Disclaimer: I obviously do not own any of the X-Men characters... Don't get me wrong, it would be SWEET if I did... but I digress. I'll do my very best to adhere to the personalities of the characters, I promise!

One Spark of Hope

Even before she'd registered exactly what had happened, Rogue's entire body seized up, instinctively recognizing the repercussions of her skin-on-skin contact with Risty. It would have been so casual a touch for any normal person, like a hug or handshake. But even subconsciously, it was like her body fell into the pattern of the lethal absorption her mutant powers brought. Blood thrummed through her ears, pounding in her temples as her hands and teeth clenched. Her vision flashed from black to full color and back; her breathing went quick and shallow. She was only vaguely aware of the hundreds of dancing teens around her, of the deep bass pounding steadily from two giant amps by the stage, or of the form of Risty falling away from Rogue's lethal touch. Was it her eyes, or did Risty's hair look suddenly… orange?

And then came that crushing wave of images. A distant, unsurprised part of Rogue's mind wondered which visions of Risty's life would flood her senses. A trip to some London playground when she was four, perhaps? Or maybe her first kiss in the English rain?

Rogue set her feet and readied for the unbalancing sensation of confused pictures to overtake her, closing her mind as the professor had taught her in his weekly sessions with her. Professor X had taught her to retreat into herself, to wrap a mental shield of light around herself to keep at bay the foreign identities in her head. As it stood, she could usually just barely keep her concentration when the flood hit her. But she hadn't counted on her weird condition lately, the weird, heightened sense of her own powers like an acrid taste in her mouth. She vaguely remembered Logan offering a mangled tennis racket for her inspection that morning before at last her floodgates broke, and in a blinding, boiling rush came the onslaught of alien memories.

But the images Rogue dissolved into were not those of a teen girl; they weren't the flighty, colorful sensations she expected of her vivacious friend. Instead, Rogue saw a slender, blue-skinned woman sprawled on the floor of the X-mansion. She gasped; the next image that slid through her was one she personally remembered: still, frigid air of a darkened cave as Rogue herself grasped the hand of the same blue woman, unprotected skin against unprotected skin. She saw her friend Risty as she knew, the fiery bronze eyes dancing as she teased Rogue about her lack of a social life.

And that's when she made the connection. Her Risty, her best friend, the girl she'd trusted with her life, who she'd even gone so far as to explain the dreaded secret of her mutation to earlier that day, was Mystique. Risty, who'd gone with her to pick a hot outfit for the Sadie Hawkins dance, who'd helped her capture a monster from another dimension at that very event, was her enemy. But it went beyond that… She saw who she assumed was Mystique in disguise as a warm, blonde woman holding a little girl with auburn hair and grey eyes in the sunshine. She saw Mystique and… herself. Rogue staggered forward a few steps before her knees hit the ground.

And that, that moment was when Rogue's entire world stretched out like a rubber band and… snapped.

Something foreign slammed through her veins. Her muscles were simply flexible, and she knew instinctively that she could shape them in any way she could imagine. Mystique's flat power to assume the gift of creation, to make herself in her own image, seized her body while her mind rolled on unencumbered by reason or want, reeling in her sick new discovery.

Risty was Mystique was… her mother?

A molten, uncontrollable rage hammered into her, knocking what little control she had left aside. The shield of light inside her mind shattered, leaving her in total darkness as she wrestled with the fury and betrayal. With her mental ears, she heard a feral snarl from the shadows of her mind. This was wrong, so wrong… The Professor had helped her perfect her mental shield to protect her victims from her powers by vesting her with some semblance of control, while it also protected Rogue from forgetting who she was entirely, as she had her first few absorptions. The shield was designed to keep two personalities separate while Rogue absorbed them. So who was lurking around here besides herself and Mystique?

That's when he pounced.

Sabertooth erupted from the gloom of Rogue's shadow-world, clawed fingers curling around her upper arms. She was too disoriented to scream.

At that same moment, Rogue's physical hands grew to the size of plates. The muscles on her arms expanded, wiry cords of muscle rippling with the change. Her hair lengthened down past her shoulder-blades, lightening to the color of old gold as vicious fangs slid out of her gums. Her eyes yellowed and her sense of smell quadrupled, bringing the various scents of hundreds of people to her attention.

Rogue got to her feet, embracing the raw rage as she towered well over the heads of every other concert-goer. She threw back her head---

Mystique was Risty was her mother was Mystique was…

--- and roared her animal wrath to the sky.

Cliffeh! ^^ I'll get to it soon! I've got a lot of ideas for this!