He opened his eyes and stared emptily at the ceiling, unsure where he was. His whole body ached, and his sense of the geomagnetic field was half drowned by a ringing, a whiteness-- if his muscles were the magnetic field then every one of them was pulled so badly that all he could feel was pain, not even a sense of where they were.
"How do you feel?"
Female voice. Slowly he tracked his head over to see. Short, dark skin, hair in cornrows, scrubs. Cecilia Reyes. So this was the X-Mansion, then.
"Rogue," he said, and his voice rasped. He hadn't realised he was so thirsty. "What of Rogue?"
He knew from the expression on her face that what he remembered, what he had hoped to be a nightmare, was cold truth.
"Joseph, I'm sorry," Dr. Reyes said gently. "Rogue didn't make it."
Didn't make it. He remembered holding her gloved hand tightly as her breath rattled in and out, Remy clutching her other hand, begging her to live, her hair as white as his and her face sunken, wrinkled, old. Body so light, so thin. Burned to ash.
Should have been him.
"I see," he whispered.
"Can you tell me how you feel? You're going to be all right, but you were pretty rough for a while. It'd help me to know if you were in any pain or if there are any other symptoms." She squatted by the bed and took his hand. "I know you probably don't feel like talking about your own health now, but Rogue wouldn't want you to suffer."
No, of course not. Rogue had decided to sacrifice herself for him. Rogue hadn't wanted him to suffer, to die. Even though it was his fault for being unable to resist Astra, even though he was only a duplicate of someone else with no independent existence or value of his own.
"I... will live." Unlike Rogue. He tried to sit up. Weakness overwhelmed him, and he fell back. He felt so old. "What of the others?"
"No one else was seriously hurt. Joseph, 'I will live' isn't good enough-- I know you're going to live. I want to know if there's anything I can do to help you beyond that. You're not doing Rogue any good by holding onto your pain."
No. He wasn't doing Rogue any good. Nothing would do Rogue any good anymore. Joseph closed his eyes tightly. "I need nothing."
"I don't believe you."
"I care little one way or the other."
She sighed. "Have it your way. Call me if you need me."
He would not need her. The only thing he could want in all the world, she hadn't the power to give. Joseph opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling again, willing himself to emptiness. Blank, just blank. Forget the events of the day, forget who and what he was, forget what he'd done and failed to do. Just forget.
Amnesia again would have been a blessing. It did not come.
Some time later Hank McCoy appeared at his side. "How do you feel?"
Joseph considered the merits of pretending to be catatonic, but decided against it. "I will live."
"Glad to hear that. It was touch and go for a while there."
Joseph didn't remember being that critically injured, only passing out shortly after the emissary from the UN had shown up. He didn't even know what the woman had said. He wasn't sure he cared, either. "What happened?"
"To you? As nearly as we can tell, your DNA matrix started destabilizing under the onslaught of the forces you and Magneto were wielding against one another, and channeling the entire magnetosphere through your person helped matters not a whit. Your cells began to deteriorate rapidly, as if within a posentropic field--"
"I have a headache. Please be brief."
"I see." Hank was quiet for a few moments. "In layman's terms, my young friend... you aged ten years in the minutes before Rogue seized control from you. Aside from the length of your hair I'd be hard pressed to visually tell the difference between you and Magnus at the moment. Had she not taken the action she did..."
"Why did any of you let her?" Joseph asked bleakly.
"Joseph, I wasn't there. I can only report what I've been told. But I don't believe there was any question of letting Rogue do anything... all her life I don't believe that was ever a question. Rogue did what she believed to be right, regardless of what others told her. Always."
He would not cry. He had no right to cry. He had killed her, the genetic instability she'd absorbed from him along with his powers aging and killing her. It should have been him. Would to God it had been him.
Or Magnus. He could have lived with that too. From the look on Magnus's face he'd seen after Rogue's death, he wasn't sure Magnus would disagree. The memory pleased him. Nothing could ever make him feel better, but knowing that Magnus suffered as much guilt as he did, if not more, seemed fitting and right. Magnus' short-sighted actions and amoral obsessions had brought them to this pass. He deserved to suffer too. And he was. Joseph knew that, as surely as if he'd been a telepath reading the man's mind. He knew Magnus as no one else possibly could, now...
...odd, that. There were memories that hadn't been there before, but detached, behind glass. His and not his. Perhaps only the natural side effect of knowing they weren't his. He suspected he knew where they'd come from-- proximity to Magnus seemed to trigger a flood of memories, as if he were absorbing them from the man over some sort of short-range psychic link between them-- but he hadn't noticed them coming in until now. Perhaps he could sort through them, take what was useful from them--
--And then it hit him again that Rogue was dead. Not that he'd forgotten-- how could he forget? But it seemed that every time his brain started to take a few moments to process, to think, to get on with the business of living, he would remember that Rogue was no part of that business anymore, and it would paralyze him. He didn't want to think, to explore new memories. Getting on with the business of life seemed horribly disrespectful to Rogue and her death.
"What of the others?" he asked. "Astra... and Magnus. What became of them?"
"Astra fled after Nightcrawler teleported her away from your combat, or so I am told," Hank said. "Magnus... I take it you lost consciousness before that point?"
"What happened?" It was an effort to force the words out.
"Magnus is ruler of Genosha. The UN granted him the territory." Hank's lips curled as he spoke, as if he were tasting something sour. "I am sorry, Joseph. But it appears the X-Men failed."
Joseph shook his head automatically. "Not failed. Magnus... threatened permanent damage to the Earth's magnetosphere, if he did not get his way. The X-Men stopped that. Rogue..."
He remembered the power flowing through him, like a raging current so powerful it battered him inside, hollowing him out and he could barely hold it even as it burned him. He could feel his insides dissolve, feel himself disintegrating into that rushing roar of power, controlling it by only the tiniest of margins as the X-Men attacked Magnus. He remembered Xavier's mind, anchoring him, holding him to his concentration, Xavier's power like mental hands on his own, steadying his embrace of the deadly current.
And then, while all his concentration was on trying to repair the magnetosphere from the damage his and Magnus' battle had done, Rogue came up behind him with no warning, spun him around and kissed him passionately, kissed him as she had only ever done to Remy, as if he were the one she loved and not Remy. And the world had gone black.
Why?
Why had she taken his power, knowing it was killing him? Couldn't she have guessed it would kill her too?
Why would she choose to sacrifice her life for a man who wasn't even a person, nothing but a copy of someone else?
Rogue was unique. Why die for a man who was not?
And Magneto was leader of Genosha. Joseph hoped it was ashes in his mouth.
No, more than hope. He knew it was.
That wasn't much consolation, though.