If there was one thing I could count on in life, it was that there would always be mounds of paperwork to do.
So much for the glamorous life of a superhero, I thought wryly, leaning over my desk with a sigh. The forms I had already finished were stacked neatly to my left. Unfortunately, the pile to my right—forms yet to be completed—was significantly larger.
I let out another sigh and glanced at the clock on my office wall. Just after 12:30 in the morning. Scott had gone to bed not long ago, after extracting a promise from me that I wouldn’t work myself into exhaustion. I had assured him I would join him soon—and I had to admit, curling up with my fiancé in a warm, soft bed was certainly a more appealing prospect than finishing this soul-sucking paperwork.
I cast a longing glance at the door, then looked back at the forms. I really did need to get them done…
My eyes began to blur almost immediately, and I decided that was the last straw. The rest of the forms would just have wait until tomorrow. Or later today, to be more precise.
I pushed my chair back from the desk, bending down to retrieve my shoes. The students often joked about always being able to hear me coming, thanks to the clacking of my heels against the bare infirmary floors. I smiled to myself. They didn’t know that I always kicked the shoes off as soon as I made it to the privacy of my office.
Straightening up, I was halfway into the motion of slipping the shoes back on when I suddenly decided against it. The thought of padding around the halls in my stocking feet—something I hadn’t done for as long as I could remember—held an odd sort of appeal. Besides, the infirmary was deserted at this hour of the night, so there was no need to put on the mask I’d been wearing for the past few days—the strong, confident and calm Dr. Grey who had it all together.
Right now, I didn’t feel strong. I just felt tired.
The past several days had been difficult to say the least. The mission to Liberty Island had been a success—Magneto was captured, Rogue was rescued, and the citizens of Manhattan were blissfully unaware that they’d been in mortal danger—but it hadn’t come without a cost. The professor was still incapacitated, and his absence was hard on us all. He was practically idolized by the students, and he was like a father to me and the other X-Men. Trying to go on without him was like an army attempting to regroup after its commander falls in battle.
And then there was Rogue. Like most of the students, she had been emotionally fragile when she first came to the school, but the ordeal she’d just gone through had only worsened her condition. Scott, Storm and I were trying to comfort her as best we could, but the fact remained that the two people most likely to help her were both lying unconscious in the infirmary. And despite my best efforts, there was no way of knowing when—or even if—they would wake up again.
My usually tidy bun was about ready to come out, so I reached up and loosened the tie, letting my hair fall over my shoulders. It probably looked like a rat’s nest, but my pillow wouldn’t care. I had only one thing left to do before I could fall into bed: check up on my patients one last time.
I tucked my shoes under one arm and set off down the hall, my pace brisk despite my lack of energy. Some traces of the no-nonsense doctor always stayed with me, even at twelve thirty in the morning.
My steps slowed as I approached the room where the professor and Logan were recuperating. The door was partly open, and dim light spilled out into the hallway.
I frowned. That the light was on was not unusual. I normally kept it on a low setting so that if—when—Logan and the professor woke up, they wouldn’t open their eyes to complete darkness. The open door, however, was out of the ordinary. I was almost positive I had closed it behind me the last time I’d been in the room.
Taking a few steps closer, I paused just outside the door, listening for signs of an intruder.
Nothing. Finally, I was about to stick my head in and scan the room when a distinct sniffling sound reached my ears.
I froze, holding my breath. A moment passed, then the sniffling came again, followed by a shaky breath being drawn. I allowed myself to relax, recognizing the all-too-familiar sounds of someone crying. Easing the door open a little more, I looked inside.
I had expected to see one of the younger students, unable to sleep, watching the professor and hoping against hope for a sign of life. Instead I found Rogue, standing by Logan’s bed at the far side of the room. Her shoulders were slumped slightly, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her face, but her body language told me all I needed to know. She looked small, and lonely, and frail.
I pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped into the room, my shoeless feet silent against the hard floor. “Rogue?”
I’d kept my voice soft, hoping not to startle her. She jumped anyway, spinning around to face me, brunette and platinum hair whipping about her face. Surprise and guilt were written all over her features.
“Oh! Dr. Grey,” she stammered, quickly bringing a hand up to brush away tears—as though it were a crime to cry at the bedside of a friend. “I’m sorry, am I—am I allowed to be here?”
Truth be told, I wasn’t thrilled about people sneaking around my infirmary late at night, but sometimes exceptions needed to be made. Right now, Rogue’s emotional state was the most important thing.
“Of course you are, honey,” I said reassuringly, walking over to her. “I think he’d be glad you’re here,” I added with a little smile, nodding at Logan.
She looked back at him, her eyes riveted to his form as though he were the only thing in the room. She took several more gulps of air, obviously fighting back another deluge of tears. It was a short-lived battle.
“I had a nightmare,” she choked out, the tears beginning to pour down her face and drip onto the floor. I winced in sympathy. One aspect of her mutation was that she absorbed the dreams of those she touched, as well as their thoughts and memories. Since Liberty Island, she had been plagued with nightmares from both Logan and Magneto—dreams of things no one her age should have to know about.
Hesitantly, I reached out and placed one hand on her shoulder where it was covered by her nightgown. She flinched, hard, but didn’t pull away. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“I’m sorry, Rogue,” I said, keeping my voice quiet, easily slipping into my familiar role of comforting teacher. I’d dried more than a few teary eyes over the past several years, stayed up late with more than one student who was finding life’s difficulties too much to handle. “Was it one of Logan’s dreams this time, or Magneto’s?”
She took a deep breath, visibly trying to calm herself. When she spoke, her voice was surprisingly steady, even as the tears continued to slip down her face. “Actually, it was mine.”
She paused, and I gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Do you want to talk about it?”
A long moment passed as she deliberated with herself, and I waited, watching her. Finally, she gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“I was back on the Statue of Liberty,” she began, her eyes never leaving Logan’s face. “Everything was happening in the dream the same way it did in reality. I was strapped into the machine; I couldn’t escape. Magneto—Magneto touched me, and it hurt.” She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering, and her gloved hands curled into fists. “Then the machine was spinning, and I was unconscious. I could see myself, just hanging there. And then—” Her eyes snapped open, focusing once again on Logan. “And then Logan came.”
Her eyes glazed over a little as she stared straight ahead, the dream replaying in her mind. Almost absently, I noticed she had stopped crying.
“And what happened next?” I asked softly. “Did he save you?”
She nodded slowly. “He touched me. I absorbed his powers and I woke up, just like what really happened. But—but then…that was where it all went wrong.”
And just like that, the tears started back up again.
I was about to tell her to take her time, but her next words spilled out in a rush, as though she wanted nothing more than to be rid of them as quickly as possible. “He was bleeding. Bleeding all over the place. It was everywhere; I couldn’t get away from it. And the smell of it—it was like I was drowning, choking. I think I was screaming. And then he fell over, and he wasn’t breathing or moving. I knelt down next to him, and he—he was dead.”
Her shoulders shook violently under my hand. For the first time, she tore her gaze from Logan’s face and stared up at me, and the wild look in her eyes made my blood chill.
“I killed him,” she said, her voice raw. “I killed him!”
I reacted on instinct, my need to calm her overriding the danger of her deadly skin. Grabbing both her shoulders, I pulled her around until she was facing me, my nails digging into the fabric of her nightgown. “Rogue! Rogue, listen to me! It was only a dream. He’s alive, and he’s going to be fine. Do you understand? He’s not dead. It was just a dream.”
Slowly, the panic faded from her eyes as my words got through to her. She took a deep, shuddering breath and sagged a little in my grip.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, her voice scarcely louder than a whisper. “I didn’t mean to freak out like that. It’s just…it scared me, a lot. That’s why I came down here. I just had to see him.” She swallowed. “I had to make sure he was still breathing.”
“It’s okay. Your reaction was perfectly normal,” I told her. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
She went very still. Her eyes darted to mine before straying back to Logan. “Yes, I do,” she said, and her voice was so soft I barely heard her. “He’s lying there because of me.”
I shook my head quickly. “No, Rogue. Don’t blame yourself for this. None of it was your fault.”
“Maybe not directly,” she said. “I know it was Magneto who caused it all. But it was my skin that almost killed Logan. And I keep thinking…there must have been something I should have done differently. Maybe I shouldn’t have left the school and gone to the train station. I shouldn’t have gone into Logan’s room when he was having the nightmare.” She gave a rather bitter-sounding laugh. “Maybe it would have been best if I’d just never even crawled into his trailer in the first place.”
A heavy silence fell over the room. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, considering my words carefully. “You’re right,” I replied. “If you hadn’t done any of those things, the situation would have turned out differently. Logan wouldn’t be in this infirmary right now.”
She looked at me, her face expressionless.
“But,” I went on, “the main reason things turned out as they did is not because you made a poor decision somewhere along the way.” I paused, looking straight at her to make sure I had her attention. “Logan is lying there because he chose to touch you.”
She closed her eyes, looking frail and lost once more. “I don’t understand it,” she said, weariness in her voice. “He knew what my skin would do to him. I just…don’t understand.”
I reached over and gently tapped the side of her head, careful not to touch anything but her hair. “Have you tried looking at his memories?”
After a moment of hesitation, she shook her head, not meeting my eyes. “Things are pretty crazy in there right now,” she said with a wan smile. “I can feel him all the time, him and the others. But the past few days, I’ve just been trying to regain control over my own mind, sorting out my own thoughts from everyone else’s.”
“I can’t say I completely understand what you’re going through,” I said, giving her a smile, “but I do know what it’s like to have other people’s thoughts in my head. It can definitely be a challenge to keep things straight.” I paused for a moment before continuing. “You know, I don’t use my telepathy very often. It’s not very well-developed yet, and obviously there’s the issue of privacy to consider.”
She finally glanced up at me, looking both curious and a little wary.
“Most of the time,” I went on, “I have to concentrate pretty hard to be able to get a clear picture inside someone’s head. But other times, if a person is experiencing strong emotions—fear, sadness, joy—it becomes a lot easier to read his or her thoughts. In those cases, I have to concentrate to keep them out. I would never deliberately invade someone’s mind without permission, of course, but…there are times when it’s almost impossible not to pick up on things.”
My eyes moved to the table where Logan lay motionless, covered with bandages and tubes, hooked up to monitors.
“That’s the way it was with him,” I said softly, “when we were at Liberty Island.”
“What did you see?” Rogue asked, her voice equally hushed.
“Mostly just flashes,” I replied, looking back at her. “Images, emotions. His mind was moving too quickly for me to get a concrete handle on anything specific. But there was one thing that was very clear: the whole time, he was focused on you. He wasn’t thinking about capturing Magneto or destroying the machine. He wasn’t worrying about the thousands of people who would have died if we’d failed. His only concern was to make sure you were safe. And there was an overpowering sense of determination—he knew he was going to save you or die trying.”
Another tear slid down Rogue’s cheek, but I knew that this time it wasn’t caused by grief or fear.
“I know you consider your mutation to be a curse more than anything else,” I said quietly, “but look at it this way. Many people live their whole lives without knowing someone who’s willing to die for them. Even fewer people can ever have access to another’s thoughts on such an intimate level. You said you didn’t understand why Logan touched you when he knew your skin could kill him, but your mutation has given you a way to know the answer.”
I looked back over at Logan. “I could only see flashes inside his mind, but you can know exactly what he was thinking and feeling, what led him to make the choices he did.”
There was a brief lull as she absorbed this information, her eyes thoughtful. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way before,” she admitted. “I was just so overwhelmed with all these new experiences and memories, I thought the easiest thing would be to lock them away as best I could. Y’know, I actually had a really normal, boring life before I found out I was a mutant, so…” she trailed off, playing with the edge of her glove. “Absorbing Logan and Magneto’s memories was kind of a shock.”
“I understand,” I said with a nod. Logan and Magneto’s lives had undeniably been anything but normal. “I don’t want to push you into something you’re not ready for, Rogue. And I’m certainly not as qualified as the professor to help you cope with all these new challenges. But…I do think that it would be helpful for you to look at Logan’s memories from Liberty Island.” I paused, absently reaching over to adjust one of Logan’s bandages. “Look at yourself through his eyes.”
Silence fell in the infirmary, broken only by the occasional beep of a monitor. I glanced at Rogue. Her eyes were fixed on Logan, seeming to look almost past him. She hardly appeared to be breathing, and I wondered if she was taking my advice to heart. I had a feeling that to say anything else would be an interruption, so I quietly turned to go.
Rogue’s voice stopped me almost immediately. “Dr. Grey?”
I looked back at her. She smiled, her eyes clear and finally free of tears. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Do you mind if I stay with him a while longer?”
I tilted my head, returning her smile. “Take as much time as you need.”
When I reached the door, I looked back at them one last time. Rogue had positioned herself at Logan’s side and taken his hand in hers, twining his long fingers with her smaller gloved ones. She closed her eyes and blew out a deep breath, tightening her grip on Logan’s hand.
I smiled to myself as I softly shut the door and started down the hallway. The recovery process might be long, but somehow I knew Logan and Rogue were both going to be just fine.
And just maybe, the rest of us would be too.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I took a few liberties with the description of Jean’s telepathic power—hopefully it’s not too far off!