Institutionalized

INSTITUTIONALIZED CHAPTER THIRTY ONE (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm)...thanks. A lot. A whole hell of a lot. Internutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are wonderful for archiving. Readers/Reviewers: I wasn't going to write tonight but I find it's good to be distracted sometimes, so here's this chapter. Thanks for reading.




Rogue did something that she rarely ever did and that made her cringe in self-righteous embarrassment even as she did it. She screamed. She screamed loud and long, letting the sound rip out of her lungs and throat and tear through her entire body, making her vocal cords feel raw almost instantly as the sound coursed through her. She had been alone, standing on the front porch, trying to see in the starlight, when the apparition formed. Being the good Southern girl that she was, Rogue had been raised with a certain amount of superstition and belief in the undead1 which also included a certain amount of fear in said restless spirits. As the mist, shining white in the relative dark, began to take form, countless stories of headless soldiers, White Ladies, vanishing hitchhikers and "haints" flashed through her mind, making her back away slowly, an inchoate belief and scared respect taking control over her usual cool demeanor. The mist took a vaguely human shape and what should be the arm reached towards her face, bone-chilling cold brushing her face. That's when she did, that's when she screamed.
"Shhhh..." The voice was not quite disembodied but rather not fully formed, sounding hollow and sexless. "You're making this harder than it needs to be..."
Rogue sucked in a breath to scream again when the mist became the mother who raised her. _It's a fetch, isn't it?2 Mama's sent me a fetch...Oh, God...that can't be good either way... _ The new scream never made it past the strangled gasp stage, her throat seizing closed as the fetch, as she thought it was, seemed to pass it's (her) hand into Rogue's neck and squeeze.
"You mutant types always have the most banal desires...a mother? Really, I expected something more exotic from you. I can see inside that little mind of yours, _Marie, _ and I know you've got some interesting things brewing in there..."
Rogue opened her mouth but no sounds came forth. She knew that the others had heard her and had a grim, fleeting moment of satisfaction when she thought that they would reach her before anything else could happen. Two things happened at once, though, that made her realize how wrong she was. First came the realization that this entity was not only touching her but seemed very, very solid. In fact, she realized, this entity was not a ghost at all. Since when could ghosts read minds, she wondered as the silencing hand within her tightened even further. The second thing that happened was that she realized she was not standing on solid ground anymore. She was being pulled off the porch and onto the grass, the sound of immanent help fading as she began to lose consciousness.
Rogue experienced a disorienting pull from somewhere within her chest, the feeling of gravity gone for a moment as her arms and legs stiffened and flailed, her eyes rolling back into her head and her heart stopping for one horrifying moment as she fell to the ground. When she regained a sense of equilibrium, she was not herself. Not quite. Her mind had taken a backseat to a drive, something making her move somewhat disjointedly as she rose to her feet. She could see, as if through a thick pane of distorted glass, Empath vomiting not twenty feet from her, and Kurt, his eyes the only sign of his presence, darting away towards the back of the house and beyond. What part of her mind that still seemed to belong to her wondered why he had not heard her scream and someone else, someone in there with her, sharing her skull, taunted her. _Empath does his job well, doesn't he? Control is the name of the game here, Marie. _
_Rogue, _ that tiny part of her mind insisted even as her legs moved jerkily, like she was being controlled by someone not used to bones and flesh, someone used to more fluid forms of movement than walking. _I'm Rogue. _
_Sure you are, dear. Sure you are... _
Rouge thought she was making a valiant effort to resist movement and fight off her invader but it seemed to be in vain. She found herself moving herky-jerky over the fence, climbing the wrought iron as if it were nothing. When she dropped to the ground on the other side, she felt the jolt shoot through her body and make her teeth clack together painfully, but the feelings became nothing more than a sort of white noise as her legs again moved, her arms stiff at her sides as she (they? She wondered. _Am I a they now? _) walked down the blacktop road towards the rear of the Institute property, where the surface petered away into grass and then the woods, a dead end lane.
She almost did not see the car, so dark was it and silent. What she noticed first was the flash of white as a woman leaned out of the car, looking towards the grounds to Rogue's right. She then saw the car, it's outline picked out by the faint glint of stars. There was a metallic clanging from within, the sound of cursing in a foreign tongue and then Rogue heard an all-too-familiar _*bamf _ * and the low tones of Kurt's voice, what Kitty called his "serious" tone. "Kurt?" she said aloud, the name tasting strange to her. Her voice, she was pleased to note, was her own. Though as soon as she spoke, it felt as if a metal band was clamped around her skull, ten times too tight. "Ah!"
_Be nice, little Marie _, the voice taunted.
Her world went briefly black and when she could see again, she was wedged in the back seat of a town car between Piotr and the white-clad woman. She was covered by her clothing but she noticed the woman still tried to ensure at least an inch of space between them. Kurt was curled into a very uncomfortable looking ball on the floorboard. Her mind felt once again her own, her body no longer heavy and strange, and she realized that whatever had possessed her was gone. New fear set in and she said as evenly as she could, "You're committing a few federal offenses here..."
The woman smiled thinly and did not turn to look at her as she spoke. "That's your best line? I am strangely disappointed. You'd think at least one of you would have developed wit."
Kurt moaned on the floor and Rogue started to reach for him, but a subtle shake of Piotr's head made her stop mid-movement. "Who are you?"
"I am the future, child."

Empath felt worse than he did before he was sick all over the grass. He had overextended himself again and there was still more to do. Kurt was gone into the mists and he would not be back, the other teenager knew. He trusted Incubus to get Rogue for Emma, the rather smug double cross against Magneto making Empath feel a little, tiny bit better despite the burning sensation in his stomach akin to that of ulcer pain. People were pouring from the house, responding to Rogue's scream. He marveled at the fact it had only been a few seconds since it all began as he staggered towards the first person he could reach. Scott. "Kurt..." he gasped to the rensednsed mutant.
"Where is he?" Scott demanded, shaking Empath a little by the shoulders.
"Some silver-haired kid," Empath panted, making sure the waft of vomit-breath hit Scott full on, making him let go. Emma had drilled him on Pietro's appearance as soon as Incubus had told her of his part in Magneto's plan. She left nothing to chance, this one, Empath thought as Scott spun away, striding into the fray of worried teenagers and one massive blue man. _Now...the hard part... _ With great effort and growing nausea, Empath exerted control once more. Lance and Bobby broke away from the group and began moving on silent feet towards the dark of the woods. Roulette followed, though without Empath's encouragement. Wait for it , he thought to himself, seeing with his mind's eye their progress. They would be close to Magneto's trap now, the one laid for Piotr. They would stumble on the scene...now. _ Empath smiled slightly and cut the connection as he felt, rather than saw, them captured. _Cakewalk. The rest of this is all a cakewalk. _


1 We are...what? Quit looking at me like that. I see dead people. Get over it. ;)
2 A fetch is one of two things-either a spirit sent to get you, to take you to the other side, or like a sending, a spirit sent to tell you the person is dead.