Partners in Crime (X-Men ROMY)

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Rogue was exploring the Library, just about the only quiet place in the mansion since the Brotherhood and Acolytes had arrived, when Magneto finally found her. He had been waiting for a chance to talk to her alone.

"Did you find anything interesting, my dear?" he asked as he approached her.

Rogue took a defensive stance and backed up as he walked closer. Magneto stopped walking and held his hands up in surrender.

"I mean you no harm, child," he assured her. "And yes, I do remember your assassination attempt, but it has also been explained that you were under someone else's influence at the time. Can we not let bygones be bygones?"

"That depends on what you want?" She had straightened her stance slightly, but was still ready for an attack.

"Want? Nothing, my dear, except to get to know you a little. You are an intriguing young woman, and the daughter of a one time friend of mine. I think a little interest in you is natural."

"Then why aren't you having this talk with Kurt? Or did you think that he might not take kindly to the man who experimented on him as a child?"

His eyes widened slightly but that was the only sign he gave that he was surprised. Actually he was shocked that she knew of his experiments and wondered how she knew.

"That was a long time ago, Rogue, and I was a different man then. I've changed."

"Have you?" she sounded cynical.

"I don't expect you to take my word for it, but yes. I rescued the other mutants being held in Area 52, just like I promised your friend I would-"

"My boyfriend," she interrupted to correct him.

"Boyfriend, then. Just ask Charles if you don't believe me. As for what I did in my younger days," he looked away, as if he was too ashamed to meet her eyes. The problem was that Remy had schooled her on body language, how to fake it, as well as how to read when someone else is faking it. He was faking, and Mini-Remy agreed with her assessment.

"I believed I was working for the betterment of mutant kind. Now I have learned to be more constructive about it."

"At the expense of humans," Rogue added. The students had been filling her in on some of Magneto's exploits and she didn't like them one bit.

"I wouldn't expect you to be any lover of human kind," he remarked pointedly.

"Humans turned me into a mercenary, that's true, but it was mutants who gave me to them, it's mutants who want to kidnap and use me now. Being a mutant doesn't make you special, you just think you are."

"They want to wipe us out, Rogue."

"And you want to wipe them out, how is that better?"

"Survival of the fittest, surely you know a little something about that?" was his barbed reply. He had hoped, given her background and upbringing with Mystique, that she would be more malleable. He didn't like being proved wrong.

Rogue flew at him, pinning him to the wall by his neck. She knew there was no way he could break her hold because her clothes didn't have any metal.

"I could snap your neck like a twig, which I guess makes me 'fitter' than you. Does that mean I have the right to take your life?"

"Good girl," he smiled as though he was proud if her. "I had hoped that Charles hadn't tamed you too much. We could use a girl like you."

She could see his words for the manipulation that they were, and she could feel his pulse quicken under her fingers, so she knew that he was afraid, despite his bluff. She didn't answer but slammed his head into the wall again.