Touch me
I'm so beautiful.
Rub your hands
Across my head
Just like this.
Come with me
Now it's not worth it
If you don't.
Are you hiding?
I am hiding.

Rogue pulled her knees in close to her chest and rested her chin on them, eyes half closed in the darkness of her room. For a moment, she let her mind drift, found herself wishing to hear Logan thrashing and moaning in the other room so she could have an excuse to go inside. It would be worth getting skewered again to have someone who understood her. More than that, someone who had touched her.

She rocked gently back and forth on the bed, remembering when her mother had held her and rocked her the same way, fingers twining in her soft little girl hair, whispering words of comfort or humming soothing songs. Eventually that stopped, and no one touched her. No one even touched her hair, her glove-covered hands for fear of grazing the toxic skin. When she was sick, she had to hold her own hair and bathe her own face with cool water.

Tears of self-pity made slick trails on the sides of Marie's face, but she ignored them. Instead she let her mind drift back to the day on the train when Logan had held her. Even though he knew what could happen if his skin accidentally came into contact with hers, he had sat with his arms around her, had touched her hair and spoke softly to her. Later, after Magneto tried to use her to mutate the world leaders, he brought her back to life with a touch. She had woken up with his lips and chin pressed to her forehead. Rogue remembered the moment with a smile. Thanks to Logan, she knew again what it was like to feel the kind of closeness that most people took for granted. He would have given his life to save hers that night, and almost had.

Her fingers wound through the chain of his dog tags and her eyes gazed beyond the room's deepening shadows.

Touch me
I'm so beautiful.
Rub your hands
Across my head
Just like this.
Come with me
Now it's not worth it
If you don't.
Are you crying?
I am crying.

She had friends at the school; there was no question about that. Bobby especially seemed to enjoy her company, and she enjoyed his every bit as much. That made it all harder somehow. Not only did she have to keep her distance from people she didn't know but from her friends as well. Rogue fell back onto the bed, hugging her pillow to her chest and burying her face in it.

Jean sometimes gently teased her about having a crush on Logan. What Marie never bothered to explain was that her connection to Logan went beyond a mere crush. She shared his pain. Twice his mind had merged with hers, twice she had touched his soul. Now Rogue awoke nights bathed in sweat, fleeting images of foreign places and unknown pain filling her young mind. She knew things and remembered sensations she could never have experienced herself. The only person who understood all of that had left.

Thrusting the pillow behind her head once again, Rogue wished Logan would return. He couldn't find anything in Canada that was more important than what he'd left behind at the school, that much she knew. She needed to ask him about things she had felt through his mind. First and foremost, she wondered why he left without telling Dr. Grey how he felt. When he was still unconscious in the infirmary, she'd found herself gazing at Jean for minutes on end without knowing why, memorizing the scent of her hair. It took Marie a little time to realize that the protective, longing feelings were Logan's love for the beautiful doctor, not hers.

Mostly, though, Marie wanted Logan to come back for herself. She needed someone who wasn't scared of her in the slightest but who understood why they should be. In the darkness, she felt small and alone and young, too young to be worried about her place in the world and why it was such a solitary one.

Taking a deep breath, she lay back to sleep, part of her welcoming the nightmares which would almost surely come with their assurance of Logan's presence within her, ignoring once again the tears falling onto her pillow.