You = Me

TITLE: You = Me

AUTHOR: Jos Mous

DISCLAIMER: Not owning characters, not making a profit.

UNIVERSE: X-Men Evolution

PAIRING: Kitty/Rogue… Coming To You Somewhere This Millennium… We Hope.

RATING: PG-13

“FUCK!!”

The voice was very definitely Rogue’s and it was coming from Rogue’s and Kitty’s bedroom. These two little facts disturbed Rogue to no end for two simple reasons. The first one being that she was walking down the hallway in front of her room and the second one being that she had not just shouted “fuck” at the top of her lungs.

Rogue jumped to the conclusion that Mystique had broken in and was now probably doing all kinds of nefarious things…

… in a bedroom of two teenage girls without access to Cerebro or anything else worth stealing or destroying.

Probably not Mystique then.

There was, of course, one easy way to find out. Which was to open the door she was standing in front of and going inside.

Which was exactly what Rogue decided to do.

Two seconds later she gave herself a pat on the back for not fainting. Or would she have done if she wasn’t so stunned.

Rogue was sitting on Rogue’s bed, looking decidedly pissed off.

Rogue looked down at her hands and then her clothes and realised that she had not switched bodies with anyone.

She looked up at Rogue again and noticed some differences she hadn’t seen during the initial shock. Her hair, for one. It was much longer. And while her uniform was, indeed, still black and green it no longer sported the huge “X” signs on the shoulders. And then there was the scar, starting at the end of her right eye and going all the way down her cheek.

“Uhm…” said Rogue.

“What year is it?” Rogue asked.

“Err… 2003,” Rogue answered.

“Fuck.”

“You… you’re… me.”

“Future you, yeah,” said Rogue. “Word of advice, never ever absorb the powers of a time shifter.”

“OK,” said Rogue slowly. “I’ll… remember that.”

“No you won’t,” said Rogue. “I’m proof of that.”

“So you’re… from the future,” Rogue said.

“Err… yeah,” came the sarcastic reply. “You know, I don’t remember being so dense.”

“I’m just trying to cope with this situation without the universe falling to pieces around me.”

“Smart move. Wouldn’t want you to faint or anything. I have no idea what would happen if I tried to give you mouth-to-mouth.”

“Oh,” said Rogue, very carefully making her way to a chair and sitting down. “So I guess I can’t control my powers then.”

“Disappointing, ain’t it?” said Rogue. “But limited control is the best we can get. We can more or less decide what to take, but we always take something.”

“Crap.”

“Yup.”

“So now you’re stuck here?” Rogue asked.

“Only until this time-shift thing wears off again. I hope.”

Rogue nodded. And then realised that here was an opportunity. She was, apparently, talking to her future self. And her future self probably knew some interesting things.

Then Rogue noticed the scar again, along with the rather decrepit looking uniform and wondered if she really wanted to know anything about the future.

“It’s a lot bigger than I remembered,” said the other Rogue.

“What?”

“This room,” Rogue explained. “I always imagined it as being smaller.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you know? This here is the mutant closet. This bloody mansion is a prison.”

“No it’s not,” said Rogue. “We can be who want to be in here.”

“Yeah, but only in here. Out there…” Rogue sighed. “I hate 2003.”

“I suppose it’s better in your time then?”

“Way,” said Rogue. “In my time, it has been officially declared that mutants are people too.” She chuckled. “Bit insulting if you ask me, but hey, that’s norms for ya.”

“When will that happen?” Rogue asked.

“Over here? 2017.”

“That’s a long way off.”

“Could’ve been longer.”

“And err… how are you holding up?” Rogue asked.

“You’re asking that cuz of the scar, right?”

Rogue nodded.

“Got that scar two years from now, along with a couple of others. But in my present, I’m doing OK. Got a steady job at the mutant division of Interpol, tracking down all the rogues out there, which is why I’m here right now. I’ve got a four year old daughter, name of Jessica, who likes to drive her mommy absolutely insane with her powers.” Rogue paused. “Figuratively speaking,” she added.

“I have a daughter?” Rogue asked, disbelief in her voice.

“Surprised me too, in all honesty,” said Rogue. “Never thought I was the mother type. But my wife really wanted one and I still haven’t figured out how to say “no” to her, so…”

“Wait, wife?”

Rogue arced an eyebrow. “Yeah. You do know, you’re bi, right?”

“I’m not…” Rogue stopped. True, she had found herself fantasising about a girl lately. But that was just one girl. “I’m not that bi.”

Rogue grinned. “Trust me, you are that bi.”

“Listen, there’s just one girl that I might be attracted to, that’s all.”

“Kitty Pryde, huh?” said Rogue. “I remember her. Had a lot of fun together.”

“Look, I have no intentions of dating her, you hear?”

“Hey, I hear,” said Rogue. “Of course, I know my past. I know what’s going to happen because it already did. And it were a great few months.”

“Few months?”

Rogue grinned. “You sound disappointed. But yeah, it didn’t last long. We had an attraction, but it was just physical. We had fun, we had sex, but we didn’t have love, just lust. Still, it was all pretty safe for me and it really helped me deal with who I am, so it was a good thing in spite of it all.”

“Sex? We had sex?”

“Oh, did we ever,” said Rogue. A smile was starting to play on her lips and her eyes seemed to mist over slightly as she took a walk down Memory Lane, towards that area with a lot of red light spilling out of the buildings.

“I can’t have sex,” Rogue said. “You know that if you’re really me. Hell, I can’t even kiss.”

“Who says you have to be naked to have sex? You can still have orgasms with all your clothes on, you know. You just gotta be a little more inventive. As for kissing…” Rogue sighed. “Well, that’s a different story.”

“So… was it really just safe fun?”

Rogue didn’t get a reply, simply because there was nobody else in the room any more.

Rogue looked at the empty space and thought. “Safe” other Rogue had said. “Safe” and “fun” to be more precise, but “safe” was more important to her right now.

She could handle safe.

It was a mere few decades later as Rogue walked towards the front door of her suburban home with white picket fence. Rogue and her wife hadn’t had the house for very long yet, which was the only reason why the fence was still there.

Rogue hadn’t even hung her coat up properly when she was found herself in a vice-like hug.

“Hi, mommy.”

“Hey honey,” said Rogue, picking the girl up from the ground and planting a kiss on her cheek. Jessica’s DNA was half Rogue’s and she was the only person immune to her powers. Which made her a target for incessant hugging. “How’re you doing?”

“Mom was very worried,” Jessica said reproachfully. “I had to comfort her all the time.”

“Mood swings are part of a pregnancy,” said Rogue. “Or so I’ve been told anyway.”

“Well you just go make up right now. And don’t be too noisy.”

“Jessica, most four year-olds don’t talk like that,” Rogue said, putting the girl back down on the floor.

“Most four year-olds don’t have two mutant parents,” said Jessica. “So it’s your own fault.”

And with that, the girl turned around and bounded up the stairs.

Rogue entered the living room, saw her wife and took a moment to see how beautiful she was again. By the look of her stomach, it was obvious that this was a woman who was going to give birth not too long from now. She hadn’t been showing when Rogue had left to track the time shifter.

Rogue decided that it was time to take up an extended vacation.

“Hey,” said Rogue.

“Hi.”

“Missed you.”

“Missed you too.”

Rogue realised that this was the time where any normal married couple would stand up and kiss. That knowledge used to hurt, but Rogue had managed to come to terms with it.

“So did you catch him?”

“Yeah, eventually I managed to knock him out with my bare hands. Spent some time in the past because of it.”

“I hope you didn’t cause any paradoxes.”

“Not really. Everything pretty much happened as I remembered it.”

“So you did meet yourself then.”

“Yep. I told her a couple of things I thought she needed to know. And I also told her a few blatant lies.”

“Such as?”

“Such as you and me having nothing more than a little fun.”