Rogue: Veins of Borrowed Fire by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Rogue-Veins-of-Borrowed-Fire-1339113052?file=1

Rogue: Veins of Borrowed Fire ANIMATION

The Debt of Skin

The humidity of the Westchester night didn’t just cling; it throttled. Rogue sat on the edge of the fountain in the center of the mutant cemetery, her gloved hands tucked tightly beneath her thighs. It was a private place, tucked behind a screen of weeping willows that Xavier had planted to hide the casualties of a dream that often felt more like a fever. She wasn't supposed to be out here, not with the way her mind had been fraying lately—a patchwork quilt of personalities held together by the thin thread of her own fading willpower.

The air shifted, turning from stagnant heat to a needle-sharp chill that bypassed her leather jacket. It wasn't the wind. It was the soil. Beneath the manicured grass, something was humming a low, discordant frequency that vibrated through her boots. Then came the sound that would haunt her dreams for years: the rhythmic, wet cracking of granite.

One by one, the headstones began to split down the center like overripe fruit. From the fissures, a mist emerged—not white and ethereal, but a bruised violet, the exact color of a fading contusion. Rogue stood, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She watched as the apparitions began to coalesce, taking the shapes of teenagers who had once worn the same gold-and-black spandex she currently donned. These were the ones who didn't make it past the training sessions, the ones whose powers had been too volatile or whose luck had simply run dry.

"Anna Marie," a voice whispered. It didn't come from the air; it came from the back of her own throat, a vibration in her vocal cords that wasn't her own.

A boy stepped forward from the mist. He was lean, with a shock of messy hair and eyes that looked like shattered glass. It was Cody Robbins—the first boy she had ever kissed, the first soul she had accidentally hollowed out. Behind him stood others: a girl whose skin flickered with internal sparks, a boy whose shadow seemed to have a life of its own. They didn't look like monsters; they looked like unfinished business.

"Cody?" Rogue’s voice was a trembling sliver of its usual Southern drawl. "You’re... you’re supposed to be at peace. You’re supposed to be gone."

Cody smiled, but there was no warmth in it. He drifted closer, his feet not quite touching the blades of grass. "Hard to be gone when you’ve got the best parts of us tucked away in your pockets, darlin’. We aren't ghosts in the ground. We’re ghosts in your blood. And we’ve decided we want our futures back."

The girl with the sparks—a trainee Rogue had once accidentally grazed during a frantic skirmish in the Danger Room—stepped into the moonlight. Her name had been Sarah, and she had died a week after that touch from an unrelated injury, but Rogue still remembered the taste of her first crush on a chemistry teacher.

"You’re a thief of time, Rogue," Sarah said, her voice a chorus of overlapping echoes. "You remember the way I felt when I finally mastered a backflip? I don't. You took that memory. You remember the smell of my mother’s perfume? That’s yours now too. I’m just a hollow shell in the dirt, while you walk around wearing my life like a second-hand coat."

The specters began to circle the fountain, a slow, predatory dance. The seduction of their presence was terrifying; there was a magnetic pull between them and Rogue, a longing for the pieces of their identities that she held within her psyche. It felt like her skin was trying to leap off her bones to join them.

"I didn't mean to take it," Rogue cried out, her eyes darting between the shimmering figures. "I never wanted this! I’d give it all back if I could. You think I like havin' a head full of screams and borrowed heartbeats?"

Cody leaned in, his face inches from hers. He smelled of ozone and dry earth. "Then give it back. Not the memories. The potential. The years we never got to breathe. You’ve got so much life in you, Anna Marie. It’s greedy to keep it all for yourself."

He reached out a translucent hand. Normally, Rogue would recoil in terror of her own touch, but here, in the graveyard of her regrets, she felt a perverse desire to be the one who was touched. The mystery of what lay beyond the veil was less frightening than the crowded loneliness of her own mind.

"How?" she whispered, her gaze locked onto Cody’s fractured eyes. "How do I give it back?"

"A trade," Cody said, his voice dropping to a seductive purr that made her skin crawl with both dread and desire. "A kiss for a soul. One long, deep d
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)