I’m Rogue.
I live at Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, otherwise known as Mutant High. (Yes, I’m a mutant. I suck the life energy out of people if I touch them. Hence the gloves.) It’s where I ended up eight months, three weeks and a few odd days after I ran away from home. Meridian, Mississippi, if you’re interested. Eight months on buses and hitchhiking around the United States—twenty-two states in eight months, I was counting. Then I was in Detroit, looking to hitch north—I figured it was time to change countries, and I was planning to make Alaska number twenty-three eventually—and a very bad man got hold of me.
I spent ten days mostly tied up in the back of his van before I was rescued by a very good man.
He’s the one who found this place. He saved my life, healed my injuries when I accidentally touched him, thereby discovering that my mutation extends to absorbing other mutants’ powers—his includes super-fast healing. As a bonus, the echoes of his voice in my head gave me a deep and abiding sense that I am a good person. Worth protecting. Worth cherishing. Worth loving.
Helps with the pangs of adolescence, let me tell you. So Logan brought me here, and he hung around while I got acclimated, even joined up with the team for a mission or two, despite his deep and abiding sense that teams are bullshit. (This I didn’t have to get by mutant machinations. Believe me, he makes it perfectly clear.) To say nothing of the shit he took from Scott Summers, the X-Men’s leader. All Mr. Summers ever saw in Logan was the renegade, a loose cannon that might go off in his ruby-quartz-covered face.
I’ve never quite warmed up to Scooter.
Okay, so here’s the thing. When I met Logan, even before the evil bastard who kidnapped me, I was pretty shattered. Finding out you’re a mutant is scary. Being a mutant with uncontrollable poisonous skin is worse. Being a mutant with poison skin whose parents want to lock you up in an insane asylum—that’s enough to send a sixteen-year-old out on the road alone.
Believe me, being held captive and terrorized for ten days straight didn’t help. I was a mess. And then suddenly I was in Logan’s truck instead, with someone who treated me like gold, who made sure no one would ever hurt me again. In the almost three weeks I was on the road with him, he made it perfectly clear that anyone who even looked at me sideways would wind up on a spit.
Like my kidnapper. Logan still feels guilty that I found out about that, by the way. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to see it. I don’t think I had the blood-lust urges before I touched Logan, but I’m not sure. I’d’ve stuck a knife into that bastard’s guts if I’d gotten the chance, I promise you.
Ahem. Okay, so Logan found out about this place and talked me into trying it out. I didn’t want to go at first, but when I got here—well, Xavier’s is amazing. It’s beautiful, and everyone here is a mutant so you don’t have to explain things like gloves and scarves. The education is unmatched—I definitely had some catching up to do after my half-assed Mississippi high school. And my two roommates, Jubilee and Kitty, they’re my best friends. Jubes, especially, helped me adjust. Kitty’s from some suburban town in Illinois—she doesn’t have a clue about some things, even if she is a genius. (Got me through calculus and physics through sheer force of intellect, I swear.) But Jubes spent three years on the street before she wound up here, and she gave me some real insight on what I was here to do.
I’d been here about three days. I was homesick for both home and the road. The more normal kids like Kitty made me long for the time when I was a regular kid with parents who loved me, and then it was easier just being with Logan, who accepted me unconditionally no matter what. I didn’t want to deal with all these other people, and I especially didn’t want to deal with Jubilee. She was loud and raunchy and she wore way too much yellow. I didn’t know anything about her background, and I just thought she was another of these clueless teenagers that made me feel old beyond my years. Then one night I was in our room and she came in. I was reading a book and I buried my nose in it, hoping she’d just change into another yellow outfit and leave. Instead, she came over and sat down on the bed next to me.
“Hey, chica.” I glanced up reluctantly, and something was different. She’d dropped the tough teenager act. “Gotta have a word with you.”
“What do you want?” I wasn’t real friendly. And she didn’t care.
“From what I hear, you went through some rough shit on the road.” And then she told me about herself, about what happened to her parents and how she survived on the street—it was horrible. She didn’t ask what had happened to me, but I found myself telling her anyway. We both cried a little and then she explained life at the Mansion in a couple of sentences.
“We get to be kids again here, Rogue. So enjoy it.”
Jubes became my second guardian angel. She hauled me to movies and parties and all kinds of teenage stuff. And Logan stepped back. I didn’t know it at the time, but he didn’t like Jubes either at first. Apparently he cornered her in the rec room or something and tried to growl at her about what he’d do if she kept trying to get me drunk. She pulled the same weird transformation on him and read him the riot act, said he didn’t need to think he was the only person on the planet who had my best interests at heart.
Yes, she actually used the phrase “best interests”. I did notice that Logan’s attitude towards her changed. I just didn’t know why until after he left this last time.
He did that, left and came back, which was to be expected. I mean, it’s Logan we’re talking about. Like I said, he stayed a month or so when I first got here, but he never really liked it here. We’d hang out a lot when he was here, and then he’d have a fight with Scooter—sorry, Mr. Summers—or the Professor would find something for him to go off and investigate and he’d go for a few weeks. He always made sure I knew where he was going and more or less when he’d be back. He even called from the road. Everyone thought it was just so sweet—big bad Wolverine and his little puppy-dog. And that’s exactly what I was, and I loved that. I loved being allowed to curl up with him on the rec room sofa watching hockey, to sit and watch him tinkering with the motorcycle he co-opted from the Mansion fleet. (It was one that Scott had tricked out specially, so there were ownership issues involved, and I can only imagine what the Professor went through smoothing that one over.) I was his little sister, his best friend, and it felt incredibly safe and special.
I just didn’t quite know why I minded so much when he flirted with Jean—Dr. Grey, I mean, Scott’s wife. I ignored all the rustlings in my head that were left over from his past conquests—quite firmly. I wanted nothing to do with any of that. And I kind of knew he flirted so obviously mostly to annoy Scooter—
I have got to stop calling him that.
Anyway, so it went. Until the Christmas party last year.
Two years I’d been at the Mansion. Jubilee had joined the main team and she was more often grown-up Jubilation Lee than Jubes, but she could always switch back with me and Kitty and whenever we were in the Mansion together we were still roomies. Kitty was doing undergrad at Princeton, but it wasn’t that far away and she came home lots of weekends. I’d been feeling kind of restless and I wasn’t sure why. None of my usual escapes was working, not drawing or writing or going to the movies. Then Jubes called from her latest mission and said she was coming home for Christmas and I was thrilled. Kitty was coming back for winter break too and surely the three of us could find some trouble to get into.
But Kitty called off. She’d met a guy in her integral calculus class and she was going to New York with him for the weekend. I was sulking like a five-year-old when Jubes got home, and the second she walked in I knew she was in grown-up mode too. I told her she wasn’t any fun any more and she put her hands on her hips and gave me a look. Then she changed my life again with two more sentences.
“Wolverine just got back with me. Want to find a dress for tonight?”
You would think anyone with as many personalities as I’ve had running around in my head would be a little more self-aware than that. Jubes just raised an eyebrow at me while it was still spinning around in my head, and then she took me to the Vera Wang boutique in Westchester and got me this amazing black dress with lots of sheer fabric along the neckline and the back. And shoes. And black lingerie, with stockings.
Jubes knows clothes.
I didn’t see Logan till that night at the party. Jubes and I got there late—she was teaching me to walk in those heels—and I saw him standing off to one side, holding a bottle of beer and looking uncomfortable. He hates parties. I was about to run up to him like I always did when he came back, and then I felt Jubes’ hand on my wrist.
She spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Walk. Do not run. And breathe!”
Oh. Good advice. I made my way slowly across the room. I saw Logan’s gaze sweep the room, going completely past me.
Then I saw his eyes stop, and come back to me. And then he just watched as I closed the remaining few yards between us, and he set the beer down on the table beside him. “Hey, kid.” It was his standard greeting, but it came out funny. “Look at you. You look great.”
“Thanks.” I reached up to brush my lips against his cheek, where the mutton-chops protect him, and that too was standard procedure, except it felt different. I didn’t have to reach up as much as I usually did because of those heels, and—it just felt different. I left my hand on his arm. “How was your trip?”
“Soon as I saw One-eye I thought it was too short.” It was our usual banter, and it felt nice and normal.
I didn’t want normal. Jubes had woken me up a little bit, but it wasn’t until just then that it really hit me.
I knew I loved Logan. I just didn’t know I was in love with Logan.
And now I didn’t know what to do. I had a healthy dose of Logan’s thoughts once, but that was two years past, and even though I knew how much he cared about me, he sure didn’t think of me that way then. In point of fact, his basic attitude at that time was that anyone who looked at me as a sexual object should be gutted, strangled and shot—in whatever order caused the most pain.
“Get me a drink?”
“You’re too—“ But he cut off his usual response to that. “What the hell. What do you want?”
“Wild Turkey and coke.” He gave me a strange look and I shrugged. Maybe I should’ve aske for Champagne, but what can I tell you? You can take the girl out of the South…
“Okay.” And he went across to the bar, and while I watched him going I couldn’t believe I’d never…I mean, I’d seen him a thousand times. I’d just never noticed…
Jubilee sauntered up casually. “So?”
“He’s getting me a drink,” I hissed. “Go. Please.” She gave me a patented mysterious-Asian look and melted back into the crowd.
“Here.” Logan was back, holding out a glass to me. I took it and he picked up his beer, tapping it against my glass. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas. And welcome home.” There was a little stirrer straw in the glass and I closed my lips around it so I wouldn’t leave all my carefully-applied lipstick on the glass. I peeked up through my eyelashes and Logan was watching.
Intently.
I lowered the glass and tried not to squeak. “Want to find someplace less crowded?” He nodded and put a hand on my back to guide me out of the room, like he’d done a thousand times before. But now I was aware of the heat of his body behind mine, aware of his fingers on me, aware of the way he moved, aware of everything. I wanted to relive every time he’d ever put his arms around me, only now I didn’t just want to feel safe in them.
He led me into one of the lounges and I sat down on a couch—it actually felt good to get off those heels. I remembered to cross my legs like Jubes said. The dress split up above my knee and I saw Logan’s eyes follow it.
“What’s goin’ on, Marie?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look—different.” He was standing there, staring, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m just dressed up. Is that so strange? This is a party. Not everyone lives in blue jeans.” I took another sip of my drink.
“When’d you start drinking?”
As if he didn’t know. “Two weeks after you left the first time. I had this uncontrollable urge for Molson.” His eyebrow went up at that. “You could sit down, you know. You don’t have to stand there lookin’ like the Colossus of Rhodes.”
“What the hell’s that?” But he moved across the room and sat down in one of the armchairs.
“One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was a big statue.” This was our old teasing behavior, but it had an edge on it.
“So what’ve you been up to?” He seemed to want to change the subject.
“Just the usual. Art classes, writing. Hanging around.” I was working privately with the Professor, but I didn’t want to talk about that, even with Logan.
“What about college?”
“Maybe next year.” Logan’s really hung up on the idea of higher education. For me, that is. I’d really, really wanted to take a year off after the calc-and-physics nightmare that comprised senior year, and he never lost an opportunity to nag me about it.
“You should go.” He’d only told me that, oh, six or seven million times.
“I’m going to, Logan. I just needed this year off.” I’d never answered that as directly before, and he nodded, regarding me curiously.
“Fair enough.” He took a sip of his drink, and I suddenly felt that intense desire for Canadian beer again. I got up and went across to him; he looked up at me. “What?”
“I want a sip.” I snagged the bottle before he could protest, and took a swallow. “Mmm. That’s good.” I handed the beer back to him and sat down on the arm of his chair. He shifted uncomfortably.
“Mixing beer and bourbon now?”
I laughed. “I’ve had three sips of bourbon, Logan. It ain’t gonna knock me on my ass.”
He grinned then, that strange little half-reluctant smile of his that I love so much. And I guess it was that, seeing that little-boy smile of his, that made me do something stupid. I was sitting there, so close to him, and I leaned over and just brushed my lips over his.
He was up and across the room so fast I almost fell. I stood up shakily and brought a hand to my mouth. “Did I—hurt you?”
He was breathing hard. “No. No, you didn’t—Marie, what the hell are you doing?”
I wanted to cry. I wanted to turn back into that little girl who could turn on the waterworks and have him comfort me. But I was dressed all wrong for that role, so I improvised. “I was trying to kiss you. What did you think I was doing?”
He stared at me so hard I thought his eyes would burn holes right through me. Then he turned on his heel and left the room.
Jubilee found me an hour later. I still don’t know how she got me upstairs. She held me and I sobbed in her arms on the floor of the bathroom, my mascara making black streaks down my face. She gave me aspirin, put a cold towel on my head, made me get undressed and into bed.
In the morning Logan was gone. He didn’t leave a note, and he didn’t tell anyone when he’d be back.
Jubilee said two things on the subject. First she said, “That jackass.” Then she said, “He’ll be back.”
I want to believe that she’s right. But that was almost six months ago. No one’s heard from Logan since then. And the thing is—if there is one thing I know with all my heart and soul, it’s that Logan would never willingly hurt me. What I don’t know is, did he leave because he thought it would hurt me to show that he wanted me, because he still thinks that bastard he killed made it impossible for any man to ever want me without hurting me?
Or did he leave because he didn’t want me—and he knew that would hurt me most of all?
Jubes says, Curtain number one, chica, and he’ll be back as soon as he gets his head out of his ass. But I’m not so sure. I know what Logan thought then, remember. He saw me as this pure little angel being defiled. He heard that man call me ‘princess’ and he’d never, ever use that word in connection with me, but he had me up on a pedestal, all right. And he might be in my head, but I’m not in his. He’s never quite believed that he didn’t take something away from me by touching me, letting his thoughts and feelings into me. I tried to tell him at the time, and I’ve tried since, to make him understand that what I’d gotten from him paid me back a thousand times over for any scrap of innocence I’d had stripped away. But he never believed me. Not really.
So he’s been gone, who knows where, since that night. And about half the time I believe Jubes when she says he’s going to come back and everything will work out. And the other half, I’m planning how to track him down and beat the shit out of him.
Jubes says if he’s not back by the Fourth of July, she’ll help.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Two years later. Rogue catches us up on what we've missed in the meantime.