“Do I even wanna know what that was all about?” Logan asked once he and Rogue were alone again.
Giving him a considering look, Rogue narrowed her eyes and said, “I think you might have already figured it out.”
Logan scoffed, whether at Rogue or at himself he wasn’t sure.
“Not gonna say it, sugar?” Rogue drawled the challenge.
Narrowing his own eyes with a growl, Logan said, “You’re not seriously tellin’ me that he skips through hell to get where he’s goin’?”
“Hmm, no….I wouldn’t say that. I don’t know if it’s hell or not, but it certainly looks a bit like it. And then there’s the sulfur. You have to admit to wonderin’ where that came from.”
Logan just shook his head, giving up on the conversation. He felt Wolverine’s wordless agreement with the decision.
“You want a beer, darlin’?”
“Sure.”
After grabbing a couple bottles from the fridge, Logan settled back into his chair. He popped the tops off both bottles and slid one across the table to Rogue. Tossing the bottle opener onto the scarred tabletop, he said, “So, kid. What’s goin’ on with you?”
After taking a few healthy swallows of beer, Rogue lowered the bottle and swiped the back of her hand across her lips.
Logan laughed. “Nice, kid. Real ladylike.”
Rogue stuck her tongue out at him and grinned. “Thought ya might like that.”
Shaking his head in bemusement, Logan just sat and watched her.
With a sigh, Rogue settled back into a more comfortable position in her chair.
“Listen, sugar, I don’t know how well I’m gonna be able to explain this.”
Logan grunted. “How ‘bout startin’ with why you’ve been talkin’ so funny?”
Rogue blinked. “I’ve been talkin’ funny?”
“Yeah. Mix o’ your normal accent and very proper, precise speech.”
“Oh. I dunno.” With a grin, Rogue corrected, “Ah dunno.”
“Make a guess,” Logan said wryly.
“Well,” Rogue began slowly, considering the situation, “I think it might have to do with control and relaxin’. I mean, you picked up on the fact that I’m me and not me anymore, right?” She waited for Logan’s nod before continuing. “The me from before was just me - relaxed, didn’t have to consider all these abilities. And the other me was all about controllin’ those abilities so I could focus on other things. I think my speech is all muddled ‘cause the way I had of talkin’ was all lazy and relaxed, but now there’s a super controlled part of my personality front and center.”
Logan shook his head. “I suppose that makes sense.” He looked Rogue over carefully, noting to himself that her body language appeared normal, although her scent had shifted slightly. It now held an edge of something he couldn’t define. Something sharp and almost electric, but not unpleasant. “So what else about you is gonna change?” he asked cautiously.
Rogue shrugged. “I dunno. Just my powers I guess. I mean,” Rogue amended at Logan’s upraised brow, “the mutations I’ve copied. I’ll get more comfortable usin’ them, but nothing’ about me is gonna change. I’m still me, sugar,” she finished earnestly.
Logan’s look softened infinitesimally. “I know,” he agreed.
Rogue gave him a grateful smile. “It’s kinda weird, though, I will admit. I mean, I finally feel like an adult. Right up until this mornin’ I still felt like a little girl half the time.”
Logan snorted around the rim of his beer bottle. Swallowing hastily, he pointed the bottle at her. “That is weird.”
“Oh come on,” Rogue said mischievously, “you have to know what I’m talkin’ about. You and the Wolverine are slowly workin’ out a new arrangement, aren’t you?”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
“One way?” Rogue asked curiously. “You have another way of lookin’ at it?”
“Kinda,” Logan said, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “Somethin’ Chuck said the other day got me thinkin’. He said that he’s seen plenty of personalities fracture in mutants. And I’m wonderin’ if that’s what happened with me and Wolverine?”
“You mean you got split apart? When? In the lab?”
Logan nodded slowly. “Yeah. And now I’m wonderin’ if, as my mind starts healin’, that split will heal too.”
Rogue’s lips formed a silent “oh” of understanding.
After a few minutes of companionable silence during which Logan and Rogue nursed their beers, Rogue finally said bluntly, “Then I guess I’m all ass backward about things.”
Logan coughed after hastily swallowing his mouthful of beer. “Huh?”
“Well, if your theory’s right - and I think it probably is - you started out with just one personality and ended up with two. And I apparently did it completely backwards.”
“Doesn’t mean there’s anythin’ wrong with doin’ it that way. And it’s not like you had a choice in the matter, darlin’.”
“True,” Rogue conceded. After taking a large swallow of her beer, she put the bottle on the table with a firm clunk. “So how about we focus on something we actually do have control over?”
Mimicking her actions with his own beer bottle, Logan squinted at her and said, “You mean fixin’ this place up?”
Rogue nodded, her expression suddenly becoming serious. “If things continue the way they are, there are gonna be plenty of scared kids needin’ a place to stay. Soon.”
“Yeah,” Logan grunted. “We’ll put in a call to that lawyer Chuck mentioned. See what our options are. I think we’ll have better luck operatin’ as a halfway house than as a school, and I have no idea about the laws and regulations involved with that.”
“No reason we can’t take care of a kid or two right now,” Rogue said philosophically. “I mean, wouldn’t we have to exceed a certain number or somethin’ to be considered an institution?”
Logan narrowed his eyes in thought. “Yeah, that sounds right. So, what? You want me to tell Chuck we’re good for short term housin’ for a kid or two?”
“Yeah. Emergency housin’. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds fine, darlin’.”
“Well all right then,” Rogue said as she reached for her beer. She paused and eyed the bottle consideringly before casting Logan a flirtatious wink. The bottle lifted into the air and floated smoothly into her hand. “Nifty, huh?”
Logan just blinked.
* * *
Straddling the peak of the roof of the dorm closest to the cabin, Logan leaned over and called down to Rogue, “Need another box of roofing nails, darlin’.”
Rogue didn’t even turn around from the table she was sanding as a container lifted from the tool box Logan had left at the foot of the ladder. He watched the nails cautiously as they came closer to him and snagged them out of the air when they were within comfortable reach.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that without looking,” he complained irritably as he opened the nails and dumped them into a pouch on his tool belt.
“I learned my lesson with the roofing tar, Logan,” Rogue replied.
Logan snorted. “I should hope so. Stuff was damn hard to get out of my hair.”
“Listen, I said I was sorry, didn’t I? As long as I just read your thoughts while I’m levitating stuff, I’m not gonna knock into you again.”
Shaking his head ruefully, he replied, “I guess not. Kinda strange that you can use more than one ability at a time, though, isn’t it?” He hammered a few nails into place before continuing, “And how is it that you can read me so easily when even the professor has trouble doin’ it?”
He looked down in time to see Rogue’s shrug. “Probably because I know how your mind works better than anybody else.”
Quit worryin’ about it, would you? Wolverine grumbled. She’s been doin’ fine the last couple o’ days.
I know, Logan groused. It’s just that everything seems to be happening so fast now.
“I can hear you, you know,” Rogue said conversationally.
Logan cast her a startled look. “Kinda rude to eavesdrop on a private conversation, dontcha think?”
“Didn’t mean to. Control’s not perfect yet.”
Wolverine snorted. Unlikely. Bet she just wants to know what we talk about.
“That’s not true!” Rogue protested, whirling around angrily. “It’s just a little harder to disengage from a mind than it is to slip into one. It’s taking me some time to get used to it.”
“Really?” Logan asked with interest, pausing with the hammer upraised. “Any ideas why?”
Rogue looked uncomfortable for a moment as she thought through how best to answer. “I think it might have to do with the way my mutation works. I mean, I copy abilities, right?” She waited for Logan’s nod even as he continued hammering. “Well, I think part of the way I copy those abilities has something to do with mind-reading. But I’m not sure if that’s original to my own ability or something I picked up from the professor that’s helping me out.” Sighing in frustration, Rogue raked her hands through her hair. “Oh hell. That doesn’t make any sense, does it? In any case, once I’m in somebody’s mind, it’s just kinda like it’s…I dunno. Sticky somehow? Yeah. It’s sticky, so it takes some effort to pull back.”
“Sticky?” Logan echoed, startled. He missed the nail he was aiming at and split a shingle. “Shit,” he muttered as he yanked the damaged piece off the roof.
Without missing a beat in the conversation, Rogue levitated a new shingle into place for him. “Yeah, it’s like once I make the initial connection, my mind works on its own to keep it in place and only lets go when I force it to.”
“Huh,” Logan grunted. “Wonder if you can only do it with one person at a time?”
“I don’t know,” Rogue mused, tapping the sand paper against her chin in thought. She sputtered briefly as wood dust drifted up and stuck to her lips. “Yuck!” she exclaimed, tossing the paper onto the table behind her. “Anyway, that’s something to think about. Can’t really test it out, though. Wouldn’t be right to just read people’s minds out of curiosity, right?”
Logan snorted. “You’ve been doin’ it to me often enough the past few days.”
“Oh, please. Like you really care?”
He considered the question briefly before shrugging. “No, guess I don’t. Wolverine doesn’t seem to either.”
“Wonder why that is?” Rogue continued. “I mean, the professor’s said that you instinctively block him, but I never seem to hit any resistance with you.”
“There’s nothin’ I have to hide from you, darlin’. You’re welcome to any o’ my thoughts, any time.”
“Oh, really?” Rogue questioned archly, “Any time?”
“Well…within reason, darlin’,” Logan hedged.
“Hmm. Like when I was talking to Wolverine in the motel? When you didn’t want to explain the difference between how the two of you think of me?”
Might as well tell her, Wolverine interjected. Don’t think it’s gonna make her panic now.
Logan glanced down at Rogue. She was watching him expectantly, hands on her hips and her eyebrow raised in question.
“You didn’t hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?”
“Wolverine.”
She shook her head. “I quit listening right after you said it was rude to eavesdrop.”
“Oh.” Logan propped his hands on the ridgeline behind him and leaned back comfortably. “Wolverine said we might as well tell you now.”
“I’m listening, sugar,” Rogue invited.
“Well,” Logan began hesitantly, “you know how Wolverine is more my instinctive side?”
Rogue nodded.
“Right…so he thinks in instinctive terms. ‘Danger.’ ‘Hunger.’ ‘Pain.’ Simple, one-word assessments of things usually.”
“Okay, following so far,” Rogue said. “So you’re saying he also has a simple one-word assessment of me?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s changed over the years. At first he called you ‘Cub.’”
“‘Cub?’” Rogue laughed, “Like you calling me ‘kid?’”
“Yeah.” Logan grinned at her. “We were in agreement there. You protect cubs and kids, right?”
“So Wolverine wanted to protect me from the get-go, just like you did?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Okay, but you said his assessment of me has changed over the years. What’s he call me now?”
Logan caught and held her gaze fiercely. “‘Mate,’” he answered huskily.
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