Girl in the Mirror


Disclaimer: I do not own the show X-Men Evolution nor the characters that appear therein. They are the property of WB Studios and Marvel Entertainment. The plot, however, belongs to me.
Author's Note: I've enjoyed the X-Men Evolution show and although I was surprised by their version of Rogue, I grew to really relate to her character. Especially her situation with Cyclops; that's what inspired me to write this song fic. There are 9 songs that appear in this story, in various forms: "Reflection" from Disney's "Mulan", "Breakable" by Fisher, from "Great Expectations", "Bad Reputation" by Joan Jett, "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls, "Take This Heart" by Richard Marx (don't laugh), "Strong Enough" by Sheryl Crow, "Not the Only One" by Bonnie Raitt, and "Save the Best For Last" by Vanessa Williams.
"-"-indicates speech, '-' poetry, and ~-~ lyrics.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The morning came, as it did most days, finding both Rogue and Kitty Pryde asleep in bed. Moments later, the alarm went off and the kids began their daily routines. Kitty phased her hand through the alarm clock, silencing it with a frizzling of wires. She yawned and walked towards her roommate's inner cove. She poked Rogue gently in the shoulder, the girl growling and burying herself deeper in the covers.

"Come on Rogue, wake up," Kitty said tiredly. "We'll be, like, late if you don't get up!"

"Go. Away." Came the rather menacing voice of the older girl.

"Fine," Kitty replied, walking out of the room without bothering to open the door--into Jean Grey, who was heading towards the bathroom.

"Kitty?" Jean asked in a surprised voice.

"You, like, try and wake her!" Inside the room, Rogue slowly opened her eyes, annoyed that the spell of sleep had been broken. She sat up reluctantly, surveying the room; the stark difference between Kitty's and her sides was pretty overwhelming to the unprepared. Kitty's was littered with popular CD's, dance shoes, posters and trimmed in pretty pastels but intermittingly peppered with computer parts and large textbooks. Rogue's half was simple without any photos or adornments. Truthfully, she had been a quasi-gypsy so long she had learned to live with little to tie her down in one place.

Slipping her hand under her pillow, her fingers curled around the one material possession that she cared about- her well-worn notebook. She flipped open the dark book, her eyes skimming over familiar blue scrawl:

'Look at me
You may think you see
Who I really am
But you'll never know me…'

Twenty minutes later Rogue stood outside the bathroom door, leaning on the wall, her features composed into her usual sulky scowl.

Ms. Perfect was inside doing whatever it was she did every morning. Rogue felt the flash of jealousy she always did at the thought of the beautiful redhead. Jean was like all those girls she had known in her life- the ones that made Rogue feel inadequate and…ugly.

Rogue's eyes narrowed. What was worse was the fact that Jean didn't even do it on purpose.

The door swung open as Jean strolled out, impeccably dressed and smiling brightly at the Gothic girl, calling, "Good morning!" as she trotted out of view.

Rogue rolled her eyes, as much at herself as at Jean and walked into the bathroom.

Jean, and Kitty too, were just different from Rogue. She was more serious, more cynical and jaded. Or so she appeared; the truth was, she was more sensitive than she let on. She didn't let anyone see it, but she was hurt often. So she created a persona to protect herself, someone that dared anyone to try and touch her. But as she looked up in the mirror, face bare of any make-up, she wished that she could be a little more like everyone else. It would be so much easier…

Her notebook lay on the counter near her hand, the pages open to a different passage:

'Everyday
It's as if I play
A part
Now I see
If I wear a mask
I can fool the world
But I cannot fool
My heart'

Rogue came unhurriedly to the breakfast table, her auburn and white locks swinging into darkly-shadowed eyes and darkly-lined lips, her body simultaneously hidden and revealed in her green mesh and back leather and outlined in silver studs. The picture of disaffected youth.

Kitty and Kurt laughed and teased one another over their sugar-coated cereal; Kurt's fingers brushing against Kitty's as she passed him the sugar bowl. Jean smiled, talking quietly with Rahne and Jubilee, taking the dark strands of the Oriental girl's hair and twisting them in a complicated pattern, despite the ruckus of Evan, Bobby and Roberto as they chased one another around the room, the occasional spike or snowball flying.

Rogue's eyes were unwillingly drawn to the calm at the center of the storm, Cyclops. Scott.

His face was inscrutable as he lifted his eyebrows to acknowledge her gaze. Rogue hated how vulnerable she felt around him. She hated that, somehow, he knew her without a word. It was if on that snowy mountainside, an eternity ago it seemed, part of her heart had exchanged for part of him. He knew her façade and knew that she wasn't brusque and unapproachable to people who mattered. He mattered.

She reached forward and snatched a golden red apple off the previously untouched pile of fruit in the center of the table. Before anyone could say anything she pivoted and strode out the entryway, heading out of the Institute altogether. School may not have been her first choice, but it was a preferred alternative to witnessing innocent acts of basic human companionship that she could never have.

"Rogue! Wait up!"

Scott jogged after the younger girl. She turned, focusing dark, expressive eyes on him. He gleaned from the people around him that she had gray-green eyes; he couldn't see them for himself, only shades of red…

He hated red. It reminded him too much of things in his past. Blood. Fire. Evil. She knew it too and she never recoiled from him as he feared everyone else would. She empathized, she had to, which was why he didn't need normal eyes to see the passion in hers. He could see it all too clearly.

"Yeah?" She replied, her stance defensive, apprehensive and impatient all at once. She always appeared on the verge of flying off, hair whirling around her face, clothes dancing around a lithe body, but always, always, restrained herself in time.

"Need a ride?" Scott offered, placing a hand on her shoulder, smiling crookedly. He felt her flinch marginally under his fingers but didn't move his hand. He wouldn't let her isolate herself, she was too important to the team. To him.

"Don't you usually give the cheerleader a ride? Or does the jock-head Duncan have dibs today?"

She snapped, eyes flashing as she jerked out of his reach, out of his touch, stalking out the door.

~Do you always have to tell him
Everything on your mind?
You know that too much
Honesty can be unkind~

She hadn't meant for that to come out, honestly. She never meant to hurt anyone, it was just something about her, she always hurt the people who cared about her in the end.

"Low blow, Rogue," his voice came from behind her. If anything else was ever true about him, he never gave up easily, especially on her. He was stubborn…she had known that from the start. "What's with you today?"

By now they had made their way down the steps outside a stunned Risty watching from her car.

"Why don't you ask yer girlfriend?! She's the telepath!" Rogue stormed away from him, the anger in her words surprising her as much as the tall boy. Where had this come from?

Rogue jumped into Risty's car wordlessly, slamming the door. Risty wisely kept silent as she pulled out of the driveway. Rogue watched Scott out of the rearview mirror, his face pained and confused.

~Every time you throw him to the floor
Why are you surprised to see
He's breakable?~

She was afraid. And when she was afraid, she lashed out. If she allowed herself to feel anything towards him, towards anyone, she would only be left alone and cold in the end. Cold to the touch. What other way could she, with her power? Her curse. Absently Rogue flipped open her notebook, her eyes glancing down at the page unseeingly.

'Must there be a secret me
I'm forced to hide?'

Rogue often wondered if she would be the same person if she had never been born into the world as a mutant. One of the outcast. She wondered if she could laugh freely and be one of the shiny, happy people. Did she want to be one of them?

Those were the very people who were cruel and merciless to anyone different. And she was different, on the outside, but also in places that they would never know.

Rogue glanced over at Risty as they pulled into the school parking lot. Risty wasn't like them. She smiled wickedly, turning up the volume of her radio as they passed the preps and the jocks.

"And I don't give a damn
About my bad reputation
I've never been
Afraid of any deviation
And I don't really care
If I'm strange
I ain't gonna change…" Joan Jett belted out. Rogue smiled a rare smile at Risty, catching the glares from the in crowd out of the corner of her eye. It was fun to stick it to them sometimes, she had learned as much from her time with the Brotherhood. They were smirking and laughing approvingly from a short distance away.

Standing off to one side of the preps were Scott and Jean. Rogue's smile vanished.

"C'mon luv, time to face the world," Risty, her closest- her only- friend, quipped in her British accented voice.

"Heaven help the world," Rogue smirked back, stepping out of the car. Reaching back inside she gathered up her books, including her notebook, closing it up on the dark scribbling:

'I am now in a world
Where I have to hide my heart
And what I believe in'

Rogue had endured all the comments, the stares, the nasty looks, and the cruel jokes that came with every day of her young life. She had asked herself many times why she dressed the way she did, if she knew this would be her only response. She quickly realized, however, that no matter how she presented herself to the world around her, she would always be disconnected. She would never be accepted. And it wasn't due wholly to her power. Her curse.

She sat in her Speech class, the one she shared with Scott, staring out the window. If she wasn't one of them, and she wasn't who she pretended to be, who was she?

She almost smiled at the paradox she had made for herself. She covered herself in the dark, Gothic persona protecting and trying not to draw attention to her real self. But she drew more attention by being atypical than she would have if she had simply been "normal".

She felt a pair of eyes on her; turning, she found Scott studying her. She glanced away, her cheeks burning as her heart twisted. That irony pierced her heart moreso than anything else.

She knew Scott better than anyone, more than Jean and to some extent the Professor as well, despite their history together. She understood his needs, the things that drove him to the breadth and height of achievement.

They were a lot alike, in truth; driven to be who they were now by their need to escape their pasts and their powers. Scott's past was darker than anyone really comprehended, save Rogue. But Scott was striving to come out of the dark and into the light. She was still struggling in the dark.

~You always try to find
What's hiding him away from you
But do you ever see your anger
Standing there between you?~

Scott continued to contemplate Rogue after her eyes, those expressive dark eyes, darted away. For the life of him, he could not figure out where her outburst had come from that morning. She was a fairly even girl, not flighty like Kitty-- controlled. She had to be.

He had seen anger there, at that control. He could understand that. Her passion was pent up, caged in, gloved and muted. He wanted her to trust him to let it out. He wanted her trust.

After school he entrusted his keys to Jean, and went off in search of his lost teammate. His lost friend.

He spent nearly an hour after school looking for her until he absolutely had to return to the Institute so he wouldn't miss his training with Wolverine. He was concerned but not suicidal. Rogue knew that Scott was looking for her but she could disappear when she wished to, quite effectively. She would go back to the Institute. She always did. And she would be lectured by a stern and worried Professor and given extra training sessions. But right now she didn't want to be with them.

~And I'd give up forever to touch you
'Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now~

"Dinner!" Hank McCoy called into the rec room as the large group of teenagers nearly stampeded towards the dining area. Luckily, the Beast's enhanced mutant abilities included agility equivalent to a monkey's.

Jean smiled as she walked down the hallway, responding to the loud voices of her classmates; she could feel their excitement that was mirrored in her own mind. Although it was a Friday night, the Professor insisted that everyone sat down to an evening meal together. Easier said than done even on the best occasions.

As she passed his room, Jean noticed that Scott was still inside. She peered her head in; he was at his desk, homework in front of him but he was a million miles away, staring out the window at the sunset.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she quipped, coming inside the room.

"Huh? Oh, hey Jean," Scott replied. She could sense that his thoughts weren't focused on her completely. A part of her was irked at this. Although she wasn't conscious of it, Jean was used to being the center of attention and when she wasn't, she could be very demanding.

"Well, I have a double date tonight with Duncan," She ventured, glancing briefly at Scott, "And Teryn. Do you have any plans for tonight?"

"Hmm?" Scott still wasn't paying attention.

"Maybe if you got something in your stomach, you could progress to whole language like the rest of us homo sapiens!" She stood, walking out of the room in a huff.

Scott followed moments later, down into the dining room. It was already filled with laughing, talking people which immediately lightened Jean's mood. In spite of her powers, Jean felt the most relaxed and at home in a large group of people. She detested the thought of being alone. She took her seat next to Kitty, across from Scott, who was taking a good-natured ribbing from the fuzzy Elf. As soon as dinner was through, several hours later, Scott Summers escaped back to his room. The Professor had made no mention of the absent Rogue, but Scott knew that he was just as concerned as he was, if not moreso. Scott was reminded of himself when he first came to the Institute, always hiding off, staying away from everyone.

~I been where you are before
No one understands it more
You fear every step you take
So sure that your heart will break
It's not how the story ends
You'll be back on your feet again~

Despite the fact that Westchester in general did not care for people like Rogue, not to mention the local high school, there was still business that could be profited from them. Such was some of the mentality of the Gothic-freak club called "Haven". Risty introduced Rogue to the nightspot and the mutant girl came there as often as she could get away. At the smoky, nearly run down building, Rogue could lose herself in the throbbing alternative music that the local bands played onstage. She could still mimic the moves she had acquired from Kitty and let her body move along to the flashing lights. The club really had lived up to its name for her.

So involved in the music was she that Rogue didn't notice the tall, lanky boy in the dark red sunglasses who entered the room, wincing slightly at the driving sound that assaulted the unprepared. Nor did Scott notice Rogue; he had stumbled upon "Haven" while walking around the town to escape his thoughts. He made his way purposefully toward the pool table, catching some strange and downright hostile looks from the patrons. In this place, with his light khakis and green sweater, Scott was the fashion freak.

~And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am~

Scott surprised the regulars, easily shooting down the more professional pool sharks. They finally gave him grudging space, in deference to his skill. Scott had always been secretly proud of his knack at pool, even though it did bring up memories of a hungry, skinny little boy who played for his dinner.

CRACK!

None of the other students knew of his habit, nor the fact that, for four years of his life, it had been his only means of income. Whenever he couldn't think anymore, he'd escape to some anonymous place and lose himself in the game. Thirteen, corner pocket.

CRACK!

Seven, ten, side pocket.

CRACK, SMACK!

Eight ball, corner pocket.

There was a calming symmetry to pool, not that he could explain it to the others. Maybe Jean would…
No. She wouldn't. He told her once, that he knew her better than anyone ever did or ever would and it was true, but he wasn't so sure that the opposite was. He did love Jean, he had for many years now, but sometimes he wondered…

Scott stood up straight, arching his back, glancing around the room. The smoke created a perpetual haze that Scott had to squint to look through. He made his way to the bartender, hoping that they had something other than alcohol at this unsavory club. He had no idea what possess him to come here that night, but suddenly he saw a reason to stay.

Rogue was dancing near the edge of the open area by the stage. She was by herself, eyes closed as her body swayed to the pulsing beat of the rock band. Scott watched her, her body moving in a rhythm that spoke of pain and caged feelings and abandon all at once. It certainly was different from what you saw at the average school dance, that's for damn sure. He didn't know how long he sat at a table watching her, but he realized, belatedly, that it was definitely past curfew when the band packed up and Rogue turned and saw him. She was panting from the exertion, her make-up wearing thin as hints of color appeared in her face.

Scott stood silently. "I'll walk you home."

~God, I feel like hell tonight
Tears of rage I cannot fight
I'd be the last to help you understand
Are you strong enough to be my man?~

Neither of them spoke as they strolled through the nearly silent town. Rogue was tired, all the fight drained from her system for the night. Scott was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn't lecture her as she had expected him to. She glanced up at him, curious, but she wasn't sure if she really wanted to hear about Jean's latest date with the King of football.

"Wanna talk to me?" Rogue jumped, glancing up at the dark haired boy. "Do ya wanna talk ta me?"

Scott didn't answer.

"We can't keep doing this Rogue. You can't keep running every time you get spooked," Scott admonished but without any heat or patronizing tone in his voice. He just sounded tired. "Why do you run?"

"Ah….don' know," Rogue replied hesitantly. She wasn't being coy either. She really didn't know why she had the urge to escape the mansion, other than things that she simply couldn't admit to anyone. They weren't real reasons, it was mostly in her head.

Or course, that's where it all went wrong anyway.

Scott stopped walking and leaned against a tree, the dark glasses on his face making it impossible to read him. "Why don't you let me help you? Or Kurt, or Kitty, or Jean? Anyone?"

"They don' understand me, they couldn't." She swallowed hard. "An' Ah've never seen anyway that ya'll can help me. If ya try, ya'll'll only wind up getting' hurt." She clutched her arms around her body. There. Her worst fear was out in the open. "Now, won't ya just leave me alone?"
"I can't."

Rogue whirled on him, desperate tears streaming down her face. All her make-up was gone, all that was left was her bare face. "Ya don' know who ya are, how the hell can ya help me know who Ah am?! How can ya reach me when anythin' Ah touch dies?! Ah'm the 21st century equivalent of the Black Plague!!" She choked on her tears, resisting the urge to throw herself at Scott, hurting him until he left her alone.

He was standing there silent and unmoved.

Scott's heart ached in his chest. Out of this young girl's mouth came nearly the same words he had spoken, or shouted rather, at Charles Xavier many years ago. It was true; Rogue could hurt someone a lot if she wasn't careful. Her power required a heavy responsibility; too heavy for such a young, lonely girl.

Scott reached forward to brush the streaked locks out of her face, when she jumped away from his fingers.

"Don' touch me," she hiccupped, though the warning wasn't lost completely.

"Why?" Scott asked boldly. "What's wrong with giving you a hug, or taking your hand, or any number of gestures, as long as I'm careful? As long as I don't touch you skin to skin?"

"Because," she cried. "Ah can'…ya don'…Ah won' ever have any more!!" Her eyes blazed brighter than he had ever seen them. "It's cruel, the whole damn world is too cruel for me ta stand. If Ah let ya- or someone else, get close to me, Ah'll never be strong enough to know that that's all Ah'll ever have! Ah'm gonna be alone for the rest of my life!"

~I was in a daze, movin' in the wrong direction
Feelin' that I'd always be the lonely one
Then I saw your face, on the edge of my horizon
Whisperin' that I wasn't the only one
The lonely one~

"You're not alone, Rogue," Scott said quietly. He approached her slowly, his arms loose at his sides. She didn't reply, just holding herself, crying. He eased her shaking, frail body into his warmth, and folded strong arms around her. She stiffened, trying to push away from him but he held fast. He held tight until she subsided. "I know you. I know that you miss human warmth. But you don't have to. You don't have to be alone Rogue, all you have to do is reach out and trust us." She shifted but he shushed her. "Trust isn't easy, I'm not telling you that. It's always going to be different for people like us. We have aspects about us that not every person is gonna accept and that's okay because we're gonna be there for each other. I'm gonna be there for you…always."

"Don' make promises ya can' keep," she rebuked into his chest.

He chuckled. "Alright. But look up at me, Rogue. Look."

The command in his voice made her lift her eyes to gaze into his. Past the ruby quartz, into the eyes the memory that she had taken told her were there behind those glasses. She knew that he meant every word he said to her honestly, and completely.

"Rogue-"

"Scott," she broke in, her voice harsh and rough with tears. "Please…Marie."

"Marie," he gave her a small smile. "I will never hurt you intentionally. Do you believe me?"

She wanted to tell him that she would believe anything that he told her. That she would do anything he asked of her, if he only would stay there with her. But she knew that she could never be enough for Scott Summers. He was already promised to the dark world, he would fight for anyone that was lost. She wasn't any different.

"Yes…" She breathed quietly, hesitantly. He smiled down at her, brilliantly, relieved. He pulled her into another comforting hug, and she finally drew the courage to return it.

This would be enough for her; she would not disappoint him. She would try for him. She would not have his love as she wanted but she would take the love that he did offer her, without any reservation or requisite for it…

~Sometimes the snow comes down in June; Sometimes the sun goes round the moon;
I see the passion in your eyes;
Sometimes it's all a big surprise.
For there was a time when all I did was wish
You'd tell me this was love.
It's not the way I hoped, nor how I planned,
But somehow, it's enough...~