“You shouldn’t have made a promise you knew you wouldn’t keep, Logan,” Rogue said without opening her eyes.
“It’s all in the wording, Marie,” he told her as he ran a hand over her hair. He saw her flinch away from that touch and his frown deepened. “Want to tell me about it?”
Rogue sighed and opened her eyes. They were wet pools of brown in her battered face. “You’ll be mad at me,” she told him.
“You left the mansion dressed like that in the middle of the night, did who knows what that put you in the position to be attacked, and then turned up back here with that woman almost completely drained. Darlin’, I was pissed off as soon as I saw you, so you might as well get it out.” Logan refused to allow her the easy way out.
Rogue’s eyes narrowed slightly before she closed them again in defeat. She didn’t open them again as she began, “I was being stifled here. You may not realize it; you’ve been pretty preoccupied lately. I wanted some fun, after all of the stress and pain and anxiety of the last couple of years. So I decided to break the rules.” Rogue opened her eyes and looked at him defiantly.
“Oh, don’t give me that look. You know you’ve done the same thing. Just because I’m only eighteen and barely graduated school here doesn’t mean I don’t have a right to have fun, the way y’all seem to think. My skin was finally safe again, so what harm would there be in enjoying myself, I thought. None of the friends I have left seemed interested in just having a little fun, so I didn’t think it would be such a bad idea to go out on my own. I’ve had plenty training in self defense, since my mutation was pretty useless in a fight unless I was able to access some bare skin.”
Logan snorted at that one, but Rogue ignored him and got on with her story, relating how she’d gone to some club out in Westchester to find the excitement she’d been missing. When she told him how she’d left to call the cab, he wanted to strangle her for being so stupid, but he kept silent and waited for her to finish. Her voice lowered when she told him about the men who almost raped her and the woman who had saved her.
Rogue was quiet for a moment, allowing Logan to ask, “The woman?”
Rogue grimaced and pointed at the bed next to her. “Her name is Carol Danvers. She’s a mutant, although I didn’t realize that at the time because I was too dazed. She was just trying to help me out, and I--I’ve done *that* to her,” she choked out, tears filling her eyes again.
Logan reached over and covered one of her hands with the sheet before taking it in his own. “You couldn’t have known that the cure wasn’t permanent,” he told her.
There was a bleak look in Rogue’s eyes as she looked back at him. “I should have known it was too good to be true,” she told him sadly. “There’s no easy way out, I guess.”
“Not really,” Logan agreed. “Sometimes we need to find that out for ourselves, though.”
“Does it always hurt so much?” Rogue asked, wincing as she sat up.
“Usually.” Logan wasn’t going to let her get off that easily, though. “So what happened with Carol?”
Rogue shrugged. “She took me back to her apartment and was getting me some ice while I lay on her couch. I had a sudden headache, and she touched my forehead. I don’t remember much except a lot of pain, and then I realized that I’d been absorbing Carol’s strength and her powers. I couldn’t pull away fast enough, though, because I was too weak. I got her here as fast as I could, and you know the rest,” Rogue told him. She wrapped her arms around her raised knees and stared at Carol.
“Did you even bother to ask one of us to go with you?” Logan asked softly.
Rogue raised an eyebrow, unconsciously mimicking him. “Sure, right before I thought about the fact that you’ve hardly done anything but teach kids during the day and brood at night. Or that Ororo’s so busy trying to run this place by herself that she falls asleep over dinner. Not to mention Jubilee and Piotr, who’re busy going after their teaching degrees so that they can help. And there was no way that I would have asked Bobby or Kitty to join me, even though they’re the only other ones my age here, because goodness knows they’re as hostile as anyone besides the four of you these days. I didn’t have many options there. Besides, like I said, I thought I’d been trained well enough to take care of myself. I guess I didn’t figure on an attempted gang-rape, though,” she said bitterly.
Logan’s claws popped out again. He made the effort to retract them and then said, “Yeah, one on one you could probably have gotten away, but guys can be like a pack of wolves when they get the scent of a pretty girl. They’ll do anything, especially if it seems like she was flirting with them and then dropped them.” He held up a hand at her angry look. “I’m not saying you did it on purpose, but I bet your fun included a lot of that hormonal touchy stuff you haven’t been able to do, didn’t it?” It was his turn to raise an eyebrow.
Rogue blushed. “I didn’t think it would hurt anyone, especially not me!” she snapped.
“Now you know better,” Logan told her.
The silence stretched between them. Logan was willing to let it draw out. He knew Rogue, knew that she would start spilling her guts to him if he kept quiet long enough. It was likely that she was being defensive about what she’d done as a cover-up for her emotions about her mutation returning and the consequences of that, but he knew that things would go much more smoothly for her if she’d start trying to accept it right away.
“What am I going to tell everyone?” she finally asked. “A lot of them saw me come in. I shouldn’t have banged that door, but I didn’t realize how much strength I’d gotten from Carol.”
“What you’ll tell them is up to you. I think they’ll understand that you didn’t mean to do it, since you thought your skin was safe now, but I can’t say that they’ll like what you did to this woman,” Logan said quietly.
Rogue looked down. Logan recognized the look on her face as the one that meant she was trying not to cry, and he really didn’t think he’d be able to handle her crying while she looked so alone, so he carefully put his arms around her, thankful for the sweatshirt he’d pulled on when he heard the original commotion. She buried her face in the rough material, and he felt moisture begin to seep through. There were no other signs that she was crying, though. Her body didn’t shake, and she didn’t make a sound. Just that wet spot growing on his shoulder.
“Now no one will ever forget what I did,” she said finally, raising her head to look at him. Her red-rimmed eyes were so sad. “If my mutation had come back at any other time, showed itself in any other way, I think that everyone might have eventually forgotten that I ever took the cure, but if Carol doesn’t come out of this, I won’t be that lucky. Everyone will always look at me differently.”
Logan couldn’t stand the bitterness in her voice, but he thought he knew why it was there. “You did take the cure for the boy, didn’t you?” he asked.
Rogue frowned a little. “I don’t know. I think that maybe he was part of it, that seeing how he was starting to want Kitty was the push I needed to decide, but I really did want to get rid of this damn curse, you know. If I had been accepted more, it would even have been worth it. I was hardly able to touch at all afterwards, though, Logan, and that’s probably the worst part of it all. I took the cure so that I could touch, but no one wanted to touch me because I took it, because I ‘betrayed’ the other mutants. They didn’t understand,” she said softly.
“No, Marie, they didn’t. I do, though, and I think that, if they were honest with themselves, they would realize that they were all at least a little bit tempted. Everyone wants to be normal. Hell, in my case, it would have meant that I’d die, but at least the fucking military wouldn’t have been able to use me anymore,” Logan said.
Rogue looked at him. “So why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you take the cure?”
Logan’s lips twisted up. “When would I have had time? I was trying to juggle a bunch of shit that was landed in my lap to make sure that a bunch of kids wouldn’t get hurt, and then I was trying to make sure that our entire world wasn’t blown to bits. There was no one else. Let me tell you, though, I wanted to run out of here so many times that it drove me crazy. It still does, at least once a day.”
Rogue glanced over at Carol’s body and then looked back at him. “So why don’t you? Why don’t we both just go, find a small hole somewhere in a back corner of the world and stay there until all this shit is over with?” she asked him. Her eyes told him that she was more than half-serious.
The idea had merit to the side of him that still wanted to run, but he knew it wouldn’t work. “We could run, sure,” he said. When her eyes lit a little, he added, “What would happen to the kids here, though?”
Rogue frowned again, her dark eyes thoughtful. “We’re the strongest ones here, aren’t we? Well, except for Piotr. I mean, if Carol’s powers don’t fade, I’m going to be as strong as either of you, maybe stronger. Carol was really serious about protecting people from hurting each other, humans or mutants. I …I think she would have wanted me to stay here and help, if she won’t be able to anymore.”
“Stay or not, it’s up to you, Marie, but now you know why I’ve stayed here. You’re right about us being stronger,” Logan said, reaching out to run a hand over her hair as her eyes clouded.
“I haven’t done a very good job at helping out around here lately, and even now I’m only thinking about myself. That’s a pretty crappy way to see yourself,” she said and sighed. “So you think it’d be better to pick everything up where I left off and just keep going.” It wasn’t a question, and he knew from that she would probably listen to him.
“Yep. That’s what we do. We go on with our lives, and we get better at learning to take the hits, pick ourselves up, and get going again. What you do with your life is your choice, though. I’m going to stay here. I think you could help a lot now,” Logan said.
Rogue thought about that for a moment. “I think Hank was right. It feels different this time. It’s harder to keep Carol locked up in my mind like I was able to with David, you and Erik. When I use her powers, they feel more natural to me than any others have, too.” She grimaced. “I guess I owe her for that one.”
Logan nodded. “The best way to pay her back would be to make sure that other mutants have the protection that they need, the way she protected you even though she didn’t know you. You couldn’t help draining her so much, not with the way your power returning affected you, but there are plenty of others out there who are hurting mutants because they want to. Xavier was right, I think. The world needs people who care to make sure it doesn’t rip itself to pieces,” he told her.
Rogue smiled up at him a little. “You’re a big softy, aren’t you, Logan?” she said.
Logan felt his spine stiffen. “I’m not a softy,” he said. “Never have, never will be. But this place is my home now, and the people here are the only family I can remember. I’m going to protect them.”
Rogue’s smile softened. “I know. They’re my family, too, even when they’re angry with me,” she said. The smiled faded. “They’re my family, so I’ll stay. I’ll keep ‘em safe with these new powers. I owe them, too.”
“You owe yourself just as much, Marie. You need to remember that you’re worth something. If your friends are ignoring you because they’re concentrating too much on the big picture, give us a big kick in the rear. We’ll do the same for you,” Logan said, giving her shoulders a squeeze.
“Gee, thanks,” she said.
“You want me to call Hank down so you can get out of here?” he asked. He noticed the way she looked at Carol before replying.
“Yeah. At least I can,” Rogue said. “It’s time to face everyone, I guess.”
“I won’t let ‘em bite,” Logan said as he moved away.
It felt right that their friendship was back. It was something that he’d missed, even though he didn’t realize it while he was trying to work himself to death to ease the grief inside. She was young, probably too young, but he felt closer to her than any other person alive, so it was good that they’d gotten everything straightened out and were comfortable with each other again. He looked back as he reached the lab’s phone. She was watching him with her serious eyes, but she smiled in response to the smirk he gave her.
The night had been traumatic for her, but he knew she’d make it through. He wouldn’t allow anything else.
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