Now I dream of a lover that I don't know
It's safer this way 'cause I don't have to go
And he won't come so nobody goes away
Sometimes I wish for the warmth of his hand
Take a look at these eyes and understand
I'm just a little too old to be learning the rules of the game.

"Daddy Said" by Nanci Griffith

---

I'm twenty-two years old, and sometimes I feel like I'm a hundred. I look into the mirror and look into my own eyes and don't even recognize myself about half the time. The woman in the mirror scared me when I was younger, back when I still cried myself to sleep every night because Logan had left me. Back then, the old woman didn't feel like a part of me. Now she is. I am.

I make a lot of people uneasy anymore. After we graduated, Jubilee and I drifted apart almost at once. She's a happy person, and most of the time I'm a pretty dark person. Most of the pulling away was on my side. I didn't want me to rub off on her. She deserves her smiles. Kitty and I still talk some. We don't have light conversations, though, don't wave and smile when we pass in the hall. Just every now and then, we seek each other out and bare our souls like it's the last chance we have. It feels good.

I think Bobby held out hope for quite a bit that he'd be able to wear me down, convince me to go out with him. I never had to tell him why I said no. Robert Drake may be just a guy, but damned if he doesn't know me better than just about anyone I've ever known even when I do keep him in the dark. He'd ask me, I'd say no, he'd smile, and we'd go on just like nothing had happened. It was part of the routine. He doesn't ask anymore. I think that hurt me at first, but now I'm glad. I don't like the way it used to hurt him even when he pretended it didn't.

Bobby knows me well enough to know I love Logan. Alright, I love the Logan who lives up in my head. He's always there. He never runs away from me. It's easier loving him that it is loving Wolverine. My Logan loves me back. He has dirty little fantasies reserved just for me, not Jean.

I'm a member of the X-Men now, and so are Bobby and Kitty and Jubilee. We save the world on a regular basis, and still my life seems like it's missing something. Scott tells me I'm a "valuable team member" often enough that it's starting to tick me off. Or maybe that's Wolverine talking. I can't be sure sometimes. My thoughts, my actions, they aren't always me. It certainly wasn't me who used to stare at Xavier like he was Logan shirtless everytime he wheeled into a room. That's an annoying little habit that I'm glad seems to have gone away. Erik was not a fun person to live with. But being a member of the X-Men is good. I'm helping. I'm using those powers I stole to help people. It doesn't help much with the guilt, with the knowing that poor woman's going to be in a coma for the rest of her life because of me. But it helps some.

Jean tries to get me to confide in her sometimes. I used to leer at her and say she just wanted to get in my head again before remembering that she never had been in my head. Just Wolverine's. Now I tell her that I'm fine and I don't need her help. Which still sounds a bit more like Logan than me. I actually do talk to Ororo sometimes, mostly because she doesn't try to get me to. She's quiet but she's strong. She won't take anything from anybody, and all that calm goes straight to Hell if somebody ticks her off. I've gotta admire that. Or maybe Wolverine does. Anyway, some part of me does.

I've got people all around me wanting to help me and talk to me and make me feel normal again. It's sweet, really. I appreciate it. But it won't work. I'm Rogue, the mutant life-force vacuum, and I'm not ever going to be normal.

The only time I come close is in my dreams and in my head. That's where Logan lives too. In my head, he loves me and wants me and needs me the way I need him. So I don't need Bobby or Remy or anybody else. I have Logan.

Shivering madly in the dark
Like an animal abandoned in the car park
And she held me and then she showed me
The beauty of the human heart.

"Hidden Sun" by Barenaked Ladies

---

I thought it would feel a lot better being on my own again. Alone is my natural state. I don't need anybody. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway. I go to a different town and a different bar every night and I fight and I maim and I drink enough to make any normal man pass out a few times over and none of it means a damn thing.

The whole time I'm tearing up whatever loser is dumb enough to get in my way, I'm thinking about that time I didn't, that time when some little girl with big brown eyes that made her look like a deer caught in the headlights convinced me without a word to let a punk brawler and some ignorant old barkeep live just a little while longer, to walk away. I'm Wolverine. I don't walk away from fights. But I did for her, because I didn't want some innocent little kid seeing what I do to people.

Problem is, I did it to her too. Maybe I never meant to, but I did it. I don't just mean shoving my claws through her chest, either, even thought I can still see the shock on her face when I close my eyes, feel the gentle pressure of those deadly fingers on my cheek. I mean the way I left. She had some damn kind of crush on me and it scared me. The hero worship in her eyes when she looked at me scared me too. I didn't deserve any of it, not from a nice girl like Marie.

It was easier to leer at Jean. She's all grown up. She can take care of herself. Besides, with her I can't care too much because I can't get close enough. She's with Scott and she always will be unless something happens to one of them. They love each other, and that isn't going to change. But flirting with Jean was easy.

Now here I am driving down the road in the middle of nowhere thinking about the kid. Well, not in the middle of nowhere, either. For the past five years, I've been traveling in a slowly shrinking circle that's taking me straight back to Westchester if I don't do something about it. I should stop and really think about this, but I've spent five years trying not to think, and making my brain do much more than react is more effort than I'm up to.

I'm not sure how I can go back after five years. I can't even begin to think what might have changed. Hell, maybe Scott's got a personality now. Maybe Jean'll be ready to throw herself into my arms and ride off into the sunset. Maybe Marie won't be a kid anymore.

Folded memories in my soul
It's that old blue line that you can never go back home
So I'm waiting for the moon to rise
He'll kiss my tears away and set my heart in line.

"You Can't Go Home" by Nanci Griffith

---

I never expected to come bounding down the stairs to dinner and see Logan standing there. The strangest part is that there wasn't any real pleasure in the discovery, just shock. I couldn't believe he was standing there. I'd been telling myself for so long that my Logan would never leave me that seeing Wolverine standing a few feet in front of me came as a disturbing intrusion of reality on my happy fantasy world.

Every night, I feel asleep in Logan's arms, wrapped up in them without a second thought for deadly skin or gut-wrenching nightmares. We had each other and nothing else mattered. All the rules that applied to everyone and everything else meant nothing because we were together and that was that. I could have him anytime I wanted him. I didn't need Wolverine in my life again.

"Hey, kid."

I couldn't read a damn thing in his expression, but the fact that he called me kid made me want to rip out his vocal chords and wrap them around his neck a few times for good measure. I don't even remember being a kid. I'm surely not one. And no man who ran out and left me alone with my fantasies was going to call me anything I didn't want to be called. I was glaring at him when I said, "Mah name's Rogue. Use it if ya feel the need ta talk to me."

I walked into the kitchen and didn't look back and didn't feel bad for the not looking. Logan might have been a day-to-day reality in my head, but Wolverine was just a man, a man I'd never really known. I sat down at the table and accepted the sandwich Ororo held out to me, scowling at nothing in particular. She knew what had happened, obviously. She must have heard. She didn't say anything, and I'll be forever grateful for that. I just wanted to be angry at him and eat my lunch and then forget that I'd ever been mad at all, that he'd ever come back.

Mostly, I just wanted him to leave.

How would you know, that I love you so?
I don't say too much.
Why are you blue whenever I'm in town?
I guess life was fine till I came 'round.

"I Love You" by the Barenaked Ladies

---

She hates my guts. I guess I didn't expect that, didn't expect that she'd be all grown up and strong. She doesn't need my protection, and she doesn't want my friendship. I fucked her over, and she's not about to let me forget it. And she's not a kid. I'm not sure why I said that when I saw her. Nobody could look at a woman like her and think she's a kid.

I don't just mean that because she's got a killer body, either. She does have that too; curves models would kill for. Her eyes are old, though. My fault, at least in part. I doubt she's even sure what's hers and what's ours now. She's older than those twenty-two years she's got.

I asked Jean what I should do to make things right. Silly thing to do, I guess. I felt like some stupid teenager asking his parents how to ask some pretty girl out. But Jean's far from my mom--not that I remember the real thing--and Rogue isn't just "some pretty girl." So maybe it's nothing like that. She told me I couldn't do anything but wait. Rogue needs time to get over the shock, she told me.

Me being me, I got angry at her and stormed off. I managed a half-hearted apology later, but she knew as well as I did that I didn't really mean it. I want a quick fix, an easy way to recapture that trust she used to have in me. But I want to deserve it this time. I want to see her eyes glowing and have her throw me one of those shy little smiles and know it's okay to just enjoy it because I'm not going to hurt her again.

Now my presence is hurting her. She doesn't want me here. I can't leave her again, though. I don't know if it would hurt her or help her, but I think it might kill me. I watch her constantly when she doesn't think I am, and I just can't help but notice that the more I'm around her, the more I care about her. It hurts too, caring. I'm not good at shit like that. I'm not good at worrying about how the stuff I'm doing is going to affect other people, but I worry about hurting Rogue again.

I worry because I'm falling in love with her. I love a woman who won't even speak to me, and it's driving me crazy. I don't know how to make things better. I don't know a miracle cure for us. Or for her. We're both going to have to wing it. I just know I can't not try.

I care too damn much to give up again.