The young woman known only as Rogue joined the X-Men to learn to control the genetic attributes that are both her blessing and her curse -- namely, the power to absorb others' memories and talents through touch. Tragically, she still has not mastered this power, and so is forced to keep those she loves most at arm's length.

Although Rogue never learned to control her power, she did gain more control over her mind with Xavier's help. Carol's persona was submerged, but acted as a backup at times when Rogue's persona was suppresed. She remained with the X-Men through the Mutant Massacre, the team's death and rebirth in Dallas, and "Inferno," getting into a sometimes volatile love triangle with former adversary Dazzler and Longshot along the way. During a battle with the Master Mold/Nimrod, Rogue was grabbed by the giant robot, and told Dazzler to laser off its foot, so that it would fall into the Siege Perilous gateway. When Dazz did so, the robot was sucked into the portal, but it took Rogue with it.

Months later, Rogue popped back into existence in the Australian town the X-Men used as a base, now occupied again by the Reavers, and discovered that the powers and psyche she had absorbed from Ms. Marvel were gone. She absorbed a little of Gateway, the aborigine teleporter, to find out the last place he had sent the X-Men, and used his bull-roarer to teleport to the Savage Land. While there, she was mysteriously attacked by a horribly degenerated Ms. Marvel. This doppelganger was the part of Ms. Marvel that Rogue had absorbed, given form by the Siege Perilous, and not the real Carol Danvers, who had become Binary years before, and who was a member of the Starjammers. The two women shared one life force, however, so as one weakened and degenerated, the other grew stronger.

Eventually, they were both felled by Magneto, who sized up the situation and decided to save Rogue, transferring all of "Ms. Marvel's" energy and powers back to her. Strangely, Rogue's powers didn't work, even her own absorption ability, which had worked before the transfer. She joined Magnus is his conflict against Zaladane, and the two began a relationship the full extent of which is uncertain. They then teamed up with Ka-Zar and S.H.I.E.L.D. to defeat Zaladane, who had threatened to take over the world's magnetic field. During the battle, Rogue's powers returned. After Magneto killed Zaladane, Rogue went to Muir Island, where she fell under the Shadow King's influence, and eventually fought against her friends.

When the Shadow King was defeated, Rogue returned to the X-Men and became part of the Blue Team. She met the new X-Man Gambit and the sparks started to fly, until his wife Beladonna showed up. Bel almost died fighting the Brood, and when Gambit returned to New Orleans to find a way to heal her, Rogue went along, and once accidentally touched Belladonna, seemingly absorbing some of her mind. Although this was hinted at shortly afterwards, it was never really followed up. Just before the crystalization of Earth by the M'Kraan Crystal, Rogue finally kissed Gambit, figuring that the world was about to end anyway, so what the heck?

When Bishop stopped our timeline from being disrupted in the past, however, Earth was not destroyed, and Gambit wound up in a coma. Rogue, on the other hand, was found by Iceman down in Florida, wearing Gambit's coat and trying to steal things. She had absorbed some memories from Gambit that were so powerful that she blocked them out, and couldn't figure out what was happening to her. She felt she had to leave the X-Men for a while, and went on a road trip with Iceman, ending up in Seattle, where Gambit was waiting, having awoken from his coma and knowing where his memories would take her. They got into a small fight and broke up.

Rogue went on by herself to a small town, when she rented a room from a single mother and began work as a hostess in a restaurant. Rogue's civilian life was short-lived, however, as her landlady went to Humanity's Last Stand and turned her in, fearing that she might harm her and her boy. Rogue was captured and brought to the Stand's base. She was about to be tortured when one of the guards turned on the others, killed them and freed Rogue. The guard revealed himself to be Joseph, and after clearing up the obvious case of mistaken identity, the two of them stopped Humanity's Last Stand from killing its own supporters, and then left to rejoin the X-Men. They returned in time for Onslaught, and helped defeat the Sentinels that he unleashed. Afterwards, Rogue found herself somewhat torn between Gambit and Joseph, especially after Joseph reworked the circuitry from the psi-shielded Z'Nox chamber to allow her to touch another person while underneath it. Later that night, the X-Men were taken to the Shi'ar Empire to fight the Phalanx, and Rogue was infected with the Transmode Virus, whereupon she confessed that she still loved Gambit.

After defeating the Phalanx, the X-Men were sent home, but their ship crashed and they were captured by Nanny. For one night, their powers were negated, and Rogue and Gambit were able to touch and fulfill their relationship. Unfortunately, the next morning Gambit was put on trial by Erik the Red (Magneto), and he revealed that he had assembled the Marauders and precipitated the Mutant Massacre. Rogue was horrified, and although she saved Gambit from the collapsing citadel when they escaped, she left him half-naked and alone in the Antarctic wliderness where they had been. Rogue returned to the X-Men but was having dreams of touching her friends and draining them dry. She found out about a Dr. Agee who claimed to be able to remove mutant powers, and was about to undergo the procedure when Mystique showed up and tried to force her out of it. After a struggle, Rogue finally realized that she couldn't go through with it, because of the implications for other mutants. She returned to the Mansion, and continued trying to come to terms with her desires and lack of control.

Then Gambit returned to the team, and the couple continued to pursue a very "on-again, off-again" relationship. Recently, Rogue was made field leader of one of the X-Men teams, being the most experienced member of her squad after Wolverine, who said he's not suited for leadership, and Nightcrawler, who refused the job, as he was studying to be a priest. Shortly thereafter, when Earth was turned into a prison planet by the Shi'ar, Rogue saved a girl from some attacking aliens. The girl turned out to be Z'Cann, a mutant Skrull who had left for outer space with Professor X after Cyclops sacrificed himself to stop Apocalypse's ascension to power. Z'Cann was badly wounded, so to get Xavier's message to Rogue she touched Rogue's bare skin, using her own telepathic powers to facilitate the memory transfer. However, due to Rogue's own powers, she absorbed not only Z'Cann's memories but also her Skrull shape-shifting power.

Rogue began uncontrollably manifesting the powers of various people that she had touched over the years, like "total recall" of those abilities. Though she eventually got most of those manifestations under control, she could not get rid of a measure of the healing factor and the bone claws she had once abosrbed from Wolverine. A few weeks later, Rogue also manifested Cyclops's optic blasts, forcing her to don a pair of ruby quartz glasses to control them. Rogue then left the X-Men with some of her teammates in search of Destiny's lost journals.

During an invasion of aliens from another dimension, Rogue begged Sage to use her jump-starting powers to evolve Rogue to a point where she could control all of the various powers inside of her. Sage agreed, and Rogue became a one-woman army, able to use the powers of anyone she had ever absorbed in the past, and exhibit multiple powers at once.

In that same invasion, Rogue was confronted by Vargas, who wanted to kill her to preserve his own life. Vargas showed her a page from one of Destiny's diaries that proved to him that Rogue would kill him. Rogue fought Vargas off and sped to rescue Gambit from the machine that was using him to power a trans-dimensional gate, but the power beam trapped her with him, and they were both stabbed by Vargas. Wounded but livid, Rogue pursued Vargas, ambushing him by replacing his statue of Psylocke and eventually using all her abilities to defeat him (and perhaps kill him, though the exact outcome of their fight is still uncertain). Both Remy and Rogue survived by a near margin, though Rogue was forced to enter the astral plane to force Gambit to live.

Following the repulsion of the invasion, Rogue realized that the Destiny Prophecies are just possibilities and that following them is more dangerous than ignoring them. She also found that she had inherited a mansion in New Orleans from Destiny, and the X-Men retired there to recuperate. Rogue soon left the team with Gambit, since they both emerged powerless from their ordeals, and they wanted to further explore their relationship.