Sometimes, Rogue's glad she's from the South. The summers up here don't weigh her down so much as they did back home, even in a cloth prison.
She's waist-deep in the grass when she spots Logan sitting under a tree. She's too far away to know if he's watching her, a white T-shirt the only thing identifying him in the leafy darkness of the maple's shade. But he doesn't move, so she turns away, navigating further into the sea of green.
These trips of theirs have become few and far between. They used to throw darts at a map and take off for two or three weeks at a time. Now it's a day at the nearest lake on the long weekend before classes start. Her last year, she hopes, before she'll officially join the team.
It's not his fault -- the absences, the way they don't really talk anymore. They're headed in different directions, and she doesn't know what to do about it. But she can feel it, in her bones, whatever it is that's changing between them. It's like the time he took her the Rockies and she'd stood on the edge of a cliff, staring out at the valley below. It stretched deep and wide, broken only by the horizon.
One day she won't be so careful. Something will happen. She'll say something, or do something, and she won't be paying attention. She'll fall.
A thick blade of grass catches her eye and she plucks it with a bare hand, flattening it between her thumbs. The blade's sharp edges grate against her skin and lips as she pulls it taut, dividing the space between the joints. One breath, pulled in and blown out, and she smiles at the sound, the memories it brings to the surface.
She glances back at the tree, wondering if he's watching her; if he thinks she's childish and silly and taking way too long with the pictures she had begged him to stop for in the first place. She shields her eyes, but she can barely make him out anymore, he's so far away. A speck of white in the tree line, nothing more.
So she pulls out her camera, takes the photograph she wanted, and heads back.
Weeks later, when she looks at it, she doesn't see a picture of a meadow in the afternoon sun. All she sees is him.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Originally written for the x_men100 Beta theme set (prompt: "Summer") and kindly betaed by Edoraslass.