Rogue emerged, late the next morning, to join the ranks of the living, and for once she had the decency to look rather tired, or at least rougher around the edges than usual with hints of fatigue. She threw together a breakfast of fruit, a bowl of oatmeal, and a large glass of milk. Then she vanished again, amidst whispers of a huge presidential press conference the next day.
When Logan, having waited a few minutes, followed her back down to her bunker, he found her curled up, asleep, on top of two tall cabinets in her bunker, which hummed with the breath and electric hum of her collection of machines. She looked peaceful, but he could see that she had one hand wrapped around her dog-tag: her symbol of her own strength and her ability to never give in. Quietly, he exited the noisy quiet of the bunker and silently shut the door.
Then he went upstairs and watched the news, checking out the skill of the machine he would soon be a part of, and admiring Rogue’s work.
She slept through lunch, and into the evening. When she awoke, she learned that the X-men had been shipped to Washington post-haste. She was hardly surprised. Having worked her ass off not moving around very much (except in cyberspace, where there was a lot of movement and activity indeed) for longer than most sane people bothered with, she retired to the Danger Room, deciding to figure out, with an idle curiosity, how the damned thing worked.
By the time that Scott, Ororo, Logan, and most of the junior team returned home, Rogue had mastered its operations and the logic of its interface; although she knew she had no time to get into the depths of its detailed programming...yet.
When Logan found her, she was in the midst of a programmed sim, and he sat back in the control room to admire her performance. Because the sim was one that he did not recognize, he easily assumed she had either made it herself, or had so altered one of the pre-existing ones that he did not recognize it...yet.
She was in her own uniform, which Logan had been informed was one she had modified from her days working with Remy. It was made of a black synthetic material that seemed to be a cross between light kevlar and something softer, with a bit of elasticity, so that it fit like perfectly-tailored denim––nothing loose, nothing hindering, but not ridiculously skin-tight. It was like a glove to her body, no seam pinching, stretching where it needed to, and not reflecting any light, so that she was as quiet and subtle as a shadow. Large pockets and a belt of small multi-tools (which could make any swiss army knife in the world feel hopelessly inadequate) were easy to access at her hips and on the outer side of her thighs. She wore steel-toed combat boots, because nothing else felt enough like war to get her into the right mindset.
She had a hunting knife in one hand, and stalked silently through the undergrowth toward a camp with an ominous brush pile in the middle of it.
Logan finally recognized the simulation as one based on an actual mission they had gone on in Louisiana, and which had very nearly gone all too wrong. She had changed the setting to somewhere with less dense swamp; although it was still wet underfoot, like the edge of a wetland. It got drier the closer she got to camp, but the underbrush and trees grew denser leading up to the clearing that the camp was in. The night-sounds were more real, louder.
In the original sim, the children tied up near the brush-pile could be heard crying.
Rogue looked like a panther as she moved; infinitely patient, one slow step at a time, listening intently to every sound around her. She paused at every human-like sound, and slowly crouched as much or as little as she needed to in order to make herself level with the brush around her. Her hair was smoothed back, her white streak covered by a black knit cap. Her pale skin was smeared only a little with mud, but it was enough to break up her outline while still leaving her most dangerous weapon available should she need it: her arms were bare up to her shoulders.
Logan had to admire her. She moved with a patient deliberation that he could not help but associate with years of experience she clearly did not have––except that she had taken them from someone else. Rogue was in full control of every muscle in her body, her movements so fluid that she seemed almost boneless as she weaved a crooked path through the terrain, moving so that there was always cover between herself and her target, but still finding the most silent ground to step on. She moved faster when the wind stirred, and then switched to impossibly slow when it grew silent.
Rogue was pure predator, and Logan found himself wishing she had been with them on that almost-failed mission. He might have relied on her, if she’d been on that approach with him. Instead, they had sent Kitty, who had only been on two training missions at that point, but who Scott had hoped would be able to get the mutant kids out of there quickly, and without harm. How he had expected her to do that when she was still in the habit of panicking, Logan had berated the Fearless Leader about for quite a while, using a lot of colorful language.
Kitty had set off a tripwire that she hadn’t seen, because she had shut off her mutation at just the wrong moment, and all Hell had broken loose.
Rogue’s eyes were fixed on the camp, but still moved down to scan her footing before every step. The faint glint of the tripwire caught her eye, and she approached slowly, not touching it, examining where it was posted, and what it was connected to. She then hovered over it, and set down several feet beyond it, crouching very low and remaining still for a few minutes, to be sure that she had not been seen. She was very, very patient.
“Why can’t all the ones we pick up have this kinda training?” Logan murmured.
“Because they don’t all suck out the brains of men who make Green Berets nervous,” said a low, all-too-stiff voice.
Turning to look at Scott, Logan grinned brightly, but with much all-too-evident sarcasm. “What a pity.”
“Mm.” Scott sounded less than agreeable. “She looks like she’s going into war.”
“She is, Scooter. It’s just a real quiet war, now, with politics the way they are. Not a Cold War, though. Too much blood for that.”
Scott straightened his shades, his jaw tightening. “I can’t see it like that. We aren’t fighting a unified force.”
“Neither is the War on Drugs or the War on Terrorism,” Logan countered.
Scott sighed. “We aren’t an army.”
“Damn straight we’re not, and that’s why it’s so damned hard to do this job.” Logan was watching Rogue on screen again. She had just silently knocked out the night watchmen with the butt end of her knife handle, and lowered them to the ground. When one guard had spotted her and started to yell, she had grabbed his throat so hard that his windpipe had made an audible, crunchy sound of protest. When he still tried to yell, she neatly snapped his neck and set him down with care.
“Then why are you here, Wolverine?” Scott finally bit out, unnerved by how efficiently, stealthily, and ruthlessly Rogue worked.
“Because if I weren’t here, most of you’d be dead by now,” Logan growled. “Because I know how to fight a war. The rest of you can be pristine in the way you ‘handle conflicts’, but I know how to do what needs to be done, and I’ll actually fuckin’ do it.”
“Like breaking people’s necks?” Scott hissed through grit teeth.
“When we did that mission in Louisiana, they killed one of the kids before we could even get there. Take another look at the screen.”
Scott did. Rogue had reached the hostages, and gestured for them to be silent. There were four kids, one with a broken leg. She looked around and then quietly cut them free. She carried three of them. The fourth with the broken leg, as it turned out, could fly, and he followed her when she took to the air.
Scott squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away.
Logan was silent, as he would not have been before, when he did not remember having his own shining ideals stomped on by war and crushed into a thousand pieces, more than seventy years ago. Longer, perhaps, than Scott might live.
“How do you live with it?” Scott said softly, dangerously, his hands clenching the back of a computer chair until his knuckles turned white.
“By living through it every day for years; living thought more than that and worse, Summers,” Logan said quietly. “I don’t expect you to approve of any of what it’s made us. Get pissed off if you like, call it unjust and unfair and make decisions that are rational and moral. Don’t be fucked up enough to do on instinct what I do...and what Rogue does. We learned lessons that people in the world you an’ Chuck are tryin’ to make won’t have to learn. Maybe one day ya won’t need us, but so long as you’re fightin’ monsters, you’re gonna need at least one monster on your side to fight ‘em like monsters fight, or else it’ll be you or Jeannie or ‘Ro, or one of the kids, that’ll become the monster.” He glared at Scott. “And yeah, that’s right, I’ve read Nietzsche. Get over it.”
Scott was staring at him, surprise and something like incredulity on his features, but he was also clearly touched. “You’ve changed.”
Logan snorted. “I’ve got more than a century of memories I didn’t have before.”
“Your life back,” Scott murmured. “It’s not...I’d thought it would change you more than this, so when you didn’t...”
Logan shook his head. “It was my life. I’m not that guy, though. Doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything from all those memories. I’m still the same asshole, I’m just a little more at peace with it, and don’t have a gapin’ hole in my life where somethin’ was stolen.”
Scott smirked. “Gee, it’s a little like redemption via an act of kindness.”
“They made you teach Tale of Two Cities again, didn’t they?” Logan countered.
“At least in this case, no gallows involved.”
Logan scowled at that. “Get out of here, One-Eye.”
“Why?”
“You’re not gonna want to see this next bit.” Logan gestured toward the screen. “She got the kids to safety and is goin’ back.”
“Why would...”
“Go away while you’re still in a good mood,” Logan warned.
Scott grumbled, but, for once, obeyed.
Logan was mildly amazed. He was right, though. Rogue was a lot less restrained once there weren’t little kids to traumatize. Most of the camp was alive at the end, tied up as federal agents arrived, but a few were quite notably otherwise and some of the survivors were badly injured. Rogue came into the control room, tugging off her cap and not looking at all surprised to see Logan there.
Up close, it was easier to tell just how well Rogue’s uniform was tailored. Her cheeks were flush with exertion and her eyes were bright. Her heartbeat was still slightly elevated. Logan’s mind was temporarily wiped clean of all thoughts except a quiet damn.
And she was slowly letting go of the coldness of fighting, but not completely, so when she smiled in greeting it was edged, dark, and somehow cat-like. “Hey, Sugah. Been here long?”
Logan felt a faint thrill, holding her gaze, knowing that behind those big brown eyes flecked with green was a mind that saw the world a lot like his own. The connection crackled for a moment, like pleasant tension. “Long enough. Scared off One-Eye for ya.”
Rogue raised her eyebrows. “Ah’m surprised he didn’ go outta his way to stop the sim an’ lecture me.” She picked up a folded white towel from a nearby chair, where she’d put it before her little ‘workout.’ She began wiping off the sheen of sweat from her skin.
Logan gave a low affirmative sound. “We had words, but they sounded more sage than usual on my side, which scared him off.”
Rogue shook her head, amused but still not loosened up enough to laugh; although she still mockingly crooned, “Aw, did you feel like a father-figure revealing the cold facts of life?”
Logan shuddered. “Oh fuck no!”
That earned him a low chuckle, but did not ease his sense of horror.
“Don’t worry, Sugah. Ah’ll never see you as a father figure.” She smirked brightly, but it shone like a knife. “Add up all the years in my head, and Ah’m older than you.”
Logan’s eyebrows lifted a little. “You’re in a good mood.”
Rogue shrugged. “My simulation editin’ works. Ah’m satisfied an’ lookin’ forward to puttin’ together my own.” Then she smiled. “And, o’ course, a little violence and a good bit of stalkin’ prey can occasionally perk up my mood.”
I could fall for this woman. Logan could not quite find any words, and just smirked at her, his eyes a little intense.
Rogue held his gaze for a moment too long and then began toweling her sweaty hair, perhaps hiding behind the towel, but when she lowered it, her hair was appealingly tousled and she had regained her composure. “How did Ah do, then?” She gestured back toward the danger room, genuinely curious about Logan’s opinion.
He widened his eyes a little. “Very good. I’d have killed a few more, but around here that’s generally looked down upon, but it’s really just a difference in our weapons: your strength, my claws. Yours can be made less lethal more easily. Your stealth is very good.”
Rogue smiled, a spark of predatory pride in the expression. “Thanks, Sugah.” Then she tilted her head and put her towel aside. “How was the capital?”
Logan shrugged with a noncommittal grunt. “Political. See what you mean about the president. Damn, he’s younger that I thought though, even if he’s goin’ grey awful quick.”
Rogue nodded, and started to make her way towards him. “Jean, Charles an’ Colossus stayin’ for the political shindig?”
Logan nodded, watching her intently. “Yeah. Your idea?”
“Nah, but it fit into a couple bits of the speech Ah suggested addin’.” She shrugged, coming to a halt when she was standing close to him.
Logan’s gaze lowered to the lines of her body. “That’s a damn fine uniform.”
“The best that Fenris could furnish, and that Ah could alter when a mission shredded it now an’ again and Ah’d have to repair it.” She ran her fingers along close-stitched seams like the remnants of battle scars.
Shredding it sounded like an interesting idea, but then he wouldn’t get to see her fight in it anymore. Then again, he might get to see her fight in leather, and that would be something to see. Then, as he was admiring the way the fingers of her left hand moved along a seam from her stomach down to her hip, he was surprised to hear the sound of a zipper. Rogue’s zipper. She had reached up with her right hand to the zipper up at her throat and begun to slowly pull it down. Logan silently thanked every deity he had ever heard of.
Dark fabric parted, framing the pale skin it exposed: the column of her throat, the impossibly perfect dip of her collar bone, the valley between her breasts––no bra, and again Logan was thanking deities––and the smooth, taut muscles of her stomach down to her navel. She only stopped when she reached that tool belt, but Logan could tell that the zipper went a few inches lower, and that with that belt out of the way that he could peel that uniform off of her real fast––or maybe very, very slowly, if he could stand the anticipation.
Rogue leaned forward, her breasts very nearly escaping her open uniform––which still clung to them for how well-fitted the cloth was––and resting her weight on her hands where they settled on Logan’s knees. “See somethin’ ya like, Sugah?”
“Hell yes, I do, Darlin’,” he rumbled, managing to tug his gaze upward and make eye contact. His hands itched to touch her, but he really wanted to see what she was planning to do next. The lack of bra and the return of that mischievous grin suggested that she did, indeed, have plans.
So he let her make the next move, and gave a faint purr when she leaned in close to catch his lips. The woman knew how to kiss, even by Logan’s standards, and that, added to the way she lifted his hand and firmly placed it under her uniform, had him getting hot under the collar. Her skin was smooth, as were the lines of her body as his hand roamed upward. He cupped a breast, hearing her breath catch as he ran his thumb across her nipple. The kiss lingered, prolonged, and Rogue pressed closer as Logan’s exploring hands threatened to melt her brain.
Especially when his fingers unbuckled her belt and slid further down, underneath the fabric of her uniform, until he cupped her sex, rubbing her slowly and making her gasp, breaking the kiss. Logan took the opportunity to lower his mouth to her oh-so-sensitive neck, making her shudder and her hips press into his hand. Her breathing turned staccato, ragged as she found herself increasingly overwhelmed by the tension in her lower abdomen. One of her hands clutched Logan’s shoulder while the other clenched around the fabric of his shirt over his chest. “Logan,” she panted.
He gave a low growl, the vibration of the sound at her throat drawing a whimper from her. His finger slid inward, past her outer lips, the scent of her arousal fogging his brain. She was wet, slick and so close. He slid two fingers into her, rubbing her clit with his thumb as his mouth tormented the skin of across the column of her throat––and less than a minute of such ministrations was all she needed, an inarticulate moan welling up from her chest as she shuddered against him, giving a low noise of disappointment when his hand left he. With his other hand, Logan caught her around the waist to keep her from falling off his lap.
Logan licked his fingers clean idly as he watched her catch her breath. She tasted rich and tart, and she was beautiful. “You okay there, Darlin’?”
Rogue grinned, her eyes bright when her eyelids fluttered open. “Yeah, Sugah, but now it’s your turn.” And then she unbuttoned his pants and pulled down the zipper.
Shortly afterward, she slid out of his grasp and all the breath left Logan’s lungs as she released his erection from the confines of his pants, proceeding to explore it with her hands and mouth.
Logan groaned, muttering something utterly incoherent as he ran his fingers through her hair, his other hand clutching at her shoulder. She might be inexperienced, but she sure as HELL wasn’t a novice; she was goddamned expert, judging by what she could do with her tongue. And then she took him into her mouth and Logan lost awareness of anything else. He lost it when she purred and he felt it so damned intimately. She swallowed around him as he released, making him shudder and growl. Then she slowly let him go, getting to her feet again. “You okay there, Sugah?” she asked lightly, playfully.
“Goddamn, Marie.”
She chuckled and zipped up her uniform, much to Logan’s disappointment, but then she said softly in his ear, “Told ya Ah’d make up for it, Logan.” She pressed a brief kiss against his temple, buckled her belt, and walked out of the room.
Logan gaped after her, and the way her hips swayed like the tail of a cat: a silent message that the game was by no means finished. He cursed under his breath in spite of the wicked grin that formed on his lips. Hell, I think I’ve fallen for this woman.
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