Within the past six months, Rogue had finally put together a life that, she felt at least, had some semblance of normalcy. She worked two jobs: one at a large specialty tailor’s shop, one at an art studio that was part of the community college she had been attending for a year and a half now. She’s a computer science major, and is finding it harder and harder not to let on how far ahead of her classes she really is. She’s always been fascinated by computers, and could hack into basic systems by the time she was in middle school. She’s been making money off of it quietly for about five years now.

The art studio had allowed her to make plaster replicas of her arms and hands, and the tailor shop had given her the skill to use those replicas to design and make her own gloves––better than any available in stores. Thin fabrics, impossibly small and sturdy seams, buttons here and there so they would not slip down her arm. She still liked working in the art studio best, because when her skin was covered in plaster and dust and paint, she was as safe as she was in gloves, without feeling quite so limited.

Although the desert air dries her skin, Rogue has decided that she rather likes New Mexico. She has plans. Once she graduates, she wants to live in Santa Fe, instead of her current place here in Albuquerque, because the people in Santa Fe are so different from the ones she remembers from home, even if their love of adobe makes her question their aesthetic taste. For now, she has a small, very private apartment in the middle of the city, where some semblance of anonymity is kept up and people do not try to get to know their neighbors. She likes how comfortably alone she feels, while still feeling close to something alive that all cities have at their heart. She likes being alone in cities, and especially in her apartment. Right now, however there is a man in her apartment, and Rogue is not happy about it.

Of course, part of that is because he’s in her head as well, and the man has a foul temper that almost matches hers, making her impressively bitter, but there are all sorts of things she’s learned from taking him into her head. All sorts of things that could get her killed if some of his superiors knew about it. And there are some of his superiors who would be deeply unsettled just knowing what Rogue was capable of.

“Captain Nick Fury,” Rogue mutters, settling into the armchair she’s moved so it faces the unconscious man on her couch. His dark skin contrasts with the couch’s light color, and the expensive fineness of his suit contrasts with the couch’s cheapness.

The eyelid over Fury’s good eye flutters a little. Rogue touches the side of her own face, almost expecting to feel the scars on Fury’s face mirrored on her own skin, but her flesh is unmarred under her bare fingertips. She’s only just gotten to the point that she no longer habitually reaches to adjust the eye patch that she does not wear.

Rogue is making an effort to hold onto everything she’s learned from this man, from his accidental, well-meaning touch. She’s never actually tried to keep so much before, but it’s surprisingly easy. His memories are like balloons, and all she has to do is tie them down so they don’t float away. She struggles with some things; learned skills seem especially slippery, but after what she’s learned, Rogue is determined to keep at least the most useful: speaking a few extra languages, extensive abilities in a variety of martial arts, some people-reading skills that are better than her own, lock-picking, useful chemistry like bomb-making and home-made truth serum. Nick Fury has a lot of useful skills.

He’s also waking up.

He doesn’t move, but his breathing changes just a little and Rogue knows all of his tricks now, and how to recognize them.

“You’re quite lucky that I like you, ya know,” she says in a loud, clear voice that lets him know he can’t pull off that act with her.

Nicholas Fury opens his good eye and stares at her.

Rogue stares right back. She’s draped across her chair like a cat, her legs over one of the armrests, her weight resting on the elbow that sits on the other armrest. Her hands are folded, fingers loosely knit. She is bare from her shoulders to her fingertips.

“What did you do to me?” Fury rasps. He feels like he’s been run over by a tank.

“Ah didn’t do anything, Sugah. You touched my skin. Ah cain’t control it, or don’t ya think Ah’d’ve wanted to avoid havin’ some a’ your thoughts in my head?” She gave him a dark look, solemn and a little irate.

Fury hesitated. “How many of my thoughts?”

Rogue stayed quiet for a moment. “Enough.” She still held his gaze, unflinching. “Ah did save ya life out there. Brought ya into my home afterwards, not that Ah plan on stayin’ here too much longer now. And thanks for tryin’ t’ get those bastards offa me, by the way. Scum like that Ah really don’t want up here.” She tapped the side of her head.

Fury watched her intently, and Rogue could almost read his mind. He was a surprisingly decent man, for a human, and government spy/bloodhound. Rogue suddenly knew a lot about her country’s government, and a lot of it wasn’t pretty. “Do you keep their thoughts permanently?”

Rogue smiled a little. “If they stick. Ah can make ‘em stick, if Ah try, and Ah’ve learned the hard way that tryin’ to get rid of ‘em makes ‘em linger more strongly. It’s usually best t’ just let ‘em fade, but again, that’s if Ah want ‘em gone.” She was watching him back and knew he was unsettled by how familiar the look on her face was, and how much her dark brown eyes looked like mirrors.

“What are you gonna do with mine?” he asked quietly.

“Mmm. Ah need some time to figure that out. Some of it...some of it is interestin’. And ‘fore ya ask again, Ah took a lot. You’ve been passed out for two days.” Her lips thinned as an uncomfortable flicker of remorse crossed her face. “Ya had a pretty strong grip on me, Nick. And when my mutation kicked in ya gripped harder. Ah couldn’t push ya off until ya were already weak enough ta loosen that hold.”

Fury’s jaw tightened. “I remember now.”

Rogue looked away for a moment, uneasy. “Ah’m sorry Ah hurt you. I meant it when Ah said Ah like you. You’re a good man, for the most part.” She looked at him again. “Even if ya doubt it, ya do what ya can, and some of it’s pretty amazin’ stuff.”

Fury was uneasy, but unwilling to be unfocused or careless or out of control. The girl’s eyes didn’t make it easy. “I can’t trust you.”

Rogue nods slowly, looking at the floor. “Ah know. That’s why Ah ain’t exactly given ya my name or anythin’. But...” She looked back into some of the memories she’d gotten from him. “There’s a school. Well, there’s a couple schools, but there’s one that’d take me and one that Ah think would kick me out when their psychic found out where Ah got my money from.” She looked up at Fury again. “Or at least, you think so. In either case, Ah like the sound of this Emma Frost woman. Maybe she and one or two of her friends can help me out.”

Fury looked at her with something wary and something that almost wanted to trust her. “With your skin?”

Rogue’s lips formed a thin line, quietly pained. “Ah manifested four years ago. Ah’ve been pretty alone since then.” She stretched her legs a little and shifted position a little in her chair; one of her feet had been falling asleep. “Ah’ll give the school-among-mutants life a try, see if Ah can live like somethin’ other than a total outsider for a while.” She looked at Fury again, her eyes seeming to look straight through the back of his skull. “Your idea, really. You’re very lonely,” she said.

Fury’s jaw tightened and a stern, almost angry look crossed his face.

Rogue interrupted him before he could speak. “Ah’m not propositionin’ you and Ah’m just tellin’ ya what ya already know.” She tilted her head to one side. “And Ah know ya don’t like me knowin’ this much, for a lotta real good reasons, but Ah can’t help it.” She turned and sighed, squeezing her eyes shut. “Ah’m just damned relieved you ain’t another goddamned slimeball like the ones who were tryin’ ta get their hands on me, and Ah...Goddamn, if this whole situation weren’t so fucked up and ya didn’t have quite the job that ya do, Ah’d like to have ya as a friend. Maybe somebody to drink with and discuss the perfidy of politicians and everyday people and our own damned selves.” Rogue crossed her arms over her chest and opened her eyes, glaring at him and daring him to make fun of her.

Fury stared at this impossibly young-looking girl, with her tousled brown hair and bruises from the other night. She shouldn’t have eyes that looked older than him; it almost made him wonder who else she’d touched, what the good one she’d mentioned was like, and what kind of life she’d had, for her to be able to look into his thoughts and memories and all and think he was a good man. But she was a tough one, and he was willing to bet that the age of her eyes was truer than the age shown on the rest of her face. She looked like she’d seen war, and Fury realized with a hint of unease that she had; she’d seen his wars, and probably more.

And he’d thought that the psychics he’d met had been unnerving. This girl was something else entirely. And if she were to get into the wrong hands with her powers...

Rogue saw the change in his facial expression and gave a twisted, bitter smile. “Don’t worry. Ah took care of your mission, by the books. No trace of me left behind. Ah don’t want anybody to know about me anymore than you want the people you’re thinkin’ about to use me for their own gains.” She would say nothing of the only other mutant she had met since she left Mississippi, and how she had found out he was a mutant, and what it had felt like and tasted like to breathe fire, and how much she still missed it. No. Rogue was a creature of secrets, and always had been. It was just that she now had many secrets that were not her own.

Fury looked incredulous. Rogue picked up a fat USB jump drive from the table beside her chair and lightly tossed it to him. “Here’s all the info on it. It’s encrypted, but you’ll know the password to unlock it when you see the username.”

Fury caught it without looking away from Rogue’s eyes. “You’re...”

“Rogue,” she said quietly. “My name is Rogue. Ah’ll be gone in the mornin’.”

Nick Fury nodded once, slowly, and put the jump drive in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. His hand paused for a moment before he withdrew it.

“And your guns are on the kitchen counter. You’ve got a couple clips left.” She smiled brightly, and a little viciously.

“You’ve already thought about what you’re gonna do with what you found in my head,” Fury said, low and challenging, suddenly wary again.

Rogue nodded. “Yeah. Ah’m gonna do what you want to do, but cain’t, ‘cause of ya job.” There was something about the grimness of her words that Fury found familiar.

“Like what?”

“Help Logan,” she whispered.

Fury’s entire body froze, a picture of tension. “What?”

“You heard me.” Rogue’s expression had a touch of anger in it now. “You know so much, but you tell him so little, even after everything-”

“I can’t do a damn thing!” Fury snarled, unsettled by the strength of his reaction. She knew too much, secrets about himself he avoided thinking about. It hurt.

“Don’t ya think Ah know that, Nick?” Rogue snapped. “But Ah can. Once Ah straighten out some things and get myself in order. Get you in order.” She pressed a hand to the side of her head and massaged her temple.

Fury found some of his tension easing. The girl wasn’t artifice. He could tell real-pain from faked-pain with an expertly discerning eye he’d gained from years of experience. The girl was honestly strained, and struggling, and hurting, but still going on through it. “I’m not so good at ghosting as you’ll need to be.”

“But Ah know how good Ah need to be and what Ah need to learn.” Rogue opened her eyes again and glared at him. “Ah know as well as you do. And Ah know more about computers than you do, too. More than even that little geek who helps you out.” Her smile was bitter, but bright and sharp like broken glass.

Fury folded his arms across his chest, but relaxed a little, now that he was getting better at reading her. If things were different, he could possibly share drinks with this woman, until they were both drunk enough to talk about war and the way governments work. He did not like the thought, but knew it to be fact. Just as he knew that, were things equally different, he and Logan might drink together similarly. One day, when he’d be too old for this job, he’d always told himself, he’d find Logan, who would be ageless as ever, and try to give that hairy Canadian the keys to the past he’d been looking for and Fury had found over time.

“You’ll be gone in the morning, then. To Emma’s?”

“Not immediately. Got some dancin’ to do to keep a few folks off my tail from you’re attempt ta rescue me.” A teasing smirk. “Not too bad, though. Just a local anti-mutant group with delusions of grandeur. You’re people have a file on them under section ‘mostly harmless’.” She grinned a little. “Ah love that book. Ah almost wanna ask you ta tell your geeks that they’re pretty funny.”

Fury shook his head. “Alright. But you’d better stay the Hell off everyone’s radar, kid.”
Rogue snorted at being called ‘kid’ but otherwise ignored it, watching Fury get up and walk toward her kitchen. He moved smoothly, like a man in control, but Rogue could see the occasional hitch in his movements from old wounds and old scars. There was some quality to him that she felt her body start to respond to, but she stopped herself with all-too-practiced restraint. It was something about his personality that did it; she did like him, but more than that and part of that: there was something deeply honorable in him, something that made his job very hard for him sometimes. It was that quality, and the casual strength and control she could read in his movements, that made him attractive. It made his face handsome in spite of its scars and the eyepatch he wore and the grimness of his expression.

Rogue knew she had somewhat odd taste in the people she was attracted to, but she had always liked it, and she met far more interesting people this way, even if she couldn’t do anything much with them even on the rare occasions that she could tell the attraction was mutual.

In this case, it wasn’t mutual, because Fury was unsettled by her: her mutation, her youth, how well she knew the goings-on inside of his skull. On his way to the kitchen he felt more uneasy by how efficient and spartan she clearly was, and how familiar it seemed to his own lifestyle, or that of many he knew who were older and coarser than Rogue. The rooms were stripped of anything remotely personal, which fit into two medium-sized boxes that could easily fit in the trunk of a compact car, one large duffle bag, and a large secure metal briefcase with a code-lock. There were several trash-bags filled with what Fury had no doubt was the rest of her belongings, ones she could live without, made unrecognizable and mixed with random clutter and perhaps garbage from other places. He knew she would dump them in a variety of places across town before changing cars, if she hadn’t changed cars already. He knew because it was what he would have done. He saw a metal shelf, desk, and folding table in the corner, along with three power-strips. Maybe she really was as good with computers as she had said. He could see faint shadows on the wall from where the paint had faded here and there, exposed to sunlight from the window, contrasted with places where sun had not reached it, blocked by less permanent shadows. The shadows had left faint shapes that Nick Fury recognized as the blocks and cords belonging to expensive electronic equipment.

Fury looked over his shoulder when he heard Rogue give a mournful sigh. She too was staring at the vacated den of computers, now empty of all things electrical.

“Do you have any idea how hard Ah worked on puttin’ all of it together?” She shook her head and let out a breath through her teeth. “Damn.”

“Is it in the bags?”

Rogue snorted. “Hell no. Took it all apart as much as Ah could in the electronics lab at my school, after-hours, melted down the metal in the metallurgy labs right next to where Ah work and made it into a random student sculpture. Took the rest, once it was unidentifiable, to three different dumps and one recyclin’ place.”

Nick nodded. “Good.”

“Learned from one a’ the best,” Rogue countered. Then she hesitated as he walked into the kitchen and started checking over his guns.

“Where’s the Desert Eagle?”

Rogue sighed in disappointment and pulled it out from behind her, along with its sheath, where both had been perfectly concealed at her lower back. “Ah really like this one. Gotta get me one.” She handed it to him muzzle-first.

Fury took it and nodded. “I’ve customized it you know.”

“Yeah. Ah know.” She raised both eyebrows.

Fury grimaced a little. “I’m terribly unused to this.”

Rogue smirked a little. “Welcome to my life.” She turned around and dug in the fridge. She pulled out two beers of a local brew. She knew the brewer, had talked to him about brewing. She’d planned to start home-brewing within a year or two with one of the less expensive kits he was willing to sell her. So much for that, now. She handed Fury a beer.

He took it and gave her a look. “How old are you, anyway?”

Rogue gave him a dark look. “As old as my tongue, and a little older than my teeth.”

He smirked a little. “Haven’t heard that one in a while. So you’re not quite old enough to drink, I’ll hazard.”

“My driver’s license says Ah’m twenty-three, and people believe it once they hear me talk or make eye contact for a couple seconds.”

“I’m sure. My guess is barely eighteen.”

Rogue narrowed her eyes at him and took a defiant pull of beer. “Ah’ve got memories older than you, Fury.”

Nick twisted the cap off his beer and took a swig. It was good beer. “I believe that.”

Rogue looked away for a moment.

“You could be a soldier, you know.”

Rogue smirked a little, knowing he meant it as a compliment. “If things were a little different, Ah’d like to be. As it is, Ah’m a little more self-serving.” She glanced back toward the empty metal skeletons against the wall, built by her, filled by her, used by her, and gutted by her own bare hands so she could run again.

“If I were a mutant I have a feeling I’d be in the same boat.” He paused a little. “You remind me a little of him––Logan––in the way you talk about things.”

Rogue nodded. “He...saved your life. A couple times. Even when he didn’t know himself and was all Wolverine.” Rogue swirled her beer in the bottle and watched it.

“And I’ve returned the favor once or twice.”

“Yeah. But you still feel like you owe him.” Rogue hesitated. “With you in my head, Ah feel that too, like Ah owe...but mostly Ah just think that he deserves to know...about everything, and that’s definitely not just you.” She took another pull of beer. “Ah didn’t luck out in the mutation department, that’s for damned sure,” she muttered.

Fury paused, wincing a little as she tossed his thoughts back at him, his envy of Logan’s ability to heal, but when he looked at her, he could tell she felt it too, if not more strongly because she was a mutant, and her mutation messed her up something fierce when she used it, accidentally or otherwise. Fury finished his beer and put his last two guns and their ammunition away. She’d taken them apart and cleaned them for him while he was passed out. It felt uncomfortably personal; everything did. He watched Rogue take a final swig of beer and set her empty bottle aside. He met her gaze and held it for a few moments. “Thank you,” he said curtly.

Rogue shook her head. “Thank you,” she said, as if correcting him, then added, “And Ah’m sorry.”

Nick saw it, the flicker of sincere regret and envy and relief across her features, like a flash of the ancient woman behind the girl’s face. She was too damned honest, but then, having him in her head, maybe she felt that she could be so. She did not seem like a naturally open person; in fact her nature seemed to be to remain distant. She was letting him read her, and the realization was one more little unsettling thing out of a dozen others that came from her.

She walked him to the front door and opened the three locks above the knob, including an impressive deadbolt. She opened the door. “Goodbye, Nick.”

He nodded at her. “Rogue.” And then he walked out of her apartment and into the night.

Rogue was gone in the morning.

Logan was staring contemplatively at something in the distance, far off the isolated patio of the mansion, which he had claimed so that he could sulk in peace. Or, at least, the rest of the X-men said he was sulking. Really, he was listening, clearing his head by getting some distance from the often overwhelming closeness of the people and smells and conversations in the mansion. When left alone, he could listen at his leisure, and take in a lot more. No gossip or telepath in the house knew more than Logan about the emotional and social states of everyone in the mansion. It was instinct; these people had somehow become his pack, and it was important to be aware of their moods, their strengths and weaknesses, their loose threads and snags and triggers. Sulking? Hell, in this house full of mutants, he was taking inventory of the armory and making note of the state of each and every weapon at his disposal.

He was listening to an argument between Jubilee––shrill, that one––and Bobby, the dueling pranksters. One day, they would escalate their competition and the comedic chaos to follow would truly be a sight to behold; that was part of why Logan was careful to listen to the sound of their arguments, if only to know when to put himself out of humiliation’s way. So he was mildly surprised when Scott opened the Patio door, obviously looking for Logan.

“There you are.”

Logan set his cigar down next to the ashtray he’d gotten all too easily used to looking for now; it unsettled him sometimes when he realized he was getting borderline domesticated. Scott was not a healthy reminder of that, and Logan growled at him. “Whaddyou want, Scooter?”

Scott had a stack of newly-arrived letters in his hand, and lifted a particularly thick FedEx envelope, the gesture in tandem with the way his eyebrows raised from behind his ruby shades: illustrating blatant surprise. “Mail for you.”

Logan’s brow furrowed. “And it’s not explosive?”

Scott shook his head. “FexEx guy dropped it trying to hand it to me. No explosions.”

Logan sat back in his chair with an incredulous look on his face. “How do you know it’s even mine, then?”

With a small tisk of exasperation, Scott finally marched over and thrust the envelope into Logan’s hands. “You’re the only ‘Wolverine’ around here.”

Logan was staring in open suspicion at the envelope, ignoring the huff Scott strode off in as easily as he ignored the sound of the patio door being tugged shut just a little too sharply. The address was handwritten, but he didn’t recognize the writing. It smelled like a delivery truck: unhelpful. Unsheathing a claw, Logan cut a slit at one end and gently tipped out the contents of the envelope onto the patio table next to the ashtray and his cigar, which seemed to have gone out.

A letter, two CD’s, and...a wedding band: gold, simple, masculine. Logan knew without looking that it would fit him perfectly. He also knew that he had seen it before. He could feel the press of memories, but could not grab them or identify them. Tentatively, he picked up the ring and stared at it. There was an engraving on the inside, an elegantly scripted name: Howlett.

That’s my name, don’t wear it out, Logan thought reflexively, almost absently. Then he stopped and felt his breathing hitch. That...that’s my fuckin’ name. His last name, which he hadn’t known until he’d seen it.

Logan sniffed at the inside of the envelope and caught the faint scent of someone: a woman, leather, exhaust fumes, pine, and mold. He never took his eyes off the ring, even as he set down the envelope and groped for the letter, which smelled a little more strongly like the woman. It was an effort to tear his eyes from the engraved name in order to open and read it.

It was short, and to the point:

Logan,
That is your real name––Logan James Howlett; although the records I’ve found seem to vary, calling you Logan James, or just James. I’m still not quite sure why...

Logan had to stop, just for a moment. With a pang, like a sharp headache, he knew why. “My records were messed up when we moved out of Quebec to Ontario. I didn’t have a birth certificate and there was a mix-up. They thought James was my first name and Logan was my father.” The nostalgia was painful, literally, and blinded Logan for a few moments. Once his vision returned he looked up, lifting his head off of the table, and slowly unclenched his fist, straightening out the letter in his hands. His fingers only trembled a little, but it was more than Logan was comfortable with.

Years of searching for his past, and all it took were a few words, some bizarre honesty, and he can remember, even if it feels like his head is splitting open, maybe Magneto ripping the adamantium apart. Logan kept reading.

I’ve sent you copies of the records, on the disks. They’re encrypted, and you need a username and password to open it. I picked something for a password that I’m quite sure only you’ll guess: numbers you keep close to your heart. The username...well. You saw the ring.
And on the subject of the ring...she’s not alive. You didn’t abandon anyone, and needn’t worry about that. The details, at least the few I’ve found so far, are in the documents on the disk.
From a friend,
Rogue

Logan took a deep breath and re-folded the letter, putting it in his breast pocket. His fingers brushed his dogtag and froze. “Oh. That’s what she meant. Smartass.” Logan glanced at the tag, at the numbers he had pretty well damned memorized.

His head was spinning, but her was calm. The overwhelming sense that the world was crumbling under his feet and hurtling into a violent tailspin, was such a familiar feeling to Logan that he felt most at his element, most clear-headed and capable, within its cold clutches.

He picked up the two disks. Two keys to parts of his past he’d been hunting for nearly three decades, now.

“I need a computer.”

Logan learned more about his past in three months from seven of Rouge’s letters than he had found out on his own in over twenty years. The first package was the largest, with information from earliest in his life: World War I, his wife Mariko and her death at the hands of the men who caught Logan James Howlett and sold him to military scientists. It was a story told in documents: a ragged birth certificate, draft cards, a death certificate, black and white pictures of men in white coats with x-rays of Logan’s hands with claws made of bone instead of metal, the criminal records of the gangsters who killed Mariko, and one photograph of Mariko in situ in a book full of Japanese symbols––the page of a family tree, with a pale sticky note, the date and event it was taken at written on the note in Rogue’s increasingly familiar scrawl.

There were a total of seven documents and eight photos on the first two disks. The first disk had been some kind of install, and set up a few strange programs of the laptop Logan had bought. The strange thing about the programs: they couldn’t be found anywhere on the hard drive, by anyone. The only trace of them appeared when the second disk went in, demanding Logan’s password and––the second time he tried to use it and every time after––a couple of verification questions, different every time, that only Logan would know, and only once a few of his memories had come back.

And more than a few had come back. Every scrap, every image, and suddenly Logan knew things. There was no flood of memories, no movies in his head. The memories were just there, as though they had never left, but the lights had been flicked on in the darker, formerly unreachable parts of his brain they had been waiting in.

There was no moment of I remember; it was simply. yeah, I know followed shortly by, wait, I do? What the fuck?!

And she sent more, and Logan found himself less distracted by the content of her “gifts” and more suspiciously curious about her. She addressed him familiarly, and tended to make asides in her statements, anticipating Logan’s questions as he read, as though she knew him well, but her scent was unfamiliar, and fainter than it should be, as though her skin hadn’t touched anything she sent. She left no fingerprints. Smells, other than hers, trapped in the envelopes, were public ones: traces of cleaner and the food-smells of a diner, the road-smells of gas and public transport, and one letter came in an envelope that had gotten a bit of sake spilled on it in a sushi bar in Tokyo. She had been in Japan, tracking down Logan’s dead wife, who had been dead for nearly half a century. There was no reason for her to do something so personal, so invasive, and something she could not possibly find personal gain in.

Why the hell was she doing all this?

Not to mention, who the Hell was she?

She used public mail drops with no return addresses or means to trace her, and left nothing traceable, biological or otherwise, on what she sent: no saliva on stamps or envelopes, no hair, no perfume, no specialized materials of any kind. And at first, Logan was irritated, ready to hunt her down. It had taken days for Xavier to talk him down, weeks to investigate all the leads in the documents. Mariko was real; Logan himself found the same book Rogue had photographed, but no one he spoke to, in Japanese he had remembered how to speak, knew anything about Rogue, or any American woman who could have accessed the book. She was like a ghost, and it was seriously pissing Logan off.

After the first envelope came two more, with just disks and documents, no letter: one a month, it seemed, was her goal for deliveries. Then came the fourth envelope. Her letter had a small, smeared drop of blood on it. Rogue’s. The only bit of DNA she left behind, and it had a faint trace of gunpowder residue in it from a government-issued pistol. And there was another letter. No disk. It had been sent by priority mail, and was almost less than 24 hours old.

Logan,
I met some old friends of the guy that I think gave you claws.
They weren’t happy about it. Sorry I couldn’t leave ‘em for you,
but I didn’t have much choice. No documents this time.
“Why not?” Ya may well wonder. I’ll tell you:
you’re a sneaky son-of-a-bitch, ya know. You’d be surprised, Ah think,
to know how good of job you’ve done, keeping people from learning
how many of the original Weapon X guys you’ve taken out. Some of
the people who haven’t the faintest clue might surprise ya. I was
originally gonna find ‘em for you, but after the fourth or fifth dead one
I figured it out.
But you missed a couple. The guy who put the adamantium on
your bones was an American. Is and American. He’s still alive.
And hostile, by the way. He’s also got mutants doing his fighting for him.
They’re trapped under some kinda...mind control, but still awake: aware
of what’s goin’ on, unable to stop it. Sound familiar to ya? Ah’m not sure
how much ya remember of what they made ya do, Logan, and what they
turned part of ya into. The records are, understandably, not easy to get
one’s hands on.
But I found something about a base at Alkalai Lake, up in your
neck of the woods. I went there. I found your claw marks on the bits of
stone, but I got interrupted from completing my search of the site when a
couple helicopters came in for a landing. They saw my tracks in the snow
and sent dogs after me.
There’s activity there, Logan, but these people know you, and may
even be expecting you to come back. Be careful around that place, if and
when you decide to visit. Don’t go there alone. Seriously. Don’t. Go. Alone.
So says the girl with the gunshot wound.
You’re welcome,
--Rogue

Logan’s thoughts on the whole matter were interrupted by an assassination attempt on the president by a blue mutant. Xavier knew about it and had tracked the mutant down before Logan had even heard the report on the news, which he did just shortly after he’d finished reading Rouge’s letter.

The blue guy, Nightcrawler, had been under the influence of mind control, and didn’t that sound familiar to Logan when he heard about it.

Logan warned Xavier about Stryker, and about activity back at Alkali lake, and pieces of the puzzle began falling together. They were able to neutralize Stryker as a threat, and get him put on trial for corruption, conspiracy, murder, and even war crimes. It went public, because he had gone after children in some of his experiments: children who had been missing and who had mourning, enraged parents whose tears changed opinions across the country when they were, shockingly, broadcast on national television.

Mutants were by no means welcomed into human society, but limits were put on the degree of cruelty they faced; much like news of the holocaust had demonized anti-semitism and the Nazis, so news of Stryker’s experiments had made certain levels of stigma against mutants––viewing them as lab rats or inhuman creatures to be exterminated or treated to a new holocaust––became more politically and socially stigmatized. Mutants were still distrusted, feared, and lobbied against by paranoid people in Congress; however, the difference was that when someone shouted that all mutants should be wiped out, or that they should be forced into mandatory medical testing, that someone was then quietly ostracized, labelled “fanatical extremist” and part of a supposed “ideological minority.”

But it was a tenuous truce, especially with well-known mutant terrorist Magneto still at large, as he always seemed to be; although he was ominously quiet all of a sudden. And the elected officials still in office were still as devotedly anti-mutant as ever, and were simply quieter about it. And Hank, the other blue fuzzy mutant in the house, was given a position in the president’s cabinet, as Secretary of Mutant affairs.

“They still trust Al Quaeda more than they trust any living mutant on the planet,” Logan insisted, to anyone who asked.

In the last two months, he had gotten another letter from Rogue, and another two disks. One had information about his history as a soldier, before he became merely a weapon. The other had information about the horrors he had committed after he had become Weapon X. The former made him feel a sense of honor, and like he knew himself again. The latter made him feel uncomfortably aware of who and what he had been at his darkest moments, and how little he had recovered from it in many ways, but the anger made him feel stronger, and the fact Stryker was locked up and had been torn away and viciously decried for what he had done to the mutants he had stolen lives from, he felt honorable, and like he could face himself. Even the Wolverine became easier to cope with, more easy to understand and thus easier to control or make efficient use of. He was not the man he read about in the documents; he was more scarred and bitter, cruel and ruthless, animalistic and rage-driven––more than he had ever been before, but he had grown to like it, really, and it sure as hell beat being depressed and Hamlet-esque.

The letter she wrote was about a man who Logan had fought alongside in World War II, and who remembered him fondly. She sent him the man’s address, and warned that he had begun to loose his short-term and most resent memories to alzheimer’s disease, but said that the man remembered wartime with impressive clarity.

Logan planned to visit him within the month.

“Do you know what the biggest effect on the media and public opinion was with the Stryker case?” Hank asked Logan, one night after a dinner that was, for the visiting now-Secretary of Mutant Affairs, a pleasantly casual event, which was a luxury now.

“Crying parents and extensive use of the words ‘tortured children’ even though nobody seemed to give a damn about these kids before they were televised,” Logan grumbled.

Hank shook his head. “That was what I thought, but my PR people have compiled research that suggests otherwise. It seems that the buzz was started on the internet by a few videos of the children that were leaked and reached hundreds of people within a single week. No one has any idea where they came from, but they circulated like wildfire; not the worst videos, but one in particular just had the youngest child, a girl of no more than eleven, with no signs of mutant genes except for her unusual hair color––lavender so pale that it was almost blonde––crying and being subject to shocks until she used her power, which was to make plants grow faster and to her whim. Throughout it all, the only thing she did was make flowers bloom.”

“Yeah. Didn’t that one end up on TV, with her parents watchin’ it?” Logan was thinking about the internet, about untraceable information.

“Yes. The video of her death was not, but the two videos, put together back to back, while never posted on any major websites, made for the most watched video clip on the web for more than a month before the trials.” Hank looked at Logan. “I understand you’ve been getting information about your past from a...computer expert. She even warned you about Stryker.”

Logan breathed out a cloud of smoke and watched it trail through the air, lingering and slowly fading as the wind took it. He had been wondering how long Hank was going to beat around the bush. “I have. She calls herself ‘Rogue’ but that’s the only information we have, other than that she visited Japan within the last few months.”

Hank nodded slowly. “I’ve had the best computer experts of the CIA try to reveal and penetrate the programs on your laptop.”

Logan nodded. He knew Jubilee hadn’t really lost it, as she had claimed. He also knew how she had managed to afford that horrifyingly yellow Jeep. “No luck?”

“On the contrary. The only problem is that our prying seems to have triggered a purging mechanism.”

Logan was very glad he had gotten himself a new laptop and that Rogue’s disks had accepted a second install; even if they had done so only after the annoyance of dealing with the twenty-three detailed identity verification questions. He admired the girl’s paranoia, sometimes. It was something truly spectacular. “You think she posted those videos. You want her for something; what is it?”

“I want to offer her a job.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “You’re serious.” He sounded incredulous. “You usually don’t like the vigilante types like her; she’s too criminal. She commits theft, breaking-and-entering, hacking, probably steals money through that hacking if I’ve gotten the right sense of how she is, and she’s not only blatantly paranoid, but also most likely criminally insane.”

“She’s helping you, though. She reminds me of you, when people describe her the way you do. And she apparently takes a guerilla-warfare approach to publicity that has proven immensely useful.”

“Until Magneto attacks again. Then it all falls again, like a house of cards, with only you to hold it up.”

“Magneto is holding off for the moment, or haven’t you noticed? He’s not ignorant of the political tide. I think he’s unsettled by the positive turn they have taken for us at last. He has no great villain to stand against now, not with the media still in mourning over the lavender-haired girl who made the flowers bloom.”

“Maybe not in this country, and you know he never stops planning. Soon enough another registration act or some other little first-step toward putting mutants in pens will make him rear his bucketed terrorist head again,” Logan murmured. Now that his memory, while still comparable to swiss cheese, went back over a century, Logan found himself increasingly sober and sage-sounding on the subjects of history, politics, the general public, and people’s alternation between strength of character and fickleness. He felt old.

“Has she sent you anything new?”

Logan looked down at his ash tray for a moment and snuffed out his cigar, which was on its last legs by now anyway. “Yeah.” He shot Hank a glare that had been known to make children cry and grown men piss themselves in terror.

Being a furry blue genius, Hank got the point, and looked away for a few moments, letting the other man cool down before he said, “And you have no idea how she even became interested in you? You have not, perhaps, remembered her from your past?”

Logan thought about it, a look of exasperated and almost resigned ire on his face. “Not a damned clue, Doc. If I knew who the Hell she might be, I wouldn’t be here waitin’ for another letter; I’d be huntin’ her ass down to get some answers.”

Logan got two more letters, and one last disk. A total of nine messages from Rogue, one every month for almost a year. Once or twice they had arrived a few days late, but after number nine, three months passed without a whisper.

No letters. No disks. Not a word.

It had taken Logan some time to notice, at first, as after a month of relative peace, his world became suddenly busy. There had been a renewed appearance of the Mutant Registration Act in Washington, the nation of Genosha had declared an all-out war on mutant-kind, and there was a new political group called the Friends of Humanity in the deep south that had instigated a dozen anti-mutant, threats against families with known mutant children, cross-burnings, and angry mobs.

It was another month before Logan had even had the time to recall that he had a reason to check his mail, and by then reports of an attempted pro-mutant terrorist attack by Magneto involving the Statue of Liberty. The reports reached the public, and the X-men, months late. The statue had been damaged, and there were traces of magnetic radiation that doctors claimed might have been geared to activate or develop mutations in non-mutants, but the attack on World Leaders appeared failed, and Magneto and his cronies were nowhere to be found, the reports had said. Once Hank had gotten him clearance and called in a few not-easy-to-get favors, Logan went to investigate what was left of the well-preserved scene.

On the top of the statue, Logan had sifted through the wreckage of the machine (which did indeed remind him of Magneto) responsible for the radiation, but it was in a sealed-off storage room lower in the statue that the best-preserved evidence was kept, until the Liberty Island staff figured out what to do with it. It was evidence that Logan could read with his advanced senses, and was there that he detected the key traces of scent he had been looking for, not washed away by exposure to the elements: Mystique, Magneto, the unmistakable stenches of Sabertooth and Toad respectively, and at least two others, women, whose scents he did not recognize. Amongst the organized debris and smaller leftover pieces of the machine, Logan found what appeared to be a handgrip, with a broken set of handcuffs on it. A prisoner? The metal was smeared with a bit of dried blood. Curious, Logan sniffed at it. He winced a little, at the scent of seared flesh coming from the handgrip. With a claw, he cut the cuffs separate from the grip, sniffed again, and was immediately struck with something like shock and anger and something unsettlingly like fear.

He recognized that scent, that blood. It had been smeared on a letter of warning that had saved his life, and the lives of hundreds of others. The blood was Rogue’s.

Three months of silence. And her blood. Here.

Logan looked at the skeletal remains of the machine for a long few moments, his face a mask of shock and rage. He didn’t even notice that his claws were extended, the blades buried in the floor under his feet, and did not notice Jean’s arrival, or her voice, until she gave him a hard telepathic nudge. He barely flinched, throwing up mental shields, which he could not remember learning how to use, like loud vault doors. He faintly heard Jean’s gasp.

“Logan?”

He stared at her, but his thoughts were clearly somewhere else. With a shrill wail of complaining metal, he retracted his claws and commanded roughly, “Call Hank. Now.”

Logan almost slammed the door shortly after opening it, as an instinctive reaction to recognizing someone of a military and government bent, but then he recognized the man.

“Fury,” he growled, with a ghost of a vicious grin, but he looked more ragged than usual, edgy and sleep-deprived.

Nick Fury nodded at him, returning the grin with a bit more suaveness. “Logan.”

Logan stepped aside, letting the man in. “What’re ya here for this time?”

Nick adjusted one of his cufflinks uneasily, his face looking a little more grim than even his usual: just the slightest hint of a repressed grimace, but Logan could read it easily. “A bit of insurance on my next mission, from the head psychic of the house.”

Logan gave a low whistle. “Bit of a rough one, eh?”

“If I’m compromised on this mission, I want you guys to tear down the place I'm headed, and maybe burn it to the ground. I have a feeling that you, at least, will be happy to.” He gave Logan a significant look, and could almost see the super-healer’s hackles rise. “But I have to do it by the book first, or it’s a risk to this entire school’s future. And a risk of plenty of you getting caught and kept.”

Logan took a deep breath and let it out harshly, a hint of a snarl on his face as he tried to keep the red tint at the edges of his vision from getting any more intense. “Alright. Follow me.”

Obediently, Fury trailed after Logan, briefly wondering if he should ask him whether he had seen any brunettes with poisonous skin lately, but since Logan had not decked him, Fury was willing to bet Rogue had not made it here. He had to wonder why. It had been over a year now. And something about Logan was off, whether Rogue was here on not. Fury could almost taste the prickle of unease in the back of his throat, and quickly repressed it, calming and shielding his mind as he had been trained to, to keep out the man Logan was leading him to meet.

Logan knocked on the heavy oak door and waited a moment, then opened it at a signal Fury could not hear. The bald man in the well-cut armani suit and custom wheelchair was as Fury remembered: kind-looking, elegant, and with an air of immense power that he found difficult to reconcile with Xavier’s apparent benevolence.

“Agent Nicholas Fury, I’m glad to see you well.” He gestured for the two soldiers to enter, and they did. Logan flopped into a chair against the wall. His friend did not sit.

Fury nodded. “Same to you, Professor.”

“You have a request, I take it?”

“Yes.” Fury took a small device with one button on it out of his jacket pocket and pushed it. Logan winced at the sound it made, which normal humans could not hear. Fury put the device away. “That should kill off any electronic bugs in the room. I know you’ve had some security issues lately.”

Xavier nodded, his expression all too grim. He made grim look sad.

Fury made it look purposeful, and rather irate, but tried to ease up on it around Xavier, with only very minimal success. “I need you to look for me, in exactly eighteen days, with Cerebro. If you cannot find me, or if I am captured when you do, you will need to destroy the compound that I or my corpse will probably be at, which you will find here.” He pulled a map and a small jump drive from his pocket. “This drive has information about the compound. It’s an experimentation facility of an illegal nature, but government-run. It’s just the Genoshan government running it. This country’s ally-status with them is still dangling in the balance. There is also one of several small but insidious branches of our own government, all of which we’ve been trying to trim since the Cold War (with blatant interference from a certain few executive-level administrations) that is aiding them.”

Xavier looked even grimmer, and almost mournful. “They are experimenting on mutants.” He gave Fury a hard look. “Why not rely on your own department for your safety? I know from past experience that you have more trust in them.”

Fury’s lips thinned. “Because one of those executive administrations, the main one currently aiding this little bit of Genoshan Hell, has gained power recently, and I don’t trust the slime that they’ve put into our upper-level management, not to enjoy being rid of me, but if this mission succeeds, the resulting climate change will force them out, or get them some nice shiny public trials, too.”

“Rev up the patriotism and this country will rebel against Genosha as a potential invader,” Logan mused. “Americans have a tendency to rebel against other countries trying to tell them what to do, even if it’s just trying to tell them what to do with their mutants.”

Fury paused to stare at Logan, because that was an unusually astute and sage observation for the hairy former-cage-fighter.

The corner of Logan’s lips twitched. “I’ve been listening to Hank too much, and sleeping far too little. Also, there’s not enough whiskey in the world.”

Surprised, Fury raised his eyebrows in silent question, but Logan only shook his head and gave a passively dismissive hand gesture.

Xavier sighed. “I had not realized they were sinking their teeth into S.H.I.E.L.D.; my apologies. We will help you in any way we can. You and your department have done more for us than has been healthy for you at times in the past.”

Fury nodded. “We’re still kickin’, Xavier.”

“So I see.” Xavier smiled benignly.

“I could always go in with you as back-up, Nick,” Logan said from where he sat near an open window, smoking that on of his ever-present cigars. “I could use the distraction from my current project. I’m gettin’ to the point I’m just too pissed off to be of any use huntin’ anyone down. An old-fashioned raid would do me some good: violent or covert, either way works.”

Fury turned and looked at him, shaking his head. “Not this time. By the book, first. When I’m ready to shred up the book, I’ll be glad to have you fightin’ with me, Logan.”

Logan smirked, looking somehow older and more alive at the same time. “Again.”

Fury gave a particularly vicious smile and bowed slightly in farewell. “Indeed.” He bowed a little to Xavier too, and nodded.

“Good luck, Agent Fury.”

“Thank you.”

~~

Seventeen days later, Fury had gotten his way in far enough to cause a little chaos. First, there was a security malfunction that locked everyone in the compound, causing a flurry of fear through the doctors and staff in the compound. Then the power went down.

Several minutes later, as he tracked down the contained mutants in the compound, Fury discovered the security malfunction; discovered, because he had not caused it, and that worried him. It was actually a positive, as it made certain parts of his plan easier, like hitting everyone he needed to with the knockout-gas laced riot grenades while they were in a panic, but it was still an unknown factor. Someone had gotten into the computers to mess that up.

Finally, Fury made it into the containment sector, only to discover that it was superbly locked down, apparently in the same way that the exits were. He finally had to resort to C4 to get a door open. He was met by a wall of fleeing orderlies, and leapt out of the way, pulling on his mask before dropping another knock-out grenade. It took another five minutes to get past the remaining doctors and guards, neutralizing them however he could. He finally had to resort to his Desert Eagle for the last few.

The power was coming back on as the emergency generators overcame the various errors and faults Fury had hindered them with, since he hadn’t had time to completely cripple them. Many of the mutants were conscious, but it was very clear which ones were considered the most dangerous; the cells at the end of the corridor looked like they could withstand a nuclear blast, while the others looked like clean white jail cells. Fury stepped toward the first cell, when one at the end of the hall rocked, as though with an internal explosion. Its door bowed outward with the force of it. Another powerful blow and it flew off its hinges, the metal shrieking in rebellion.

A small form dressed in white stumbled out. Long brown hair with white streaks, bloodstains across her chest, the woman looked like she was ready to raise hell. Before Fury could react, she had ripped all the doors off the other big cells in two swoops. Swoops: she could fly, and damn fast, too. She glanced into a few cells before darting into one that was two doors down from her own, with a shout of “Emma!” that got Fury’s feet moving.

He reached the doorway in time to watch the brunette tearing into the various psychic and physical restraints holding a battered and partially-emaciated Emma Frost to the wall. The brunette was using her bare hands, and cursing heavily in a slight midwestern accent.

“You need a hand with her?” Fury said, and immediately regretted it, because the brunette flew at him and pinned him to the wall by his throat with her unnatural strength. As soon as he saw the girl’s face, even if it was now mysteriously green-eyed, he was very glad he’d worn something with a high collar, because it had quite literally saved his skin. He choked slightly, but managed to speak. “Rogue?”

Her eyes widened for a moment, and she shook her head abruptly, as if to clear it. When she looked at him again her eyes were brown with only a few scattered shards of lingering green in them. “Nick?”

“Yeah. That’s me. Let me breathe, girl!”

Rogue set him down almost gently and released his throat. “Sorry. Carol hasn’t met you. She’s rather protective of Emma, especially now.”

Fury gave her an odd look.

Rogue pointed to her head. “They wanted to understand my mutation, Sugah. Wanted to see how Ah effect other mutants.” She let her hand drop. “Ah’m still not so sure whether they meant fer me ta kill her, though. She seemed valuable enough to ‘em on her own.”

It took a moment before Fury understood: they had forced her to touch another mutant, a woman named Carol, until the woman had died. “Oh. I see.” A curious look. “She could fly and...all that?”

“Yeah.” She looked away a little, but then gave a bitterly cold fake smile. “You here to rescue us, Sugah?” Rogue asked, heading back to tug at the last few restraints holding Emma to the wall. Emma was already murmuring to herself as the drugs she had been under began to wear off. Rogue’s eyes seemed greener when she looked at Emma.

“Among other things. You got into their computers.”

“Once. Early on, before they’d...before Carol. After that I was in special isolation, as ya can see. And Ah’m sure ya’ve guessed why, too.” Rogue cradled Emma carefully and then handed her to Fury. He followed her as she went into the other isolation cells and pulled a few other mutants out: a familiar-looking boy named Havok, a pretty green-haired woman who had was still unconscious, but Havok carried her before anyone even asked. He seemed to be attached to the woman. Rogue kept talking to Fury. “Ah was programmin’ it so that when the sensors picked up an intruder, and Ah planned to be that intruder insteada you, the security system would mess up and lock everyone outta this sector. After a few hours the strong ones, like Emma and Carol, their drugs would wear off an’ they could bust us out. Ah didn’t quite finish the codin’. It was supposed to knock out the power in this sector, too, but they caught me.”

When Rogue reached the last cell she seemed to hesitate. “Fury?”

“Yeah?”

“This is the man who got us into this mess.” She looked straight at him. “You know him. Ah’m still lettin’ him out.”

Fury stared at her. “I sure as Hell can’t stop you.”

Rogue smirked a little, but it was bitter. “Damn right ya cain’t, but you’ll wish you could when ya see him.” She stepped in, and soon afterward stepped back out carrying a heavily-sedated and therefore disoriented older gentleman with slightly-too-long white hair, and concentration-camp numbers tattooed to his inner arm.

Fury’s jaw tensed. “Magneto,” he said, the name snarled through gritted teeth.
“I call him Erik, myself.” She looked at Fury cooly. “He tried to kill me, usin’ me to run a machine to make humans into mutants. Emma and Carol came for me. Then all of us were caught, but not before I almost died in that machine, along with many other people.”

Fury hesitated, then all but growled as the realization hit him. “The Statue of Liberty. I knew I smelled cover-up but this is deeper...”

“It is.” She looked at the mostly-unconscious man in her arms, who was larger than her but carried as though he weighed nothing. “One more time, Erik,” she said quietly, and pressed her cheek to his forehead; it would have looked affectionate, even loving, if not for the grim and slightly vicious look on Rogue’s face and the way Magneto, even barely aware of the world around him, widened his eyes in horror.
Nick watched as Magneto’s expression contorted and the veins on his face seemed to bulge as his skin paled, while Rogue’s cheeks grew suddenly flushed even as she grimaced a little. It was only a few seconds, then she pulled back, breathing hard. She glared down the length of the hall and lifted one hand. As she curled her fingers, the sound of warping metal filled the corridor like an inhuman chorus of thin screams. The bars of the non-isolation cells warped outward and then snapped, curling outward up toward the ceiling and down toward the ground. Freed mutants ran out, charging down the hall in a flood.

Rogue turned and gave Fury a wicked grin. “Shall we then, Mr. Fury?” Her accent was momentarily dulled, her words crisp and elegantly European-sounding.

Fury stared at her, suspicion and a touch of cold anger written across his face.

Rogue shook her head. “I’m fine, Fury. I’ll be talking like myself within the hour. It’s just that I’ve touched him before. The familiarity makes some of his quirks linger.” She tossed the now-unconscious Magneto over her shoulder as if hefting a golf bag, and began walking down the hall. One mutant was very obviously waiting for them outside of her cell, watching them closely. She looked normal, even beautiful and healthy, but her eyes flashed yellow when Fury glanced at her, and he again felt a welling of anger, and the need to kill.

“Mystique,” Rogue greeted coldly.

“You let him live. I’m impressed. And intrigued,” Mystique said, speaking with a hundred different voices at once.

Rogue narrowed her eyes. “We’ve all been in this place together. I don’t like you; in fact, if I see you outside this damned place, I will probably maim you, but no one deserves this place. No one should die here except the people who did this to us. The enemy of my enemy is, at least temporarily, my friend.”

Mystique nodded slowly.

“Are you strong enough to carry his ass?” Rogue pointed at Erik.

Mystique pursed her lips a little, but nodded.

“Good. Then I won’t be so tempted to defenestrate him.” Rogue handed over her burden to Mystique, who promptly shifted into a large, muscular man, and carried Magneto with more delicacy and a touch of reverence.

Fury was staring at Rogue, feeling oddly struck by her speech. He felt that he suddenly understood why Logan had saved him the first time, out in that damned desert.

“Let’s go,” Rogue growled, and took point as they went out, deliberately putting herself between them and any potential resistance. And resistance they found, and resistance Rogue ruthlessly took out. Fury thought she put on quite a show.

Then Fury got the call: Xavier’s voice in his head, hours early. Agent Fury, are you all right? Fury thought about it, and watched as Rogue picked up a few fallen mutants who had also met resistance and almost been lost to it. I think these folks need a ride. There’s nearly thirty of them. Emma Frost is with us. So is Magneto. Fury could almost hear the ringing shock from the psychic, and had a darkly morbid urge to smirk.

The blackbird will be there within the hour.

And within the hour, Rogue had broken down the doors and let them all out. Emma Frost and Magneto were coherent by then, and helped Fury keep the mutants in some semblance of order to wait for the jet. Rogue watched, then turned on her heel, heading back into the building.

Fury caught her shoulder, and she felt like a statue made of stone under his hand, but he held firm. “Where are you going, Rogue?”

“To neutralize some people. Don’t worry. Ah won’t kill the ones you’ll need ta try in court, secret or otherwise. Ah know who they are, and many Ah wanna kill, but Ah won’t.” She took a deep breath, hers hands forming fists so tensed they shook faintly, then let it out, forcibly releasing the tension. “As it is there are plenty in there still movin’, or startin’ to move as sedatives wear off, and Ah wanna make sure they either stay down, or are dumb enough to make me hafta take ‘em down, because Ah’ll have fun with that.” She turned and met Fury’s gaze. “Ya cain’t stop me.”

Fury hesitated. “How much of this is Magneto?”

Rogue flinched. “Some. But not so much as ya’d think. Ah’m a pretty angry person in my own right, Sugah.” She stepped away, and Fury’s hand slid off of her should as she went back into the smoke. In the half hour that followed, only a few explosions followed, with plenty of scattered crashes of various volumes in between. Then Rogue emerged again, looking determinedly restrained, but also like she really really wanted to go back in and kill everyone. Ten minutes later, the jet arrived, and Fury finally pulled out his communicator, calling his agency with an interesting report. He could almost hear management being gutted as he used the words “genetic cleansing” and “torture” and other colorful phrases that sounded Nazi-enough to horrify the general public if they got out.

When he was done he looked up to see Logan standing next to him, staring at the compound. “You’re sure it’s clear in there? All neutralized?” Logan was rubbing his knuckles a little, looking almost eager.

Fury turned his head and looked at Rogue, who was leaning against a tree between the group of welcoming mutants, and the compound. She was off to the side and if not for her white streaks and white prisoner uniform, however smeared both were now with gore and destruction, she would have scarcely caught anyone’s attention. “I’m pretty damned sure.”

Logan followed Fury’s gaze with blatant curiosity. His brow furrowed. “You not tellin’ me somethin’ here?”

“See that fucked-up steel door, about a foot thick?” Fury asked lightly.

“Yeah.”

“Magneto was barely conscious when that happened. She did it.” Fury gestured toward Rogue with his chin. “With her bare hands.”

Logan gave a low whistle. “Damn.”

“Yeah. And that’s the tip of the iceberg with that one.” Fury pulled a cigarette and lighter from one of his uniform’s pockets, and lit it, cupping the flame against the wind.

“You know her?” Logan asked, raising an eyebrow at the cigarette.

Fury rarely smoked. Only when his nerves were really taxed, and it took a lot to do that, these days. “I met her once before. About a year ago. Thought I’d see her again, but not like this.” He wondered if he should tell Logan anything more about her, about things she knew. He shook his head a little. “Her powers are...they would unsettle people if news got out about her.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t told them about her, have you?”

With a grey-clouded, bitter sigh Fury shot Logan a weary look, one that spoke of too much fighting: a soldier getting tired of it all, but still planning to fight forever. “No. I haven’t. You know me, Logan. I play everything close to the vest, and we both know that quiet is always a better weapon than noise.”

“Whose weapon is she?” Logan asked, his voice bitingly cold.

“Her own, now that she’s out of that place.”

Logan examined the slip of a girl, too thin for reasons he didn’t want to think about while he was still planning on controlling his rage. The wind hid her face behind her hair, and she had folded her hands under her arms to keep them warm. She was whiteness and a dark swathe of hair, and didn’t look like she could scare the daylights out of the general public and their paranoid leaders. “Is she coming with us?”

Fury took another long pull from his cigarette. “I’ll ask. Give me a minute.”

Rogue was more huddled than she had looked from a distance, but her gaze were on the compound. Her eyes looked haunted, but the look on her face was stern and almost fierce. She turned to look at Fury before he was actually close enough to hear, and when he stood right in front of her, she explained simply, “You’ve got some metal in your bones, too.”

Fury clenched his teeth as he felt the pins in his forearm and shin hum very faintly. “Don’t do that,” he said tersely.

Rogue smiled a little, but it was brittle and closed-lipped. She looked burnt out, and her eyes were almost black, the thin shards of green like dim lights in a dark house. “Sorry. My sense of humor is gonna need some time to recover before Ah can be allowed around other people.”

Fury stepped closer to her. “What about them?” He jerked his head toward the Blackbird.

Rogue glanced at it, but her gaze fixed on a figure standing a little bit away from it, watching her and Fury. She flexed her fingers. “You mean, ‘what about him?’” Tilting her head to one side, a shadowed look crossed her face. Her accent abruptly faded, her words taking on the clarity of enunciation of Erik, the smoothness of her own drawl, and a touch of the midwest. “I can feel the metal in him––sense it, like Erik does.” Rogue took a ragged breath. “I can’t be around the X-men right now. And I have some things to make up for, as it is.” A pained, guilty look crossed her face, making the green in her eyes all the brighter

Fury knew how to spot the more dangerous and harmful forms of guilt, and he didn’t like the look of the one Rogue was ready to carry on her back for the rest of her life. He seized her shoulder and pushed it against the tree, turning her so she faced him. “No you don’t, girl.” He spoke in the calm, clear, and blatantly confrontational voice of an army captain. “Did you save everyone you could who needed savin’?”

Rogue’s lips pulled back from her teeth for a second, almost a snarl, but her eyes shone like glass; although she didn’t let any tears fall. The shards of green seemed unnaturally bright, almost glowing. “No.”

Fury shook his head, clearly not believing her. “I said everyone you could, not everyone they put you next to.” He squeezed her shoulder harder. “Did you do everything you could within your abilities, soldier?”

Rogue hesitated, but straightened up a little. “Yes,” she said softly.

“Did you fight every way you could?”

“Yes.” Her voice was a little stronger.

“Did you leave anyone behind?”

Rogue shook her head. “No.”

“Did you lead everyone out of that Hellhole who didn’t create it?”

Rogue’s eyes were brighter, now with something other than tears. “Yes.”

“Look at them, Rogue. Some of ‘em aren’t in the plane yet. Look at the kids whose lives you saved,” Fury commanded firmly, and pointed at the jet.

Turning to look, Rogue felt herself easing, somehow, relaxing faintly. She gulped silently and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“I’ll ask you again: did you save everyone you could have saved, who needed savin’?” Fury said slowly, every word sharp.

Rogue turned and met his gaze, all hints of brittleness gone, tempered away by the heat of justified anger and a protective kind of pride. She put a hand over his arm where he was protected by his sleeve. “Sir, yes, sir,” she replied, a hint mocking, but her smile was as much grateful as it was relieved, and it shone like a hunting knife. She was beautiful, but terrifying.

Fury nodded at her, and released her shoulder. “Good. Don’t pull that shit.”

Rogue’s lips twitched in amusement, but she raised a hand to her temple, massaging it a little. “Thanks for shakin’ me out of it. Carol has this goddamned Hero complex, but there’s so much of her in my head it’s hard to tell when she’s gettin’ to me.”

Fury raised his eyebrows. “And you’re gonna tell me you don’t have hero issues?”

Rogue shrugged and plucked the more-than-half burnt-up cigarette from his hand, careful not to touch his fingers. “Only about as much as you do. Probably a little less.” She took a pull off of the cigarette, exhaled slowly, and handed it back.

Fury shook his head. “Those things’ll kill you ya know.” He took it back gingerly.

Rogue stuck out her tongue. “Bleh. Not really my deal anyway. But Erik used to smoke, Carol was havin’ trouble givin’ it up before all this, and Ah’ve still got some of you bouncin’ around up here, too.” She snorted and crossed her arms over her chest again. “Ah suppose it’s better than when Ah used to crave Lonestar. That crap is disgusting.”

Fury was tempted to ask who it was who craved that godawful beer, but just shook his head again. “You’re insane, but I admit you’ve got a better excuse than most.” He dropped the butt of his cigarette and snuffed it under his heel. “Where do you plan on goin’?”

Rogue tilted her head up and looked skyward thoughtfully. “How far away are your S.H.I.E.L.D. boys?”

“Not too far off. Maybe a few miles.”

Rogue smiled enigmatically. “Good. Then Ah’ve got time.” She paused. “Tell Emma that Ah’m headed home, and remind her firmly that she shouldn’t mention me or my existence to anybody at the mansion. Ah’ve gotta talk to a few friends of hers Ah’d been workin’ with before...all this. Gotta make sure the school’s still goin’. Ah’ll be waitin’ for her when she gets there.” An odd look crossed her face and she touched the side of her head again. “Damn, it’s awkward havin’ her dead lover in my head. She messes up my thoughts somethin’ fierce. Ah don’t have anything remotely resemblin’ a goddamned home.” Rogue said it with a hint of defiant pride.

Fury blinked twice in quick succession, but showed no other hint of surprise. “Ah. That explains a surprising number of things.”

Rogue snorted. “Yeah. As ya can guess, Ah won’t stay there long, once she’s back.”

Fury nodded. “You’re a runner.”

“And what would you call your life?” she countered.

He shot her a glare.

“Just because you’re always chasin’ somebody doesn’t mean ya ain’t just another kinda runner, Nick.” She looked down at her feet and smirked as she hovered a couple of inches off the ground. “Me, Sugah, Ah fly.” She flashed a brilliant grin and shot up into the sky like a white-and-brunette bullet.

Fury watched, mildly flustered. Mostly, he felt more tired than he had ever felt before, and wondered if he was getting too old for this. When he walked back up to Logan, he found the man’s unlined face to be a depressing sight.

Logan had watched the exchange curiously, trying to figure out what was between them, and had found that he could not name it. Fury had been afraid of the girl, but had also looked at her the way Logan knew he looked at his men, when men worked under him: protective, but in a harsher way than anything affectionate. The girl had acted with respect, but not deference; she liked Fury, which was odd enough, but she had also seemed to know him, better than Fury knew her, and that was outright bizarre. “I guess she’s not comin’ with us,” Logan mused.

The scowl on Fury’s face deepened. “No.” Not today.

“Who is she, anyway?”

Fury took a deep breath, and reached for another cigarette from his pocket. “She’s an insane and infuriating girl who knows too damned much.”

Logan looked thoughtful. “I’m lookin’ for somebody like that.”

Fury made an inquiring noise.

“What do you know about the Statue of Liberty?”

With the practiced ease of a soldier and a spy, Nick did not tense in surprise or show any hint of nervousness. “Magneto did it, and there was a huge fuckin’ cover-up.”

Logan nodded toward the compound. “And Bucket-head was in there.”

“Who’re you lookin’ for?”

An odd look crossed Logan’s face: something like reluctant and annoyed affection. “Just a girl who sent me some letters.”

So she did get to you,Fury thought, but gave Logan an irritated look, and shook his head. “Keep talkin’, hairy, and this time try to say somethin’.” The ‘play to expectations’ game. Don’t even think of her name. It was an all-too-common game for him: convincing himself, for short periods of time, that he honestly knew nothing. He was good at it too, but then it was often his job to lie.

Logan snorted. “She knows more than she should, and I want to know why she bothered to tell me. She knows about my past, Nick.”

A pause, just a couple of beats of silence––Fury often had a gift for timing––and he asked,“D’you think that you know her?”

“I don’t. All I know is her handwriting, her scent from the letters, and that she’s a computer genius of some kind.”

Fury looked at Logan, and saw the differences that had unsettled him before. He was relieved, knowing what had caused them. Logan looked better, more sane; and yet he was run ragged, hunting the ghost of Rogue. “So her letters stopped. And you found on the statue...what?”

“Blood. Not much; she didn’t die there. But she bled there.”

Fury nodded.

They stood in silence for a few moments, until Logan’s head perked up and he turned it to one side, listening. “Your boys are almost here. Did the black hawks get louder over the years, or somethin’?”

“They do have a little more power than they used to.”

“Good luck with ‘em, Nick.”

“Same to you, Logan.”

Rogue arrived back at Emma’s school that night, and recieved a letter the next day––special delivery air-mail. It was addressed to Carol Danvers, but Rogue recognized the handwriting on it and knew he’d just been avoiding using her name. It was a short note that said simply:
Write to the bastard so he can get some goddamned sleep, already.
He’s been looking for you.
--Fury

Within a week of the X-men’s visit to the compound, Logan had vanished.

Whispers flew through the mansion about the sudden disappearance of the irate and ragged creature who usually roamed the mansion’s halls so frequently. At first, many of the students were convinced that he’d been kidnapped, but as the rest of the adults showed no alarm, this rumor faded quickly. Next was the idea that he had run off with his mistress or whoever he was hunting down lately. This was only disproved when someone noticed that Logan’s and Scott’s bikes were both still in the garage. In reality, Logan had just been asleep for four days straight.

There was an open letter on his desk.

Logan,
I’m safe now.
--Rogue

It was enough. Somehow, inexplicably and impossibly, after months of hunting, three words were enough to bring Logan to call off the hunt. The page had smelled like Rogue and a hint of tobacco and diner-smells. The scent could not be faked, and it was no older than the post-date on the letter. She was alive, and had written. She had not been safe before, and she was now, and quite possibly she had heard that someone was looking for her.

It was enough, and Logan fell back from the darkly nervous and ill-tempered place his mind had been whilst hunting and worrying, and into his more normal position as the cantankerous wiseass prone to occasional sageness. The rest of the mansion seemed to breathe a heavy sigh of relief, finally growing relaxed.

So Logan was surprised when, two weeks later, the now-recovered Emma Frost looked so utterly uneasy when she asked to have a word with him, but he obliged, and followed her out into the garden. She led him away from prying ears, and sat down on a white marble garden bench. Logan did not sit, but leaned against the tree beside the bench and watched her.

“I asked Xavier about you. He said that you had been hunting a girl named Rogue for months.” She hesitated. “I know a girl named Rogue, and she’s killed someone very dear to me.” Her voice wavered for a moment, but Emma was strong. “But she was...not in control. She’d had control, hard-won, taken from her.”

“She was in the lab?” Logan asked.

Emma’s lips thinned and she nodded. “She is not one of the ones who came here, but neither would she have gone with Magneto. She was one of the half-dozen that had the ability and good reasons to go off on their own.”

Logan took a deep breath and pulled a cigar and lighter from his pocket, lighting up with practiced ease as Emma watched him. “Stay outta my head,” he said lightly, exhaling his first puff of smoke and feeling all too aware of her curiosity.

“I don’t want to go in there,” Emma said simply. “Not...not if knowing about your past has made Rogue do some of the things she’s done. I have enough things to be justifiably outraged and upset over.”

Logan chuckled a little. “And what has your Rogue done?”

“She’s not mine,” Emma corrected. “She took the one I loved, the one who was mine and who I belonged to.” A flash of pain across her features. “Her mutation does that. It takes the life force, memories, personality, and powers out of people, and into her. If she drains them to death, she keeps every bit of it.”

Logan mulled this over, and had to wonder who she’d taken, to learn so much of him. “Why are ya tellin’ me this now?”

Emma looked at him sharply, her eyes the color and temperature of glaciers. “Because you looked for her when she vanished. Because I saw the way you looked before that last letter got here.” She looked away. “Hell, just the fact that she wrote you another letter was incentive.”

“How do you know her?”

“I’ve been providing her a place to live, on the few occasions she’s ever stayed still long enough to need one, and getting her the connections and procedures that she needed in order to gain control of her mutation. In turn, she has donated generously to my school and...quietly gotten out of my hair a few public figures dead set on our destruction.” Her facial expression took on a hint of admiration. “She’s got a very keen set of skills in technological and politic savvy, and she’s ruthless as anyone on earth.”

Logan considered this. “You don’t know where she is.” It wasn’t a question.

“If she means to meet you, she’ll find you.”

“Why has she been doing all of this? The letters. For me.” Logan’s eyes were locked onto Emma’s, his gaze intense and fierce.

She did not balk. “Because she thinks that you deserve to know, that she has the skills and abilities to inform you...and that she has some sense of purpose when she hunts. It’s, in all likelihood, the same reason that she did not leave Magneto behind when she and Fury evacuated the compound, even though the man had tried to kill her in his machine to make a few human leaders into mutants who would die within days of mutation. It’s the same reason that she had continued to watch over my school like a silent and unseen sentinel, quietly and ruthlessly removing threats to the peace we have there, even once she had control of her mutation and no longer had any need for me.” Emma swallowed thickly. “Maybe it’s why those bastards had to work for over a month, with drugs and electroshock and attempts at reverse-surgery, before they could force her mutation to activate at their whim to get her to drain...” Emma swallowed again as a few tears escaped her eyes, but her face was still stony as she looked at Logan.

And Logan looked back, trying to absorb this knowledge, trying to imagine a woman like this, and all too easily understanding the thoughts behind her actions: The world will not be like this within the reach of my arm.

Emma looked away. “And I swear to God, she’s barely twenty, and I’m terrified of what she could become.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Just like every human in the world is terrified of the kids at this school, and yours.” He puffed on his cigar.

“She could kill even you, Wolverine,” Emma said quietly. “She took out my invincible Carol Danvers; she could easily drain you until you don’t heal any more, ever again.”

Logan shook his head. “She won’t.”

Emma took a deep breath, and let it out. “No. She won’t. Not of her own volition. And she was already so goddamned paranoid, no one will ever have the chance to control her again. Especially not now that she has Carol’s powers.”

It took Logan a moment to make the complete connection: that Emma had been in love with a woman named Carol, whom Rogue had killed. It hardly fazed him. He watched the pale ice queen in silence for a few moments until she finally took a deep breath and got to her feet.

“I wanted you to know that she does exist, and what she is. Any more than that, I’m not even sure I know.” She turned to walk away, back toward the mansion.

“You could give me a physical description, a list of her favorite haunts around that school of yours, the account numbers you got the donations from...”

Emma Frost turned and looked at Logan one last time, her pale blonde hair falling in her face a little, but not quite obscuring her bright blue eyes. “I could.” She smiled faintly, coldly. “But she can hurt me worse than your adamantium can, so I hardly see why I should.”

Logan watched her walk away, already planning his trip to visit her school.

Emma returned to her school in a solemn and mournful homecoming, and found Rogue sitting in her room, at the big wooden desk covered in school papers. Rogue’s eyes were pure Carol-green and the look on her face when Emma entered was all Carol: regret, love, hurt, sadness, despair, and wanting.

It took Emma’s breath away, and she had to shut the door behind her swiftly in order to lean her weight against it, or else her legs might have given out. Lips nervously covered by her pale fingers, Emma asked, tentatively, “Carol?”

Rogue got up slowly, but she did not move like Rogue, and the intent look of focus-on-Emma on her face was not a look Emma ever expected to see on Rogue: devotion, worry, love. “She wanted me to have this: to welcome you home...and ask something.” A nervous gulp, and fidgeting fingers: it was Carol, and she walked up to Emma, standing very close and looking at her, taking one of her hands and just holding it gently.

“What is it?” Emma’s eyes were shining with tears.

Carol leaned in tentatively and pressed her forehead to Emma’s. “I’m yours, Em. Take me back. Please. She’ll let you in, she wants...” A reluctant, bitter and almost hysterical laugh. “She wants to be rid of my emotions and my reckless heroics and my damned morals.”

Emma snorted a little in an unwilling and involuntary laugh. “That’s not funny.”

“Yeah it is,” Carol said, and Emma could almost believe that it wasn’t coming through in Rogue’s voice, but in the playful, lighter tones she knew so much better.

Emma put a hand on the side of Carol/Rogue’s head, her brow furrowing. “Last time I tried this, I went into a seizure.”

“Ah won’t do that this time, Emma,” Rogue whispered.

“She doesn’t have much choice. I’ve got nearly as much control as she does. And I haven’t been trying hard to make her life miserable...yet.”

Emma shut her eyes slowly, and reached out with her mind. She gasped a little at the sheer ease and warmth of the welcome; something from Carol.

It took about an hour to complete the transfer, before Rogue finally broke away with a hoarse gasp, her whole body shuddering. She stumbled to the floor and landed in a sprawl, her eyes open wide as the bright shards of green in her irises dimmed, looking at last more natural and ceasing to all but glow. Rogue wrapped her arms around her head and curled her knees to her chest, one more shudder wracking her body as a muffled yell died in her throat.

Emma watched in awe, still dazed and slowed down faintly by the weight of two psyches. “Are you alright.”

Rogue stayed curled up, holding her head and gasping for breath as her arms trembled. “Never. Again,” she panted vehemently, and coughed, rolling onto her side on the floor with a groan. “Oh gawd, my head feels like an implodin’ supernova of pain.” A sharp gasp and her arms finally loosened from around her head a little. “But empty. Finally goddamned...just me an’ the ghosts, thank every deity ever condemned by the Catholic church.”

“Don’t you mean ‘confirmed’?” Emma asked, but was unsure if that even made sense.

Rogue slowly lowered one arm, and pushed herself up into a sitting position with it. The other arm lingered, hand pressed to the crown of her head. “No. Condemned. Ah can cover more gods that way.” Her eyes were tight shut. “Painkillers. Painkillers. My kingdom for some painkillers.”

“I’ll get you the good stuff,” Emma promised, opening the door. “And Rogue...thanks.”

“Emma? One thing.”

“Hmm?”

“Ya can be cut by adamantium,” Rogue said sagely.

Emma snorted, “Yeah, but he didn’t know that,” and shut the door behind her.

Rogue smirked a little, through the throbbing pain in her skull, and looked at her hands: bare of gloves, covered in faint scars, long-fingered and strong, but elegant, and deadly. Briefly, she imagined having her knuckles torn open by metal claws, but she knew that with Carol’s powers still permanent, adamantium couldn’t cut her.

It was hard to think far past the pain, but she was able to deduce one clear point: it was time to visit the X-men and see them with eyes other than Fury’s. Another touch, another earth-shattering series of chaotic events in her mental landscape, another huge change in direction.

Logan’s visit to Emma Frost’s little academy of oddities was to no avail; Rogue was long gone, and Miss Frost had one blue eye and one green eye all of a sudden, and seemed to be quietly whole again, rather than the strong, but broken, woman she had been back at Xavier’s. It was just that she silently seemed to talk to herself; although Logan was glad that the woman’s restraint and social savvy kept her from drifting away from other people. If only she’d stop switching accents at random from dangerously soft and oh-so-educated and dapper, to brash and borderline-crass Midwestern.

Logan rather liked her more coldly practical approach to mutant-human relations, as they were something he could better grasp and approve of than Xavier’s idealism, but Logan was keenly aware of his own flaws, and aware that striving for perfection produced more and more honorable positive results than ruthlessness, because life was more than survival; it was about honor, and being able to live with himself for the many, many, many years he had left in his seemingly endless goddamned life.

So he came home to an emergency close to––although he still winced to call it thus, because of how unnatural the world felt on his tongue––home: a big goddamned fire, obviously arson and obviously involving Pyro.

It took an hour to track down the room where Pyro kept half a dozen hostages, threatening to burn them to a crisp. Logan knocked him out just as Storm called down a torrential downpour and Iceman made a flame-shield, preventing the hostages from scorching.

Logan was left patrolling the ash and making sure none of Magneto’s other friends had been around, when he saw a hunched, ash-coated figure, cursing and digging for something at the edge of the site. She smelled like the fire, and Logan could glean nothing else, except that she was female, from the south, and had a colorful vocabulary which she used in new and creative ways that even impressed him, and he himself could make a sailor blush. He watched her dig for five minutes and then pull out a battered steel case, scorched and minimally dented, from under a few rafters.

“Victory!” she muttered in a satisfied growl. “Damned fire-bug. Inconvenient as fuck.” She dusted off the case and then opened it after some careful code-entering. “Yes! fire-shielding for the win!”

Logan had, by now, silently stepped up behind her. “Who are you?” he growled from around his cigar.

The girl sprung to her feet, snapping the metal case shut and spinning to face him, instinctively crouched in a fighting stance that could take down someone twice her weight, especially since she was poised to wield the metal case like a weapon.

Logan was a little impressed, even if he was pretty sure that he was more like three times the girl’s weight, with all the adamantium.

Then the girl’s eyes widened a little, but then she actually smiled. “Oh. Hey, Logan.” She straightened up.

With skillful ease, Logan pinned her against the remainder of a wall, claws to her throat. In a casual, business-like voice, he asked, “How do you know me?”

Rogue seemed to passively allow him to pin her, still smirking a little. Her teeth were starkly white, smeared as her face was with ash; even her white streak wasn’t visible under the thick muck of raindrops and burnt building. She looked like a shadow with human eyes and mouth. “Xavier’s,” she said simply. “And mutual friends.” Not entirely a lie.

Logan’s eyes were still narrowed. “You don’t sound familiar.”

Rogue sighed and pointed at her hair, then seemed to notice the ash, and grabbed a lock, tugging on it and freeing it of enough ash to show a hint of a white streak and a glint of brown. “Ah’m used t’ bein’ a little more recognizable.”

Logan’s eyebrows raised briefly, and he gave a grunt of acknowledgement, retracting the claws. “Fury’s.”

“I’m not partial t’ the possessive, but yeah, Ah know Fury.”

“Did he tell you my name?” Logan was wary.

Rogue smirked. Well, sort of. “No. He didn’t tell me.” Before Logan could ask anything else, Rogue looked around, spotting another X-man figure in the distance. “Oh, hey, it’s the whole crew. Ah thought that rain was unnatural, but considerin’ it was focused on a different part of the fire than I was in, Ah was understandably distracted.” As if she’d just noticed, she started dusting off the sleeves of her muck-covered coat.

Logan looked her over. “Bullshit.”

Rogue put her hands on her hips. “Ah wasn’t wearin’ the trench coat at the time. Ah had to go t’ my car an’ get it or Ah’d be diggin’ around in the ash practically naked. Ah’m fireproof, but most a’ my clothin’ ain’t.”

Logan looked at her a little more intently.

Rogue crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t. Even. Think about it,” she growled, suddenly serious and suddenly not joking or lighthearted in the least.

Logan raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Don’t know what ya mean, darlin’.”

Rogue snorted, carefully relaxing again with a visible effort, and looked over her shoulder in another direction before turning to Logan again. “Actually, speakin’ of my car: it’s kinda...well, it’s that mess over there.” She pointed at a vehicle that had been half-crushed by a large bit of furniture that had been flung from the formerly burning building. “Can Ah get a lift? Maybe hang out at the school for a while? Ah was kinda livin’ in that car, y’see.”

Logan had to admit, he was already partial to her. She was amusing, and he was curious as to how she managed to appear so old and so young all at once. “What’s your name, kid?”

She arched an eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. “Just ‘cause ya older than the hills doesn’t mean ya can call everyone kid. Especially not me.” She snorted and lifted her chin a little in defiance, but her smile was a little soft and a lot bitter. “My name’s Rogue. Nice t’ finally meet ya, Sugah.”

Logan almost dropped his cigar. As it was, he had to catch it shortly after his jaw dropped. He glared at her, expecting a laugh, but she was only looking at him with an intent sort of curiosity. And he stared back, trying to read her face through the streaks of gray ash. It was a fine enough face, from what he could tell. He took in a deep breath through his nose, finally catching a few faint, fresh traces of that oh-so-familiar scent from under the ash, especially sinse she was beginning to sweat a little under the trench coat; from warmth rather than nervousness, he could tell, because she was utterly calm. And Logan had no doubt at all that she was the Rogue who had given him the keys to his past. He took a slow pull of his cigar and asked, “What took you so long?” he asked finally.

Rogue smirked a bit, but then visibly hesitated, looking over her shoulder toward the now-no-longer-faint sound of an approaching fire engine siren that had been giving Logan a head ache for the last ten minutes. “There’s some people in this city and through other parts a’ the state that Ah don’t want knowin’ Ah’m not dead on the side a’ the road somewhere between Mississippi an’ Alaska.”

“It’s a big city.”

She looked at Logan again and snorted with a faint smirk. “That’s puttin’ it lightly, Sugah; it’s New York. But it’s also unfamiliar turf that Ah don’t want them catchin’ me on, even if the chances of them seein’ me are slim, they can never really be slim enough. Of course, Ah’m not so vulnerable as Ah used t’ be.” She looked up at him with eyes that glinted with faint traces of green. “Also, Ah was busy. And in the midst of business Ah was...interrupted.” She pushed her hair behind her ear, a faint glint from the white streak in her hair catching the light.

Logan nodded. “I’d gathered.” His face was drawn in a look of cold understanding. “I found your blood on top of the statue.”

Rogue gave a low sound of acknowledgement. “I’d wondered if you an’ the X-men had looked int’ it. That’s where Ah got the white streaks, ya know: the mixture of what Ah took from Erik and what the machine took from me.” She did not look shaken and battered about it now, but there was a solemnity and low anger in the words that Logan recognized, and could relate to all too well. She held his gaze, not asking for pity or demanding anything, just stating fact and watching him passively.

Logan looked at the remains of the vehicle she’d claimed was her car. “So what did you have to do with the fire?”

Rogue smirked a little. “Nothin’, actually. It was Sabertooth’s ass who went after me ‘cause he thought Ah knew somethin’ about the scheme. Ah didn’t. Ah was just makin’ use of the electronics systems in the place to get into a local bank mainframe.”

Logan considered this. “Where is he?”

“Trapped in a sewer pipe with the back of his head smashed in. Actually...” Rogue tried to look at her watch and sighed, tapping at the melted metal and plastic half-glued to her wrist. “Dammit. Now Ah’m a goddamned paintin’ by Salvador Dali. Do ya know what time it is?”

“Never liked that painting,” Logan muttered, but looked at his own watch, which was more flame-retardant. He told her the time.

“He should be awake by now, but he ain’t goin’ anywhere for a while.” Her grin was vicious and had a hint of sadism in it.

Logan’s communicator went off at his hip, and he picked it up. “Yeah? No, none of the others. Sabertooth mighta been here, but he’s––” he gave Rogue a significant look “-gone off somewhere, the bastard.” He listened a little more. “No. Nobody injured, an’ no bodies. I did find somebody diggin’ around, though. She’s comin’ with us.”

Rogue could faintly hear the murmur of Scott Summers’ voice, asking the predictable question, to which Logan had such an unpredictable answer.

“She’s a friend of mine, gettin’ into trouble, I’d guess. Her car got fucked up from the fire.” A slight pause. “Not funny, One-eye. No strip joints like that in this part of town anyway. We’ll meet up with ya in a sec.” he snapped the phone shut and turned back to Rogue. “You got anything else left in that car?”

Rogue looked around at the ground around them and seized a battered-looking duffle bag, formerly camouflaged amongst the other debris at her feet by its less-than-thrilling coloration and thin coating of ash, and hefted it over her shoulder. She still had the big metal case in her other hand. “Nah. Let’s go.” The bag and the case together appeared to weigh about as much as Rogue did, but she carried them as though they were little more than pillows, even as they started walking towards the blackbird.

Logan’s brow furrowed, suddenly remembering a steel vault door mangled and ripped off of its hinges. “How strong are you, exactly?”

“Exactly? Not sure. But Ah know Ah can pick up an entire eighteen wheeler. Ah coulda thrown it if Ah’d wanted to.” She hesitated. “That’s a long story.”

“You’d better have time to tell a few long stories once we get to the mansion.” Logan gave her a severe look.

“Did Ah mention Ah can kick your ass six ways from Sunday? You’d better be glad Ah like you, ‘cause your people skills leave somethin’ to be desired.”

“How do you know me?” Logan growled.

“Luckily, that story’s not so long: Fury.”

“You said he didn’t tell you my name.”

“He didn’t tell me. He touched me. Before Ah had control. T’ be fair, he was tryin’ to save me from a few thugs an’ his fightin’ skills, once Ah had ‘em, helped out quite a bit. ‘Course, it knocked him out on his ass for a few days.” She shrugged.

“So you had his memories.”

“Have. Ah can keep the mental stuff with some effort. And unlike some of the sleaze-balls who’ve tried to grab me in the distant past, Fury’s a good man. And his head had plenty in it worth holdin’ on to.” She looked at the other X-men, now nearly in hearing distance and waiting for them under the blackbird. Scott in particular looked particularly suspicious, and Rogue fell silent.

Scott immediately stepped up to her with a harsh, “Who are you?”

Rogue pushed her duffle bag at him, catching him off guard as the weight hit his gut, forcing him to catch it. “Ah’m your guest. The name’s Rogue. Hold onto that for me, will ya?” She then brazenly sidled past him and up the steps of the blackbird.

Scott gaped openly as Logan merely smirked and followed her. “C’mon, Scooter.”

“Asshole,” Scott bit out. “And how the Hell was she carrying this thing?”

“I dunno, but I think I like her,” Storm mused, sounding amused.

“She seemed a little ungrateful, considering,” Jean said, even as she started up the steps with a faint smirk on her lips.

“Maybe it was her way of matching Scooter’s unique brand hospitality,” Logan said as he made his way up the last few steps of the plane.

“The man has a point, Scott,” Storm sighed, and made her way into the plane.

Scott muttered under his breath irritatbly, but followed.

Rogue had insisted on a shower immediately after the blackbird landed.

“Ah don’t give a damn if ya’re paranoid an’ want me meetin’ yer telepath leader; Ah’m coated in muck and refuse t’ be presented ta anybody until Ah’m at least remotely presentable!”

Storm had laughed at the look on Scott’s face and led Rogue to the women’s locker room, and the showers therein.

The locker rooms were just off of the hangar, thus separate somewhat from the rest of the mansion, and due to various X-men related issues, the whole hangar and the locker rooms had been re-built (and re-designed to prevent re-occurrences of such issues) over the years since Erik had helped Xavier build the school; so Rogue’s ghosts were quiet there, for a while.

She noted without surprise the slight flare of Logan’s nostrils when she emerged from the locker room. He was clearly waiting for her, clearly watching her with his sharp eyes to try and see into her past the armor of her appearance; although her appearance was somewhat distracting, if only because she had a body like a battle-axe and lips to make lesser men’s knees turn to water when they curled into a smirk.

“Alright. Now take me to ya leader,” she joked idly, fussing a little with her damp hair as it dried. The brown, when wet, was so dark it looked nearly black, and the tendrils white stood out even more starkly, even tangled and interwoven with the brown. And she smelled very good, fresh from the shower: like a rich oolong tea, lychee, and an enchantingly sharp and almost cat-like feminine musk. She held Logan’s gaze without the faintest hesitation, and did not look away. It might have unnerved someone else.

“Then we talk later, you an’ I,” Logan said slowly, around the lit cigar he held in his teeth, which did not hinder his enunciation in the least.

Rogue smirked a little, but the amusement did not reach her eyes, her expression remaining stony and closed off. “Yes we shall,” she replied.

And Logan led her into the mansion. Scott joined them in the hall.

Rogue’s mood, on entering the mansion, was hard to define. She seemed to slip into odd mannerisms not wholly natural to her and watch the architecture with mixed curiosity, familiarity, and with a sharp eye for changes made over the years. It was only when Logan saw the half-mournful and half-sardonic smile she got, when the door to Xavier’s office was opened, that he recognized it as touches of Magneto.

Well, that and the way that she so easily drawled, “Hello, Charles,” in cold, smooth tones.

It startled the professor a little, but it was clear that there was more to her that startled him than just her words.

“Don’t try to pry much, Charles, my head isn’t a safe place for ya,” Rogue said as she approached his desk. Her southern accent was more muted. “It takes a lotta work for me to open the door, and if I don’t open it...bad things. Emma learned that the hard way, and that was before I knew anything about telepaths and what my mutation makes my mind like on the astral plane. Apparently, it isn’t so pretty.” She smiled, but it was still Erik’s smile.

“You’re truly Rogue, then?” Xavier asked.

Rogue nodded. “That’s the name.” She raised an eyebrow as she turned to Logan. “About how much did ya let ‘em see?”

Logan had followed her in, and stood halfway between her, where she stood close to the front of Xavier’s desk, and Scott, who stood like a watchful bodyguard at the office’s closed door, glaring at her and Logan both. Logan held Rogue’s gaze, reading bits of his enemy on her face, but not on the whole finding it repulsive. Rogue had clearly only kept the parts about the man that she had liked or found valuable, or which were close enough to her own personality that they stuck. It was telling, really, and what it told Logan was nothing bothersome: just that Rogue was ruthless, cold, bitter, and sardonic with a twisted sense of humor.

“They’ve seen what they needed to,” Logan answered her gruffly.

Xavier was slightly uneasy at the suggestion that there were things about his team member that he did not need to see, but he did not press the matter. “What, exactly, is your mutation, if I may ask, Rogue?”

She turned to look at Xavier as if from over the distance of a few centuries. “It’s my skin. I’ve gotten control of it only through scientific and surgical means...from quasi-legal sources. Don’t worry about them. They’re mutants themselves, although you may not approve of their methods, none of which are actually physically violent, by the way––just generally illegal.” She smiled a bit brightly. “They’re a lot less ethical than the telepaths who’ve come an’ gone under your tutelage, Charles.” Rogue sat down on one of the leather chairs set up for conferences held over Xavier’s desk. She all but lounged in it, but her back was stiff and the way she held herself had a faint Magneto air about it. “My skin, when it makes contact with the skin of someone else, effectively drains their life-force, as well as taking a ghostly replica of their psyche and personality into my head, complete with memories, thoughts, and mannerisms, etc, of varying strength dependin’ on how prolonged the skin-to-skin contact lasts. In the case of mutants, I also ‘borrow’ their powers.” She hesitated a moment. “Prolonged contact, and inability on my part to stop the pull, can lead to death, me with somebody else’s brain tryin’ to occupy an’ control mine, and permanent retainment of another mutant’s powers.”

“How many times has that happened?” Scott asked, his voice surprisingly unaccusing. He had recognized the regret at the edge of Rogue’s voice, and thought about the ruin he’d turned his junior high into when he’d manifested.

Rogue turned her head just enough to show a bit of her profile, but not enough to actually make eye contact. “Just once. In the compound Fury helped me break out of. You guys showed up not too long after that, as I recall.”

Logan heard Scott quietly clear his throat and shift his weight on his feet.

“I’m sorry,” said the man in the red shades.

“You didn’ put me there, Sugah, and ya sure as Hell didn’t help ‘em shove electrodes under my skin to turn off the micro-biotechnical stuff that helps me keep my skin under control so they could see if Ah could kill the invulnerable and invincible Carol Danvers.” She turned back to face Charles Xavier, who noted the shards of green in her eyes with new interest; he also noted that her southern drawl was much less present when she was looking at him. “Turns out, by the way, that I could,” Rogue added.

Xavier had finally unwillingly recognized traces of his old friend in the girl before him. “And Logan was also right, then, in guessing that you were part of Magneto’s plot on top of the Statue of Liberty?” Xavier guessed.

Rogue’s expression was at once brittle like broken glass, and touched with unwilling smugness that was not hers; it was an odd mix. “Yes. I was the plot, for the most part. I made the whole plan possible, so that Erik’s machine wouldn’t drain him to death.” The smugness dropped as Rogue’s flare of rage overcame the ghost of Erik in her mind. “It’d just drain me to death, after he’d lent me enough power to pull off the whole feat. Carol an’ Emma stopped him, but then all of us got picked up by the folks who ran that lovely little compound.”

Xavier’s eyes lowered to his desk and he nodded. “I see. I am very sorry that we could not have been of aid to you sooner.”

Rogue shook her head. “Ah was workin’ pretty hard to keep ya’ll from crossin’ my path.”

Xavier’s brow furrowed. “Yes...I’d become aware of that early on.”

Rogue smiled a little. “Ah’m not tellin’ you about my sources. That’s between me an’ the furball.” She jabbed a thumb in Logan’s direction, seemingly unaware of the involuntary snort of laughter this elicited from Scott.

Logan himself scowled a fraction, but let it go.

Xavier hesitated, but finally looked resigned. “All I ask, is that any potentially illegal activity––or activities––that you plan on doing whilst staying here, be undertaken only in situations of dire need, and preferably with my consultation, and that I have the power to prevent you from performing any particularly unfit illegal activities. I would caution especially against theft, arson, assassinations, black-market trading of goods and information, and undue hacking into files belonging to various branches of government.”

Rouge allowed herself to pout a little. “Well, that’s...limiting.” She sighed, but then raised her arms above her head and arched into a full-body stretch, causing a few popping sounds from her back; she punctuated the display with a murmured, “But Ah can live with that, Ah suppose.”

“And I do hope you will eventually come to trust us, Rogue,” Xavier added quietly.

Rogue’s eyes caught the light in a way that made them look predatory, even if the half-confused look she gave Xavier made her look close to human for the first time since she’d walked into his office. “Ah don’t trust anybody, Charles. Not like your people. Not even like Erik’s.”

Xavier’s gaze moved visibly to Logan for a few moments before he looked back at Rogue. “I’m familiar with the attitude. Perhaps, then, I can only hope you will eventually feel comfortable talking to me with fewer obfuscations.”

Rogue smiled a little, but it faded as she spoke. “Ah have a habit of continually obfuscating in the face of believed enlightenment. It’s a side-effect of livin’ in the shadows, and havin’ so many shadows in my head of bitter folks and the memories of wars an’ betrayals and human cruelty that made ‘em so.” She looked at Xavier a little more openly, letting him get a glimpse of something war-torn, ragged, tired and ancient. “And Ah ain’t just talkin’ about Erik.” She pulled herself to her feet and put her hands in her pockets. “It’s your job to make light, though. And ya aren’t exactly bad at it.” She gave a more encouraging smile, but it was still rough with something like embittered sadness, and had an edge to it like a knife.

Xavier’s brow was knit, the weight of his thoughts clearly immense. “I’m not sure what to say to that, Rogue.”

“Yeah, well. Try livin’ with it a while from my side.” She shrugged. “Or don’t. It’s not really your kinda thing. It’s good to finally meet ya though. You’re not nearly as unsettling as some people think. Then again, maybe Ah’m just better at it than you are.” She extended a hand, bare and with her deadly skin perfectly under control: turned off.

Xavier shook it, a faint and slightly curious smile on his face. Not Erik, surely...she’s telling me that I’ve met someone else she’s touched. Her informant, perhaps? But all he said was. “Thank you. It’s good to see you at last, Rogue.”

Rogue turned and faced the other two men, her smile turned into a cocky smirk. “So. Ya got any drinks around here?”

Her face made her look young; although something about the short and sharply angled cut of her hair––ear-lobe length and layered in the back, chin-length in the front, with inexplicably natural looking layers making the transition smooth, following the line of her jaw––made her look more mature. Rogue looked youthful, and ancient, and restless, and hurt, and too tough to let it stop her, and very willing to hurt others ten times worse than they could possibly hurt her. Her eyes were dark and suspicious, even with the odd glitter of green that sometimes caught the light from within their chocolate depths.

Up close, Logan could see scars: across her knuckles, a faint line down her forehead that formed a very narrow pale line near the outer end of her left eyebrow, a month-old shiny spot just off-center on the edge of her lower lip, and––most notably––imprints on her palms of the metal grips from Magneto’s machine. Logan tried to figure out how he’d missed them before, and recalled that she had been wearing fingerless gloves.

She had made a point of going gloveless to meet Xavier, but judging by the way she kept reaching and then pulling back to adjust her cuffs, she was not used to having her hands quite so bare. Logan recalled that she had not always been in control of her skin, and guessed that she must have a lot of gloves.

Scott had left them alone for all of ten minutes, just long enough for them to reach the kitchen, discussing the snooping habits of the X-men’s junior team. Logan could hear the occasional curse from their well-hidden peanut gallery, but it was Rogue who oh-so-casually pushed a large book to the edge of a table they passed in the hallway. Several seconds later, a spy disturbed the table just enough that the book fell. Loudly.

Rogue smirked a little when she heard the faint cry of surprise and pain as the spy’s toe was nearly broken under the weight of the book.

Logan was a little impressed. “That one’s Bobby.”

“He’s not so subtle,” Rogue mused.

“That’s one way to put it,” Logan muttered, pulling out a cigar as he told Rogue where the liquor was: concealed cabinet. He punched in the code, which he had little doubt Rogue memorized immediately. He watched her peruse the drink selection, and finally pluck out a particularly fine scotch.

“I’d have figured you for something a little more Southern.”

“Too many creeps in the South, these days. Two too many who thought it was a good idea to try and take advantage of a fragile-lookin’ girl hitchhiker. Don’t need to stir up any of their ghosts, even if there ain’t much left of ‘em.” She opened the scotch and sniffed gingerly. “And Erik can’t stand scotch unless it’s in a cocktail like a Manhattan.” Her eyes shifted momentarily to a jar of maraschino cherries just behind the vermouth in the liquor cabinet. “That’s his favorite drink: Manhattan straight-up.” She took a highball glass, filled it half-way, put the scotch back, and shut the cabinet, walking over to the fridge for ice.

Scott came in shortly after Rogue had dropped three wedge-shaped ice-cubes gently into her drink and swirled it a little. He stared at her for a moment, clearly distracted from whatever he’d intended to say as soon as he came in. “Are you even old enough to drink?”

The glare Rogue shot him could have made glaciers flee in shame, knowing themselves to be outclassed. “Ah’m gonna pretend ya didn’t ask that,” she said slowly, and took a small sip of scotch. She noted that Logan had puffed up a little, almost territorially. “Lemme guess, Summers: ya want ta have a word with me.”

“Yes.” Scott was a little unsettled by how easily she made eye contact through the shades. Most people’s eyes wandered over the reflections in the quartz, often never making that snap of connection that came with eye contact. That snap was immediate with Rogue, and she did not look away at all, to the point Scott began to think she wasn’t blinking enough.

Rogue sighed a little. “You’ve got two minutes. Out in the hall. Logan has an unofficial but inviolable appointment with me, and just because you’re the Team Leader of the X-men doesn’t mean you’re more important than that rendezvous.”

Scott considered this. “Fine.” He was out the door.

Logan met Rogue’s gaze, saw the faint traces of irritation and resignation on her face. He smirked a little. “You’ve already got the hang of this.”

Rogue shrugged. “He’s easy to read.” She swirled her drink gently as she walked out the door, pausing only when she shut it slowly behind her.

Scott was glaring at the door.

“You’re gonna be overheard. Get over it,” Rogue sighed.

Scott transfered his glare to Rogue. “You’ve got attitude issues.”

“So do you. Yours are just more authoritarian and prone to leadership-related expression. You have trouble managing your attitude around those who don’t give a damn, because you care a lot, about a lot of honorable and good and bright things.” She took another sip of scotch. “Ah’ll credit the honor, but for the good and the bright, Ah’m a bit tarnished and my amoral tendencies are just somethin’ you’re gonna have to live with.”

Scott’s arms were crossed over his chest. “I’ve lived with psychics for more than half my life; is this meant to perturb me?”

“Keep in mind, Ah’ve never touched you before.” She raised one hand and wiggled her fingers in a mocking ‘spooky’ gesture. “And actually, it’s not meant to perturb, but rather to shorten the conversation.”

Scott shook his head. “I just want to know why you’re here, so I can try to keep things running smoothly in my home.”

Rogue’s eyebrows lifted a little. “Nice. More blunt than Ah expected. Ah like that. Anyway: Ah’m here to meet Logan, and to figure out what to do with all this.” She tapped the side of her head. “Basically, Ah’ll sit around, or fly around––Ah can do that, by the way––chat with people, and probably drain half of your liquor cabinet within the week. The rest is improv.”

Scott frowned. “I hate improv.”

Rogue smiled brightly. “Figures. But that’s how I roll.”

“That sounds so wrong in a southern accent,” Scott muttered.

Rogue gave a soft laugh, or the ghost of one. “Goodnight, Summers.” She moved to open the door, then instinctively jerked back when Scott reached out to grab her arm. The movement was instinctive, smooth, and she did not spill a drop of scotch, although her grip on the glass had changed subtly, so that she could more easily fling it if need be. Scott’s hand closed on empty air and he got a glimpse of an enraged grimace on Rogue’s face for a moment before her expression turned into a stony mask free of any emotion. “Don’t. Touch me.” Her voice was a low growl, and her eyes were bright with anger.

Scott took a step back. “I’m sorry.”

Rogue took a breath and a long pull of her drink. “What did you plan on sayin’, oh Tactless One,” she snapped.

“I...I wanted to say that I understand a mutation that’s out of control,” he said quietly, adjusting his glasses. “I’m thinking I may have fucked that up.”

Rogue shook her head. “A bit. Ah know about...my informants ‘ve had access to some serious dossiers. Ah know about all the X-men.” She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, a gesture clearly showing frustration rather than meekness or tears; her jaw was set and her lips formed a scowl. “Ah see what you’re sayin’. That’s all the credit Ah can give ya right now.”

“I’m sorry, Rogue.”

She lowered her hand and glared at him a bit. “Just treat me like a recent prisoner of war re-adjustin’ to bein’ around people, not some kid lookin’ for family connections that you’re playin’ father-figure to.”

Scott flinched a little. “You’re a bit bitchy.”

“Learn to like it. Go take care of the Junior-team eavesdroppers. One of ‘em, Bobby Ah think Logan said, may have a broken toe.” She was opening the door. “My fault, not Logan’s, and he deserved it.” The door snapped shut.

She hardly looked at Logan as she strode back through the kitchen and out the back door onto the large patio, but she could sense him as he followed. The night air was cool and dry and Rogue’s skin looked twice as pale as usual when under moonlight. She set her drink down on the rail and pulled tobbacco paper and a pouch from her pocket. Her scarred hands slowly, dexterously, and with years of skill not her own, rolled a cigarette.

Logan stood next to her, leaning on the rail and watching her hands. That was when he noticed the scars on them. And then he’d looked intently at her face. It was a little unsettling to realize quite how beautiful she was. Logan watched her light her cigarette with a wooden match. It was brand of tobacco that he knew Fury sometimes kept on him when he knew things were going to be Hell and he’d need something deeply unhealthy and a bit luxurious to take the edge off; it was expensive, and it was a good blend. But Fury didn’t hand-roll his, preferring to not take the time in which he could be easily interrupted or caught off-guard.

Rogue was aware of his gaze. “Erik used to smoke. Hand-rolled cigarettes remind him of old times, but I don’t buy his D&R stuff. It encourages his ghost too much.”

Logan nodded. “But you don’t mind Fury’s?”

Rogue shook her head. “Nah. He’s one of the only ones Ah actually like; although Ah got rid of most of the early ones that were really messed up. Ah’ve only gotten about...fifteen ghosts, since I manifested, if ya count Carol. Ah’ve only got about half a dozen that still make any noise.” She paused thoughtfully. “Most of ‘em on accident. Five times outta last-resort self-defense...and one because he asked me to.” She sipped her drink.

“Who was that one?”

“Some idiot who thought he was in love with me,” Rogue muttered, obviously a little disdainful. “We worked together, briefly, under the folks who helped me with my skin; they’d agreed to help me if Ah did a few heists with the guy.” She shrugged.

Logan considered this, decided to follow up on it another time. “You’re good at theft.”

“Yeah. Comes with the territory.”

Logan smirked a little. “And the insane computer skills.”

Rogue smiled, just a little, and it was good to see. She looked less tired when she smiled. “Yeah. Those help a lot.” She looked down at her cigarette contemplatively. “Start askin’ what ya’ve wanted to ask for the last year. Ah don’t need any slow build-up to it just ‘cause Summers acted like a dick.”

Logan pulled out his lighter, starting to light the cigar he’d had in the corner of his mouth since Scott had asked to have a word with Rogue. He was surprised when she stopped his hand with hers; an idle touch from her was, he suspected, not really idle, but her air was casual.

“You know that drives Fury nuts, that you use a lighter for that?” She took it from him and pulled out her matches, lighting one. “You lose the flavor. Here.” She waved the wood-smoke flame slowly under the end of the cigar, once it had burned just past the sulfurous end of the match and none of that sulfur-taste hit the cigar.

Logan inhaled slowly. It did have more flavor. “Thanks.”

Rogue smirked a little and shook out the match, dropping it in the nearby ash-tray: Logan’s tray, now shared. “No problem. Like I said, it drives Fury nuts.” She looked kind of amused, her words edged in smoke.

After considering his words for a while, Logan asked, “Why didn’t he tell me what he knew? And not about the cigars.”

Rogue folded her arms and rested her weight on them, leaning on the patio railing and staring at something in the distance, straight-ahead. “Simple: he cain’t.” She unfolded one arm enough to lift her cigarette to her lips, seeming to savor a long pull. Her expression had an edge of all-too-familiar grimness. “If the information went from him to you, it was traceable, and shit would go down in the world he works for. People would come after him that he’d never get away from, they’d go after you and some of ‘em...some might like the excuse to try and make you a weapon again. And there’s people in that world who could, X-men or no X-men.” A slow exhale. “And he wouldn’t be in any position to get between you an’ them, not once he was compromised, or dead, more likely.”

Logan watched her face. “You looked into it.”

“Of course Ah did; the man’s pretty damned knowledgeable, but not omniscient.” She sipped her scotch again. “But he ain’t wrong about what’d happen.”

Slowly, Logan nodded. “Alright.”

“That’s part of why Ah did the huntin’ for you. So ya wouldn’t be near these guys. You wouldn’t be their target. And Ah took a lotta information about a lotta other people: made it look like Ah was either lookin’ to experiment myself, or targettin’ the experimenters.” Rogue tapped ash off the end of her cigarette. “Ah worked slow, careful, inch by tedious inch wadin’ through information that didn’t mean a damn thing. It was shit that Ah knew, from Fury, that you’d never do.” A crooked, bitter grin that shone like broken glass flickered across her lips.

Logan gave a grunt of acknowledgement, but it was only grudgingly done. “But why the Hell did you even start doin’ it?”

Rogue looked down. “Because it needed doin’, because Ah could do it, and because nobody deserves what they did t’ you, let alone to not know...to have all of that taken from ya.” She took a more shaky pull from her cigarette.

“There’s a lot of other things you probably learned, things Fury can’t do but should,” Logan pressed. “Why me?”

Rogue shook her head. “Because you were where it all started. You were where all Fury’s doubts came from, and where the greatest violations of folks’ rights came from. He was a bitter, disillusioned soldier before you showed up, but after you showed up he was determined to make things better where the corrupt orders come from. He’s fixed a lotta shit, whenever he could, and he’s pretty damned talented at gettin’ other people like him, without the connections that inhibit him, to turn around at just the right times to glimpse somethin’, and hunt down and fix other problems he knows about. But he could never manage that with you. It was too deep, too convoluted, too much was hidden and it had stopped long enough ago that he couldn’t arrange for somebody else to find it. And it was bullshit, that you couldn’t...” She exhaled a lungful of smoke and tried to pull her thoughts together.

“There was other stuff Ah coulda done. Yeah. Other people Ah coulda helped, who needed it pretty bad. Fury wants to help them just as bad.” Rogue set her cigarette in a notch in the side of the ash tray, and ran a thumb across the hand-grip scar on her opposite palm. “They didn’t interest me, though. They weren’t like me. Not even because a couple of ‘em aren’t mutants, but...you’re a runner. You’re Wolverine. You...reminded me of me somehow, when Ah was siftin’ through Fury’s memories: too self-centered to be a perfect hero, unable to control destructive aspects of yasself, not...not close to anybody for a lotta the same reasons Ah’m not.” She picked up her cigarette again, tapping ash off the end and lifting it to her lips. “You were the only one Ah thought about and also thought, ‘Ah gotta do somethin’ about it.’ Because Ah’m not a hero, really. Ah’m just Rogue.” She finally looked him in the eye, solemn and cold, but as honest as her almost cowboy-like honor made her, and she was an honorable creature.

Logan had watched her as she spoke, the frustration as she tried to put into words the feeling that had driven her, the one he’d identified when talking to Emma. He told her its name: “You were thinking, ‘the world will not be this way within the reach of my arm.’”

Her eyes widened a little, and she said almost breathlessly, “Yeah. Yeah that was it.”

Logan nodded. “Chuck told me that was about the extent of my moral considerations, and that he found it frustrating.”

Rogue smiled again, just a little, but it was one of her less bitter ones and it suited her. “Ah can imagine.” She smiled a little more. “That was another...thing Ah kinda recognized, but there didn’t seem to be words for it.” Then her brow furrowed and she looked away a little, as if listening to something. “Oh. Hmm. Apparently it’s a line from the book Hannibal. Ah haven’t read that in a long time, but...it was from Clarice Starling.” Rogue clicked her tongue. “Ah can live with that.”

Logan, who’d watched Silence of the Lambs and liked Clarice enough to read the book, nodded a little. “Hmm. I think I can, too.” He made a mental note to look into the rest of the series to see if Hannibal was worth reading. “Who reminded you?”

Rogue frowned a little. “Erik. He has a thing for Anthony Hopkins, Ah think. Not that he’ll admit it.” She took a long pull of scotch, draining the last of it.

Logan wished he had some alcohol, too. “Didn’t need that image.”

Rogue chuckled a little.

They stood in silence a few moments. “What kind of a name is Rogue?” Logan asked after a while, his voice light and almost teasing.

With an expression that was part-amused-smirk and part-prideful-smile, Rogue shook her head and put out the butt of her cigarette, leaving it in the ashtray. “Same kind as Wolverine: other people used it to refer t’ me for a long time, sometimes affectionately but often insultingly, and Ah eventually embraced it, because they were far more right than they knew or would ever know. It’s who Ah am.”

Logan held her gaze, seeming to look right through her mask, which did not apparently surprise or unnerve her. “How long since you’ve been called anything else?”

Rogue’s brow furrowed as she tried to remember. She ran a hand through her hair. “Time is slippery for me, Sugah, gimme a sec. Too many centuries in the way.” She shut her eyes and forced herself to count. “Four...five...six years, it was. People stopped callin’ me anything but Rogue about a year before Ah actually manifested. My dad an’ Ah didn’t really names for each other, on the few occasions we talked at that point, and all my friends but Cody had moved away, not that there’d been many. Cody...Ah told him about people callin’ me ‘that rogue’ like Ah had a social disease. Ah told him to start callin’ me Rogue to see what they thought of it, and it caught on around town.” Her fingers fidgeted restlessly with her little box of matches as she contemplated whether she wanted another cigarette. Talking about Cody made her want to finish off that half-bottle of scotch back in the kitchen, but she didn’t want to leave the patio. Words were pouring from her when Logan asked questions, now. She hadn’t talked this much, and this sincerely, since she’d had Fury in her apartment. It was nerve-wracking and phrasing it all right was frustrating, and on the whole it was kind of agonizingly against her nature to be so revealing, but...something about looking Logan in the eye and putting all of it in the open between them made it a good agony, like stretching tired and painfully tense muscles and feeling some knots finally ease a little through the ache.

Logan was a little surprised that she’d tell him so much, and it must’ve shown on his face, because Rogue answered before he could ask why.

“Ah know a lot about ya, Logan. It’s only fair that Ah don’t hide from you.”

“I owe you more than you owe me,” he said quietly. “You...what you’ve...” He sighed, equally frustrated with words. “Thank you. For giving me James Howlett back, even if I’m not him anymore.”

Rogue nodded slowly, recognizing the expression on his face and the tone of his words, putting the picture together. She knew what it was like to have memories that weren’t Rogue’s, but that now belonged to her: a part of her mind and her past, but never quite really her identity. “But ya do know who ya are,” she observed, sounding almost a little relieved.

Logan looked into her eyes again, and saw the understanding––not pity, not remorse, not sadness, but just pure understanding from one toughened and hard war-survivor to another. “Yeah. Learning about James helped a lot with that.”

Rogue gave a faint smile, satisfied with a successful mission. “Good. Good. Ah’m glad.” She looked at his face a little more intently and then looked away again quickly. “What else do you wanna know, Logan?”

He thought about it, and took a small step closer to her, leaning on the rail too, and feeling glad that everything in the mansion was built to resist damage so that the railing didn’t so much as groan at his adamantium-laced bulk. “More about you. I’m curious, at this point. And you interest me.” He put out the remains of his cigar and pushed the ashtray aside, thinking about some of the things she’d already told him. “How’d you learn all the computer stuff, anyway? Mississippi towns aren’t known for their technological savvy.”

Rogue eyed the narrowed distance between them, which was perhaps eight inches, and found to her surprise that it didn’t make her nervous. “My mom died when Ah was eight. My dad became a bit of a wreck, so his brother had to come into town to help out. He stayed for a few years, Ah guess until he was sure Ah could fend for myself, because even after my dad went back to work, he was still a wreck. My uncle built custom computers and computer programs, workin’ from home. He’d left town for college and moved to California afterward, so he was considered a black sheep back in town, but he was the only real family Ah’d ever had. My dad was always distant and my mom had tried, but we never saw things the same way, even when Ah was just a little kid tryin’ to tell her Ah didn’t want to wear dresses ‘cause they inhibited tree-climbin’ and goin’ upside-down on the monkey bars while she tried to convince me Ah shouldn’t be doin’ that stuff anyway ‘cause Ah was supposed to be a little lady.” Rogue snorted a little, shaking her head. “Ah didn’t like town, or what they thought was how Ah should act. Never did. My uncle was the same way, though, so I clung to ‘im like a life raft. And so he taught me about puttin’ the computers together, and Ah eventually even persuaded him to teach me the programmin’ languages, ‘cause he’d made me my own little computer game and Ah wanted to make my own.” A nostalgic smile touched her features, but there was something like dread in it.

“Well, bein’ eight, he thought it’d take me a while to learn it all, but languages and rules and games are easy as Hell to learn at that age, an’ so by the time Ah was nine Ah knew three main programmin’ languages at the same level as my uncle knew ‘em: Linux, DOS, and even macintosh, which was a pain in the ass, let me tell you, but it can be damned useful now and then, more than ya might think.” Rogue gave up and started rolling another cigarette, deliberately slower this time. “By the time Ah was twelve Ah knew more than him, at a higher level, and was helpin’ out with his business. We got into a fight when he found out Ah’d been researchin’ hackin’ techniques, sayin’ Ah’d mess up an’ get arrested. At the time, Ah found that more encouragin’ than anything, even though afterwords he thought he’d put the fear of God into me.”

She looked down. “And then he and my dad got into some kinda fight. Ideological. Somethin’ about religion and politics. My uncle had tried to recruit a few people around town into his anti-mutant group, which was more militant and had a different religious slant than my dad approved of at the time. Ah thought they were both nuts. ‘Course, they didn’t know Cody’s mom was a mutant and Ah didn’t plan on tellin’ ‘em. She was the nicest woman on the planet, and all she did was sense people’s emotions and sometimes reach out to make ‘em better. With some effort, she could heal little cuts and stuff, or a cold, but it drained her real bad.”

“With my uncle gone, and the computer business gone, Ah was left with the computer system Ah’d earned workin’ for ‘im, and boredom. Ah taught myself how t’ hack from there. Ah was paranoid enough to get good and know how to leave no trace before Ah even peeked at the neighbors’ files, and at first there was not much else to do with my skill. Then Ah found some files that...” A flicker of real rage, and deep disgust. “Well. It made me glad Ah’d never really been religious, despite my parents. Ah put together an anonymous tip, and some of the files, easy-to-access even for the technologically stupid, on a disk. The cops arrested the town’s biggest church’s preacher and Ah hacked into the foster care system to make sure that his son got a good home with no more goddamned perverts anywhere near him, and set him up with the best state-paid therapist Ah could find.”

Rogue ran a hand through her hair. “It was a bit of a turnin’ point for me, Ah suppose. Ah got more skilled. Ah got into national banks. Then international. Ah set up a Swiss bank account, and another in Antigua, and started to stash my own ill-begotten funds there. The Swiss would shit their pants if they knew how easily Ah got stuff in and outta there from some of the accounts of the most corrupt sacks of shit in the world.” She stared at her cigarette, rolled but unlit, and pocketed it with a sigh, folding her arms across her chest. “Ah was ready to run before Ah had a reason. Ah knew Ah didn’t have a home. Ah was just waitin’ for the axe t’ fall and give me an excuse t’ go. And the hackin’ was what made me secure enough to know Ah could. So Ah kept learnin’ more, and gettin’ better, until even Ah couldn’t find my own trails anymore. And the more advanced people’s systems got, the easier things got for me. Early on, Ah’d gotten messages, now and then, from a few other hackers. At first, Ah got tips. Then, Ah got fan-mail. By the time Ah was fifteen, they were askin’ me where Ah’d gone and if Ah still did any hackin’, because they thought Ah’d given up since they never found any traces a’ me anymore.” A bitter, fierce smile crossed Rogue’s face. “Talk about knowin’ Ah’d arrived.”

She looked at Logan again, coming back to herself. “That’s it, really.”

Logan remembered a few numbers: six years she’d been called Rogue, which started one year before she manifested, and she’s barely twenty. “And you manifested at fifteen?”

Rogue’s eyes narrowed a little, but she nodded. “Yeah. Ah left shortly after that, as ya can guess.” She looked away. “Not the best way to experience one’s first kiss, by the way.” Running a hand through her hair, she gave a rough sigh.

That, Logan thought, sounded truly messed up. “What happened?”

“My skin turned on during my first kiss, and nearly killed the only friend Ah really had left. Cody’s mom was the first one to find us, after Ah screamed. She tried to touch my shoulder and Ah jumped away so fast she looked sad. She managed to wake Cody up, with her power. That was about when it hit me that Ah was a mutant, and Ah told ‘em, and Cody’s mom tried to touch my hand, but it hurt her, and she was tired enough from helpin’ Cody that she was almost knocked out just from brushin’ my knuckle.” Rogue shook her head. “Ah went home, told my dad Ah was a mutant and Ah was runnin’ off to Alaska. He called me a liar, grabbed my arm, and went down. Ah can say without doubt or hesitation or fear a’ bein’ biased, that he was a no-good sonofabitch.” Rogue looked uneasy. “Ah need more scotch, for this.”

“Alright.” Logan stood up, started to turn around.

“Logan?”

He looked at her, over his shoulder.

She held his gaze and said, with visible difficulty, and so quiet that Logan knew she was taking advantage of his advanced senses. “My name’s Marie.”

He froze for a moment, then turned to face her again. “I won’t share it.”

Rogue nodded, looking down. “Good. Thanks.” She pushed herself away from the railing, standing up straight. She gave a self-depreciating half-laugh. “Ah haven’t even heard that name in six years...haven’t thought about it in more than five.” Rogue shook her head, giving another not-quite-laugh. “It was hard to remember it.” Hard to say it, too.

Logan nodded, understanding both what she said and didn’t say. “Thanks for lettin’ me hear it. It’s a good name.”

Rogue smirked very bitterly. “Was my mom’s sister’s name. She died not long before they got married. My mom named me after her. My dad had killed her so she wouldn’t tell my mom about their affair. And my uncle helped him with the body.” She looked at Logan. “Apparently there’s some resemblance, too, between me an’ her.” Rogue sighed and a flicker of old anger and older resignation crossed her expression. “Let’s get that scotch.”

They went inside.

Rogue sat down on a barstool, leaning on the kitchen counter, weight resting on her elbows and forearms as she watched Logan fill a bowl with ice from the freezer. He set the bowl down in front of her, next to her empty highball glass. She’d drained the scotch-laced water and few pathetic ice cubes from the glass earlier.

Rogue watched Logan go to the liquor cabinet and pull out her bottle of scotch (she was determined to drain it tonight, it might as well be hers, she reasoned) and a second bottle of what looked like Canadian bourbon. She liked watching him. His body was all sorts of amazing, and he moved with a sense of carelessness that Rogue easily saw through: he was effortlessly in control of his movements. And he was handsome, which had been impossible to notice when she looked through Fury’s memories. Fury didn’t ever look at Logan as a creature who could be described with words like: handsome, attractive or damned sexy––all of which, incidentally, were on Rogue’s mind when she looked Logan over.

His voice’s effect on her was something unexpected, too. He had a deep voice, rather rough, and Rogue liked it, in a way that Fury would have never dreamt of considering. Sometimes, Rogue reflected, experience via other people’s memories did not due the experiences in question any real justice.

Rogue let the thoughts go, familiar as she was with indulging in appreciation of someone without ever planning to so much as dream about them. It was something she’d picked up over the years: keeping control and keeping her distance. She thanked Logan as he put a few ice cubes in her glass and filled it with scotch. Then he sat next to her on his own bar stool, and poured himself some bourbon in his own highball glass.

“The snoops have mysteriously vanished,” Logan observed.

“Maybe Summers is good for somethin’ now an’ then.”

Logan gave a low chuckle, the sound rumbling up from deep in his chest.

It caused an odd, light feeling in Rogue’s stomach. She felt warmer that she had a moment ago. If not for her restraint, she might have been blushing. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Is it good, then? The super-hero gig?”

Logan looked thoughtful. “Keeps me busy, allows me to kick ass and beat up annoying assholes for a living, and the food around here’s pretty good.” He examined Rogue’s face. “You considering a career change?”

“Big change: from criminal hacker and anti-government vigilante to a team-member hacker-vigilante that the government has agreed to quietly ignore?”

“Actually, the Secretary of Mutant Affairs might want to hire you.”

A flicker of shock crossed Rogue’s features, then she looked thoughtful, “The blue guy?”

“Hank. Yeah. He’s one of ours.”

Rogue nodded. “Yeah, Ah remember now. He’s...not usually...”

“I was surprised, too. His team was trying to work out how you’d gotten me the files you did. He’s the only one who connected you to the videos from Stryker’s labs.”

Rogue’s face was a bit mask-like, as she seemed torn between suspicion, pride and anger-at-Stryker. “Yeah. Ah was pretty proud a’ that.” She looked at Logan. “You didn’t think to go to your resident hacker? Not that she could find anything, either, but still...”

Logan looked confused.

Rogue smiled. “Oh, she’s good an’ quiet about it, then. Ah’ve been trackin’ her for a while. She’s a protegee` of one the folks who sent me a message askin’ where Ah’d gone, and if Ah’d help ‘em teach others through this website she was designin’.” Rogue sipped her scotch. “The protegee` saw the one article Ah did for the site and tracked me by it, askin’ some good questions. Ah tracked her in return, even if Ah never got the chance to answer her. Her name’s Kitty.”

Logan’s eyebrows raised. “You’re shittin’ me.”

Rogue’s smile widened. “She did look like the mousy type, not anybody’s usual suspect. She’s got potential. She leaves trails, still, and still hasn’t got the hang of a lotta Linux stuff, but she’s not bad.”

Logan shook his head. “She walks through walls.”

Rogue nodded. “Fury’s met her.”

“Can’t believe she’s been keepin’ that quiet,” Logan growled.

Rogue bit her lip for a moment at the growl, but once more pushed her less professional thoughts aside. “It’s the morals around here. She’s not been up to much in the past six months. She just needs some encouragement. Ah’ll talk to her.”

Logan shook his head. “You’re insane.”

“Did it take you this long to notice?” Rogue asked, sounding mock-aghast.

“I knew it when you sent the first package,” Logan muttered. “Out of your mind.”

“Nah. The world outside my mind is saner, trust me. In here, it’s scary.”

Logan looked into her eyes for a long moment, then shook his head. “Not to me.”

“Not yet. Everyone’s scared of it eventually,” Rogue murmured into her glass. She took a long pull of scotch.

Logan watched, and waited until she met his gaze again. “Not me.”

Rogue raised an eyebrow, looking a little incredulous.

Logan’s gaze lowered to her hands, the scars on her palm. “Let me fix those. The scars.”

Rogue’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Borrow my mutation.”

Rogue’s eyes opened wide and she could find nothing to say when she opened her mouth to tell him no. Instead she said, “Logan?” sounding a little unnerved.

Logan slowly reached over and took her free hand. She didn’t flinch, but she set down her scotch and her heartbeat got faster. He traced the scars on her palm with his fingers. “If you don’t want me in your head...”

“Uhm. Awkward as this may sound, Ah doubt Ah’d mind. Ah like you.”

“Like Fury?”

Rogue was having trouble forming words. Part of her mind wanted to panic because he was touching her and she didn’t want to hurt him, another part was busy noticing how warm his hands were, and another was telling her this is insane this is insane this is insane. “Uhm. You’re more like me than he is, really,” she found herself staying. “Even if there are things about ya Ah don’t understand.”

“Like what?” He looked up from her palm, his thumb still in the middle of the scar across its middle. “You’re one of those types who look through people.”

“So’re you,” Rogue murmured.

“Now I am. It used to be a lot damned harder.”

“Before Ah interfered?”

“Yeah. See? You get it.”

“It comes with the territory.” Rogue held his gaze. “How...how do you stay still? How do you stay in one place like this?” Her brow furrowed in sincere confusion. “Ah’d planned on stopping here, after Ah’d found what Ah could. Ah was on my way here when Erik caught me.” She shook her head. “But the stoppin’ is the part Ah can’t figure out how Ah’m gonna stand. The idea of wakin’ up in the same place too many times...”She shook her head solemnly.

Logan looked down at her palm again, looking thoughtful, then a little frustrated as he found he couldn’t explain. “Hard to say. Impossible, actually.” He let go of her hand, but held out his own, palm-up. “Here. Take it.”

Rogue shot him a look that might’ve been sharp and hurt if not for the worry in it. “Ah don’t want to hurt you, Logan.”

“Let me. Just once. Call it a gift.”

Rogue looked at the floor. “You’re gonna fall off the barstool.”

Logan thought about this. “Really?”

“Ya may go into a coma.”

“I heal-”

“Logan. Just get a chair so ya don’t fall anywhere,” Rogue commanded.

Logan smirked faintly, but went and got a wooden chair with arms on it that would keep him from dropping off one side of it. Rogue was on her feet now, controlling her breathing and nervously adjusting the soft cuffs of her sleeves. Logan sat down and held up his hand again, palm-up, the universal sign of both offering and begging.

Rogue walked up and gave a ragged sigh. “And you think Ah’m insane.” She shook her head. “Logan...”

“Please, Marie,” he said quietly.

She froze and stared at him as if from over a huge distance. Part of her insisted quite forcefully that she ask him to never call her that. Rogue shook her head and gave another ragged sigh. “You’re gonna regret this, Sugah.”

“We’ll see,” he murmured, watching her hand cover his. He waited.

Rogue’s eyes fell shut, a determined look on her face. Slowly, she opened the metaphorical floodgates. Slowly, slowly, trying to control what she took, trying to see if she could try not to hurt him.

Logan felt it: first a numbing buzz like the feeling after an electric shock, then a jolt that he felt like the displacement of his body from the kitchen into outer space, and his vision darkened and it hurt like hell, but he laced his fingers through Rogue’s and held on.

“Let go, Logan, Ah cain’t turn it off that fast!”

He could faintly hear it, but only tightened his grip, even as his muscles felt weaker and weaker suddenly, and his head seemed full of static. Then the world snapped into place and for a few long moments Logan didn’t notice, being almost fully unconscious, but his eyes fell open when Rogue tried to pull away again. “I’m awake. Was it enough?”

“Are you a masochist?”

“You tell me. Does that answer actually make sense? I’m not sure what all you just said. My ears are ringin’.” He loosened his grip on her hand but only so he could run his thumb across her palm. The scars were fading as he felt them. “That’s kinda cool.”

“Are you alright?” Rogue asked, looking sincerely worried. Her free hand cupped his face, tilting his chin up so he looked into her eyes. Her hands were soft, which was kind of funny considering what Logan had seen of what they could do to steel.

“I’m fine. Kinda dizzy. A bit tired.” He had enough sense to stop himself before he added, you have really pretty lips, because he knew that would make him sound like Summers with a concussion (and hadn’t that been a fun mission?) and Summers was a pansy.

Rogue shook her head.

“You got me up there?”

“Yeah. Can’t tell ya much, now. It takes me a while to process people...Logan why-”

“I saw the hand-grips, up on the damned statue. The ones that gave you the damned scars. Hadn’t been that pissed off at somebody in a long time. Didn’t think bucket-head had it in him to make me that angry. The burning smell was pretty intense. Had to cut off the handcuffs to smell the dried blood on ‘em, and dammit, it was yours. And you’d stopped writing.”

Rogue’s brow smoothed a little. “Fury sent me a letter, you know. The day after Ah got outta the compound. Said to write to you so you could, quote, ‘get some goddamned sleep, already.’” She smiled a little.

Logan snorted, amused, but then he suddenly looked pissed off. “That––dammit, you were right there and he didn’t say a word about you when I told him I was looking––and he knew!” Logan popped the claws, wondering why he wasn’t standing up.

Rogue held him down, one hand on his chest. “Easy, tiger. What could he’ve said? How pissed off were you? How mighta you reacted to him, what, confessin’ he was my source? You’d’ve figured that out quick, wouldn’t ya? Said he met me a year ago. When did the letters start?” She shook her head. “Calm down. You’re disoriented. And if anything, shouldn’t ya be pissed that Ah didn’t come over an’ say ‘hi’ or soemthin’, if you’re that mad at Fury. Come on.”

Logan’s breathing slowed a little, but he didn’t retract the claws, and was a little stunned by how completely unperturbed she was. “Fine. Fine. You were both prolonging my misery.”

Rogue nodded, then finally looked at one of his clawed hands. “Yeah. Sorry.” She surprised him by gently taking his wrist and holding his hand up the same way he’d held hers, her finger touching the blades just like he’d touched her scars.

Logan suppressed an inexplicable shiver. “Careful, darlin’.”

“Ah’ve got invulnerability from Carol. They can’t cut me.” She pressed the tip of one finger to the tip of a blade to illustrate, then ran it down the length of the blade. It would’ve sliced open anyone or anything else on earth.

The sight made Logan extremely nervous, because of how much he really didn’t want to make her bleed, and a little turned on despite himself. “Oh. Huh.”

“They hurt, comin’ out, don’t they?” she murmured.

“Every time.” Slowly, he retracted them.

Rogue watched, interested, but clearly aware that the movement caused him pain. “Suddenly, Ah have an urge t’ kill an incarcerated madman named Stryker.”

“Welcome to my life,” Logan teased, but then asked curiously, “Wait, is it my urge or yours?”

Rogue thought about it for a moment. “Yes.”

Logan smirked a little. “I think we’ll get along just fine, you an’ I.”

Rogue smiled back a little. “Yeah. Ah think so, too.”

Once Logan had regained more consistent coherency, Rogue provided him a crutch as they headed upstairs. Her new room was, apparently, right across the hall from his. This did not surprise her, not with what Erik knew about Xavier, in the more affectionate memories, at least.

She returned to her room, scoured it for anything out of place (a paranoid habit of hers) and left her bag packed beside her. Early on when she’d just started running, she slept with a pistol under her pillow, and it had saved her life twice, but these days she didn’t need it, even in a house full of other powerful mutants. And besides, pistols were uncomfortable as Hell.

She slept in cotton shorts, a soft cotton tank top, and chain with a tag on it around her neck. It wasn’t adamantium, but it had the numbers they’d given her, and the name ‘ROGUE’ engraved on it. They had forced others to tell their real names for their tags. Rogue touched where she’d had a scar on the edge of her lip, from biting it too hard, those first few nights in the compound. It was gone, now.

Rogue fell asleep with her fingers tangled in the chain, and in sleep, she processed Logan in her head, so that when she woke, she knew him inside-out. Of course, she also woke in the throes of a nightmare, cold sweat soaking her skin and a scream muffled in her throat; if she were not invulnerable, she might have renewed the scar on her lip, biting it the way she did to hold back the sound. She had experience with nightmares, and had early on gotten into the habit of staying quiet. Rogue showered, dressed, and made her way downstairs. The sounds of banter and morning-snark had her braced: the junior team and much-needed introductions awaited.

There was only one thing that she did not expect.

And at the base of the stairs, she froze when he shouted out, “Rogue!” sounding shocked and excited and getting out of his seat with the casual fluidity of movement he’d trademarked––one that suggested all the cool people enthusiastically precipitated themselves out of chairs these days.

Ah, Remy Lebeau.

Rogue crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at him as he approached. “If ya try to hug me, Ah’ll defenestrate you.”

Remy merely gave a dazzling grin. “Roguey, you have not changed, non?” He reached for her hand and smiled again when she reluctantly let him take it. He kissed her knuckles. She wore fingerless gloves today, and hardly felt it.

“Ah’ve changed a lot, Remy. Can Ah have my hand?”

He sighed a little and shook his head, but let her go. “Y’ hurt me, chere. Like always. I almost missed it, your kind of pain.” Remy straightened up.

Rogue looked over his shoulder at the rest of the stunned junior team: Siryn, Bobby, Jubilee, Pete, and Kitty...yes, Kitty. Rogue finally smiled. “Hello, Kitty. Nice to finally meet you in person.” She stepped past Remy with a nod as he shot her an amused, albeit perplexed, expectant look; he was used to being surprised by her, and was awaiting the full display. Kitty only looked confused as Rogue stepped up to her and held out her hand to shake Kitty’s. As the other girl finally took her hand, Rogue explained, “My name’s Rogue. You asked some really good questions about an article of mine.” She proceeded to release the girl’s hand and mention a few expert hacking tips and watched Kitty’s eyes go wide. “Because you still leave quite a trail, m’dear, Ah must say.”

“You...you’re...ohmygod. And Rogue was Logan’s...uh-” Kitty squeaked.

“Helpful informant,” Rogue said firmly, ignoring the sigh of relief from Remy.

Jubilee had perked up at the mention of Logan. “Holy shit. You’re telling me you got that computer of his the way it was and led some of Hank’s guys on a cross-country wild goose chase? And Wolvie chased after you, too, when you stopped writing.” Jubilee crossed her arms and shook her head. “I thought you’d be taller.”

Rogue smirked a little. “Yeah, that’s me: Ah’m Rogue. Nice to meet ya, Jubilee.”

“Do you know all of our names?” Bobby asked.

Rogue looked thoughtful. “Well, yeah. Don’t ask. It’s partially because of who my informant is, and partially because Ah research places before steppin’ in. Mostly, it’s just all me. And Ah’m not psychic, by the way.”

“How do you know Remy?” Siryn asked, looking between the two of them suspiciously.

Remy looked nervous.

Rogue’s smirk widened. She turned and asked the cajun, “How many heists did they hire us for? Ah think there were six in my contract, but number four got cancelled due to international ceasefire, right?”

Remy cleared his throat. “Oui, it was. And number five was not a heist so much as a rescue operation.”

Rogue noted the looks of shock and awe on the faces of the others, just out of the corner of her eye. It was fun, putting on a bit of a show for once. “Yeah, yeah. And almost went to Hell because they didn’t warn me about targets with iPhones. Ah remember.”

“So...are you living here now?” Bobby asked, looking hopeful, not appearing to notice the pitying smile Remy gave him.

“We’ll see. Ah am stayin’ for a bit.” She put her hands on her hips. “And Ah’m afraid Ah’m not actually real forthcomin’ here, so Ah’ll only accept three mor questions, and Ah’m allowed to reject a variety of suggestions before answerin’ one Ah like.”

They all looked at each other.

“That’s not altogether reasonable. You’re staying in our home,” Siryn said idly.

“And, as needed, Ah’ll deal with ya on an individual basis when we cross social paths, but really, Ah’m rather anti-social-”

“No kidding,” Remy murmured.

Rogue ignored him. “And Remy, Ah’m sure, can provide interestin’ gossip about what it’s like workin’ with me, where Ah’m from in the South originally, what my mutant abilities did to him, and what it’s like to be turned down by me in a romantic way, so don’t bother askin’ me that. Also, Ah’ll be fair enough to explain my mutant powers right off the bat to get that out of the way.” She proceeded to explain what her skin did, that she had technological and surgical enhancements to control it, gotten via the people she’d been contracted with while working with Remy, and that she had extra powers from being locked up in the ‘mutant experimenting’ compound they helped evacuated, and that the woman she killed now currently inhabited the mind of the psychic she’d been in love with. She then admired their stunned faces for a while, wondering where this exhibitionist streak had come from.

The she heard the clapping, and turned to see Logan standing in the doorway. She narrowed her eyes at him a little, even as she smirked. Ah, there’s the exhibitionist streak. Damned cage-fighter.

“Go on,” Logan encouraged the junior team. “Ask her questions while you can, before she vanishes and gets bitchy and elusive.”

“Asshole,” Rogue growled, but it was almost affectionate, and earned Logan a glare from Remy. “How long ya been there?”

“Whole time. Learned all sorts of things.” He glanced in Remy’s direction, his smirk widening a bit when he met Rogue’s gaze.

Rogue blatantly ignored the unspoken suggestion and turned to the junior team, giving them an expectant look.

“So she’s like you, then, Wolvie? Antisocial, bitchy and elusive...” mused Jubilee.

“Questions for me, if you please. You can harass the hairy Canadian creature on your own time, come on,” Rogue urged.

“Why did you help the hairy Canadian creature find his past?” Pete asked.

“Good one, Ironman. Because Ah could, and because Ah found all the information Ah needed to do it via coincidence. Don’t ask about the coincidence. He was tryin’ to save me from some thugs, had the misfortune of grabbin’ my bare arm in the process. Ah beat up the thugs, life moves on. Next?”

“Do you plan on joinin’ the X-men?” Jubilee asked.

“Ah don’t know. Apparently a hairy blue guy wants to offer me a job, first. Ah’ll see which one suits my fancy, if either of ‘em do. Next?”

A long pause. Finally, Kitty asked, “What’s with the hair?”

Rogue explained briefly about Magneto, his machine, and her hair colors. “All things considered, Ah’m kinda fond of it.”

“Well, having Mags in your head would explain you knowing some of us. That’s one informant down,” Siryn murmured.

“Erik in my head, Ah’m sure, could explain a variety of things. Few of them light-hearted, so we’ll drop the subject, if you’ll be so kind.” Rogue took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair. “Logan, Ah think your mood is wearing off. Can we talk?”

They walked out of the room, a heavy silence in their wake for a full five seconds.

“That...was weird,” Jubilee said finally.

“She said Logan’s mood wore off. Did she touch him, or something?” Kitty mused.

Remy suddenly looked very angry, but it passed, a look of resignation following it. Siryn noticed, and reached over to touch his hand. He looked startled for a moment, but then gave her a vague smile that didn’t reach his eyes and a bit of a shrug. “Remy is a fool, is all, chere. And Rogue does not suffer him gladly n’more.” He looked at Bobby. “And trust me, homme, she’s a heartbreaker an’ ya got no chance. Too many centuries in dat head o’ hers.” He patted his pockets, and sighed when he found no cigarettes.

“So you liked her, eh?” Jubilee crooned.

“Loved her, Jube-Jube. Or t’ought I did, and she prove me wrong. Somet’in’ like dat. She es somet’in’ alright: not sure what kind, but she can do anyt’ing wit’ computers dat can be done, I seen dat. An’ she don’ talk ‘bout herself to anybody who wanna know. Closed book wit’ locks not even dis t’ief can get t’rough.”

“So what’s with her and Logan, then?” Bobby mused.

Remy shook his head. “Dat make no sense to me. Not like her. But...she did say one time she was helpin’ somebody get somethin’ back dat been taken from ‘em. I ask, she say he lost his life, she gettin’ it back. Dat sound an awful lot like Logan, now, in retrospec’.” Remy looked grim for a moment. “An’ wit’ his memories back, he got a few centuries in his head, too, non?” A sigh escaped him and he cursed low in Cajun french.

“You think she wants him?” Jubilee asked, hungry for gossip.

“I don’ know. Before, when she workin’, she not seem like she want anyt’ing but...but to get jobs done, an’ do right by folks she knew she could respect. Sometimes Remy fit dat bill, sometimes...sometimes I don’ t’ink she t’ought I did. She not de kind to want t’ings. She a soldier, Jube-Jube, more dan ya Wolvie has been t’ dis house. More ruthless. Less connected t’ people...”

“Less than Wolverine?” Kitty asked, looking worried.

Remy looked at the floor for a few moments. “When Remy knew her? Oui, she was. Now? Maybe she change. Maybe she suspended her humanity for a while, and is lettin’ herself turn it on now dat she invincible. I don’ know. She a closed book to me. Always been.”

He was thinking about the hours after heists with her, when they were both full of adrenaline and wired and being taken back to the base to debrief with the Fenris twins. She was always closed, and all he knew was that he couldn’t touch her skin, that she was frighteningly skilled with computers and beautiful as sin in the damned outfits their bosses gave them, and that between heists she was neck-deep in government info looking for someone else’s life. But they would talk about theft, about human nature, and their mutations, and he’d decided at some point that she was the perfect Marion to his Robin Hood, and she’d proved she was nothing of the sort. He wondered if she still had some traces of his ghost in her head. An now, with the X-men, he wasn’t exactly Robin Hood anymore, anyway. Who might she become?

He was more distant from the conversation after that, and eventually left them, quietly trailing after Rogue.

She and Logan were in the study, near the library.

“Ah hear ya, Remy,” Rogue said immediately, startling him, but he came out of hiding and faced her. Logan, too, which was awkward. They were on opposite ends of the same couch, but the couch wasn’t all that big. Usually Rogue preferred more distance between her and others, even when she could touch them safely.

“Jus’ curious, chere. ‘S been a long time.” He put his hands in his pockets.

Rogue looked distant, as always, and cold, but it looked like she’d collected another half-century in her eyes over the last six months. “About what, this time, Remy?”

“Lots a t’ings, like always.” Remy looked at Logan a little thoughtfully. The two of them had got on well enough since Remy had joined up. They’d had a couple of drinking sessions together, talking about the X-men, both as individuals, and as a fighting force. Logan was pretty distant, too. And Remy had seen the man during that time Jubilee had explained as, ‘the time his mystery informer-girl stopped writing.’ How odd, that nobody had thought to mention the name ‘Rogue’ to him. “I didn’t know she was de one writin’ you, homme. Nobody tol’ me de name, or I mighta helped.”

Logan nodded. “I ‘ppreciate it.”

Remy nodded back, then looked to Rogue again. A longing look flickered across his features. “No chance?”

Rogue hesitated, then shook her head. “Non. No chance, homme,” she said fluidly, tossing his accent back at him fluidly. She smirked at him a little. “But Ah gotta thank ya for some of the lock-breakin’ skills ya gave me. Got me out of a few binds.” She got to her feet, leaving Logan on the couch to approach Remy.

He looked down at her face, and remembered that she’d given him one kiss, and a very good one at that, once she could touch. It was how she’d said adieu. Not goodbye––it was too final to be goodbye, but here she was. “Y’ haunt me a little, Rogue.”

She smirked a little. “And Ah’m the one with the ghosts.” She shook her head. “What do you really wanna know, Remy?” She asked it in French.

He was looking at the unfamiliar sparks of green in the brown of her eyes. “What change in you, dat you end up here?” He asked, also in French.

She thought about it a moment, and answered in French. “It was time to stop runnin’. Ah’m gettin’ too old for it, and loosin’ track of time and...Hell, Ah’m thinkin’ it might be nice to have long-term goals for once in my life. At least, ones that won’t be crushed if somebody grabs my arm to save my life.” Rogue shook her head again, and spoke in English once more. “Is that a good enough answer?”

Remy nodded. “Oui.”

Rogue smiled at him faintly. “Did ya warn the blond boy?”

Chuckling lightly in spite of himself, Remy shook his head at her. “Chere, you say d’ese t’ings, I may not keep doin’ ya work f’ you.” He gave her lips one more longing look, and finally bowed a little, saying he’d be on his way.

“And outta mine, for a while. Might be nice,” Rogue mocked.

Remy bit his thumb at her, and vanished out the door.

Rogue shook her head again. “That man and his inexplicable affinity for shakespearean insults. Insufferable romantic.” She shook her head. “If not for Fury in my head an’ my sheer paranoia, Ah’d have fallen for that man.”

Logan felt favored by fortune. “‘Insufferable romantic’ is a good description, though.”

Rogue was smirking again when she rejoined him on the couch. “Yeah. He’s a good guy, though. Just has his head in the clouds when it comes to people.”

“You have him in your head?”

Rogue nodded. “Not too much. Ah kept what was useful, and Ah kept what seemed to like stayin’. He doesn’t cause any trouble up here.”

“Do I?”

Rogue looked at him––through him––and, to his surprise, smiled a little. “You’ve improved my mood, actually. Must be the healin’ factor or somethin’. Or maybe knowin’ everybody around here from your perspective...And Ah haven’t slept that well in years, either.” She looked down at her hands and then looked up at him again. “Ah do see, now, how ya’ve stayed.”

Logan raised his eyebrows a bit. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She pulled off her fingerless gloves idly, looking at her hands, the lack of scars. “And thank you.” She held up her palms.

Logan smiled. “I’m curious about the two you had on your face, though.”

Rogue lowered her hands and shrugged. With a fingertip, she traced the invisible line where the scar on her forehead had been. “Sharp bit a’ shrapnel from an emergency explosion Remy was forced into usin’ on heist number five. And...the one on my lip was from when Ah bit it, keepin’ quiet. Y’see, they made these...” She pulled the chain around her neck, tugging it so that it came undone. She re-hooked the chain and handed it, and the tag, to Logan.

He took it slowly, running his thumb across the letters. “Jesus...”

“They wanted my name. They got all the others to tell ‘em their ‘real names’ and tried...similar means to get it outta me. As ya can see, they gave up, eventually.”

Logan found that he knew, looking at the titanium steel dog-tag, that she’d had some other scars from that experience, hidden under her sleeves and shirts, and he was very glad that he knew them to be gone, too. He handed her back the tag, watching her put it back around her neck. “Why keep it?”

“Why did ya keep yours?”

“It was all I had, for a long time.”

“Yeah...well. Same here. Except instead of identity, it was dignity.” She held his gaze.

Logan nodded, knowing she could see that he understood. “You gonna stay, too?”

Rogue was examining his face intently. “Yeah. Ah think Ah will.”

Dr. Hank McCoy had scheduled lunch at Xavier’s two weeks in advance; he had not been warned about the mansion’s most recent guest, her arrival having been less than twenty-four hours before the lunch in question, and so was rather surprised to find her at the table usually reserved for guests and senior X-men. She sat next to Logan and looked up at Hank without the slightest trace of surprise or curiosity, either about who he was or why he was covered in blue fur, and this alone made Hank a little wary, but he approached with his usual diplomatic air, holding out a hand for her to shake.

“Hello, I do not believe I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, Miss...”

She smirked a little, her green-flecked brown eyes alight with something like cool amusement as she reached out a hand––clad in fingerless gloves––and took Hank’s. “No ya haven’t, Dr. McCoy, but as Ah understand it, yer lookin’ ta hire me. My name’s Rogue.”

Hank’s eyes widened and the rest of his features went slack with open shock. He only snapped out of it when Rogue’s handshake tightened for a moment before she let go: her grip was much stronger than he had expected, given how fragile her slender, long-fingered hands appeared at first glance. Then he glanced at Logan, who appeared to be suppressing his amusement, with minimal success.

“I see,” Hank said quietly, straightening up a little as he retracted his hand. He looked the girl over, from the steel-toed combat boots on her feet, up the slightly loose army-green cargo pants she wore with their many pockets, to the more close-fitting black t-shirt and the outline of a chain and tags beneath it near her throat. He scanned her face, mystified by how young she was, and how old her eyes looked. “I do recall saying something about wanting to hire someone with your set of skills. Perhaps we can discuss the matter after lunch.”

Rogue’s smirk lingered, perhaps widening a fraction. “Of course. Amongst other matters as well, Ah’m sure.”

Hank retreated, taking his usual seat beside an intigued-looking Charles Xavier.

Logan leaned a little towards Rogue so he could quietly murmur, “You enjoy shock factor, don’t ya, Darlin’?”

Rogue tried to hold her appreciation of the low rumble of his voice at a cool distance, but felt a faint flicker of heat across her skin despite herself. She was still able to shoot an amused look at Logan and murmur back, “Pot. Kettle. Black.”

Logan smirked at that, meeting Hank’s gaze challengingly when he caught the other man staring. Hank looked away instinctively, but still kept an eye on them. Throughout lunch they discussed the political climate as relating to mutants, and positive means to combat them. Rogue and Logan were quiet, but observant, watching each other and Hank more than most of the others, who in turn shot them wary glances now and then.

Hank finally brought up the subject of internet-driven Vox Populi media, and what increasingly profound effects it was having on politics. “It’s amazing what ideas can be rapidly communicated, and what profound emotive effects they can have on the public,” he concluded.

Rogue was impressed that he had not so much as glanced at her; although he looked down to watch her unfathomable expression reflected in his wineglass. Her face was unreadable when viewed closely, and Hank’s wineglass perusal gave him no real answers. Rogue looked at Logan, who seemed to have been waiting for her to meet his gaze.

“Apparently I’m the only one he mentioned your connections to,” Logan said very quietly into his drink, so that Rogue scarcely heard it.

“Or he still isn’t sure it was me,” Rogue whispered back, her lips hardly moving; she knew his advanced hearing would pick up her words.

“You’re the closest thing he’s got to a lead,” Logan murmured.

Rogue gave a soft “Mm” of understanding.

Hank was asking the table what media they thought would be the best for mutant PR. “It’s difficult to drown out the loudest voices in a crowd, especially such an unruly one as the internet. How can we be overheard over the fanatics, and catch people’s attention without frightening them or sounding like Magneto?”

Rogue chose that moment to join the conversation. “The only thing louder than a shout is a whisper. So whispers are the best bet.”

Everyone was staring at her, sans Logan who was examining the others, and there was a beat of silence when she did not say anything further.

“What do you mean, exactly, Rogue?” Xavier finally asked; although the expression on his face suggested that he grasped her gist, and his tone of voice suggested that she explain it to the others rather than to him.

“Anyone ever tell you that if you’re dealin’ with somebody who’s gettin’ too loud, maybe startin’ ta yell, that to get ‘em to stop you whisper to ‘em?” She asked. There were a few murmurs of assent and several who muttered to the effect that they hadn’t. “It’s funny to watch, when it’s put into practice. One guy gets real mad and starts talkin’ louder an’ louder, stands up so his chair falls down, and the other guy whispers to him. Doesn’t tell him to be quiet or anything, but continues the argument in a whisper. The guy whose shoutin’ usually looks a bit confused, but whispers back, and stays quiet because he cain’t admit how ridiculous it is that he’s suddenly whisperin’.” Rogue smirked a little. “It’s a mind-game, really, but what Ah said has other applications. The only thing that people pay as much attention to––if not more than––as the criers in the pulpits, is gossip about them. Whispers imply secrets, that the authority figures are pullin’ the wool over people’s eyes, that there’s gossip to be had. News of gossip and suspicion travels faster than news of condemnation and threat. It’s less ‘official’ but it goes to the core of people’s humanity. That’s why tabloids are so insanely popular. That’s why tabloids were the first to start tellin’ stories, mostly true, about William Stryker. Same with the blogosphere, which was quietly ablaze with condemnation of the man––because those people had reacted instinctively an’ emotionally to whispers they found online. How many loud anti-mutant voices went suddenly hush because of whispers that got louder an louder––and they came from, as ya called it, Hank, the online Vox Populi media. Nice name for it. Ah like it.” She settled back in her chair, taking a sip of wine.

Scott was visibly stunned, but highly intrigued. Jean looked like some of her idealism was hurt by the implications of Rogue’s view of humanity. Storm was impassive as ever, but smiling a little. Hank was watching Rogue intently, his face hard to read through the fur and the mask of intellectual consideration beneath it. Xavier wore his usual look of sincerely thoughtful respect––his reserve being the most difficult to shake.

“So you take a somewhat guerilla warfare attitude toward the media,” Hank observed.

“Put it that way, and nobody here ‘ll be surprised to find out that Ah do.”

“With your particular set of skills, it also would not be too surprising to find that you had already taken action,” Hank said, his look purposeful.

Rogue looked thoughtful. “If Ah’d had the time, maybe.” She gave a casual shrug.

Only Logan’s hearing picked up the traces of a lie in her voice, and event that was because of how much attention he paid it. She was a very good liar.

Hank looked slightly unsure, but by no means dissuaded.

Jean asked what kind of whispers Rogue was talking about online, that the people would be reacting to so strongly. Rogue mentioned a widely-received video about a girl in one of Stryker’s labs, and flowers.

Hank stated that his department had tried to trace the source of the videos, but had never found one. He did not say what he had told Logan––that its first origins had been online.

The conversations moved on, and the rest of lunch was eaten. Xavier asked to speak with Hank privately, and soon the rest of the X-men dispersed as well. Rogue and Logan took up Logan’s usual place on the balcony-like patio. Logan was listening to the mansion. Rogue was listening to her own thoughts, and perhaps those of her ghosts. They were both silent, and remained quite comfortably so for nearly half an hour before Logan finally spoke.

“Hank doesn’t trust the X-men. Or Xavier. Not really.” He took a pull of his beer.

Rogue made a thoughtful sound. “Ah was wonderin’ about that. Fury wasn’ sure, and Erik had no clue. My impression was that he’s unsettled by the concept of what Charles can do. It’s part of him bein’ so philosophical while also thinkin’ that people generally act selfishly and tend towards corruption.”

“I can relate to that, but he leaves out the concept of honor,” Logan pointed out.

“He’s not sure it exists, and can’t read people well enough to tell if they have integrity or not, so he’s suspicious of all,” Rogue said softly.

Logan snorted. “Yeah, yeah. Still a pain in my ass. Causes too much fuckin’ drama, just because they don’t get it.” He took another pull of beer and shook his head.

Rogue smiled a little. “It’s good to hear somebody else say that for once. Other than me.” She finally turned her head to look at him.

He met her gaze with a hint of a smirk. Then his look turned more thoughtful. “You thinkin’ about workin’ for him?”

Rogue tapped her fingers idly on the table, her eyes still on Logan’s face. “Ah thought about that. Ah might let ‘im hire me on a per-contract basis, like a P.I., but Ah won’t be his employee or anything. Or his watchful eye on this place.” She looked at her empty wine glass, but did not seek to refill it. “Not that Ah’m gonna tell him that in so many words a’ course.”

“I like the way you think, Rogue,” Logan said.

Rogue looked a little surprised, wondering if Logan knew that no one else had ever responded to her that way, even Remy ‘Master-of-Banter’ Lebeau could not toss a quip her way without a hint of unease or fear. She gave Logan a faint smile. “Thank you, Sugah.”

Logan smiled back a bit, seeming to get the gist. Then he turned his head a little, listening. “Hank’s outta Chuck’s office now. Probably lookin’ for you.”

Rogue nodded, and got to her feet. “Best catch him before he gets a chance to think too much about whatever it was Charles told him about me.”

“Good luck with your mind-games.”

She gave a faint, melodic laugh and shot Logan a bright smile before she turned and headed for the door, cursing herself for letting him affect her enough that she would need a few moments to slow down her heart-rate before her control would be confidently solid once more.

Logan watched her go, his eyes lingering on the subtle roll of her hips, the predatory air about the set of her shoulders and the way she held her head, and the idle way her bare thumb brushed her fingers where her gloves cut off. He admired her, and had to wonder what he was going to do about how much he wanted her.

She was not what people thought of as ‘his type’, because she was not like Jean Grey. Jean was willowy, her features sharp and fine and bird-like; she was a firebird. But Rogue...Rogue had a body like a battle-axe, for all its dangerous curves, and her features were still fine but also with an air of strength: more feline than aquiline. Rogue was not so flashy as a firebird, but she was far more haunting, if only for her subtlety, and the qualities about her that seemed too elusive to properly describe.

Logan had long ago come to the conclusion that he was the moth to Jean’s flame, even before his infatuation with the red-head had begun to fade––a process that had been sped up as the memories of his past had been returned to him.

Rogue was not a flame. She did not shine like the comforting light of a candle or give off any of its warmth, but neither did she incinerate the wings of moths who got too close. She was a more obviously dangerous creature than the deceptively fragile-looking firebird; Rogue was more akin to a panther: elusive to the point of being ghost-like, but still clearly a creature of flesh and blood and bone and very sharp claws, quiet and solitary, an efficient killer but capable of utter savagery, and somehow hypnotically elegant both in her shape and her movements.

She appealed to those who interpreted danger not as a sign to steer clear, but as a sign that something valuable lie in wait to be discovered beyond the danger.

No wonder, then, Logan reflected, that Remy Lebeau had fallen for her the way that he did. And no wonder he had failed, because he had not been able to identify his discovery for what it was; he had not seen Rogue for who and what she truly was.

Logan recalled the look on Rogue’s face when she had called to the boy, whose footsteps she had been able to hear with traces of Logan’s advanced senses. She had looked both disappointed and resigned, before she could put on her usual mask once more.

She was resigned to being unfathomable, and to being alone. The thought was unsettling.

Logan lit himself a cigar, and realized he’d been sitting and thinking for nearly fifteen minutes. He began listening to the world again in time to hear approaching footsteps.

Rogue opened the patio door, one hand clinging to the doorframe, the other the door, as she leaned out and smirked at him. “Hey, Logan? Ya wanna help me set up a high-tech hacker cave somewhere in the basement?” Her eyes were bright with amusement and mischief, and she wore a wicked grin.

Logan stood up, wondering what the Hell he was going to do about this girl. “I’m not exactly the most tech-savvy one around here, Darlin’.”

Rogue shrugged. “Yeah, but you can help me empty the room out while ya explain what it’d be like if Ah were to join the X-men.”

Logan had a brief mental image of Rogue in leather. It made his mouth water a bit, but still he raised an eyebrow at her. “Didn’t take ya long to think about joinin’ up.” He was stepping closer to her now, though, obviously intending to follow her downstairs.

She leaned against the doorframe, smirking at him a little. “And it took you, what, two days before ya jumped on board? And Ah’m still not fully decided, but Ah’ve got the feelin’ that wadin’ through all the government files Ah’m gonna be wadin’ through for the next week or two, Ah’m gonna wanna kick some serious ass afterwards.”

“So you want me to persuade you to kick ass for Chuck’s ideals?” Logan asked.

Rogue gave a languid shrug and let go of the door, letting it swing all the way open. Logan caught it and she started to step out of the doorframe as she said, “You guys have the only enemies that might give me a decent fight and still let me sleep at night when the fightin’s quieted down enough to let me do so.” Then she was walking away, towards the elevator that headed down into the school’s underground levels.

Logan followed her, tantalized by her answer, because it might as well have been his own. There was more to that answer, and what about the X-men meant that fighting on their side helped Logan live with himself, and might help Rogue the same way; he knew it, and she knew it. The understanding hummed between them for a few quiet moments.

Then, in the elevator, Logan began to think about Rogue in leather again, but for reasons other than his own pleasure this time. He put out his cigar in his palm with a slight wince and pocketed it. “Scooter’s an idealist, and serves as the sort of figurehead leader. He lays out a plan for every mission, and so about 70% of the time, the plan goes to Hell pretty fast.”

“Ah figured somethin’ like that. The missions you guys go one are usually rescue mission, right? Either that or ‘stop the bad guy’ sorta things in the cases of Magneto and his crew and similar threats.”

“Yeah. Mostly. There’s also recon missions, raids on illegal Genoshan labs and facilities, the occasional PR appearance in Japan or some other mutant-friendly country, and occasional all-around superhero gigs where we help out when a building is on fire or something, unnaturally or otherwise.”

Rogue gave a thoughtful noise.

“So Hank wanted you to keep an eye on Chuck, right?”

“Yeah. Especially once Ah mentioned how hard my mind is for telepaths t’ read. That guy’s been in Washington too long already. He’s picked up a little of the ‘deal making’ air.”

Logan shook his head. “Pity.”

“Yeah. Aside from the paranoia, he’s not a bad guy. He used to fight with you guys, too, didn’t he?”

Logan nodded. “Yeah. He designed the Danger Room.”

Rogue’s eyes lit up. “Yeah. Ah got that from your memories. Ah kinda wanna just waste a few weeks learnin’ how the whole damned thing works.”

Logan shook his head a little. “Another geek on the team,” he muttered.

Rogue punched his arm, hard enough to make him raise an eyebrow, but not as hard as she could have hit him. “You’ve benefitted mightily from this geek, Sugah, and Ah can kick your ass, too. Don’t ya dare complain.”

With as much intent curiosity as he’d contemplated what Rogue would be like in bed, Logan had been equally tantalized by the thought of what Rogue would be like in a fight––against him, or for him, or with him, all were equally interesting, really. He grinned at her. “Are you sayin’ we should spar in the Danger Room before setting up your base of operations?”

Rogue looked a little hungry at the thought, and smirked wickedly. “My, Logan, ya know just what to offer a girl. Ah’ll be happy to beat the crap outta you before dinner.”

“You can try, Darlin’, you can try.”

It didn’t take Logan very long to realize that Rogue could fight, and fight well, and fight damned hard; and it wasn’t long before they were interrupted, in any case. Logan didn’t hear the door open because his skull was humming from the most recent blow it had received from Rogue, who had simply chosen to ignore the door. It took Scott a few minutes to get their full attention, and he was unnerved by the way they turned to glare at him in unison, like two wolves squaring off with a deer who had interrupted them, and solved the problem of their dinner.

Before they could get in any snark, Scott broke the sudden silence. “Genosha has just launched some kind of long-ranged missile. It’s too big to be a bomb. It’s something meant to target mutants, and is scheduled to land in an hour. Let’s go, Wolverine.” He started to turn away.

Rogue spoke up: “Did they call it a ‘Sentinel Launch’?”

Scott froze. “How did you know that.” He turned to glare at her, but fell abruptly silent when he caught sight of her face.

The anger and ferocity written across her features could have made Wagner weep and call his ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ worthlessly impotent. Rogue said simply, “Ah’m goin’ with you. You’ll need my help with this.”

Scott made a sound of unease and looked at Logan.

Logan seemed to be looking at Rogue with interest, the coolness of his consideration not quite covering his own instinctive flare of anger, which did not quite match Rogue’s, but which still did not look remotely merciful. “He’s worried that you’d have a problem with chain of command, Darlin’.”

Scott looked at Rogue again.

She looked at him back. “Do ya want your team to survive?” she barked.

Scott scowled. “You know the answer to that.”

Rogue’s eyes narrowed. “Then don’t worry about tellin’ me what to do, boy. I know more about keepin’ soldiers alive than most anybody on the planet.” Her accent was a mixture of her own Southern drawl, a hint of Logan, and a very notable trace of Nick Fury, but her thoughts and emotions were all her own, even if the memories they fed off of often weren’t. “Now let’s go beat this walkin’ cliche` they’re sendin’. Ah’ll go get my uniform.” She marched out.

Scott watched her, his mouth open slightly. Finally, he seemed to regain the ability to speak. “Did she just call me boy?”

“That she did, Scooter. I’d listen to her, though. This time, at least. My bet is, she stole the thoughts of a few people in that compound she was trapped in, and knows somethin’ about the Sentinel program. Where is this missile supposed to land?”

They stood in New York City within forty minutes, gathered and waiting, watching the horizon with notable tension. The Sentinel Launch was predicted to land in Central Park. Logan said he could hear the approach of Black Hawk helicopters in the distance. By then, they could see the projectile. Logan noted that Rogue’s feet didn’t quite the ground; instead, they hovered a few inches above it.

Logan knew that if he’d had the opportunity to face down a direct attack from Stryker, he would have the same look on his face. He couldn’t help but smirk when she started to ease into the air as the others were distracted, fixated on the sight of the approaching weapon. Earlier, Rogue had given a brief summary of what she knew about the sentinels:

Ya remember the Terminator movies? Remember the nasty androids tryin’ to kill specific targets? Imagine havin’ ‘em about ten feet tall, less skeleton-like but more cheesy destoryer-robot, an’ programmed to seek-an’-destroy mutants. That’s the whole big idea behind the sentinels: mutant exterminatin’ machines.

She was right; it was terribly cliche`, but then, so was most Genosha’s rhetoric.

It took a full two minutes for the others to realize Rogue was in the air, headed to intercept the projectile, and that was because she was then visible as a speck in the air.

“What’s that headed for the missile?”

“I don’t know...”

“Where’s Rogue?”

At that point, Logan was already halfway into the blackbird.

“Where are you going?” Scott barked.

“To get buckled in.”

“Why would you-” Jean started, but was interrupted.

“The missile is changing directions! It’s following Rogue!” Storm shouted.

From Jubilee: “What the fuck-”


“In the plane! Everyone in the plane! Jean, Storm, get ready to pursue. And Storm? Make things difficult as soon as we’re somewhere less populated,” Scott ordered.

“Cyke, we’re in New York! Everywhere is populated,” Logan snapped.

“He’s right, Scott, I’ll need to be able to concentrate, and there will still be a lot of...excessive damage,” Storm said.

“Something tells me that there’s going to be a lot of that, regardless,” Scott growled.

Logan gave a nod of approval.

Rogue, to her credit, found the largest empty space outside the main of New York City to land in. Of course, shortly after she landed, she had to dodge the missile, and still ended up vanishing under the tail end of it as the blackbird landed.

The X-men emerged just in time to see the outer shell of the projectile fall open, and Rogue explode from underneath their remains to launch herself at the first android within reach. It was a striking sight, lit up in the sudden Storm-induced darkness by a few flashes of lighting as Rogue tore apart metal as the machines turned on her. She looked like pure rage incarnate; beautiful the way that fire is beautiful. The rest of the X-men closed in as Rogue was hit with the first flashes of pink-red blasts from the sentinels. The humming, zapping sounds of the blasts were interrupted by shouts of pain and lots of cursing. Once Rogue got away from the cannon-fire she shouted a warning that the blasts would badly injure anyone without invulnerability.

There were eighteen machines in total. Iceman, Jubilee, Siryn and Kitty worked in unison with the ease that came from endless drilling, fending off three sentinels. Storm had formed a narrow, but powerful cyclone, as well as a great deal of lightning, while Cyclops and Jean worked in tandem; the three of them took out five of the colossal machines. Logan had asked Colossus to fling him at one of the sentinels, and worked from there as Colossus took it upon himself to aid Storm in aiming her lightning bolts, and making sure Jubilee and Siryn didn’t get stepped on, before finally teaming up for some more productive destruction with Remy, with whom he took out two sentinels.

Logan and Rogue finished off all of the rest.

The most impressive light shows came from the others, but Logan and Rogue were by far the most brutal and efficient in their fighting. Logan beheaded two within the first five minutes, before he was knocked to the ground and forced to work harder; although he got a pretty good view now and then of Rogue tearing open the metal joints of the machines with her bare hands. He had heard her scream a few times. The powerful blasts from the machines challenged even her durability. Her uniform had also suffered, which Logan found profoundly disappointing, because seeing her in it had been one of the day’s highlights.

It took them half an hour to fully subdue the threat, by which time S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopters were landing nearby. Rogue looked like she might like to quietly retreat into the blackbird, but something about all the adrenaline and endorphins and burning rage still flooding her system made her instead straighten up and stand amongst the X-men.

She looked up at Logan when he stepped up beside her.

He looked down at her, still breathing hard. “You alright? You took some bad hits.”

Rogue gave a crooked, somewhat unconvincing smile. “They modeled those blasts after Havok’s. He’s the only one Ah know who can cause that much hurt to my invulnerability.”

Logan’s brow drew in consideration. “Havok Summer, ya mean?”

Rogue looked momentarily surprised. “Rescued from the compound?”

Logan nodded.

“Well, that’d explain a lot, then,” she said idly. With the way she spoke––trying not to breathe too deeply––she sounded like she had bruised ribs, and much of her abdomen was indeed exposed where it had not been before, burnt away.

The smell of charred fabric was powerful, and made Logan uncomfortable, because it reminded him of how close they had passed by Ellis Island today, and of the smell of her burnt skin on top of a certain statue. He examined her visible flesh. “You’re not burnt, though.”

“Not visibly. Ah’ll be bruised like Hell tomorrow, and my skin is uncomfortably stiff where it got overheated.” She ran her fingers along her stomach and winced, exhaling through her teeth in a pained hiss. But when the S.H.I.E.L.D agents got closer, Rogue was able to completely ignore discomfort, glaring at them in distrust as they spoke with Scott. A few were shooting her suspicious glances. Two who notably turned to whisper to each other about Rogue were interrupted by gloved hands clamping down on their shoulders.

Nick Fury said something to them about a level of security that they dared not dream of, and then approached Logan and Rogue. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, when he knew he was within range of being clawed, but stepped closer still. “Logan. Rogue.” He nodded to both of them. “I take it one of your team was responsible for re-directing the Sentinels?”

Logan and Rogue exchanged glances.

“You could say that,” Logan said finally.

Fury glanced almost imperceptibly back toward his team. Once he was satisfied that they were distracted by Summers, Fury looked at his old friend more significantly, his grimness momentarily sharpened by remorse. “I’m sorry, Logan.”

There was a tense pause, and then Logan nodded firmly, still holding Fury’s gaze. “I know.” There was something firmly accepting in the way he said it, and Fury relaxed a near-imperceptible fraction, exhaling heavily.

Then Fury turned his eye on Rogue and gave a grateful nod.

Rogue raised a hand to her temple in a respectful salute.

After a moment’s hesitation, Fury smirked and gave her a light salute back. “At ease.”

Rogue lowered her hand. “How’s the world treatin’ ya, Nick?”

“Better than yours, by the looks of it.” He took a pull of his cigarette as he eyed the tattered remains of their uniforms with a clinically detached gaze. “But not by much. Turns out a few more of those were launched. One to London, one to Tokyo, and one to Hong Kong. A few of them were invited, like the ones in St. Petersburg and Berlin, but most weren’t. They’re calling it a sort of advertising. Only this particular one was launched direct from Genosha, since the U.S. has been the most thorough in keeping them off our soil, and away from our radical crazy folks who might build places from which they can launch these things. In the other countries, Genosha’s just been backing local anti-mutant groups who made the launches.” He tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. “The X-men have been of help there. As have you, Rogue. Where’s that uniform from, anyway?”

Rogue shook her head. “People who privately pay the politicians on our side, and that’s all ya need to know, Nick.”

“How did they pay you, specifically?” Nick inquired.

Rogue wiggled her bare fingers at him. “With the means to my own self-control.”

Fury looked thoughtful, but masked. “Hm. And I haven’t heard of them?”

“Ya hadn’t a year ago, and they’ve only gotten more careful over time. Sometimes, even Ah almost cain’t find traces of ‘em where Ah know there should be.” She shrugged. “Besides, ya’ve never liked people with Mythology in their names.”

Fury shook his head. “Fine. But we’ll find ‘em eventually.”

Rogue only smirked vaguely.

Fury was finally called back into the fold, vanishing amongst the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Logan turned to look at Rogue again, and was slightly surprised to see a hint of that same resignation that had crossed her face once before, with Remy.

She tensed at first, under the touch of Logan’s hand on her shoulder, but his hand was gentle––not actually gripping, just settling there. After a few moments, she relaxed and leaned into the touch a little, looking slightly surprised, her gaze on the ground.

“You’re on the record now,” Logan murmured. “Might as well stick around.”

She smirked a little. “Ah dunno. Ah’ve gotten pretty used t’ bein’ a ghost. It’s a big adjustment.” A look of hesitation crossed her face. “Maybe Ah can delete the data once they enter it tonight...”

Logan’s hand squeezed, just a little. “Stay.” It was more request than command; in fact, it was almost a plea.

Rogue’s eyes fell shut for a few moments, but she unconsciously leaned into his hand a bit more. “How do ya do it, Logan? How do ya stand so much light? Do ya miss the shadows? It’s so much quieter there, so much less...exposed. Less vulnerable.”

Logan thought about it, his thumb stroking along her shoulder slowly back and forth. “There’s plenty of shade, here. You’re not as exposed as ya think. Well, not to the others.”

She smirked a little at that. “But to you?”

“I see more than they do.”

Rogue nodded. “Yeah.” She finally opened her eyes, turning her head to meet Logan’s gaze, reading his face curiously, finding that he was not afraid of her. “Ah keep wonderin’ when Ah’m finally gonna scare ya.”

Logan tilted his head a little. “You already did. When I found your blood on the statue.”

Rogue’s brow furrowed a little, but smoothed along with the rest of her expression into a casual mask as she looked at the ground again. Her eyes fluttered shut when she felt Logan’s hand slide down her back, and slowly back up: gentle, and careful not to touch her where her skin was damaged, but unhesitant to touch the less injured skin, even now that he knew what it could do to him. She really liked his touch, for a lot of reasons, some of which she found all too appealing, and she wondered if those reasons were clouding her judgement, but didn’t really care. “Logan...” Her voice was a little softer than she’d intended.

“Are ya really thinkin’ about runnin’ again?” he asked quietly.

Her eyelids lifted enough for her to look up at him through her thick eyelashes. “Aren’t you?” she countered.

Logan’s lips formed a solemn line. “Usually.”

Rogue put her hand on top of his, which had again settled on her shoulder. Her fingers stroked his knuckles where the skin was still tender from healing over repeated extensions of his claws, and she was dimly aware of the silent almost-pause in his breathing when she did so. “Ah’ll stay, Logan,” she said quietly, holding his gaze and smiling faintly. It was the smile of an old soldier who hadn’t been in battle in a while, but after a good brawl was smiling as much because of the pain she felt as through it. Not many understand how some kinds of pain can feel like a bittersweet homecoming, but Rogue knew damned well that Logan was one of ‘em.

He smiled back in the same fashion. “Good. I won’t be alone with these idiots.” He jerked his head in the direction of Scott.

Rogue grinned at that, giving a low chuckle, but it made her think, and she looked at Logan more closely again, pondering the implications before she added, “Yeah, and Ah won’t be alone with a world a’ further idiots.”

They exchanged glances, and moved to join the rest of the X-men.

Jubilee looked Rogue over and whistled. “Damn, chica, how many hits did you take?”

This caught Remy’s attention, and despite the sunglasses he wore, it was clear that his eyes had widened and he was taking in Rogue’s exposed skin. He swallowed thickly.

Rogue was aware of his gaze, but ignored it, instead meeting Jubilee’s. “A few dozen.”

“Must be nice to be indestructible,” Siryn said.

Rogue gave a bitter sort of smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s got some benefits.”

Logan watched her walk up the steps into the blackbird, knowing that the others didn’t see the way she favored her left ankle, and how stiff her back was against the pain from blast-scorched skin along her back, stomach, and arms. Just as he knew they never noticed how gingerly he tended to move limbs where bullets and shrapnel hadn’t worked their way out of his flesh yet. He, too, was bitter. But he followed Rogue, wondering if she wanted to be a little less alone than she’d been for most of her life. She was making him think that he did.

For the rest of the evening, through the night, and late into the next morning, Rogue spent time putting together frames and shelves, and routing large amounts of electricity through heavy protective insulation she had built up from scratch. She worked with an eye for detail, and grim determination. Her little electronic bunker would be protected from all electromagnetic interference short of a nuclear bomb’s EMP, but with all of the out-going wires she arranged, Rogue would have access to every satellite in the sky and every government mainframe on the planet; at least, she would when she had put together her untraceable machines and set up her ghost programs. While her modest laptop and not-so-modest portable servers had her most recent programs and figures and mainframe-structure-maps and dozens of other things, Rogue had always felt that she could have perfected them so much further if she had not been restricted by danger-induced time limits borne from the activities she used her skills for.

Now, she had time, and she planned on creating one Hell of a masterpiece.

But first, she had to put together the machines that would house her creation. She stripped down to her underwear and put on a wristband specially designed to eliminate static electricity. Tools and computer parts collected on the floor before her, she turned on a few lamps and a specialized hanging-magnifying glass that she maneuvered so that it hovered between her face and her more detailed work. She worked with all the precision, delicacy and focus of a surgeon, but the work was all-too-familiar, and she soon fell into a rhythm of movement that allowed her mind to wander freely.

As a younger, less mutant girl, Rogue had often talked to herself, if only in her head as she contemplated complex subjects. Since her mutation had manifested, the practice had been forced to cease for a while, because it was one thing to have an internal dialogue, but quite another thing when the internal dialogue could be interrupted by someone else inside of her head; thus, one of the first things Rogue had been determined to learn about her mutation was a way to clear her mind of other voices so that she could think more clearly. She had found success via her own experimentation with mediation.

Now, alone in her miniature fortress surrounded by the skeletons and organs of machines that were slowly coming into shape under her dexterous fingers, Rogue decided to have a conversation with herself about Logan, because images of him fighting the sentinels had been running through her head far too much of recent.

Outwardly silent, Rogue inwardly mused, “Damn, that man has a fine ass.”

“And chest, and stomach, and-”

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

“Of course! Just look at his memories; there’s a lot of naked imagery, plus the sex. Oh, there’s a lot of sex, there.”

“From his perspective. Not that that’s bad, really. Just occasionally disorienting.”

“So is his sex appeal, in general.”

“That’s the problem, though. I don’t get disoriented. Lust can make me feel a lot of things: physical hunger and craving, heat, arousal.”

“But not dizziness.”

“Nope. That’s strictly post-orgasm. Not pre-foreplay. Not even with Remy, and I wanted him pretty bad for a while there. (Blame the uniform because damn!)”

“Then consider quite how amazing it could be to get that from-”

“Stop.”

“Why? You can touch him.”

Rogue tried to pinpoint the source of her unease, and whether it was worth letting it hold her back. She continued the silent conversation, finally answering, “I don’t know what it will do to me to let myself touch him, let myself be touched. I know so much about the experiences of others, and how sex has affected them––emotionally and physically. I’ve had my emotions under control for a while, and through a lot, but that’s because I’ve built up armor and kept myself at a distance. With sex, I won’t be able to do that.”

“Yeah. Armor and distance do get in the way of...release.”

“And with him up here, the distance is already pretty hard. Damn, he’s beautiful.”

“Yes. His mind as much as his body.”

“...I want to go for it.”

Silence greeted her, and Rogue sighed in frustration at the flutter of nervousness still hindering her from a clear decision.

“Am I afraid? Am I a coward?” she asked herself without speaking.

A pause, then: “Are you letting nerves, not logic or reason, prevent you from doing something that you want?”

Rogue’s hands paused in the middle of something complicated involving the placement of a few microchips. She took a deep breath, and let it out very slowly. “Dammit,” she muttered quietly, but kept working.

When Rogue had still not emerged from her den even deep into the late evening, Logan cursed himself a fool as he descended into the mansions lower levels to seek her out.

Two full days. And a half. That’s how long she’s been here, and yet you can’t let her go through the whole of day three without seeing her.

She hasn’t eaten. It’s not healthy. Besides, it’s quite a sight to see, especially if she’s still in that uniform.

She won’t be. It was all torn up; she’ll have changed out of it.

“Still a damned good view,” Logan muttered. He punched his code into the door lock. Rogue had told him, soon after being shown the place, that the lock would be the first thing she’d hack, in order to keep some of the more idealistic X-men out. He’d asked if he’d still be able to get in. She’d said yes, and sure enough, the door’s locks clicked and Logan pushed the door open. Then he froze in the doorway, his pupils dilating rapidly, and not just because it was darker in Rogue’s bunker than outside in the hall.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor in nothing but a simple black bra and a simple, little, matching black thong that left little to the imagination––covering her sex successfully, but just barely––and Logan felt his blood rushing south and his brain slowing down.

She ain’t in that uniform, but it’s still definitely a fuckin’ great view, Logan thought, and his pseudo-conscience could not argue. Logan smirked a little at the thought that it was shocked speechless.

Rogue didn’t look up from the computer parts she was carefully manipulating. “Either leave or come in, and either way, shut the door so nobody else gets an eyeful, eh, Sugah?”

Logan stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him, noting the insulation on the inner side of it, and over all the rest of the walls. “You’ve been busy.” He looked at her again, his eyes wandering over her pale bare skin with uncloaked admiration and no small bit of hunger. Her body was truly a work of art.

Rogue gave a nonverbal affirmative sound, still not looking at him.

“You’re also practically naked, Darlin’. Who else can still get in here?”

“Just Hank and Charles. Y’know. The guy who’s payin’ me and the guy who owns the place.” Finally she glanced up with a smirk. “And you: the guy who’d cut through the locks if Ah didn’t let him in. Incidentally, Ah’m only undressed this far to avoid havin’ static electricity fuck up the more sensitive parts Ah’m workin’ with. This wristband helps, too.” She lifted her left arm so he could see it.

Logan’s eyes fixed on the way her lifted arm affected how much of the tops of her breasts he could see. He realized his mouth was watering and swallowed quietly.

Rogue chuckled softly and glanced up again as her hands pushed together the two halves of a boxy-looking computer-like device. “See somethin’ ya like, Sugah?” She got to her feet and put the box on one of several big shelves with further mysterious pieces of computer equipment.

Logan bit back a growl when she turned away enough that he could see the firm, round, lovely shape of her ass, and those miles-long legs. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Then she returned to the pool of light in the middle of the floor and Logan’s brows furrowed as he finally noted the discolorations and traces of damage to her immaculate skin. “But damn, you weren’t kiddin’ about the bruises. Is your skin actually cracked right there?” He pointed at a spot on her side that appeared to be about the width of his hand.

“There’s some hairline crackin’ in some of the places that almost blistered, but that’ll peel off tomorrow like snakeskin and Ah’ll be good as new. The bruises might be gone in a few hours.” She shrugged, but the movement was still slightly stiff.

Logan felt uncomfortably sobered. “Sure I can’t lend you a hand with the healin’?”

Rogue looked up at him thoughtfully, curiously, almost in disbelief. Then she smiled a little and shook her head. “Sorry. Ah’m still just...not used to a lack of fear. Thanks for the offer, but Ah’m indestructible enough on my own. Ah’m just singed, really.”

Logan shook his head. “Singed. Right. That’s why you’re still stiff and why you’re still keepin’ your breathing so controlled. How’re your ribs?”

Rogue snorted. “My ribs are fine. The singed skin across my shoulder blades doesn’t like to stretch,” she corrected, as she finished packing up her tools and set them on a nearby table as she got to her feet again. Much to Logan’s disappointment, she pulled on a pair of shorts. At least they didn’t reach past her knees and left most of those legs of hers exposed. She shivered when she realized Logan had taken the opportunity to move closer, so that his fingers gently brushed the damaged flesh she’d just mentioned.

“And this’ll be fine tomorrow?” Logan asked, his fingertips ghosting across her shoulder blades and then down to her mid-back. The damaged skin was just slightly darker than the rest, and had faintly red, tiny webs of cracks across its surface.

“If Ah sleep. Without sleep it’ll take two days. No promises on that; it depends on how ‘into it’ Ah get tonight,” she said, gesturing to the assorted machines and monitors she had been setting up over the last twenty-four hours, trying not to think about how suggestive her words sounded now that she’d just said them.

Logan was taking in her scent, relieved beyond words that she did not actually smell as singed as she looked. “I could make it my mission to distract you,” he offered, as much playfully as seriously, because she smelled good, and she also smelled a little interested, which was something new.

Rogue bit her lip for a moment, but finally rejected her inexplicable nervousness and smirked a little as she countered, “You’re already pretty distractin’, Sugah.” Her fingers brushed his hand, which had unconsciously settled at her hip. In her mind, she heard: Alea iacta est. For anyone else, it would just be flirting; for Rogue, it was crossing the Rubicon.

Logan hesitated, trying to figure out quite when his hand had gotten there, but he easily bantered back, “You were the one sittin’ around mostly naked, and you still don’t have a shirt on––not that I’m complaining.”

“And you’re shirtless and fresh from the shower if Ah’m not mistaken. Danger room?”

“No, I just usually make my rounds through the sub-basements without a shirt or shoes on, because these labs and basements have such a casual atmosphere,” Logan mocked.

Rogue turned to face him, feeling a flutter of uneasiness again when she realized just how close he was, and how intense the look in his eyes was. She knew he could hear it faintly when she swallowed, trying to clear the sudden lump in her throat that formed as she looked him up and down. “Ah’m not complainin’ either.” She smirked a little.

Logan raised an eyebrow in surprise, but held himself in check, because what he wanted to do was wrap an arm around her waist, but he could see the faint discoloration of damaged skin across a variety of the places he wanted to explore through touch. “I’ll keep that in mind, darlin’.”

Rogue nodded, turning away just a little as she picked up her cotton tank top and started to pull it back on. She chuckled softly at the disappointment on Logan’s face. “Did ya come here strictly for the banter, or was there more?” she teased.

“Have you taken any breaks at all?” he asked idly, still watching with evident regret and mourning as she tugged down the hem of her shirt, covering her stomach.

She shook her head. “That word ain’t in my vocabulary, Sugah.”

“It is now. C’mon. It’s practically time for dinner.”

“Is it?” Rogue took Logan’s arm and looked at his watch. “Oh. Ah guess it is. Hm. Time flies when you’re sittin’ naked around a bunch of computer parts.”

That mental image momentarily distracted Logan, enough that he blinked in surprise when he realized she was heading for the door, and he had to take a couple of surreptitiously quick strides to catch up. “I’ll have to come around more often. Remind ya to take breaks, naked or otherwise.”

She gave him a slightly wicked smile. “Maybe Ah’ll let ya.”

Logan’s eyes fixed on the roll of her hips as she walked through the door, and he watched for a moment before following. This girl was gonna kill him, of that he was certain. but he was also pretty sure that there weren’t many better ways to die.

Logan watched in amusement as Rogue rummaged through the fridge, occasionally growling under her breath. She chose an eclectic assortment of foods: a few pieces of leftover fried chicken, a bit of odd-looking expensive cheese with her name on it, Canadian beer (a six-pack), a green apple, and a cluster of dark purple grapes. “Put the chicken in the microwave, will ya, Sugah?” She handed him the paper bucket.

Logan took it and obediently heated the chicken, watching her slice both the cheese and the apple, setting out both on a plate, which she then set aside on the bar as Logan joined her with the re-heated chicken. “Not gonna eat your appetizer?” he asked.

“That’s dessert. It’s best at room temperature, and it’ll be there once the chicken’s gone,” she said matter-of-factly, plucking a drumstick from the bucket. “Ah ordered in next-day-delivery the night Ah got here. Ya can blame Erik for corruptin’ me with certain gourmet habits, but Ah picked the cheese myself.” She shrugged. “Ah don’t mind some of his tastes, really. Just his ideology and the fact he’s an asshole who tried to kill me.” To punctuate her statement, she took an impressive bite of chicken. Rogue has more prominent eyeteeth than the average person; they’re pointed and while they don’t really show when she talks, they stood out stark and white when the tip of her tongue darted out to pick up a crumb left at the corner of her mouth.

Logan nodded distantly, trying not to think too much about her mouth. “I ended up with a similar thing about really good Japanese food, once my memories came back. Spent weeks huntin’ down a sushi place that gets the rice right.” He grabbed his own piece of chicken and bit into it.

Rogue gave a small smile, sincere and soft and a little grateful. “Ya know, you’re probably the only other person on the planet who’s got a clue as to what it’s like...with memories that are yours, but aren’t at the same time.” She pulled more meat off the bone and popped it into her mouth with bits of the crunchy, battered exterior. It wasn’t southern-fried chicken or home-made, but it still smelled a little bit like a place that used to be something like a home to her, however long ago.

Logan considered her words, swallowing his mouthful. “You don’t think the telepaths can relate?” he inquired.

Rogue shook her head. “They see other people’s minds from the outside lookin’ in. Ah see ‘em from the inside, and to make it even more awkward, they’re in my damned house, metaphorically speakin’.”

Logan chuckled softly. “Yeah. That’s a good way to put it,” he mused, thinking about how it had been as he re-discovered James Howlett, and how foreign and familiar it had been all at the same time as things came back not in a flood but as though he’d tripped over them.

Rogue gave that smile again. “It’s just odd for me. That it’s not just me and that you get it.” She shook her head, the smile fading. “Ah feel so old, and like Ah’ve been wandering around in other people’s lives for two hundred years, give or take a few decades, but my mind has always had that odd distance between what Ah’m rememberin’ feelin’ and how new it is to me, and who Ah actually am and whose memories Ah’m in at the time. And then Ah wake up feelin’ like Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz, only the adventure lasted years an’ years, and then people look at me and call me ‘kid’ and wonder why Ah get pissed off.” She set down her chicken on a folded paper-towel and grabbed a beer, plucking off the cap with an ease that only invulnerable skin and super-strength could give her.

Logan nodded. “I get the same thing when One-eye tries to play leader.”

Lowering her beer after taking a swig, Rogue replied, “Ah know.” She gave him a soft look that was oddly piercing.

Logan recalled, somewhat belatedly, that she’d gotten a peek into his skull when he’d lent her his healing. He smirked a little. “I guess you do.”

Rogue looked at the floor for a moment. “What do ya think of me, Logan? Now that ya’ve met me, and my skin, and t’ some extent my fightin’ ability.” She tried to smile a little, but there was real nervousness behind her question; she really wanted to know, and it really meant something to her. “Has it changed much, since ya last gave me a picture of what’s in your head?”

Logan held her gaze, thinking. His first impression from her first letter had been: this bitch is crazy! But as time had passed, he’d absorbed all of what she had sent along with that letter, and all the things that followed, and he had felt grudgingly grateful, and frustrated and confused because he couldn’t understand what the Hell the mystery woman thought she was doing. Then even that had eased, if only a little, because she had given him so much, for no other apparent reason than because she thought it was right, and he’d understood that when she had sent him a disk with a smeared drop of her blood on it from a gunshot wound. And then Emma had told him that she was afraid of Rogue, and told him about Rogue’s insane quest and ruthlessness and lawlessness and determination. And he’d known that whoever Rogue was, she was like him, which was something new to Logan, even with so many of his memories returned.

What had changed since he’d met her? When he’d first seen the frantic figure digging and cursing in the wreckage, he had been amused and curious and had thought she was a spitfire. And then she’d stood up and shown off that body and the way she moved, and even through the muck and the trench coat, Logan had seen enough to make him think she’d be great in bed. Then she’d been amused by his claws, and unafraid, and she’d known too much about everything; then she had told him her name was Rogue, and later told him much more about who Rogue was. But wasn’t what she was asking; she knew about that, knew his thoughts about all that, from when he’d taken her scars away.

What had changed since he’d felt that desperate need to see that her hands didn’t have those scars? He’d gotten to see more of her character, and her body, and the way she perceived things and thought about them: other people, touch, war, ‘the rules’, authority, and––to some extent, at least––Logan himself. And he may have just met her three days ago, but he’d started getting to know her about a year ago, with that first letter, and everything else she’d sent since then. Now that he’d finally managed to come to terms with the Rogue he’d known all this time and the one in front of him...yeah. Things had changed a bit.

He couldn’t find the words. Not in any of the three-and-a-half languages he’d remembered. It took him several quiet seconds to go over it all in his head and figure out what to say. “Some thoughts have gotten clearer. Others are still kinda in the works.” He wiped the grease from the chicken off his fingers with a paper towel. “You could always take a quick peek.” He held out one hand, palm-up.

Rogue hesitated, pausing in the middle of licking her fingers. She picked up a napkin and wiped her hands clean, even as her facial expression remained unsure. “Ah don’t...like usin’ my skin on ya. As much as Ah...kinda like lookin’ at the world as seen by you, Ah don’t like hurtin’ you,” she said quietly.

Logan was flattered, but insisted, “I want you to see this, because I can’t think of how to say it for the life a’ me.”

Rogue inhaled slowly and something in her eyes changed a little, and her scent, too, taking on a sharp edge, smelling like a mixture of crisp snow-scent and overheated titanium steel, as her skin activated. She tried to control the pull, more than she had ever needed to before, as her fingertips touched Logan’s palm and she looked straight into his mind as it flooded over hers. One second, two seconds, three...

She pulled her fingers away absorbing his thoughts. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Logan felt drained, and exhausted, but his healing factor kicked in faster and he neither fell off of his barstool or went anywhere near unconsciousness. “Not so bad, this time.”

“Didn’t last as long, and Ah wasn’t tryin’ to borrow your mutation this time.” Rogue rolled her shoulders. “But apparently Ah got some of it. The burns are gone.” Her voice was a little distant, her thoughts still directed inward.

It was Logan’s turn to feel a hint of nerves, because if there was anyone in the world whose fear or disgust or disappointment could wound him, it was the woman sitting in front of him with her eyes shut as she slowly pulled back her hand to rest her elbow on the bartop. He felt a wash of relief when he saw that faint smile on her lips again, and was intrigued by the hint of nervousness that flickered behind it. Nervous seemed like unfamiliar territory to Rogue; she wasn’t the type to get nervous, she was the type to get defensive. The fact she wasn’t getting defensive with Logan said volumes.

“Thank you,” she said softly. She opened her mouth to speak further, but then hesitated turning to look at the kitchen doorway.

Logan had heard the footsteps as well, and cursed under his breath. Kitty, Jubilee and Siryn were on their way, chatting and laughing in the way that only carefree youth can. Rogue sighed and finished her chicken.

The trio appeared in the doorway a few moments later, and seemed to pause for a thoughtful second at the sight of Logan and Rogue.

“She’s alive,” Siryn observed.

Rogue raised an eyebrow.

“That’s not surprising, really,” Jubilee said in corrective tones, “it’s that she’s above ground that’s a real shock.” She wore a playful smirk.

Rogue gave a languid shrug. “A girl’s gotta eat sometime.” She glanced at Logan, but then shifted her attention to Kitty, who looked nervous. “Hey, Kitty? When do you want to start lessons?” Rogue set aside her picked-clean chicken bones after wrapping them in a paper towel.

The other girls took this as a cue to do what they’d come to the kitchen to do, and they moved to the fridge and pantry, pulling together a stock of snacks. Jubes put some popcorn in the microwave.

Kitty hesitated for a moment, struggling to hold Rogue’s gaze. “Uhm. When would be best for you? I mean...I heard you were still busy putting together your work station...”

“What better place to start than with the hardware? Ah can teach ya anytime, for a couple hours a session. You’re the one with a concrete schedule.”

Kitty nodded. “Uhm. Seven-ish in the evenings then?”

Rogue nodded. “Sure.”

There was a minute or so of idle talk amongst the girls as the popcorn popped. They apparently planned to have an epic eclectic girls’ movie night––British-themed this time; Pride and Prejudice followed by Love Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Logan finished off the rest of the chicken and dumped all the bones, including Rogue’s, into the bucket. He watched her pull the cheese plate forward so it sat between them. She gestured toward it after picking up a piece. Logan’s gaze may have lingered on the way her tongue darted out to pluck the cheese from between her fingertips. He picked up a piece of it, intrigued by its odd, but not unpleasant, scent. It was a little strong, but complex and rich, somewhat earthy, and just a little bit sweet, with traces of a flavor like wine.

They had nearly finished the cheese, and Rogue had nearly finished the fruit with it, by the time the microwave finally beeped and the trio of teenagers fled the room.

“It’s almost time for the dinner rush, isn’t it?” Rogue observed. So much for their previous relative privacy.

Logan gave a light growl. “Yeah. There’ll be a dozen of ‘em here in a few minutes.” He reached for the plate absently and popped a piece of cheese into his mouth.

“Try a bite of it with a grape, Logan,” Rogue insisted. She reached over and glibly pressed a grape to his lips. There was only the ghost of a smirk on her lips as she watched him.

Raising an eyebrow somewhat, Logan bit the grape lightly, taking it from her. As his teeth broke the skin of the grape, he had to admit she was right: it tasted good. Logan was wondering what Rogue tasted like, and how that might combine with the lingering flavors on his tongue. He couldn’t help but think that it would go well with just about anything.

As if reading his thoughts, Rogue smirked morevisibly, taking the last piece of cheese for herself and picking up the plates, the bones-and-napikin-filled paper bucket, and their two empty beer bottles, as she got to her feet. Logan watched her curiously as she tossed the bucket in the trash and set the plates in the sink, rinsing the beer bottles before dropping them in recycling. She dried her hands and returned to the bar, but there was something about the almost-smirk hinted by her facial expression...

Instead of taking her seat next to him again, Rogue stood in front of him and leaned in, her hands resting on either side of him on the marble counter. Her face was very close to his and her gaze lingered on his lips for a long moment. “Ah would very much like to be close to you,” she said softly. She took a deep breath, slowly, drowning in his scent for a moment, and then looked into his eyes as she added meaningfully, “Ah want t’ let you get close to me. Ah want you to know me...maybe as well as Ah know you.” Her words were solemn but warm with something almost tentative, but too calm to be called uneasy, and her dark eyes were like shadowed mirrors, interrupted by flecks of green and hints of gold.

Logan held her gaze silently for a few long moments, reading her, seeing the uncharacteristic heat of her expression; he could tell that she was not familiar with being this close and this open, despite the ease of her movements and the knowledge behind them. Logan could sense something not unlike a mixture of nervousness and the not-quite-unpleasant tension of want from her. He wondered what she could sense of him. One of his hands settled on her hip, then slid slowly up to her waist and pushed up her shirt a little in the process, his palm and fingers taking in the feel of her skin. He could hear the slight change in her breathing, just the slightest tremor of response. “You’re pretty new to this,” he said quietly, the statement serving as both a gentle warning and a light observation.

“Yeah, but as usual, Ah still know what Ah’m doin’.” She leaned a little closer, so her forehead touched his. He was close. It felt...good. And warm. She felt a promising flicker of greater intensity when his thumb began to stroke the side of her stomach, near her hip, in slow back-and-forth arches. “In some aspects anyway.” Rogue smiled archly. “Ah know how to do everything from the perspective of other people. It’s different, y’know, when it’s what Ah want, and when it’s you.”

Logan’s hand on her side tightened its hold just slightly. She smelled good, and the more she talked, the more he felt this pressure somewhere left of his sternum––not painful, no, never painful, but he could not think of it as pleasure so much as a pang of intensity. He wanted her, but the craving was not immediate, and it inspired in him a kind of predatory patience. He knew, from her voice and her smile, that somehow, this was to be a sort of game, but not one that either of them had played before, having never had the opportunity. “It isn’t cat and mouse. That’s why it’s different,” he said.

He knew he was right when Rogue pulled back and met his gaze, a smile on her lips.

“It’s cat and wolverine,” she agreed.

Lynx, Logan decided mentally. Rogue was a lynx: guardian of secrets, elusive, and surprisingly strong for her size. It was fitting. “Your move, Marie.”

She was still leaning over him, very close, but not quite touching him––not quite ready to be so vulnerable as she knew she would be as soon as she reached for him. It was already strange, to feel his hand on her skin, and feel how tenuous her hard-won control could become, and how easily; it was disconcerting, and yet exhilarating. Rogue took a breath, and let it out slowly. “Keep in mind, Sugah, Ah don’t play fair.” Her gaze shifted away, landing on the doorway to the kitchen with an expectant look.

Logan realized that she had borrowed his advanced senses.

Remy was merely the forerunner. Three or four others were shortly behind him. Rogue had heard Siryn’s voice mentioning her, and had, quite rightly, expected Remy to quietly part from the group and get to the kitchen ahead of them. Rogue met Logan’s gaze again.

And that was how the Cajun found them, facing off in a silently challenging way, like a pair of cats trying to decide whether to fight or have sex, because either option would be truly exciting. There was an air of intensity about them, and through its haze Remy got an unusually clear look at them, at the Logan and Rogue few ever see and live to tell the tale.

Then Rogue put a hand on Logan’s hand as she stepped away from him, her thumb brushing the inner side of his wrist as he let her pull away. She pulled the hem of her top back down and turned to look at Remy, a somewhat glib smirk touching her lips for a moment. She stepped past him with a light “Hello” and made her way out the door.

Logan watched her from his place at the bar, his gaze lingering on the slight sway of her hips as he reigned in the urge to growl, which was difficult, because he could tell the Cajun was staring at Rogue, too.

After a few moments, Remy gave a low whistle. “Merde. You lucky sombitch,” he murmured, shooting Logan a bit of a glare. Then he fumbled around in that bulky trench coat, pulling out a cigarette. There was something unsettled in his countenance.

And Logan could see it. “You’re scared of her.”

Remy shook his head. “Not always. Jus’ when she look...” He gestured in a futile manner, grasping for words he could not find. “Like she gon’ drink blood, or sum’ like,” he concluded at last, his brow creased with dissatisfaction.

Logan looked away from the other man, fixing his gaze on the empty doorway. “Frankly, I think that look is pretty appealing.”

Remy lit his cigarette and exhaled clove-scented smoke. The look he shot Logan was solemn and considering. Then he shook his head, cursing the other man in bayou French quietly under his breath.

As the others entered the room, Logan got up from his barstool. As he passed Remy, he said quietly, “Jealousy doesn’t become you, Cajun.”

He was surprised when Remy replied, “I know when I be outclassed, Wolverine, but dat don’t mean I gotta be happy ‘bout it. I’m like a cat whose tail been stepped on, homme; gimme time to regain composure, non? Then we have drinks like we do sometimes.”

Logan nodded, and left the kitchen, resisting the temptation to follow Rogue; he wanted to draw this game out.

Logan was sitting in his usual spot, on the usual patio, when Rogue joined him later that night. She had a glass of scotch in her hand as she sat in the chair next to him, and she gave him a faint smile and a nod by way of greeting.

“What did ya do to that boy?” Logan asked.

“Remy?”

“Who else?”

Rogue shrugged. “Fair enough. Not like anybody else, ‘sides you, dared to try an’ get close to me, after Ah’d talked to ‘em anyway.” She took a sip of scotch. “Ah worked with him, and the first day we met, he had his fiancee` with ‘im.”

“Belladonna?” Logan asked.

“Yeah. His now-ex, Ah believe. He told ya that she tried t’ kill him?”

Logan nodded.

Rogue nodded too. “Yeah, this was before that. Anyway, Remy’s always been a flirt, as Ah’m sure ya’ve guessed, an’ Bella let him, ‘cause she knew she could take down most any of the other women he flirted with, and didn’t have a problem advertisin’ the fact. Girls would get within an inch of invitin’ ‘emselves into his bed, but never quite go farther because a’ Bella, and how intimidatin’ she could be. Well...she went out of her way to tell me t’ keep ‘professional distance’ from her man.” The way Rogue said the words made it clear that she’d taken them as a challenge. “Ah hadn’t initially been that interested, and Bella’s little almost-threat had been more funny than anything, considerin’ my skin, but on some level...it provided an unspoken incentive, later, ‘cause Ah knew Ah could take him away from her.” She paused, biting her lip. “And maybe that incentive made it easier for me t’ think that his perception of me wasn’t as distorted as it was, but when Ah did look into his mind...it was a painful bit a’ dissonance, Ah’ll tell ya.” She sipped her scotch and grew rather quiet.

Logan swirled his beer thoughtfully, listening to the light hiss of bubbles as he did so. “So it was kinda like...me an’ Jeannie.”

Rogue gave a small, amused smirk and a light chuckle. “Yeah, Ah guess so.” She bit her lip for a moment. “But kinda not, too. ‘Cause in the end, he wanted me an’ Ah didn’t want to have him anymore, because in the end it wasn’t anything that Ah’d thought it was, and Ah ended up tellin’ him so. It wasn’t real pretty for a while there.” Another sip of scotch.

“That doesn’t explain the way he still looks at you now and then.”

Rogue sighed, idly tapping her fingers on the wood of the patio table. “We still had work t’ do, for our contracts. He was still sore about it, mostly ‘cause he felt bad, and was mad at himself, an’ then Bella tried t’ kill him before our last job together...and Ah don’t hate ‘im.” Her fingers tapped out part of some unknown song. “He was there, when we’d both gotten paid for our work. Ah had control of my skin, and he looked like he’d been dragged through Hell, and looked so damned guilty whenever he looked at me––So, before we parted ways, Ah kissed him senseless.” She smirked a little, and shook her head, but the amusement faded a bit as she kept going. “It was my way of lettin’ him know that he could stop feelin’ bad about me, and then sayin’ ‘adieu’ insteada ‘goodbye’ told him that he still couldn’t have me for anything more.”

Logan nodded thoughtfully. “That explains it.”

Rogue nodded back. Then she smirked a little. “You’re still tryin’ to figure out, though, if Ah didn’t go on a spree of sensory indulgence once Ah could control my skin.” She met his gaze, still smirking.

Logan shrugged, but smirked back. “I know I’d’ve wanted to get busy.”

Rogue shook her head and laughed a little bitterly. “Maybe Ah would’ve, if Ah hadn’t gone through what Ah did with Remy.” She swirled the remains of her scotch, then drained them and set the glass aside, her smile gone. “Ah’d found out that Ah wasn’t interested in lettin’ anybody close enough to me t’ touch me who didn’t know who they were touchin’, and Ah’d gotten all too aware a’ how people saw me, since Ah was determined not to make the same mistake twice.”

Logan considered this and looked at her face intently for a few long moments. When she looked up again and met his gaze, he found that he could see into them. What he saw caused an odd pressure in his chest; it was an uncharacteristically emotional response for him, even though his head remained clear. “I see,” he said finally.

Rogue smiled softly, sincerely. “Yeah. You do.”

Logan found himself smiling too, even as Rogue got to her feet, picking up her glass of scotch, and he was sure that she would leave him in contemplation again, as she had done before.

He was pleasantly surprised when she asked, “You want another beer, or should Ah just bring out another glass and the bottle of scotch for both of us?”

Logan’s smile widened even as his eyebrows raised a little. “The scotch.”

Rogue could feel his eyes on her as she briefly returned to the kitchen. When she shut the door quietly behind her, she realized with surprise that she was still smiling, and that her heartbeat was a little faster than usual. Even more surprising: she was not perturbed by it. I want to loose control with him, she thought to herself, and her smile widened as she grabbed another highball glass.

Logan watched her face as she poured scotch over the ice in his glass before handing it to him. He took it, his fingers brushing hers, and then reached out with his free hand to pull her forward by her waist. She let him, and even went a step further by sitting on his lap as she refilled her own glass, leaning her shoulder against his and resting her hand on the arm of his chair. Logan’s hand settled on her hip as he took a sip of scotch. Rogue lifted her legs and rested them over the other arm of his chair. Once he’d set his glass aside, Logan rested his other hand on her knee.

“You’re still being cautious,” he observed.

“Always,” she countered, meeting his gaze. As his fingers stroked the line of her hip through the fabric of her pants, Rogue was aware of her heartbeat increasing again. Logan’s body was solid under her, warm, and she found herself relaxing easily.

“What are you worried about?” His thumb traced a slow arc along her side.

Rogue turned her head a little, facing him a little more. “Not worried, but there are still unknowns, which makes me cautious; Ah don’t know anything about my own reactions to...being close, being touched, allowing myself to reach for what Ah want...things like that.”

“Mmm.” Logan leaned in and lightly nuzzled her neck.

Rogue’s eyes fluttered shut and her skin flushed faintly. Her breath stuttered for a moment.

Logan smiled. “Sensitive?”

“My––neck is. Knew that,” Rogue said, her voice somewhat strained.

“How sensitive?” Logan asked, his lips brushing her skin.

Rogue’s pulse quickened and her skin all but prickled under the light touch––hypersensitive. “Rather,” she replied distantly.

Logan gently nipped at the tender skin of her throat with his teeth, holding it there for a moment as his lips and tongue suckled, and he tasted her.

Rogue’s breath hitched, her grip on the arm of the chair tightening. She set down her glass on the table half-consciously, letting go of it before she accidentally crushed it. Her freed hand settled on Logan’s knee and squeezed. By the time his mouth pulled away, Rogue was nearly panting, but still managed to give a low whimper of protest. She gave a low sigh when his lips trailed higher, up to the corner of her jaw. She could feel the heat coming off her skin and collecting low in her belly: arousal. One of his hands was exploring the lines of her back, moving up until he cupped the back of her neck. He could smell how aroused she was, and she could feel, from beneath her thigh, him beginning to respond.

“How did you know?” Logan asked, his voice a low purr in her ear.

Oh, his voice––it sent a shiver down her spine. It took her a moment to clear her head enough to form coherent thoughts. “The shrapnel that left that big scar on my eyebrow––it’d made a lotta smaller cuts all along that side a’ my face, an’ my neck. Remy had t’ clean an’ bandage it. Nearly drove me up the wall.” And it had: all those ghost-light and tender touches all along her throat, and Remy leaned in so close, due to the dim light, that she could almost feel his breath; it had been the closest she’d ever gotten to loosing control and jumping that boy, skin and suspicion be damned.

Logan gave a faint, thoughtful rumble, and licked the side of her neck, noting the audible effect it had on her breathing. “He didn’t notice.”

“Didn’ have your senses, and when Ah’m tryin’ to keep composure, Ah can be pretty hard t’ read, Sugah,” She released her hold on the arm of his chair and instead curled her fingers into his hair, her thumb rubbing small circles on the nape of his neck; while he was not as sensitive as she was, she knew that it felt, to him, somewhat similar.

The low growl from the back of his throat, in response to her touch, confirmed it. “Maybe he’s right then, about be being a lucky sonofabitch.”

Rogue gave a soft laugh, dragging her short fingernails lightly down the back of his neck. “Ah heard him say somethin’ like that shortly after Ah’d made my exit.”

Logan’s grip on her knee tightened, and Rogue smiled a little, tangling her fingers in his hair again as her other hand traced little circles on his inner thigh. She tilted his head up and met his gaze. After a slight pause, she looked down at his lips, and leaned in to kiss him, smiling a little at the eagerness of his response. The exploratory sliding of their lips soon deepened, and Rogue gave a low purr at the taste of him, making Logan groan as he tried to pull her closer. Behind the lingering flavor of scotch, Rogue tasted like carmel, wine and rosemary.

The kiss was altogether brief, and seemed to calm them more than enflame them, and they parted reluctantly, but without difficulty; although Logan briefly prolonged it by catching Rogue’s lower lip in his teeth and sucking on it, but he eventually released it. Smiling, Rogue ran her tongue across her lightly bruised lip as she met Logan’s gaze.

“I want you,” she said.

Logan’s hand slid upward from her knee until his thumb almost brushed the juncture of her thighs, and there drew infuriatingly slow circles. Rogue purred again.

A crash sounded from somewhere near the door leading out to the patio.

Both Rogue and Logan tensed, turning to look at the door with suspicious eyes. “Dammit,” Logan growled.

“Ah concur.”

The patio door swung open after a moment, showing a disheveled and heavily embarrassed Jean Grey, with a hand partially covering her eyes as she pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Uhm. Sorry. I just...couldn’t sleep and came down to get some air and...” She took a deep breath and seemed to find her composure somewhat, lowering her hand to her side and managing to shoot them a slightly flustered glare; it failed to intimidate, mostly because her face was still very nearly the same color as her hair. “Please don’t have sex on the patio. This is a school.”

Rogue began sniggering helplessly, but quickly smothered it behind one hand, shooting Logan an amused look.

Logan himself was smirking rather evilly. “At least it ain’t the library.”

Jean flushed, if possible, even brighter. “That...that’s none of your-”

“Couldn’t really help it. Clean up better, next time.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Still can’t look at that desk the same way.”

Jean opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. After a few deep breaths, she finally managed to say, with some hint of amusement, “Yes, well, Logan...we didn’t get caught.”

Rogue snorted and shook her head, smirking; but Logan gave a reluctant groan and relented, “Fine. We’ll leave the patio.”

“Spoilsport,” Rogue accused in Jean’s direction, but she reluctantly slid out of Logan’s lap and picked up her glass of scotch. Her legs felt uncharacteristically shaky, but in a good way.

“I’m a teacher. It comes with the territory,” Jean countered, with a smile.

Logan got to his feet with audible complaint, adjusting himself noticeably in his jeans, causing the redhead to look away, blushing again. Rogue only smirked, swirling her scotch in its glass as her eyes flickered between Logan and Jean with amusement.

Logan settled a hand on Rogue’s lower back, only to be halted by Jean clearing her throat distinctly. He looked back at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Logan, can I talk to you for a second?”

Logan looked at Rogue who seemed amused, albeit a little disappointed. Under her breath, she whispered, “S’ok, Logan. It’ll just keep the game goin’, won’t it?” Rogue arched an eyebrow and smirked.

Logan smirked back. “That it will,” he murmured, and let her go. They both stepped into the kitchen, but only Rogue kept walking from there; Logan closed the door behind them and stayed in place, once more arching an eyebrow at Jean.

Once she was sure that Rogue was out of hearing range, Jean finally began: “Logan, can I ask...”

“Jealous, Jeannie?”

She snorted. “No. I just...hope you aren’t jumping headlong into this without worrying about how little we all know about this girl. She just showed up here a few days ago-”

“After sending letters for the last year.”

Jean sighed. “Are you sure that she’s who she says she is, Logan?”

Again, he tapped the side of his nose. “Damned sure, Jeannie.”

The redhead bit her lip. “You’re dead-set on pursuing her aren’t you?”

Logan smirked a little. “Pursuit is what I had goin’ for you, Jeannie. This is just a little different.” He set aside his long-forgotten glass of scotch on the table where Rogue had set her own. He noted that Rogue also hadn’t finished hers, or indeed taken a sip since their little interlude, and smirked. He’d hazard a guess that she, too, hadn’t wanted to wash away the taste of the kiss lingering on her tongue.

“I had noticed...that you stopped. Can I ask what changed?”

Logan leaned against the table, meeting Jean’s gaze easily. “Rogue. She gave me my life back. Did ya think that more than a hundred years of memories wouldn’t change anything?”

Jean hesitated, looking away. “Well––so few of your other, more overt habits didn’t really change...a hundred years?” Her brow furrowed, and Logan could tell that she was having trouble taking it all in.

“Yeah. And Rogue has even more memories in hers. From a psychic perspective, she’s almost twice my age.” He was smirking now.

Jean relaxed a little. “She’s at least told you about her past, then? Other than her resume?”

Logan nodded. “Not that I’m gonna share the info. You should know that.” He narrowed his eyes at her.

Jean shook her head. “Of course not. I just...she’s so solitary. I can’t fathom it. When I first manifested and ran away to try and find some quiet, the loneliness was almost suffocating.” Again, she shook her head. “And she seems to enjoy that exile. Even more than I think you ever did, Logan.”

Logan thought about it. “She’s a different breed, Jeannie. She an’ I both.”

She looked at him with those piercing green eyes of hers. “I’m beginning to see that, Logan, and I...I’m a little unnerved by it.”

“That’s because you coulda been like us, if things had been different, and if you’d had a tougher go of it––if you’d seen war. Maybe you still could become like us, but it wouldn’t be a pretty change.”

Jean’s brow furrowed. “What breed are you two, exactly?”

After a contemplative pause, he finally said, “We’re monsters with good intentions and a sense of honor, and we plan on keepin’ the people here from becomin’ like us. Like I said, it ain’t a pretty change.”

Jean thought about what she had seen on those few occasions Logan had asked her to look into his mind: blood and metal, burning flesh, pain and agony and war crimes. No. Not pretty at all. “I don’t like that you feel the need to call yourself a monster. You’re as human as the rest of us, Logan.”

Logan smirked, and there was something almost sad in the bitter amusement behind it. “C’mon, Jeannie. I know you’ve run across Nietzsche at some point. ‘Whoever fights monsters...’”

Jean could hear the quote finished in her mind, in the sad voice of Professor Xavier: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you stare too long into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you. Again, she saw flickers of the horrors of Logan’s past. He had, by no real fault of his own, stared too long into the abyss. So, too, had Rogue. It all made abrupt and terrible sense. She shut her eyes. “I understand. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He emptied the glasses of scotch down the sink and started to walk out of the kitchen.

“And Logan?”

He looked back over his shoulder.

“Thank you.” The look on her face and the tone of her voice instilled the words with great meaning.

“No problem, Jeannie. G’night.”

Logan, Scott, Jean and Storm were sent out on a mission the next day; another incident in the south. Rogue was not asked, because the mission was meant to do as little unnecessary harm as possible, as Xavier preferred, and she had not yet had any real practice in that area. Also, she had not slept the previous night. She insisted that she could go without sleep for several days. When the others were distracted, Logan asked what happened on day eight.

“Hallucinations. Vivid ones,” Rogue explained succinctly.

She did not wish him luck on the mission; she knew she did not have to.

By the time Kitty approached Rogue’s subterranean den that evening, the machines therein were almost ready to be turned on, and the remaining work to be done, could be done fully clothed. Rogue heard Kitty punch her usual code into the key-lock, and saw the girl on her security monitor––one of the only screens of nearly a dozen that was even connected to power yet. Rogue settled back in her chair (which was inordinately expensive, infinitely adjustable, and somehow still looked like something that would be sat in by an evil genius planning to take over the world) and waited, with a smile and a hint of curiosity.

Kitty stared at the door at first, looking unsure. She tried to use her powers and looked shocked when they didn’t work.

Rogue smiled and mentally scratched ‘phase disruptor’ off her mental checklist, marking it as a success.

Kitty appeared flustered, and finally began examining the door, feeling across it whilst trying to phase through it, then examining the key-code lock. It took her five minutes to hack her way in.

She was greeted by Rogue with: “Very good, now put your hair back in a ponytail and help me with these.”

Two hours later, Kitty would emerge from Rogue’s den in a daze with her head spinning full of hacking concepts. She’d never been as savvy with hardware as she had with software, and once Rogue had started explaining there had been no cease: just constant lessons given clearly and with exactness. Rogue had been clearly able to tell whether Kitty had struggled or understood, and easily adjusted her explanations accordingly.

Initially it had been surreal, hearing droll and precise teacher-intonations in the speech of such a young-looking girl, but that impression had soon vanished for Kitty. By the time she was preparing to leave, Kitty realized that had stopped seeing Rogue’s youth, and come to a startled realization as to something in the way Rogue spoke now and then.

“Your accent...”

“It comes and goes, yeah. Especially when I get pedantic; it brings out aspects I’ve absorbed from Erik. He loved being a teacher, you know.” As Rogue had said it, her words had taken on a dry, almost European air.

Kitty had hesitated. “By ‘Erik’ you mean...”

“Magneto, yes.” Sensing the tension in Kitty’s silence, Rogue added, “I don’t agree with the man on a lot of things, especially so far as politics; however, he is an intelligent, cultured, and interesting man, who has seen his share of war and horror. I haven’t tried to get rid of his better traits––the ones that stuck, anyway.”

“Oh. The professor says the same thing about him, and why he still calls him his old friend,” Kitty murmured.

“No. He thinks that Erik is just misguided. Ah know that he’s actually demented.”

It had been an educational, but somehow unsettling way to spend a large chunk of her evening. And then, right towards the end of her lesson, Logan had showed up. Kitty, who had had to hack her way in, was a little flustered by the easy way Logan had swaggered his way through the door, freshly showered from after the mission, and thus shirtless as he was so often inclined to be.

Of course, shortly after entering, he had grimaced. “Hell. These things’ noise...”

Rogue had only smirked, not looking up from her work, as seemed to be normal for her. “Ah’ve barely plugged anything in, yet, Sugah. By the time Ah’m up an’ runnin’, ya won’t be able to stand exposure for more than five minutes before gettin’ one hell of a headache.”

Logan snorted. “What about you, then, darlin’?”

Kitty had done a mental double-take at the endearment, but said nothing.

“Ah’m resistant to electromagnetic interference, and my senses aren’t as sharp as yours. When Ah’m focused, it sounds like peace to me.” Absently, Rogue’s fingers lightly trailed across a keyboard, as though she half-contemplated playing part of the Goldberg Variations on it. Then she looked up and met Kitty’s gaze. “Have you had enough, this evening?”

Kitty nodded. “Yeah. It’s a lot to take in. Maybe give me a night or two to work some of it out on my own?”

Rogue nodded, a small smirk on her face. “Sure. Go on.”

When Kitty left, her head heavy with information, Rogue was very aware, even without looking, of Logan stepping closer. Her gaze settled first on his naked torso for a few lingering, admiring moments, before roving up to look into his eyes.

“How was the mission?”

“I understand why you left the south,” he rumbled, and there were lingering traces of ire and frustration in his facial expression; although it was not directed at her.

Rogue turned to face him a little more, and raised one hand to the back of his neck, running her fingers up and down the back of his neck, occasionally running up further into the damp hair at the base of his skull; her touch was somewhere between stroking and scratching, and felt marvelous. Logan’s head drooped forward and he gave a contented murmur as Rogue’s arm draped over his shoulder so that she could more comfortably maintain the contact. “Ah did, originally. Ah went back as far as Austin, Texas, once or twice, an’ lived in New Mexico for a while. New Mexico people can be delightfully liberal and insane, but insane in the good way,” she assured him.

“Mm?”

“Well, Ah’m insane, but yer not exactly complainin’. New Mexico has people with the kinda crazy that does cool things. So does Austin.”

“I see,” Logan murmured, aware of the way his muscles were all instinctively relaxing under the actions of Rogue’s fingers. He wondered what else she knew about how to affect his body; so he asked her.

Rogue smirked. “Well now, Sugah, why would Ah ruin the surprise?”

Logan gave a low rumbling growl, but it was more sexy than threatening, and he rested a hand on her lower back, pulling her a little closer. Rogue’s smirk widened even as her pulse quickened as he lifted his head to look into her eyes. Her breath caught when he turned them both, pinning her hips to the table with his and capturing her lips in a kiss.

Rogue’s fingers clutched at the back of his neck instinctively as her free hand ran up his chest, shivering at the feel if his warm bare skin and the shapes of the muscles beneath it. He had the advantage of the first move, and his kiss made her almost dizzy. He tasted like rain and the smoky flavor of bourbon without the bite of alcohol. When he broke the kiss, Rogue gave a low, wanting purr as she opened her eyes.

Now it was Logan who was smirking. “You forgot to eat again, didn’t you?”

“Ah stopped for lunch,” Rogue said with mock-defensiveness. “However briefly.”

He shook his head, and pulled her out of the room. She followed him to the kitchen. They both stopped smiling when they were met there by Hank, who looked from Rogue to Logan, back and forth, with his too-insightful gaze and too-intent curiosity, even as he greeted them with immaculately smooth politeness.

Before they asked, he explained, “I arrived only shortly before you did, and spoke with Xavier in the interim. I was just about to seek you out, Rogue.” He sipped at what appeared to be brandy. “And you as well, Logan. There has been a recent political sea change of sorts. Would you like to have a seat?”

“I’d suggest letting us get some food first,” Logan replied, a hint of warning in his voice.

Rogue smirked a little and made her way to the refrigerator. She pulled out some leftover pot roast while Logan got out a large plate. Hank watched patiently as they warmed up what looked like enough for four people. If he had not known Logan as well as he did, he might have assumed that they planned on sharing with him, but they kept the plate between them, and did not even offer him silverware as they began to eat.

After taking her first bite, Rogue turned to Hank and asked, “So you got my message about that new recruiting video from everyone’s favorite terrorist group?”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “Magneto or Bin Laden?”

“The latter,” Rogue said.

“Yes. Your speed of detection is quite impressive. It put me ahead of any of the intelligence agencies, and allowed the President and I to work on damage control. I do not want to think about what might’ve happened if certain parts of the CIA had gotten their hands on it first.” Hank swirled his brandy in its glass.

Rogue turned to Logan and explained, “They sent out a mutant-oriented recruitment video. They wanna take advantage of our potential as weapons, and how oppressed we are by western nations. We’re a boon for ‘em, really, especially with how many scared an’ lost mutant kids get thrown outta the house. They’re vulnerable an’ confused: perfect targets for religious an’ ideological conversion.”

Logan nodded. “Damage control, indeed. How’re you plannin’ to stop a witch-hunt for mutant terrorists now? Or an extermination of ‘possible recruits’?”

“By taking advantage of the public’s feelings toward Stryker, Genosha, and the current president. I’ve had a look at the president’s speech, and it’s quite promising.”

“A speech will only get ya so far, even with an orator like him. What’d he think of my suggestions?” Rogue inquired.

Hank tapped his fingers on the counter in a quiet, nervous rhythm. “He is uneasy, but has already begun putting together a team to implement them. This is totally unknown legal theory, Rogue. Even science fiction has scarcely dreamed of the philosophies behind it.”

Logan guessed, “He’s working on mutant civil rights?”

“Yes. The look on his face when he told me...He never wanted to fight an ideological war, especially after that of the previous administration, but he has found that this is something upon which he cannot compromise. From both a practical and moral standpoint, he wants us on his side, and he wants this country to be as much a land of tolerance and opportunity for us as it has been for him, and millions of others from around the world.”

“As far as his personality, he’s a younger, more human version of Xavier, without the psychic powers,” Rogue murmured. “Although Ah think he has more charisma, and a more political mind, but those are good things. There’s one thing he’s gotta do in his speech that no politician in American history has done before.”

“What’s that?” Hank asked, sounding worried.

Rogue and Logan exchanged a knowing glance.

“He’s gotta look the whole country in the eye and say, ‘we, as a nation, were and are in the wrong, and must make amends,’” Logan said.

Rogue added, “Just make sure he starts off mentionin’ the new enemies, though, so that people remember how much they believe in him, an’ how they were effected by Stryker’s trials and Genosha’s attack. Remind ‘em that the economy of right now has left the country vulnerable in more ways than one. Then tell ‘em how much of a wasted resource we are, and that some of us have been savin’ their asses for a long damned time already. Tell ‘em who really stopped the Genoshan attack. Then tell ‘em about the new video, and what our enemies are tryin’ to do.”

Hank nodded, committing the ideas to memory. “You’re impressively politically savvy, yourself, Rogue.”

She shrugged. “It comes with the territory.”

“Indeed. It’s also part of why I plan to offer to extend your contract.” He turned to Logan. “And to offer you one, too, Logan.”

“What does the government want from me?” he growled.

“We would like to take on the both of you in an advisory capacity with major oversight capablities, for reforming all mutant-related aspects of our current military. You yourself, Logan, have more experience with military training than most anyone alive, and also the most experience with training young mutants for combat situations.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed. “You want to recruit mutants to fight your wars for you?”

“Fighting Genosha is more than just this country’s war, Logan,” Hank countered.

Logan gave a low growl, but quieted when Rogue reached over and settled her hand over his, running her thumb across his knuckles. Neither of them spared a glance for Hank, or the way his eyebrows rose at the sight of the gesture.

“Unfortunately, he’s right. Ya saw the sentinels. Those’re just the start.” She drew her hand away and took a sip from her glass of water. “How long a contract are we talkin’, Hank? A few years? Or do ya plan on keepin’ us around even after you an’ your boss ain’t in charge anymore?” She narrowed her eyes at him.

“We want you to help up form the framework, hopefully so that it will last without your constant presence––which is to say, resistant both to outside politics and the ravages of time,” Hank said firmly. “I can think of no two better engineers, but if you can think of any...”

Rogue and Logan exchanged glances yet again, this time looking grudgingly accepting. “Not anybody still alive and available,” Logan ceded.

“Can I count on you, then?” Hank asked.

Rogue and Logan shared one last look, seeking confirmation and assurance, and then both looked at Hank and nodded.

“Good. Good. Thank you both.”

“When is the speech?” Rogue inquired.

“The day after tomorrow, but it will get an utterly astounding amount of anxious press tomorrow. We want to get as many listeners as possible, all over the world.” Even under his air of determination and ever-present coat of blue fur, Hank looked uneasy. “Let’s hope it works.”

“Hope is his forte,” Logan murmured.

Hank gave a bitterly amused smile. “Yes, but it isn’t hope that’s turning his hair white. I’ll leave you now, if you don’t mind.”

“Ah’m sure yer very busy. Good luck, Doc,” Rogue said.

“Thank you. Goodnight to you both.”

“Bye, Hank,” Logan dismissed.

The politician left, and Rogue finished the last bite of roast.

“Si vis pacem para bellum,” Logan muttered darkly under his breath.

“And Ah thought the previous administration had issues with ius ad bellum,” Rogue countered, shaking her head. “And they want our help buildin’ it.” She looked heavily contemplative. “Sea change indeed.”

Logan snorted, a smirk on his lips, even if the amusement did not fully reach his eyes. “They must be desperate.”

“Well, they’ve got pretty limited choices.” Rogue tapped a staccato pattern on the counter with her fingernails, staring at the ceiling thoughtfully for a few moments. Then she sighed and pushed her hair back out of her face, slightly regretting that she had cut it just slightly too short to tie it back out of the way. “Ah’m not gonna get a lotta sleep for a while.”

Logan frowned. “Get it when you can.”

Rogue nodded. “Ah know. Trust me, Logan, when Ah’m in an ad bellam mindset, Ah don’t lose track a’ time. Ah remember to take in needed resources. It’s not like when Ah’m...just gettin’ lost in my work an’ havin’ fun with it.” She sighed a little more irritably. “Days like this, Ah start feelin’ kinda misanthropic.”

Logan nodded, giving a low affirmative sound. Rogue didn’t resist him when he reached over and pulled her off her barstool and into his lap. She only rested her arms on his shoulders and settled her knees on either side of his hips. Logan’s hands stroked up and down her sides lazily as he examined her face. “How much work do you have waitin’?”

Smiling sadly, Rogue shook her head. “Too much.” She leaned in and rested her forehead on his. “Enough to last me ‘til tomorrow night.”

“With or without some extra time off for a while up here?” Logan rumbled, his hands roaming lower, across her hips and outer thighs.

Rogue bit her lip. “If we started, could we really stop tonight?”

Logan thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it a little more, his hands still moving, until Rogue caught one that had started to creep up along her inner thigh.

“Logan,” she reminded him gently.

“Just thinkin’ it over thoroughly,” he mused, and she could hear him smirking. Then his voice lowered, sounding reluctant as he finally concluded, “I’d have you up ‘til dawn, and then you’d really need your rest.”

Rogue shivered ever so slightly, and rubbed the back of his neck. “What Ah’d give t’ have the time, Sugah.”

“Go on, then, before I try to persuade you that ya do. With my tongue.”

Rogue bit her lip again, harder this time, and reluctantly slid off his lap. “Ah’ll make it up to ya. Promise.” She flashed a mischievous grin and left the kitchen.

Logan leaned back on the counter, cursing quietly under his breath until his pants felt less tight and he was able to feel the same sense of misanthropy that Rogue had mentioned. “Damn,” he muttered. “Damn.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he got to his feet. “Damn.”

Rogue emerged, late the next morning, to join the ranks of the living, and for once she had the decency to look rather tired, or at least rougher around the edges than usual with hints of fatigue. She threw together a breakfast of fruit, a bowl of oatmeal, and a large glass of milk. Then she vanished again, amidst whispers of a huge presidential press conference the next day.

When Logan, having waited a few minutes, followed her back down to her bunker, he found her curled up, asleep, on top of two tall cabinets in her bunker, which hummed with the breath and electric hum of her collection of machines. She looked peaceful, but he could see that she had one hand wrapped around her dog-tag: her symbol of her own strength and her ability to never give in. Quietly, he exited the noisy quiet of the bunker and silently shut the door.

Then he went upstairs and watched the news, checking out the skill of the machine he would soon be a part of, and admiring Rogue’s work.

She slept through lunch, and into the evening. When she awoke, she learned that the X-men had been shipped to Washington post-haste. She was hardly surprised. Having worked her ass off not moving around very much (except in cyberspace, where there was a lot of movement and activity indeed) for longer than most sane people bothered with, she retired to the Danger Room, deciding to figure out, with an idle curiosity, how the damned thing worked.

By the time that Scott, Ororo, Logan, and most of the junior team returned home, Rogue had mastered its operations and the logic of its interface; although she knew she had no time to get into the depths of its detailed programming...yet.

When Logan found her, she was in the midst of a programmed sim, and he sat back in the control room to admire her performance. Because the sim was one that he did not recognize, he easily assumed she had either made it herself, or had so altered one of the pre-existing ones that he did not recognize it...yet.

She was in her own uniform, which Logan had been informed was one she had modified from her days working with Remy. It was made of a black synthetic material that seemed to be a cross between light kevlar and something softer, with a bit of elasticity, so that it fit like perfectly-tailored denim––nothing loose, nothing hindering, but not ridiculously skin-tight. It was like a glove to her body, no seam pinching, stretching where it needed to, and not reflecting any light, so that she was as quiet and subtle as a shadow. Large pockets and a belt of small multi-tools (which could make any swiss army knife in the world feel hopelessly inadequate) were easy to access at her hips and on the outer side of her thighs. She wore steel-toed combat boots, because nothing else felt enough like war to get her into the right mindset.

She had a hunting knife in one hand, and stalked silently through the undergrowth toward a camp with an ominous brush pile in the middle of it.

Logan finally recognized the simulation as one based on an actual mission they had gone on in Louisiana, and which had very nearly gone all too wrong. She had changed the setting to somewhere with less dense swamp; although it was still wet underfoot, like the edge of a wetland. It got drier the closer she got to camp, but the underbrush and trees grew denser leading up to the clearing that the camp was in. The night-sounds were more real, louder.

In the original sim, the children tied up near the brush-pile could be heard crying.

Rogue looked like a panther as she moved; infinitely patient, one slow step at a time, listening intently to every sound around her. She paused at every human-like sound, and slowly crouched as much or as little as she needed to in order to make herself level with the brush around her. Her hair was smoothed back, her white streak covered by a black knit cap. Her pale skin was smeared only a little with mud, but it was enough to break up her outline while still leaving her most dangerous weapon available should she need it: her arms were bare up to her shoulders.

Logan had to admire her. She moved with a patient deliberation that he could not help but associate with years of experience she clearly did not have––except that she had taken them from someone else. Rogue was in full control of every muscle in her body, her movements so fluid that she seemed almost boneless as she weaved a crooked path through the terrain, moving so that there was always cover between herself and her target, but still finding the most silent ground to step on. She moved faster when the wind stirred, and then switched to impossibly slow when it grew silent.

Rogue was pure predator, and Logan found himself wishing she had been with them on that almost-failed mission. He might have relied on her, if she’d been on that approach with him. Instead, they had sent Kitty, who had only been on two training missions at that point, but who Scott had hoped would be able to get the mutant kids out of there quickly, and without harm. How he had expected her to do that when she was still in the habit of panicking, Logan had berated the Fearless Leader about for quite a while, using a lot of colorful language.

Kitty had set off a tripwire that she hadn’t seen, because she had shut off her mutation at just the wrong moment, and all Hell had broken loose.

Rogue’s eyes were fixed on the camp, but still moved down to scan her footing before every step. The faint glint of the tripwire caught her eye, and she approached slowly, not touching it, examining where it was posted, and what it was connected to. She then hovered over it, and set down several feet beyond it, crouching very low and remaining still for a few minutes, to be sure that she had not been seen. She was very, very patient.

“Why can’t all the ones we pick up have this kinda training?” Logan murmured.

“Because they don’t all suck out the brains of men who make Green Berets nervous,” said a low, all-too-stiff voice.

Turning to look at Scott, Logan grinned brightly, but with much all-too-evident sarcasm. “What a pity.”

“Mm.” Scott sounded less than agreeable. “She looks like she’s going into war.”

“She is, Scooter. It’s just a real quiet war, now, with politics the way they are. Not a Cold War, though. Too much blood for that.”

Scott straightened his shades, his jaw tightening. “I can’t see it like that. We aren’t fighting a unified force.”

“Neither is the War on Drugs or the War on Terrorism,” Logan countered.

Scott sighed. “We aren’t an army.”

“Damn straight we’re not, and that’s why it’s so damned hard to do this job.” Logan was watching Rogue on screen again. She had just silently knocked out the night watchmen with the butt end of her knife handle, and lowered them to the ground. When one guard had spotted her and started to yell, she had grabbed his throat so hard that his windpipe had made an audible, crunchy sound of protest. When he still tried to yell, she neatly snapped his neck and set him down with care.

“Then why are you here, Wolverine?” Scott finally bit out, unnerved by how efficiently, stealthily, and ruthlessly Rogue worked.

“Because if I weren’t here, most of you’d be dead by now,” Logan growled. “Because I know how to fight a war. The rest of you can be pristine in the way you ‘handle conflicts’, but I know how to do what needs to be done, and I’ll actually fuckin’ do it.”

“Like breaking people’s necks?” Scott hissed through grit teeth.

“When we did that mission in Louisiana, they killed one of the kids before we could even get there. Take another look at the screen.”

Scott did. Rogue had reached the hostages, and gestured for them to be silent. There were four kids, one with a broken leg. She looked around and then quietly cut them free. She carried three of them. The fourth with the broken leg, as it turned out, could fly, and he followed her when she took to the air.

Scott squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away.

Logan was silent, as he would not have been before, when he did not remember having his own shining ideals stomped on by war and crushed into a thousand pieces, more than seventy years ago. Longer, perhaps, than Scott might live.

“How do you live with it?” Scott said softly, dangerously, his hands clenching the back of a computer chair until his knuckles turned white.

“By living through it every day for years; living thought more than that and worse, Summers,” Logan said quietly. “I don’t expect you to approve of any of what it’s made us. Get pissed off if you like, call it unjust and unfair and make decisions that are rational and moral. Don’t be fucked up enough to do on instinct what I do...and what Rogue does. We learned lessons that people in the world you an’ Chuck are tryin’ to make won’t have to learn. Maybe one day ya won’t need us, but so long as you’re fightin’ monsters, you’re gonna need at least one monster on your side to fight ‘em like monsters fight, or else it’ll be you or Jeannie or ‘Ro, or one of the kids, that’ll become the monster.” He glared at Scott. “And yeah, that’s right, I’ve read Nietzsche. Get over it.”

Scott was staring at him, surprise and something like incredulity on his features, but he was also clearly touched. “You’ve changed.”

Logan snorted. “I’ve got more than a century of memories I didn’t have before.”

“Your life back,” Scott murmured. “It’s not...I’d thought it would change you more than this, so when you didn’t...”

Logan shook his head. “It was my life. I’m not that guy, though. Doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything from all those memories. I’m still the same asshole, I’m just a little more at peace with it, and don’t have a gapin’ hole in my life where somethin’ was stolen.”

Scott smirked. “Gee, it’s a little like redemption via an act of kindness.”

“They made you teach Tale of Two Cities again, didn’t they?” Logan countered.

“At least in this case, no gallows involved.”

Logan scowled at that. “Get out of here, One-Eye.”

“Why?”

“You’re not gonna want to see this next bit.” Logan gestured toward the screen. “She got the kids to safety and is goin’ back.”

“Why would...”

“Go away while you’re still in a good mood,” Logan warned.

Scott grumbled, but, for once, obeyed.

Logan was mildly amazed. He was right, though. Rogue was a lot less restrained once there weren’t little kids to traumatize. Most of the camp was alive at the end, tied up as federal agents arrived, but a few were quite notably otherwise and some of the survivors were badly injured. Rogue came into the control room, tugging off her cap and not looking at all surprised to see Logan there.

Up close, it was easier to tell just how well Rogue’s uniform was tailored. Her cheeks were flush with exertion and her eyes were bright. Her heartbeat was still slightly elevated. Logan’s mind was temporarily wiped clean of all thoughts except a quiet damn.

And she was slowly letting go of the coldness of fighting, but not completely, so when she smiled in greeting it was edged, dark, and somehow cat-like. “Hey, Sugah. Been here long?”

Logan felt a faint thrill, holding her gaze, knowing that behind those big brown eyes flecked with green was a mind that saw the world a lot like his own. The connection crackled for a moment, like pleasant tension. “Long enough. Scared off One-Eye for ya.”

Rogue raised her eyebrows. “Ah’m surprised he didn’ go outta his way to stop the sim an’ lecture me.” She picked up a folded white towel from a nearby chair, where she’d put it before her little ‘workout.’ She began wiping off the sheen of sweat from her skin.

Logan gave a low affirmative sound. “We had words, but they sounded more sage than usual on my side, which scared him off.”

Rogue shook her head, amused but still not loosened up enough to laugh; although she still mockingly crooned, “Aw, did you feel like a father-figure revealing the cold facts of life?”

Logan shuddered. “Oh fuck no!”

That earned him a low chuckle, but did not ease his sense of horror.

“Don’t worry, Sugah. Ah’ll never see you as a father figure.” She smirked brightly, but it shone like a knife. “Add up all the years in my head, and Ah’m older than you.”

Logan’s eyebrows lifted a little. “You’re in a good mood.”

Rogue shrugged. “My simulation editin’ works. Ah’m satisfied an’ lookin’ forward to puttin’ together my own.” Then she smiled. “And, o’ course, a little violence and a good bit of stalkin’ prey can occasionally perk up my mood.”

I could fall for this woman. Logan could not quite find any words, and just smirked at her, his eyes a little intense.

Rogue held his gaze for a moment too long and then began toweling her sweaty hair, perhaps hiding behind the towel, but when she lowered it, her hair was appealingly tousled and she had regained her composure. “How did Ah do, then?” She gestured back toward the danger room, genuinely curious about Logan’s opinion.

He widened his eyes a little. “Very good. I’d have killed a few more, but around here that’s generally looked down upon, but it’s really just a difference in our weapons: your strength, my claws. Yours can be made less lethal more easily. Your stealth is very good.”

Rogue smiled, a spark of predatory pride in the expression. “Thanks, Sugah.” Then she tilted her head and put her towel aside. “How was the capital?”

Logan shrugged with a noncommittal grunt. “Political. See what you mean about the president. Damn, he’s younger that I thought though, even if he’s goin’ grey awful quick.”

Rogue nodded, and started to make her way towards him. “Jean, Charles an’ Colossus stayin’ for the political shindig?”

Logan nodded, watching her intently. “Yeah. Your idea?”

“Nah, but it fit into a couple bits of the speech Ah suggested addin’.” She shrugged, coming to a halt when she was standing close to him.

Logan’s gaze lowered to the lines of her body. “That’s a damn fine uniform.”

“The best that Fenris could furnish, and that Ah could alter when a mission shredded it now an’ again and Ah’d have to repair it.” She ran her fingers along close-stitched seams like the remnants of battle scars.

Shredding it sounded like an interesting idea, but then he wouldn’t get to see her fight in it anymore. Then again, he might get to see her fight in leather, and that would be something to see. Then, as he was admiring the way the fingers of her left hand moved along a seam from her stomach down to her hip, he was surprised to hear the sound of a zipper. Rogue’s zipper. She had reached up with her right hand to the zipper up at her throat and begun to slowly pull it down. Logan silently thanked every deity he had ever heard of.

Dark fabric parted, framing the pale skin it exposed: the column of her throat, the impossibly perfect dip of her collar bone, the valley between her breasts––no bra, and again Logan was thanking deities––and the smooth, taut muscles of her stomach down to her navel. She only stopped when she reached that tool belt, but Logan could tell that the zipper went a few inches lower, and that with that belt out of the way that he could peel that uniform off of her real fast––or maybe very, very slowly, if he could stand the anticipation.

Rogue leaned forward, her breasts very nearly escaping her open uniform––which still clung to them for how well-fitted the cloth was––and resting her weight on her hands where they settled on Logan’s knees. “See somethin’ ya like, Sugah?”

“Hell yes, I do, Darlin’,” he rumbled, managing to tug his gaze upward and make eye contact. His hands itched to touch her, but he really wanted to see what she was planning to do next. The lack of bra and the return of that mischievous grin suggested that she did, indeed, have plans.

So he let her make the next move, and gave a faint purr when she leaned in close to catch his lips. The woman knew how to kiss, even by Logan’s standards, and that, added to the way she lifted his hand and firmly placed it under her uniform, had him getting hot under the collar. Her skin was smooth, as were the lines of her body as his hand roamed upward. He cupped a breast, hearing her breath catch as he ran his thumb across her nipple. The kiss lingered, prolonged, and Rogue pressed closer as Logan’s exploring hands threatened to melt her brain.

Especially when his fingers unbuckled her belt and slid further down, underneath the fabric of her uniform, until he cupped her sex, rubbing her slowly and making her gasp, breaking the kiss. Logan took the opportunity to lower his mouth to her oh-so-sensitive neck, making her shudder and her hips press into his hand. Her breathing turned staccato, ragged as she found herself increasingly overwhelmed by the tension in her lower abdomen. One of her hands clutched Logan’s shoulder while the other clenched around the fabric of his shirt over his chest. “Logan,” she panted.

He gave a low growl, the vibration of the sound at her throat drawing a whimper from her. His finger slid inward, past her outer lips, the scent of her arousal fogging his brain. She was wet, slick and so close. He slid two fingers into her, rubbing her clit with his thumb as his mouth tormented the skin of across the column of her throat––and less than a minute of such ministrations was all she needed, an inarticulate moan welling up from her chest as she shuddered against him, giving a low noise of disappointment when his hand left he. With his other hand, Logan caught her around the waist to keep her from falling off his lap.

Logan licked his fingers clean idly as he watched her catch her breath. She tasted rich and tart, and she was beautiful. “You okay there, Darlin’?”

Rogue grinned, her eyes bright when her eyelids fluttered open. “Yeah, Sugah, but now it’s your turn.” And then she unbuttoned his pants and pulled down the zipper.

Shortly afterward, she slid out of his grasp and all the breath left Logan’s lungs as she released his erection from the confines of his pants, proceeding to explore it with her hands and mouth.

Logan groaned, muttering something utterly incoherent as he ran his fingers through her hair, his other hand clutching at her shoulder. She might be inexperienced, but she sure as HELL wasn’t a novice; she was goddamned expert, judging by what she could do with her tongue. And then she took him into her mouth and Logan lost awareness of anything else. He lost it when she purred and he felt it so damned intimately. She swallowed around him as he released, making him shudder and growl. Then she slowly let him go, getting to her feet again. “You okay there, Sugah?” she asked lightly, playfully.

“Goddamn, Marie.”

She chuckled and zipped up her uniform, much to Logan’s disappointment, but then she said softly in his ear, “Told ya Ah’d make up for it, Logan.” She pressed a brief kiss against his temple, buckled her belt, and walked out of the room.

Logan gaped after her, and the way her hips swayed like the tail of a cat: a silent message that the game was by no means finished. He cursed under his breath in spite of the wicked grin that formed on his lips. Hell, I think I’ve fallen for this woman.

Still somewhat shocked by her own audacity, Rogue tried to straighten out her thoughts. She’d gotten the idea to do what she’d done as soon as she spotted him in the control room, at the end of the Danger Room sim. It had been a fleeting thought, of the sort that she was all too used to pushing aside. God, how long had it been since she’d stopped saying ‘no’ to that particular voice in the back of her head? Rogue thought about it, and realized that she had never said anything else to it. Damn, what a thrill.

Definitely gotta start sayin’ ‘yes’ more often.

She was still flushed, still aroused. There was no way that she could just head back to work downstairs. Gotta cool down. Cool down...heh. A smile overtook her as she thought of a way to do it.

Rogue made her way upstairs to her room, removed everything from her pockets, took off her belt, and stepped out the window and into the sky. The wind and the quiet felt like home as she took flight. Maybe Ah’ve been underground too long.

She rose quickly, until human eyes would struggle to see her against the backdrop of stars and clouds. There was peace, up here. No airplanes overhead in this part of the state, as the hub of New York city always seemed to send its planes out on either side of it. Rogue had little doubt that Xavier had seen that as part of the location’s appeal, and had probably been quietly working to keep it that way.

Rogue floated, glided, swooped, slowly getting closer to the low-hanging clouds that obscured her view of the moon. The air was thin, and cold, and the wind surprisingly strong. The lingering traces of sweat on Rogue’s body threatened to turn to ice, but Rogue focused on what little remained of what she had long ago taken from Remy, and was able to keep herself warm. She only ever kept the smallest traces of others’ mutations, when she didn’t kill them, but those traces had their uses––however rarely. Remy’s ability to channel and transform energy had left her with a heightened awareness and control of her own internal energy flow; as a side effect, she could consciously control how much heat her body gave off. Even in the freezing air, she did not shiver, even as she felt the cold. It felt fantastic to be so warm and so cold at the same time.

Rogue purred, which was a trace of Logan’s mutation that promised to linger. It made her smile even as she plunged into the cold cloud, soaking her uniform in water vapor as ice crystals formed along it in spider-web traces. Larger crystals formed like jewels in her hair. She continued to float up, holding her breath and keeping her eyes shut; past experience had taught her that floating particles of ice and dust landing in wide-open eyes stung like a bitch, and that inhaling cloud vapor lead to coughing fits.

When she felt herself emerge through a break in the cloud, her eyes opened and she hovered carefully in place, moving with the cloud, which still clung about her calves and ankles where she had emerged. It was a full moon, and the cloudscape around her glowed with it. As a child, when she’d first flown in an airplane and seen the fantasy-place of the clouds from the round window, she had wanted to walk through it and climb it and taste it.

Rogue smiled now, her mind as quiet as the night air around her, her eyes drinking in a childhood dream come true. Remy had never understood, the day he asked her whether she regretted being a mutant. Even before she could fly, she had not, and he could not see why.

That should have been her first clue.

Rogue found it very reassuring that Logan had never asked.

She bit her lip, smiling through it with a pure and light kind of happiness. Her facial expressions were much more animated when she flew; she couldn’t help it. She could feel happy up here as she almost never did on the ground.

Rogue let herself drift over the cloudscape, through the arches and amongst the spires of it. Her mind was always clearest up here. She licked her lips, the taste of Logan still on her tongue mingling with the taste of cloud-vapor. It was good. At some point, Rogue thought with a smile, she would have to take him flying.

After an hour or so in the clouds she returned to earth, and slipped out of her uniform. Her dry, day-to-day clothes felt warm and comfortable.

She stepped out of her room and shut the door, lingering thoughtfully in the hallway for a moment as she looked at the door to Logan’s room. He was in there, she knew. It would be so easy to join him. Rogue’s lips parted as she gave a silent sigh, and made her way in the opposite direction down the hall, to the elevators. She returned to her bunker, and continued working late into the night, spreading seeds of change across the most fertile and tactically advantageous lands in cyberspace. Soon they would be picked up by the inhabitants of those virtual lands, and enough of them would explode into life and into bloom, that even if only a tenth of her seeds took root, they would in turn re-seed and spread far and wide, filling up the lands Rogue had marked with them. By noon tomorrow, she expected them to overflow into other lands, as well, and begin growing there, too.

The seeds that Rogue spread were memes: contagious pieces of thought that stuck in people’s minds, growing on their closest held beliefs about what it meant to be good people.

It had all started with the first, most powerful seeds: the videos of Stryker’s victims, and the raw emotional power of the images. Then she worked more subtly, influencing the language used to discuss Stryker and his deeds, and quietly making more information available in the most untraceable places, the dark depths where people collected horrors, and where other people made admirable efforts learn from the past horrors in order to stop some in the process of happening and prevent others from ever being repeated. Agents of law swam through looking for crimes. Agents of truth were less common, but they had a much more interesting effect: they brought horrors into the light.

Rogue only needed one or two of these journalists. They did not even need to be respectable or famous; they had only needed to find what she had left for them.

It had taken less than a day. Then Rogue had only to spread the word in her quiet way: posting links, luring others into the depths looking for more.

The wildfire had spread from there, and Rogue had merely guided it now and then, to places it would find the best fuel and light up the places that she most needed lit.

She had photos and footage, which the television media had been thusfar too scared to touch, that depicted the damage and horrors committed by Sentinels in the countries that had not been able to stop them. Many, especially in Britain, had been taken by security cameras. The images depicted children being hunted down by metal monsters, and the homes and lives of innocent non-mutants torn apart purely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rogue enhanced them, and set them loose. Like an invisible divine hand, she guided their progress late into the morning. She was faintly aware of someone approaching the door to her bunker, but did not look up, even when the figure on the screen in her peripheral vision, video fed from her security camera, did not leave when his code failed.

When her door swung open with only the softest whisper, Rogue still did not look up.

“Hello, Remy,” she greeted.

Remy leaned against the doorframe to watch her for a few moments, then stepped in and shut the door behind him. “Up to mischief, chere?”

“Always,” she countered. It was easy banter, and had been repeated between them at least once on every mission they had gone on for Fenris. “What’s on ya mind?”

He strode up to her chair and leaned against a nearby cabinet. He waited until she turned to meet his gaze, before he spoke. “You, chere. An’ how much a’ thief I am, to de bone.”

“With a thief’s pride,” Rogue warned quietly, her voice edged with something dark that lingered in her eyes.

Remy sighed, running a hand through his red-brown hair. “I learnt long ago ya can’t be stole, Rogue. Don’t stop me wishin’.”

“Then you should stop yourself, Remy. Waste your time on wishes, and you won’t see what’s right in front of you, and that’s dangerous for a thief, if only for the possibility of having missed an opportunity.”

Remy’s eyebrows raised. “Quoi? Co faire?”

Rogue smiled just a little, and shook her head. “Ah have eyes an’ ears, Sugah. Don’t tell me yours are malfunctionin’.” She paused to look at him and, seeing that he was clueless, suggested, “Who was it you were really buttin’ heads with, when you first got here? One of the girls just seemed to really hate you, right?”

Remy’s brow furrowed now. “Well, I did kinda almos’ blow up de junior team. None o’ dem like me much at firs’, ‘xcept Jube-Jube. She a street rat, she understood.”

Rogue smirked at that. “The street rat speaks fluent swamp rat. Ah’m not surprised. But she ain’t the one half in love with you.”

That made him hesitate, leaning more of his weight on the cabinet, and on one hand that he rested on the edge of Rogue’s desk to lean a little closer. “Have I been dat out of it?”

“Only since Ah got here, but somethin’ tells me this is new t’ her. It’s a recent change, and she’s still uneasy with it.”

Remy looked away, rubbing his chin thoughtfully for several moments, only half aware of Rogue once more tapping at her keyboard, her eyes glued to her main computer screen. After nearly a minute, he finally seemed to get it, his eyes growing suddenly wide. He said something in French under his breath that sounded heavy with shock and disbelief.

“When did she stop hating you?” Rogue asked quietly.

“I got hurt.”

“Being protective and noble while doing it, I’m guessing?” Rogue’s own unique experiences with the human psyche had given her a good sense for people’s characters, and the patterns of romantic entanglements to which they were prone.

“Oui.” Remy swallowed. “We still argue, but it started bein’ more like a game, den. Me, her an’ Jube-Jube make a good team. We all seen t’ings an’ lived in dark places.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Merde. When did she change?”

Rogue was smiling now. “Sometime ‘fore Ah got here. Somethin’ started it.”

Remy suddenly looked disturbed. “Oh no.”

That earned him an amused and curious look. “Oh, I know that voice, Sugah. Ah’ve heard that once before, shortly after ya’d gotten drunk enough not to remember half a what ya’d done. Whatever happened to those Egyptian artifacts you had in your coat?”

“Oh, mon Dieu. She tol’ me I didn’ do anything but pass out sometime after tryin’ to do card tricks drunk-”

“Ah though the puttied-over spots there had a familiar shrapnel-pattern,” Rogue mused.

“Merde, what did I do?” He sounded sincerely unnerved.

“Afraid you led her on?” Rogue asked innocently.

Remy opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand, cursing under his breath. “No, no dat not my worry, damn you.”

Rogue smirked, seeing that he had abruptly gotten over his fixation on her, in favor of a more compliant target.

After cursing for a bit longer, Remy seemed to regain his composure. He gave one last ragged sigh and asked, “You comin’ up for breakfast?”

Rogue’s fingers tapped out a final, decisive clatter across her keyboard, and half of her screens went black. She pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “Ah suppose that might be a good idea.” Her smirk faded when he raised a hand to cup her cheek.

Remy smiled faintly. “If de hairy man give you any trouble, call me an’ I’ll make ‘is skeleton combust.

“Remy,” Rogue sighed, sounding disappointed, and only just restraining herself from rolling her eyes.

“Ah, chere, jus’ lemme say it. I know ya can tear de world an’ him apart, but I gotta tell ya I got your back somehow.” He dropped his hand away and crossed his arms over his chest, shaking his head.

Rogue blinked twice, then smiled in a half-puzzled fashion and shook her head. “Thanks Remy. Ah appreciate it. And Ah’m sorry about the injury to your tail. Ah’ll try t’ be more careful with the rockin’ chair.”

Remy gave a surprised laugh, and followed her to the door. When she opened it for him, he leaned in and said softly in her ear, “I knew about your neck de whole time.” Then he sauntered past.

Rogue stilled for a moment, shocked, then smirked faintly, and followed him, shaking her head. “She’ll be damned lucky to steal your heart, ya know that right?”

“Was it luck you had, chere?” Remy mocked, raising his eyebrows at her as they approached the elevator.

Rogue thought about it. “Alright. Fine. She gets major points for tyin’ you in knots without even sayin’ anything. Ah at least flirted openly. She’s pretty subtle in this respect.”

“Oui.” The elevator dinged, and the doors swished open. He let her step in first. “Now, Logan, that homme has de luck.”

“No more than you, Remy. Ah didn’ even see him in uniform at first, there, so he didn’ have that advantage like you did.”

Remy shook his head. “Y’ cruel to me, chere.”

“You wound my pride, Ah wound yers.”

“I t’ink it was you who started it. Certainly looked like it in de kitchen dat night.”

“Yeah.” She smirked a little. “Maybe so. But if ya hadn’t been so easily distracted by me, you coulda made your move first. Not my fault, there.”

Remy sighed heavily. “All I gotta do t’ check my ego be to talk to you, Rogue.”

“It’s secretly my purpose in life. Along with bein’ generally mysterious an’ snarky.”

“An’ seducin’ de Wolverine.”

“You seduce, Remy. This is a different kinda game. It ain’t really about pursuit.”

“Non? What it be about, den?”

Rogue just smiled wickedly, and said nothing. The elevator doors opened, revealing a surprised-looking Wolverine, who had apparently been about to press the ‘down’ button. “Hey, Logan,” Rogue greeted, her smile still present.

Logan looked from Rogue, to Remy, back and forth.

Remy waved slightly, and slid past Logan to head down the hall. “Be seein’ you, non? I got somebody I need to talk to.”

“Best of luck with her,” Rogue called.

Logan’s eyebrows raised as he watched the Cajun leave. “What was that about?”

“What’d Jean wanna talk ta ya about?” Rogue countered, and shrugged idly. “Although he’s more bruised than worried. Ah just pointed out somethin’ he hadn’t noticed.”

“Siryn?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s about time,” Logan huffed, but he smirked when Rogue grabbed his wrist, tugging him away.

“It’s also about time Ah got fed, Sugah, come on.”

It was late into the morning, so the kitchen was full of teenagers freshly woken from their late-night teenage antics. Of course, most of them weren’t going to be teenager’s much longer. Logan would still always call them ‘the kids’ much to their chagrin. He watched Rogue move through them like oil moving across the surface of water.

They had accepted her as an X-man, after she had helped them take on the sentinels, and they had naturally adjusted to her “touch issues” by keeping a little bit of distance. Of course, they were still young and absent-minded, but Rogue was less so, and smoothly avoided any thoughtless contact. Only once did she move quickly enough for it to be called a flinch, and that was to avoid being struck about the head by one of Jubilee’s dramatic story-telling hand gestures. Jubilee never made exceptions for these gestures, and it was usually considered a right of passage to be hit by one for the first time. As it was, Jubilee only smirked a little and complimented Rogue’s exemplary reflexes.

“It comes with the territory,” Rogue said.

“Is that your catch phrase or something?” Siryn inquired.

Rogue seemed amused by the idea. “Ah hadn’t thought about it, but maybe.” She shrugged and moved away with her breakfast plate, now piled high with an unruly mixture of fruit and protein. With her plate in one hand, and two bottles of molson in the other, she sat next to Logan, and handed him his breakfast beer.

“You made it back alive. Now I really am impressed.”

“Ah also apparently have a catchphrase.” She opened her beer and casually rolled the cap into a compacted little ball with her unnatural strength. “And Ah think you were impressed before then.”

“Yeah. I was. Last night, especially.”

Rogue smirked, and said with light and airy sarcasm, “Ah never woulda guessed.”

Logan chuckled, and took a sip of his beer.

They both settled back quietly, people-watching as they ate.

Remy returned, obviously still looking for his prey, appeared puzzled and perhaps even irritated until he spotted Siryn sitting next to Jubilee. He did pause as he passed Logan and Rogue sitting at the bar. “Beer for breakfast?” he questioned, showing a hint of disgust.

“Ah didn’ say anything when you had bourbon with your pancakes,” Rogue countered.

Remy’s brow furrowed. “But that’s pancakes.”

Rogue arched an eyebrow at him, obviously unimpressed by his logic. “Beer goes with anything except pancakes, in my opinion.”

“No accountin’ for taste, I suppose.” He turned to Logan. “No ‘ffense, mon ami,” he added, a mocking smirk gracing his expression before he sauntered off to join the madness of the junior team’s table.

Logan’s eyebrows raised. “Did he just-”

“Yeah. He’s not bad at snarky banter now an’ then. He’s better at it in French, though.”

Logan snorted, shaking his head, but smirked a bit when Remy squeezed his way in to sit next to Siryn. “She speaks French, y’know. Shocked the Hell out of him, early after he joined up, when he tried to say something under his breath and she ripped him a new one over it, in the language. Dunno what it was about, but it sounded...colorful.”

Rogue chuckled quietly.

“You got any more work today?”

Rogue took a deep breath and exhaled, swallowing her bite of bacon. “Not ‘til after the news conference. Not much left to do before that but nitpick neurotically at stuff that’s doin’ fine enough on its own.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes as much as it should have, and Logan could tell that she was beginning to run haggard, and it wasn’t just the lack of sleep; it was what she was doing instead of sleeping and what a toll it was taking to keep herself from reacting to it.

He’d been there before. “It’s gettin’ to ya.”

Rogue’s expression abruptly closed and she looked away. “It’s just a little raw, is all. I’m still raw from that cage,” she said quietly, but with cold conviction. The brief visit back to a militant mindset felt like having cooling ointment put on a burn. “Plus Ah haven’t had the chances you have, to go kill all of ‘em.” Her eyes darkened considerably, but there was heat in it that seemed to energize her somewhat. “Not yet, Ah haven’t.” She took a pull of beer.

“Keepin’ track of ‘em, though?”

“Damn straight, Ah am.”

“Let me know if I can join you when you get the chance to go after ‘em.” He didn’t ask to help; she didn’t need help, but he wanted to cause them pain, too.

She smiled a little, showing her teeth, but it did not reach her eyes, which were still remained, at least for a few moments, hard and dead-looking as only war can make them. “We’ll see, Sugah. Thanks.” Her eyes did lighten a bit when she looked at him.

Logan’s fingers traced her spine. “You should sleep, before the speech.”

Rogue nodded, setting her fork down. “Ah know. Ah planned on it.” She sighed a little. “This is gonna be a long day. It’s a waitin’ day. Ah hate those.”

Logan nodded. “Me too.”

They exchanged an empathetic look, and finished their breakfast in silence, and Logan followed her out into the hall. She let him lightly press her against the wall, his fingers brushing lightly along the lines of her face as her eyes fell shut. She looked weary, and that aged her more than anything else Logan had yet seen, but the strangeness of the tender gesture––and how much she actually liked it––made her brow crease just slightly, and the puzzlement made her look younger again.

“You’ve got freakishly high endurance for sleep deprivation, especially without a healing factor,” Logan said; it was as much a question as an observation.

Rogue smirked a little. “Ah like that you’re observant,” she murmured sincerely, and opened her eyes. “Ah’ve gotten used to nightmares worse than yours Logan, startin’ back when Ah was more fragile. That fragility got me int’ the habit of missin’ a lotta sleep. My mutation’s all about adaptation, so it makes sense that Ah was able to adjust to it. Ah think day eight has proven to be my limit, though, without absorbin’ anyone.” She shrugged.

Logan nodded, understanding; although, it did give him an idea. He gently tugged her away from the wall by her wrist. “C’mon.” He was relieved when she followed. He took her into the main TV room, which was empty for now. In several hours, it would be full of nervous mutants watching the presidential news conference, but it was currently quiet. Logan sprawled on the couch and tugged Rogue so she landed in his lap. “Sleep here.”

Her eyebrows raised a little, and she almost hesitated on instinct, but she was honestly curious, and she had always been a bit of an addict when it came to new experiences, be they aesthetic, sensual, or insanely risky. She rested her head on Logan’s shoulder and lay down, her body settling along his, her weight half on him and half on the couch. Her muscles twitched and tensed instinctively when he wrapped an arm around her waist, but his scent and the sounds of his breathing calmed her, and she slowly shut her eyes as the tension began slowly draining from her body. It felt utterly foreign to her, to fall asleep without being secure in how alone she was, how out of reach or even how prepared she was to rise at the slightest hint of someone else’s presence. Alone meant safe, and all of Rogue’s most deeply-ingrained instincts told her so. But she felt good here, and warm. She wasn’t even unnerved by the realization that she really trusted Logan this much.

“Thank you,” she murmured softly, and felt his arm tighten momentarily to give her a reassuring squeeze. She purred, very quietly. It got softer as she got closer to sleep.

Logan shut his eyes as her breathing slowed, although he opened them briefly when one of her hands moved instinctively to clutch her dogtag; she was only half-conscious by then, but something about the gesture struck a chord in him. She shifted a little, so her forehead rested against his neck and she was a little more curled up: something else about her that was cat-like. Then, at last, she fell fully asleep, going bonelessly relaxed even as her grip tightened a little around her dogtag.

Logan relaxed too, listening to her breathing, and the movements of people throughout the mansion. He’d made this offer on impulse, but it felt right, strangely: providing her with something It was comfortable here, and he found himself dozing lightly, waking up when people walked through any nearby halls. He could hear nervous talks about politics as he drifted in and out. Within about an hour he woke as he felt Rogue’s muscles tense, and her heartbeat start racing. Her breathing sped just slightly, but even in dreams she was used to keeping it even. She smelled of anger and a grimace flickered across her features.

Surprising himself somewhat, Logan stroked her hair and whispered her name in her ear: once, then twice. She calmed slowly, and shifted her position a little, her breathing deepening so that she took in his scent, before her body relaxed again.

It was shortly after that when Scott walked in, glancing at them as he settled in a nearby chair, then doing a perfect double-take and becoming very still as he realized quite what he was seeing on the couch.

Logan raised his eyebrows in a way that silently challenged: You got a problem, Bub?

Scott slowly leaned back in his chair, still staring. He was remembering the way Rogue had flinched the first night she stayed at the mansion, and the look on her face when it happened, and then the colder and more dangerous look that she gave him shortly afterward. The Fearless Leader was rather understandably shocked, seeing her now curled up and sleeping soundly on top of Logan, and the pair of them looking rather like cats in a sunbeam––assuming, of course, that the cats in question were panthers.

Finally, in the back of his head, Scott found the answer: Monsters of a feather.... It all made sense, and really, wasn’t very strange at all. Not after what he had seen Logan do on missions. Not after seeing Rogue fight sentinels, and not after seeing her in the Danger Room sim calmly snapping a man’s neck. He nodded lightly at Logan, and turned on the TV, making sure that the volume was very low.

Rogue stirred, but did not wake. Logan’s fingers stroked her waist as Scott watched the news, his face stern and serious as people speculated about international relations with Genosha.

Rogue adjusted to the sound of the TV relatively quickly. Logan suspected that it was a skill she had picked up that allowed her to sleep in that bunker of hers surrounded by the low rumble and constant electronic hum of her machines.

After a while, on the third or fourth batch of commercials, Scott turned the volume down further and asked, “Do you trust her?”

Logan rolled his eyes and gestured at himself and Rogue with his free hand.

“Let me rephrase: can we trust her––the X-men?”

“As much as you can trust me,” Logan said quietly.

Scott ruminated on this. After a long pause, he stood up. “Okay,” he said finally, putting the remote in Logan’s free hand on his way out of the room. From the doorway, Scott added, “But for the record: I’d prefer it if she’d stop calling me ‘boy’.”

Logan only smirked. “No promises,” he muttered, and changed the channel.

Hours later, Rogue was still adrift, and quite thoroughly so. When Logan finally woke her, shaking her shoulder lightly and calling her (Rogue, not Marie this time) she instinctively flipped out a bit. Her muscles tensed and she pushed herself upright, eyes wild and a low, perplexed growl escaping her throat. It took her a moment to realize that she had pinned Logan’s wrists over his head. She raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Sorry, Logan,” she said, but she sounded rather amused.

Logan was glad he’d waited until no one was around before trying to wake Rogue. “Good morning to you, too, Darlin’.” He sounded sarcastic. He didn’t bother to struggle after his initial instinctive tug; she was stronger than him. And he thought there was something entertaining about the incongruity of her size and appearance versus his own.

Rogue’s amusement took on a slightly wicked form. “Do ya really mind, Sugah?” she asked, giving a slow grind of her hips.

Logan hissed softly through his teeth. “Admittedly, it might be growin’ on me.”

“Oh, an innuendo there would just be too easy,” Rogue countered, releasing his wrists and holding herself up by folding her arms and resting them against his chest. She looked around for a clock. “What time is it?”

“Dinner.”

Rogue’s lips formed a thoughtful moue. “Hmm. Ah suppose that means we should go get food, but that involves gettin’ up.” She sounded less than thrilled with this notion.

Logan smirked. “I’ll make it up to you,” he rumbled wickedly.

Rogue’s eyes lit up and she smirked back. “Will ya now?”

His hands settled on her hips and slid up along her sides and her lower back. “Yeah.”

She bit her lip, dragging it between her lip slowly as she tilted her head slightly to one side, looking wickedly contemplative. “Guess Ah’ll be gettin’ up, then.” She unfolded her arms, placing splayed hands on Logan’s chest as she slid her legs off the couch and planted her feet; in the process, she bent forward enough that he could see down the front of her tank top, to the dog tag nestled between her pale breasts. Then she stepped back, standing upright, and headed for the kitchen. Logan followed her, a mischievous smirk on his lips.

Again, the pair resumed their places at the edge of the crowd, despite sitting near the middle of the long dining room table. They watched and listened as though everyone else in the room were just part of their dinner and a show. On a few occasions one or the other tossed out a sarcastic or a witty comment, but for the most part they simply weren’t great social talkers, and there was a show of sorts to be had, as Remy tried to be subtle about flirting with Siryn by way of hopefully inspiring her to forgive him, when in fact this only seemed to ruffle her. Of course, Remy was a professional, and when Siryn seemed to approach outright viciousness in her replies, he said something full of meaning, and held her gaze just a bit too long as he said it so very lightly, so that it shook her up a little and made her blush.

“You’re smirking like you taught him or something,” Logan said to Rogue.

“Blame the narcissism of his ghost, and how amused Ah am that he needed me to point out what he’d been missin’ while moonin’ after me,” Rogue replied in what was almost a whisper, her smirk turning briefly into a grin that showed her teeth.

Logan chuckled.

And maybe he won’t eavesdrop, accidentally or otherwise, while we’re on the patio, Rogue added mentally, sipping at her glass of iced tea.

At one point, Scott asked Rogue if her technological expertise extended to cutting-edge aircraft, which caused her facial expression to abruptly mask.

“Mm. Ah may’ve had some experience with planes.”

Remy chuckled. “Ya did take a bit of a crash course.”

Rogue shot him a glare that only a few people at the table could see any kind of playfulness in. “Just the one time, and that was technically part of plan B anyway.”

“Luckily,” Remy shot back.

“In this case I’m just wondering if you might be able to look into the blackbird’s cloaking mode. From what I understand, it works similarly to the illusions in the Danger Room, since Hank designed both, but I’m not really a software guy.”

Logan, Rogue, Remy and Jubilee simultaneously bit their tongues to prevent themselves interrupting him with innuendo concerning ‘hardware’.

“The cloak has been acting up a bit, and I was hoping you could look into it for me?” Scott inquired.

“Ah could probably do that, sometime after the press conference,” Rogue agreed, briefly wondering what exactly had removed the Fearless Leader’s last traces of distrust. She glanced questioningly at Logan, but he only raised his eyebrows knowingly. Rogue made a mental note to ask him later.

Of course, Rogue had said the magic words and a more furtive sort of conversation started around the table. Worried looks, and flickers of hope crossed people’s faces. Rogue could see, with some bittersweet empathy, when the hope on someone’s face immediately turned into hesitance and worry. This was a table of mutants who had long ago become accustomed to their hopes never quite coming to fruition.

“The only difference between them and us, is that they still get that hope at all. It still lights up their eyes, like something sacred,” Rogue said very softly, into her drink, so only Logan could hear it.

He nodded very slightly, almost imperceptibly. “Kinda like faith.”

Rogue hesitated. “Do ya ever miss it?”

After a thoughtful pause, he answered honestly, “Not really. You?”

“Not in the slightest,” she replied, with a faintly surprised sincerity.

She left dinner before he did, but as she pushed her chair back her fingers brushed along Logan’s thigh. He watched her out of the corner of her eye as she went, waited five minutes as he finished his meal, and then followed her, the trail of her enticing scent leading him upstairs. He found her sitting on the large oak desk in what was laughingly referred to as Logan’s office, because he almost never actually occupied it, for all that he was supposed to, as the mansion’s official self-defense teacher.

Rogue was thoughtfully looking over a few papers that had been left out on the desk. “These are from last year,” she observed in a slightly amused tone, when Logan entered. The light silk scarf she’d had around her neck had been tugged off, and set aside on the corner of the desk. She looked up when she heard him lock the office door. She smirked a little. “Ooh, do Ah get my incentive, now?”

Logan rested his hands on either side of her hips, leaning close. He smirked wickedly, especially as Rogue’s heartbeat quickened. “If you think you can handle it.”

Rogue gave a low purr. “Ah can handle anything you can dish out, Sugah.”

He plucked the papers from her hands and tossed them aside, cupped the back of her neck and pulled her into a demanding kiss. Rogue returned it eagerly, wrapping a leg around him and sliding her calf up the inner side of his leg as her tongue teased him.

Giving a low growl, Logan pulled her closer, his free hand leaving the desk to slip under the back of her shirt, caressing and exploring along the lines of her back, listening as her breath quickened. She was so sensitive, so responsive. He broke the kiss and moved his mouth down to her neck, loving the way her noise of protest turned into a gasp. Her hands slid under the front of his shirt, exploring his chest and stomach. The heat of his body and the impatience of his wandering hand, now unhooking her bra, were getting to her, making her initial excitement quickly deepen into full-blown arousal. She lifted her arms when he pulled at her shirt, and shivered slightly at how cool the air felt on her bare skin.

Logan paused for a few moments to take her in: round and shapely breasts proportionate to her frame with taut honey-colored nipples, lean muscles under her skin making her arms wiry and her stomach taut with the hint of a six-pack, and the elegant battle-axe curves of her body––ribcage tapering in at her narrow waist only to bow out again at her hips left slightly bare by the way her pants hung low on her hips.

Rogue bit her lip, watching his face as she tried, with minimal success, to get her breathing back under control. “Enjoyin’ the view?”

Logan met her gaze with a dark look, dropping her shirt and bra to the floor and leaning in closer again, pressing the evidence of his enjoyment against her. “What do you think?”

At the feel of him, Rogue’s cheekbones lit with a soft pink flush and her pupils dilated. She grinned brightly. “Ah think Ah enjoy you enjoyin’ the view, but Ah’d much prefer ya do more than just look,” she purred, and ground her hips against him.

“I plan on it,” he growled, and reached down between them to unbutton her jeans. He tugged the zipper down, and she arched her hips, allowing him to tug the fabric of both her pants and panties down her legs, and he went down on one knee as he did, smirking at the way her breathing grew more ragged at the sight of him there between her legs.

Her scent filled the air, heated and heady. Logan was sure he could drown in it. He put one of her legs over his shoulder and pushed the other aside, parting the outer lips of her sex with his fingers and tasting her in a long, slow lick that made her whimper.

Rogue felt her arms shaking and leaned back, resting on her elbows as she looked down the length of her body at Logan. He shot her one more grin and latched his mouth around her clit, suckling and licking until Rogue’s body quivered and her head fell back as she softly moaned something that sounded like his name.

Logan continued to tease her, with his mouth, but couldn’t resist feeling her more intimately again, and thus slid two fingers into her, pumping slowly. She was very tight, and only got tighter as her climax approached, the change in her scent––the way it deepened and gained an almost spicy edge––making him painfully hard in his jeans. He sucked at her again, flicking his tongue across her clit in quick, sharp licks as he did so, curling his fingers up slightly and pumping faster.

Rogue shuddered as the sensations overwhelmed her, pleasure bursting out from her core and sending waves of bliss throughout the whole of her body as she climaxed. She whimpered in relief when Logan released her clit, but the continued pumping of his fingers kept her riding on the aftershocks long enough that she did not realize he had gotten to his feet again and was leaning over her until his mouth wrapped itself around her nipple, making her gasp.

Her eyes fell open to stare at him, and Logan met her gaze easily, releasing her breast from his lips, only to capture it again in his hand as he leaned in further, his lips brushing hers as he pulled his hand away from her sex. “I told you I’d make it up to you,” he purred.

Rogue shivered again, feeling his erection pressed against her thigh. Her eyes still slightly glazed, she hooked a leg around his hip and pulled him closer. She nipped playfully at the corner of his jaw. “That ya did, Sugah, but now what do you want?”

Logan groaned softly, his own breathing far from even now. “I haven’t got a condom on me-”

“Ya don’t need it.” She smirked a little. “I was under some interesting drugs during all the surgery on my skin, and apparently asked for an IUD birth control, and was somehow articulate enough to claim it would be needed, and they saw fit t’ give me one despite how loopy I was when I asked.” She leaned up and ran her tongue along the line of his throat.

Logan hissed in relief and reached down between them to get his jeans open. Rogue helped, unfastening the button and pulling his zipper down once he’d unfastened his belt, and using her legs to push the denim down and out of the way. Then she tugged his shirt over his head and arched up against his chest, shivering at the feel of so much skin, and all of the strength and heat of him from beneath it.

She said his name in a low, breathy voice as she felt the head of his cock pressing into her. He stretched her, pushing in slowly. Rogue trembled in anticipation, despite the slight sting as he pressed through the only part of her that could be called her ‘innocence’; she could scarcely feel it, since he was kissing her again. He was hot and hard and she bucked against him, sending the last few inches into her all at once and earning a moan from both of them, Logan breaking the kiss to stare at her: shocked and very, very turned on.

Rogue’s hands clutched at his ass and she met his gaze with a dark and hungry look as he pulled back. “Don’t hold back, Logan.”

He growled and slammed back into her, deeper than before, and rougher, picking up a rhythm and not being gentle. The way she met his every stroke so expertly, and the ways she kept touching him and running her hands over him as he fucked her, made it clear that she was hardly innocent, but he knew that he was the only one who had ever touched her, and that thought was strangely satisfying to him. He growled almost possessively as he fixed his mouth over a tender spot on her neck. She felt good, and knew what she was doing, and it took all of his control to keep going long enough for her to reach another climax before he lost it, and came within her with one last bruising thrust.

They lay entangled on the desk for a minute, still breathing hard. Rogue trembled now and then with the lingering weakness and sensitivity from her orgasm, and it was so lovely that Logan was trying to figure out whether they had time for another round when voices reached him from the hallway.

“But he’s never in his office.” That annoying tone could come from no one but the ice-boy.

“Well, he’s certainly not in any of his other haunts, but the bikes are all present and accounted for.” Click-click. “And the door’s actually locked for once.”

Logan lifted his head and glared at the door shortly before the second speaker––sometimes called Pyro––knocked loudly. “Hey! Anybody in there?”

“Fuckoff!” Logan growled.

“Hey, don’t claw the messenger. Jean just told me to track down your hairy ass to tell you that the speech is gonna be on in half an hour, only since it took me so long to find you it’s more like ten, now. Also, do you know where Rogue is?”

Logan looked down at her and raised an eyebrow.

Rogue merely shrugged, appearing genuinely amused.

“Consider her informed,” Logan replied.

“What does that mean?” Iceman asked Pyro quietly, but not quietly enough.

“It means Ah got the message, and ya can go away now.”

There was a surprised and puzzled silence from the two young men behind the door. Then Pyro said, “Uh...sure.” And they left.

Logan snorted in irritation at them, and consoled himself by earning a low noise of surprise from Rogue as he nibbled her neck.

“If ya keep doin’ that, we may never leave, Logan,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even.

Logan considered for a moment and pulled back. “Yeah, and then Scooter may break the door down to yell at me, and half the damned school would somehow end up starin’ at us.” This was clearly more to fortify his own self-restraint than for any other purpose. He pushed himself up and to his feet, but his gaze lingered on Rogue, momentarily surprised to note that there wasn’t a mark on her. “Invulnerability really covers a lot, I see.”

Rogue sat up looking down at herself and tilting her head. “Hickeys and bite-marks at least. Makes us even since any marks I might try to leave on you just heal up.” She looked almost disappointed for a moment before she turned to reach for her bra and shirt, putting them back on. She wiped herself up with her scarf and then put on her panties, and her jeans.

Logan just pulled his jeans back up, zipped them, and watched her, not really feeling all that hurried. He liked the way her scent mixed with his, and wondered briefly what she planned on doing with that scarf. Once she was dressed again, she stepped up to him, buttoned his jeans, and buckled his belt, while holding his gaze evenly.

“I get to be on top, next time,” she said, her voice low and firm, and then she stepped past him, unlocking the door and stepping out into the hall.

Logan watched her, feeling the smirk as it crossed his features. He followed her.

The TV was totally surrounded, leaving many of the younger students crowded on the floor, but they had consciously left an open seat for the Wolverine. Rogue had already perched on the arm of the seat by the time Logan arrived to take his place in it. Once people had stopped shooting them curious looks and the TV had been turned up as the introduction music began to play, Logan reached out idly and tugged Rogue into his lap.

Biting her lip to keep from making an embarrassing squeal-type noise, Rogue stiffened a bit and glared at Logan.

He tilted his head and gave her a look that seemed to ask if she really had any qualms, here. One of his hands had settled on her hip, and stroked gently.

Rogue shifted uncomfortably for a moment, searching his face to be sure she was reading the situation correctly, then silently acquiesced, leaning back against him and returning her attention to the television as she slowly, and––to her surprise––almost involuntarily, relaxed. Her hand settled on top of Logan’s, stroking the hollows between his knuckles.

Most of the others were so focused on the screen that they scarcely noticed; although Scott, Remy, Siryn, and Jean may have shot the pair curious looks. Rogue and Logan ignored them, as the President of the United States of America approached his podium.