“What?” Xavier breathed.
Not Rogue’s brow furrowed. “It was strange. Both times Rogue was screaming and crying even before Logan got here, like she knew what was going on. That had never happened before. Logan also appeared right in front of her. That’s something else that just doesn’t happen here. All the other times, we’ve had to go looking for them; no telling where they’ll end up either.” She shrugged. “Anyway, with Logan, she was able to heal him without dying – probably something to do with having absorbed his healing factor. That’s why she doesn’t become unstable when she absorbs Logan like she does with the others. She doesn’t have to give any of herself up to keep him alive here.”
Xavier frowned. “How is that possible? And are there two Logans here then, from each time she absorbed him?”
Not Rogue smirked. “Come now, professor. Do you really think it’s only happened twice? Half a dozen times now at least. When Rogue’s control was still shaky, Logan was healing every little scrape and bruise she got.”
“I…I was not aware of that,” Xavier murmured with quiet dignity.
“Yeah, well. All due respect, but when it comes to Logan and Rogue, you really don’t get even a tiny fraction of what’s going on.”
“What?” Xavier couldn’t remember a time when he had found a conversation so confusing. While he really hadn’t thought he relied on his telepathy to any great extent, its absence in Rogue’s mind was making him appallingly aware of the limits of his intelligence.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say you lack intelligence, Professor,” not Rogue said cheekily.
And for the first time in his life, Xavier responded with, “Huh?”
The girl cackled with genuine mirth before explaining. “You’re definitely smarter than the average person. Much smarter. It’s just that your telepathy has always added to that. Even when you’re not actively using it, you still pick up all the surface thoughts that are swimming around all the time. And if somebody’s concentrating on something particularly hard, you pick that up whether you realize it consciously or not.”
Not sure if he should believe her, Xavier nonetheless gave her the benefit of the doubt. “How do you know all this?”
She shrugged again. “I gather information for Rogue. And that includes figuring out mutations. I’ve been in contact with yours often enough to have figured out how it works.”
Xavier’s eyebrows flew upward. “Rogue has never absorbed me.”
“No. But you’ve poked around in her head plenty. Even peripheral contact is enough for me to determine the type and strength of a mutation, as well as how it’s used and what its weaknesses are.”
Xavier was silent as he pondered the implications of not Rogue’s revelation.
“But anyway,” she continued, “we haven’t answered your question.”
“What question?” Xavier murmured, distracted.
“About Logan. There were two of him for a while. But as soon as they were in the same room, they kind of snapped together into one.”
Tilting his head to the side, Xavier let the visualization play out in his mind. “I think you’re going to have to explain that one a little more.”
“Sure.” Not Rogue winked at Xavier and suddenly they were standing in front of the mansion.
“Where are we?” he asked, turning in circles as he took in the building, the driveway and gate, the trees surrounding the open expanse of the lawn.
“This is where Rogue is,” his guide said. She gestured him toward the front door. “Shall we?” Once they had crossed the foyer and begun walking up the stairs, she continued her explanation. “This is where everybody comes eventually. It didn’t always look like this, of course, but once Rogue identified the mansion as home, it kind of just took this appearance. So anyway, the first Logan was staying here with Rogue when the second one gets dropped right on the doorstep. Rogue heals him and brings him up to her room where the first Logan is. As soon as the second one walked through the door, fwshht!” The sound effect was accompanied by not Rogue bringing her hands abruptly together to indicate merging. She shrugged and dropped her hands back to her sides. “Logan’s more put together than the others, too. More like his own person.”
“What do you mean by that?” Xavier asked as they reached the third floor and started down the hall.
“He’s able to do things here without Rogue knowing. None of the others can do that.”
The professor remained silent as they continued down the hallway, uncertain of the implications of Logan being an autonomous entity in Rogue’s mind. When his guide walked past Rogue’s door, he paused in confusion. Not Rogue moved on to the next door, which would have been Logan’s room in the real mansion, and pushed it open without knocking. She stepped through the door, calling over her shoulder, “By the way, if you’re gonna be poking around in here, remember that you should always knock. Logan and I are the only ones who don’t have to. Not that you’ll ever be wandering around here without me.”
“What happens if I don’t knock?” Xavier asked curiously as he followed after her.
“Bad things happen.” The reply was made with Rogue’s voice, but the positioning was off, so he knew it hadn’t been his guide who answered. Xavier focused on the source of the voice and saw Rogue – the real one, he assumed – lying on her side on the bed with her head resting on one of Logan’s thighs. Logan was studiously ignoring them, fixated on a hockey game playing on the TV in the corner of the room. Slightly shocked by the sheer mundane nature of the image, although he couldn’t say what else he might have been expecting, Xavier was unable to respond for a moment. Instead, he took his time examining his surroundings. With the exception of the building’s quietness, everything was a faithful replica of Logan’s room in the mansion, right down to the barely noticeable stain in the carpet in front of the nightstand. Logan had never volunteered what caused it, and Xavier had never asked. He suspected it was blood, but since it was obvious that Logan – or perhaps it had been Rogue? Xavier now wondered – had made quite an effort to get rid of it, he didn’t feel that he had any right to pry. The pair had always had more secrets than any of the mansion’s other residents, secrets that at first belonged only to each of them individually and that later they had learned to share with each other. Pulling himself from his thoughts with a shake of his head, Xavier turned his attention to Rogue. From the look on her face, he was uncomfortably aware that she had probably heard every one of his thoughts.
“Ah did,” she said wryly.
“How?” Xavier asked curiously.
Rogue shrugged. “Ah dunno. As soon as anybody’s in my head, Ah can listen in on ‘em if Ah want.”
“If you can listen to their thoughts, that means that you should be able to figure out where they are, isn’t that correct? So why would I need to knock before opening a door?”
Logan snorted and smoothed a hand over Rogue’s hair. “You weren’t listenin’, Chuck. She said she can listen if she wants to. You think she’s gonna go out of her way to listen to everybody all the time? It’d drive her crazy within a week. You should know that,” he finished pointedly.
“Indeed,” Xavier murmured, his discomfort increasing as Rogue ignored him in favor of the hockey game. Logan, however, looked him over closely.
“He probably shouldn’t spend so much time this far in, darlin’,” he murmured to Rogue. She made a low noise of agreement, her fingers curling lightly against the muscles of Logan’s thigh. He chuckled and smoothed her hair again. “I’m gonna go talk to Chuck for a bit and then we can send him on his way, all right?”
“All right,” Rogue murmured sleepily, shifting a bit to allow Logan to get up. She immediately curled herself around the pillow he had been leaning against and closed her eyes.
Logan set his empty bottle on the nightstand and stood watching Rogue for a few moments as her breathing evened out and slowed. Xavier’s discomfort grew as he observed the tender look on Logan’s face. Although it was an expression that he had never seen in reality, he had no doubt that Logan looked exactly as he would in real life should he ever show his emotions openly. Feeling like a voyeur, Xavier dropped his eyes to the ground. Logan chuckled and murmured, “Hallway,” as he moved toward the door. Not Rogue followed after them.
“What’s going on, Logan?” Xavier asked. He immediately frowned, wondering if he was actually speaking to Logan, or if it was, in actuality, Rogue’s mind projecting Logan’s image and characteristics.
Logan leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s me, Chuck. Kinda.”
“I – I don’t understand any of this, Logan.”
“Join the club,” the other man grunted. “Listen, I’ll tell you everything I can. What do you need to know first?”
The professor considered the question carefully. “When you said I shouldn’t stay this far in for too long...what did you mean?”
Logan shrugged. “It’s not dangerous for you, Chuck, so if that’s what’s worryin’ you, you can stop. It’s just that it tires Marie out.”
“Why?”
“Everybody here, except for me it seems, draws their energy from Rogue. You bein’ here kinda distracts her and she has to concentrate more.”
Xavier frowned. “What happens if she loses her concentration.”
Logan smiled humorlessly. “Let’s just say the natives get restless.”
“Can’t you help her with that?”
“Some,” Logan acknowledged at the same time not Rogue said, “Not nearly enough.” They scowled at each other. “Next question,” Logan barked.
“Who, exactly, is she?” Xavier asked, gesturing vaguely at their female companion.
“What, didn’t I answer that well enough?” she mocked.
“Quiet, you,” Logan said. She stuck her tongue out in response. Logan shook his head and focused on Xavier again. “As near as I can tell, she’s a manifestation of Marie’s mutation.”
Xavier’s breath caught in his throat. “Is it…is it like it was with Jean then?”
Logan shook his head. “No. Rogue – I call her Rogue and the one in the other room Marie to keep things simple – is here to protect Marie, but she can’t take over. She can pretty much do what she wants when Marie lets her, but she always knows what’s goin’ on.”
“And you?” Xavier asked. “Rogue here said that you’re your own person here.”
“Not exactly. That’s somethin’ Marie gives me.” Logan looked suddenly frustrated and raked his hands through his hair. “Little idiot. Even after all the times she’s taken me in, even after knowin’ everythin’ about me, she still feels like she’s stolen my life from me. I don’t blame her or resent her for anythin’, but she just doesn’t believe me when I say so.” Logan shrugged. “So she lets me be. Set up all sorts o’ barriers so she never influences what I think or feel.” He grinned wolfishly. “Doesn’t matter. I just tell her everythin’ anyway. Freely given, so she can’t go feelin’ guilty ‘bout that.”
The professor’s frown had deepened as he listened to Logan’s explanation. “Rogue’s mind doesn’t work at all the way I thought it did,” he murmured. “Why didn’t I see before?”
“Simple. She didn’t let you see before, Chuck.”
Feeling somewhat insulted, Xavier argued, “I’m the most powerful telepath in the world, Logan. I should have seen the way things are regardless of Rogue’s allowing or not allowing it.”
Logan snorted. “In Marie’s mind, you’re not a telepath, Chuck. Nobody here has any gifts except her.”
“But every time I worked with her on her control, I was able to move within her mind just like I did with others.”
“That was ‘cause she allowed it. Rogue here,” Logan gestured to the girl next to him, “fed Marie information on how your telepathy worked and she was able to use that information to allow you to do what you needed to do.”
Shaking his head, Xavier let the subject go. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand that fully. Anyway, something Rogue said confused me.” He turned to address her directly. “You said that Rogue’s absorbed Logan several times, but you spoke of him arriving only twice.”
She nodded. “Those were the two strongest absorptions. Each time after that, the Logan here just got a little stronger. No new arrivals and no new fwshhts.”
“No new fwshhts,” Xavier repeated dubiously.
“Don’t mind her,” Logan said dryly. “She’s the resident crazy.”
“Hey!” the girl cried, backhanding Logan in the chest.
Observing their interaction curiously, Xavier questioned slowly, “Mind you, I’m not complaining. But if you can do what you want here, Logan, why does Rogue need to be present for our conversation?”
“You weren’t listening very well, were you, Chuck?” she asked. Xavier’s eyebrows shot upward in surprise. She hadn’t addressed him so informally before. “Yeah, Logan leaks into me a bit if we spend too much time together.”
“Huh?” Logan asked, looking between her and the professor.
“The professor was just wondering why I started to sound like you,” she explained.
Logan grunted wordlessly.
“So anyway, Chuck,” she grinned evilly as she emphasized the nickname, “Logan can do anything and go anywhere he wants here, but you can’t. I’m here to keep you from fading away.”
Frowning, the professor said, “I’m quite adept at keeping my mental projections focused, my dear.”
“You’re not listening to me,” she said, frustration evident in her voice. “You are nothing here. You’re not real. You have no powers here, so Rogue’s holding you together through me. That’s why it was so easy when you first stepped into the garden. You didn’t do that. Rogue and I just popped you into existence here.”
“So I won’t remember any of this when I leave?”
Rogue frowned. “I don’t know. That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? We’ve never tried this when we weren’t physically in the same room.” She shrugged suddenly in dismissal. “No matter. If you don’t remember it, we’ll just zap the memory to you.”
“How would you do that?”
Rogue tapped her head. “Telepathy.”
“You’ve never absorbed that particular gift, though,” he protested. And then, uncertainly, “Have you?”
“Absorbed, no. But like I said earlier, I’ve observed it often enough to know how it works.”
Logan’s head jerked up sharply. “I’ve been wonderin’ ‘bout that,” he growled.
“What?” Xavier asked as Logan and Rogue faced off.
“I knew you’d figure it out eventually, Logan. You can’t tell Rogue yet, though. She’s not ready.”
“What? What’s she talking about, Logan?”
Logan’s voice was low and rough as he answered without taking his eyes off Rogue. “It means that Marie doesn’t have to absorb somebody to use their mutation. She can copy it just by bein’ around it. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Okie dokie. Most difficult chapter so far. My brain's all muddled and confused after trying to make sense of this. Feel free to point out any inconsistencies or confusing points and I'll work on explaining them in the following chapters.