Origin/History
Marie Wood was born to Frank Wood and Virginia Deveraux when they were 21 and 18, respectively, a young couple who enjoyed a sudden, whirlwind romance (despite Virginia's fairly wealthy parents' objections) and eloped together a year before their daughter was born. Virginia dropped out of high school to marry Frank, and the two moved to a small trailer park in Caldecott County, Mississippi. When the blush of romance faded, Virginia found herself living with neither the wealth nor the amenities she had been accustomed to, and resented Frank for causing the breach between she and her parents that had resulted in her being disowned. Frank lost his job at the mill, which began a long string of brief employments and short-term jobs, which only served to infuriate Virginia more. Frank started drinking, which set off explosive fights between himself and his wife, until the day he snapped and slapped her across the face. By the time Marie was born, a regular pattern had established itself. Frank would leave for days at a time, come home thoroughly drunk, Virginia would scream at him until the two got into a fistfight, then Frank would buy her flowers the next morning and be gone again within a day or two. From the time she could walk, Marie learned to avoid the screaming fights, often hiding in a closet or cupboard until they were over, and bringing her mother ice afterwards for the bruises. She grew up regarding her mother as a vengeful deity who must be appeased at all costs, and her father as something of an alien creature who visited occasionally, bringing chaos close behind him. In grade-school, Marie squeaked by, often spending more time in detention for fighting with her classmates than actually in class. She acquired a reputation as quite the spitfire, and the others soon learned to leave her alone, especially after she knocked out an older boy's front tooth for calling her "skunk-hair" on the playground. When Marie was about 10 years old, in 4th grade, her father came home in one of his customary drunken rages and broke the cassette player she had saved up spare change for months to buy, when he knocked it off the table in a lunge at Virginia. Marie grabbed a broomstick and attacked him, beating at him with the pole until he stopped hitting her mother. Unfortunately, his next target was Marie herself. Frank grabbed Marie by the neck and held her off the floor, too drunk to realize or care that he was choking her with every shake. In her fright, her mutant powers manifested, draining Frank's energy, mind, and the latent mutant ability he had never known he had... an erratic pyrokinetic talent. Struggling with the unwelcome presence in her mind, Marie accidentally started the fires with her mind, but lacked the physical modifications that would have protected her body from the flames. That evening, a neighbor noticed smoke rising from the direction of the Wood home, and when the sheriff arrived, all he found was the burned-out husk of a trailer, two adult corpses, and a charred trail that led half a mile through the swamp before disappearing. Marie was nowhere to be found. Fleeing the scene of the accident, flames still trailing from her body, Marie ran into the thickly forested swamps to hide. She collapsed late that night nearly 5 miles away, sprawled by the side of a road with her clothes and hair burned to cinders, severe burns, and her feet bleeding from her run. In the darkness, she never knew she was near a road until headlights woke her from her sleep. Frightened out of coherence, she scrambled up and prepared to flee again, when a strange, beautiful lady in nice clothing stepped out of a shining new car and insisted on taking her to New Orleans. Of course, by the time they reached New Orleans, Raven Darkholme had convinced the frightened girl that she didn't need to flee after all. Suspecting that the girl was a mutant, Raven managed to worm a few details of what had happened out of her, enough to know that the girl would be in grave danger if her mutancy and identity became known. It is likely that at some point before Raven knew the full extent of Marie's powers, she touched her, and Marie retained the powers long enough to subconsciously return her badly burned skin to normal, preventing scarring. Taking the child in and naming her 'Rogue', Raven revealed her own identity as Mystique, a shape-shifting mutant (mutants being a thing unfamiliar to Rogue), and proceeded to see to it that Rogue was fed, clothed, bathed, and slowly-but-surely drawn out of her shell. Raven took it upon herself to study Rogue's powers and ascertain exactly how the two of them could benefit from them. Trusting Mystique and Mystique's long-time friend and lover, Irene, more implicitly than she had ever trusted her helpless mother, Rogue didn't hesitate when Mystique asked her to step in and drive the "getaway" car (Mystique taught her to drive by the time she hit 12 years of age) from the scene of a bombing Mystique had orchestrated. After that, the two were involved in everything from bank heists to assassination threats, and were wanted criminals in a number of states (although Rogue always wore a hood to conceal her distinctive patch of white hair, and Mystique's powers made it nearly impossible for police to track her). Rogue was well on the way to becoming one of the youngest career criminals in the US, when one of Mystique's plans leaked to the authorities, somehow, and the two found several SHIELD agents waiting for them at what should have been a simple maneuver. Rogue found herself cornered by the super-powered SHIELD agent Carol Danvers, and panicked. When Danvers knocked her off a bridge and suspended her hundreds of feet above the water, she grabbed the woman's bare arms and failed to let go soon enough, in her fright. Hitting the water below finally shocked her into releasing Danvers, only to be sucked under by the strong current. SHIELD, in the meantime, cut Mystique off, giving her no way to rescue Rogue, and she was forced to withdraw. When SHIELD agents pulled the half-drowned girl out of the river a few minutes later, unable to find any sign of Danvers, they secured her according to standard policies for capture of mutant fugitives, and sent her to a Weapon X facility for processing. Rogue woke up dazed and confused in a small cell with a strange, highly hostile voice in her head, that of Carol Danvers, whose memories and very personality seemed to linger in her mind. Her subsequent fit of terror ended when she was subdued and sedated for proper testing. The Weapon X scientists were able to determine that Rogue's power not only 'stole' the memories and mental patterns of her victims, but seemed to cause genetic change within Rogue's own body, allowing her to mimic some super-human abilities if the absorption was retained long enough. Somehow, in the accident that had lost SHIELD's test agent, Rogue had permanently drained the woman and showed no signs of losing the effects as time went on. Rogue did not respond well to the Weapon X brainwashing program, perhaps as an effect of the secondary 'Danvers' personality that persisted in fighting her control of the body. The scientists, however, did not have time to investigate further, as Mystique returned, this time with the aid of Magneto and his Brotherhood, to free Rogue and the other young mutants Weapon X had gathered. Under the care of Magneto, Rogue stayed with the Brotherhood, as did Mystique, finding relations with people her own age as awkward as always. However, she seemed to find something of a kindred spirit in Magneto's own son, Pietro "Quicksilver" Lensherr, and when Pietro finally left the Brotherhood, tired of his father's treatment, Rogue left with him. Afraid to tell the woman she knew as "Momma" that Magneto's ideology just didn't appeal to her, Rogue left a cryptic note and fled with no word to anyone save Irene, who she counted on to keep her destination secret. Rogue and Pietro made their way to New York, where Xavier's school was rumored to be, in the hopes that Xavier would be able to offer some immunity should Magneto decide to punish his errant son.

Rogue is not currently aware of her own strength, flight power, or semi-invulnerability, and has blocked memories of her traumatic experiences in Weapon X and Carol Danver's personality fragments from her mind. Rogue is also unaware of the true cause of the fire that claimed her parents' lives (absorption of her father's mutant pyrokinesis).