Logan almost slammed the door shortly after opening it, as an instinctive reaction to recognizing someone of a military and government bent, but then he recognized the man.
“Fury,” he growled, with a ghost of a vicious grin, but he looked more ragged than usual, edgy and sleep-deprived.
Nick Fury nodded at him, returning the grin with a bit more suaveness. “Logan.”
Logan stepped aside, letting the man in. “What’re ya here for this time?”
Nick adjusted one of his cufflinks uneasily, his face looking a little more grim than even his usual: just the slightest hint of a repressed grimace, but Logan could read it easily. “A bit of insurance on my next mission, from the head psychic of the house.”
Logan gave a low whistle. “Bit of a rough one, eh?”
“If I’m compromised on this mission, I want you guys to tear down the place I'm headed, and maybe burn it to the ground. I have a feeling that you, at least, will be happy to.” He gave Logan a significant look, and could almost see the super-healer’s hackles rise. “But I have to do it by the book first, or it’s a risk to this entire school’s future. And a risk of plenty of you getting caught and kept.”
Logan took a deep breath and let it out harshly, a hint of a snarl on his face as he tried to keep the red tint at the edges of his vision from getting any more intense. “Alright. Follow me.”
Obediently, Fury trailed after Logan, briefly wondering if he should ask him whether he had seen any brunettes with poisonous skin lately, but since Logan had not decked him, Fury was willing to bet Rogue had not made it here. He had to wonder why. It had been over a year now. And something about Logan was off, whether Rogue was here on not. Fury could almost taste the prickle of unease in the back of his throat, and quickly repressed it, calming and shielding his mind as he had been trained to, to keep out the man Logan was leading him to meet.
Logan knocked on the heavy oak door and waited a moment, then opened it at a signal Fury could not hear. The bald man in the well-cut armani suit and custom wheelchair was as Fury remembered: kind-looking, elegant, and with an air of immense power that he found difficult to reconcile with Xavier’s apparent benevolence.
“Agent Nicholas Fury, I’m glad to see you well.” He gestured for the two soldiers to enter, and they did. Logan flopped into a chair against the wall. His friend did not sit.
Fury nodded. “Same to you, Professor.”
“You have a request, I take it?”
“Yes.” Fury took a small device with one button on it out of his jacket pocket and pushed it. Logan winced at the sound it made, which normal humans could not hear. Fury put the device away. “That should kill off any electronic bugs in the room. I know you’ve had some security issues lately.”
Xavier nodded, his expression all too grim. He made grim look sad.
Fury made it look purposeful, and rather irate, but tried to ease up on it around Xavier, with only very minimal success. “I need you to look for me, in exactly eighteen days, with Cerebro. If you cannot find me, or if I am captured when you do, you will need to destroy the compound that I or my corpse will probably be at, which you will find here.” He pulled a map and a small jump drive from his pocket. “This drive has information about the compound. It’s an experimentation facility of an illegal nature, but government-run. It’s just the Genoshan government running it. This country’s ally-status with them is still dangling in the balance. There is also one of several small but insidious branches of our own government, all of which we’ve been trying to trim since the Cold War (with blatant interference from a certain few executive-level administrations) that is aiding them.”
Xavier looked even grimmer, and almost mournful. “They are experimenting on mutants.” He gave Fury a hard look. “Why not rely on your own department for your safety? I know from past experience that you have more trust in them.”
Fury’s lips thinned. “Because one of those executive administrations, the main one currently aiding this little bit of Genoshan Hell, has gained power recently, and I don’t trust the slime that they’ve put into our upper-level management, not to enjoy being rid of me, but if this mission succeeds, the resulting climate change will force them out, or get them some nice shiny public trials, too.”
“Rev up the patriotism and this country will rebel against Genosha as a potential invader,” Logan mused. “Americans have a tendency to rebel against other countries trying to tell them what to do, even if it’s just trying to tell them what to do with their mutants.”
Fury paused to stare at Logan, because that was an unusually astute and sage observation for the hairy former-cage-fighter.
The corner of Logan’s lips twitched. “I’ve been listening to Hank too much, and sleeping far too little. Also, there’s not enough whiskey in the world.”
Surprised, Fury raised his eyebrows in silent question, but Logan only shook his head and gave a passively dismissive hand gesture.
Xavier sighed. “I had not realized they were sinking their teeth into S.H.I.E.L.D.; my apologies. We will help you in any way we can. You and your department have done more for us than has been healthy for you at times in the past.”
Fury nodded. “We’re still kickin’, Xavier.”
“So I see.” Xavier smiled benignly.
“I could always go in with you as back-up, Nick,” Logan said from where he sat near an open window, smoking that on of his ever-present cigars. “I could use the distraction from my current project. I’m gettin’ to the point I’m just too pissed off to be of any use huntin’ anyone down. An old-fashioned raid would do me some good: violent or covert, either way works.”
Fury turned and looked at him, shaking his head. “Not this time. By the book, first. When I’m ready to shred up the book, I’ll be glad to have you fightin’ with me, Logan.”
Logan smirked, looking somehow older and more alive at the same time. “Again.”
Fury gave a particularly vicious smile and bowed slightly in farewell. “Indeed.” He bowed a little to Xavier too, and nodded.
“Good luck, Agent Fury.”
“Thank you.”
~~
Seventeen days later, Fury had gotten his way in far enough to cause a little chaos. First, there was a security malfunction that locked everyone in the compound, causing a flurry of fear through the doctors and staff in the compound. Then the power went down.
Several minutes later, as he tracked down the contained mutants in the compound, Fury discovered the security malfunction; discovered, because he had not caused it, and that worried him. It was actually a positive, as it made certain parts of his plan easier, like hitting everyone he needed to with the knockout-gas laced riot grenades while they were in a panic, but it was still an unknown factor. Someone had gotten into the computers to mess that up.
Finally, Fury made it into the containment sector, only to discover that it was superbly locked down, apparently in the same way that the exits were. He finally had to resort to C4 to get a door open. He was met by a wall of fleeing orderlies, and leapt out of the way, pulling on his mask before dropping another knock-out grenade. It took another five minutes to get past the remaining doctors and guards, neutralizing them however he could. He finally had to resort to his Desert Eagle for the last few.
The power was coming back on as the emergency generators overcame the various errors and faults Fury had hindered them with, since he hadn’t had time to completely cripple them. Many of the mutants were conscious, but it was very clear which ones were considered the most dangerous; the cells at the end of the corridor looked like they could withstand a nuclear blast, while the others looked like clean white jail cells. Fury stepped toward the first cell, when one at the end of the hall rocked, as though with an internal explosion. Its door bowed outward with the force of it. Another powerful blow and it flew off its hinges, the metal shrieking in rebellion.
A small form dressed in white stumbled out. Long brown hair with white streaks, bloodstains across her chest, the woman looked like she was ready to raise hell. Before Fury could react, she had ripped all the doors off the other big cells in two swoops. Swoops: she could fly, and damn fast, too. She glanced into a few cells before darting into one that was two doors down from her own, with a shout of “Emma!” that got Fury’s feet moving.
He reached the doorway in time to watch the brunette tearing into the various psychic and physical restraints holding a battered and partially-emaciated Emma Frost to the wall. The brunette was using her bare hands, and cursing heavily in a slight midwestern accent.
“You need a hand with her?” Fury said, and immediately regretted it, because the brunette flew at him and pinned him to the wall by his throat with her unnatural strength. As soon as he saw the girl’s face, even if it was now mysteriously green-eyed, he was very glad he’d worn something with a high collar, because it had quite literally saved his skin. He choked slightly, but managed to speak. “Rogue?”
Her eyes widened for a moment, and she shook her head abruptly, as if to clear it. When she looked at him again her eyes were brown with only a few scattered shards of lingering green in them. “Nick?”
“Yeah. That’s me. Let me breathe, girl!”
Rogue set him down almost gently and released his throat. “Sorry. Carol hasn’t met you. She’s rather protective of Emma, especially now.”
Fury gave her an odd look.
Rogue pointed to her head. “They wanted to understand my mutation, Sugah. Wanted to see how Ah effect other mutants.” She let her hand drop. “Ah’m still not so sure whether they meant fer me ta kill her, though. She seemed valuable enough to ‘em on her own.”
It took a moment before Fury understood: they had forced her to touch another mutant, a woman named Carol, until the woman had died. “Oh. I see.” A curious look. “She could fly and...all that?”
“Yeah.” She looked away a little, but then gave a bitterly cold fake smile. “You here to rescue us, Sugah?” Rogue asked, heading back to tug at the last few restraints holding Emma to the wall. Emma was already murmuring to herself as the drugs she had been under began to wear off. Rogue’s eyes seemed greener when she looked at Emma.
“Among other things. You got into their computers.”
“Once. Early on, before they’d...before Carol. After that I was in special isolation, as ya can see. And Ah’m sure ya’ve guessed why, too.” Rogue cradled Emma carefully and then handed her to Fury. He followed her as she went into the other isolation cells and pulled a few other mutants out: a familiar-looking boy named Havok, a pretty green-haired woman who had was still unconscious, but Havok carried her before anyone even asked. He seemed to be attached to the woman. Rogue kept talking to Fury. “Ah was programmin’ it so that when the sensors picked up an intruder, and Ah planned to be that intruder insteada you, the security system would mess up and lock everyone outta this sector. After a few hours the strong ones, like Emma and Carol, their drugs would wear off an’ they could bust us out. Ah didn’t quite finish the codin’. It was supposed to knock out the power in this sector, too, but they caught me.”
When Rogue reached the last cell she seemed to hesitate. “Fury?”
“Yeah?”
“This is the man who got us into this mess.” She looked straight at him. “You know him. Ah’m still lettin’ him out.”
Fury stared at her. “I sure as Hell can’t stop you.”
Rogue smirked a little, but it was bitter. “Damn right ya cain’t, but you’ll wish you could when ya see him.” She stepped in, and soon afterward stepped back out carrying a heavily-sedated and therefore disoriented older gentleman with slightly-too-long white hair, and concentration-camp numbers tattooed to his inner arm.
Fury’s jaw tensed. “Magneto,” he said, the name snarled through gritted teeth.
“I call him Erik, myself.” She looked at Fury cooly. “He tried to kill me, usin’ me to run a machine to make humans into mutants. Emma and Carol came for me. Then all of us were caught, but not before I almost died in that machine, along with many other people.”
Fury hesitated, then all but growled as the realization hit him. “The Statue of Liberty. I knew I smelled cover-up but this is deeper...”
“It is.” She looked at the mostly-unconscious man in her arms, who was larger than her but carried as though he weighed nothing. “One more time, Erik,” she said quietly, and pressed her cheek to his forehead; it would have looked affectionate, even loving, if not for the grim and slightly vicious look on Rogue’s face and the way Magneto, even barely aware of the world around him, widened his eyes in horror.
Nick watched as Magneto’s expression contorted and the veins on his face seemed to bulge as his skin paled, while Rogue’s cheeks grew suddenly flushed even as she grimaced a little. It was only a few seconds, then she pulled back, breathing hard. She glared down the length of the hall and lifted one hand. As she curled her fingers, the sound of warping metal filled the corridor like an inhuman chorus of thin screams. The bars of the non-isolation cells warped outward and then snapped, curling outward up toward the ceiling and down toward the ground. Freed mutants ran out, charging down the hall in a flood.
Rogue turned and gave Fury a wicked grin. “Shall we then, Mr. Fury?” Her accent was momentarily dulled, her words crisp and elegantly European-sounding.
Fury stared at her, suspicion and a touch of cold anger written across his face.
Rogue shook her head. “I’m fine, Fury. I’ll be talking like myself within the hour. It’s just that I’ve touched him before. The familiarity makes some of his quirks linger.” She tossed the now-unconscious Magneto over her shoulder as if hefting a golf bag, and began walking down the hall. One mutant was very obviously waiting for them outside of her cell, watching them closely. She looked normal, even beautiful and healthy, but her eyes flashed yellow when Fury glanced at her, and he again felt a welling of anger, and the need to kill.
“Mystique,” Rogue greeted coldly.
“You let him live. I’m impressed. And intrigued,” Mystique said, speaking with a hundred different voices at once.
Rogue narrowed her eyes. “We’ve all been in this place together. I don’t like you; in fact, if I see you outside this damned place, I will probably maim you, but no one deserves this place. No one should die here except the people who did this to us. The enemy of my enemy is, at least temporarily, my friend.”
Mystique nodded slowly.
“Are you strong enough to carry his ass?” Rogue pointed at Erik.
Mystique pursed her lips a little, but nodded.
“Good. Then I won’t be so tempted to defenestrate him.” Rogue handed over her burden to Mystique, who promptly shifted into a large, muscular man, and carried Magneto with more delicacy and a touch of reverence.
Fury was staring at Rogue, feeling oddly struck by her speech. He felt that he suddenly understood why Logan had saved him the first time, out in that damned desert.
“Let’s go,” Rogue growled, and took point as they went out, deliberately putting herself between them and any potential resistance. And resistance they found, and resistance Rogue ruthlessly took out. Fury thought she put on quite a show.
Then Fury got the call: Xavier’s voice in his head, hours early. Agent Fury, are you all right? Fury thought about it, and watched as Rogue picked up a few fallen mutants who had also met resistance and almost been lost to it. I think these folks need a ride. There’s nearly thirty of them. Emma Frost is with us. So is Magneto. Fury could almost hear the ringing shock from the psychic, and had a darkly morbid urge to smirk.
The blackbird will be there within the hour.
And within the hour, Rogue had broken down the doors and let them all out. Emma Frost and Magneto were coherent by then, and helped Fury keep the mutants in some semblance of order to wait for the jet. Rogue watched, then turned on her heel, heading back into the building.
Fury caught her shoulder, and she felt like a statue made of stone under his hand, but he held firm. “Where are you going, Rogue?”
“To neutralize some people. Don’t worry. Ah won’t kill the ones you’ll need ta try in court, secret or otherwise. Ah know who they are, and many Ah wanna kill, but Ah won’t.” She took a deep breath, hers hands forming fists so tensed they shook faintly, then let it out, forcibly releasing the tension. “As it is there are plenty in there still movin’, or startin’ to move as sedatives wear off, and Ah wanna make sure they either stay down, or are dumb enough to make me hafta take ‘em down, because Ah’ll have fun with that.” She turned and met Fury’s gaze. “Ya cain’t stop me.”
Fury hesitated. “How much of this is Magneto?”
Rogue flinched. “Some. But not so much as ya’d think. Ah’m a pretty angry person in my own right, Sugah.” She stepped away, and Fury’s hand slid off of her should as she went back into the smoke. In the half hour that followed, only a few explosions followed, with plenty of scattered crashes of various volumes in between. Then Rogue emerged again, looking determinedly restrained, but also like she really really wanted to go back in and kill everyone. Ten minutes later, the jet arrived, and Fury finally pulled out his communicator, calling his agency with an interesting report. He could almost hear management being gutted as he used the words “genetic cleansing” and “torture” and other colorful phrases that sounded Nazi-enough to horrify the general public if they got out.
When he was done he looked up to see Logan standing next to him, staring at the compound. “You’re sure it’s clear in there? All neutralized?” Logan was rubbing his knuckles a little, looking almost eager.
Fury turned his head and looked at Rogue, who was leaning against a tree between the group of welcoming mutants, and the compound. She was off to the side and if not for her white streaks and white prisoner uniform, however smeared both were now with gore and destruction, she would have scarcely caught anyone’s attention. “I’m pretty damned sure.”
Logan followed Fury’s gaze with blatant curiosity. His brow furrowed. “You not tellin’ me somethin’ here?”
“See that fucked-up steel door, about a foot thick?” Fury asked lightly.
“Yeah.”
“Magneto was barely conscious when that happened. She did it.” Fury gestured toward Rogue with his chin. “With her bare hands.”
Logan gave a low whistle. “Damn.”
“Yeah. And that’s the tip of the iceberg with that one.” Fury pulled a cigarette and lighter from one of his uniform’s pockets, and lit it, cupping the flame against the wind.
“You know her?” Logan asked, raising an eyebrow at the cigarette.
Fury rarely smoked. Only when his nerves were really taxed, and it took a lot to do that, these days. “I met her once before. About a year ago. Thought I’d see her again, but not like this.” He wondered if he should tell Logan anything more about her, about things she knew. He shook his head a little. “Her powers are...they would unsettle people if news got out about her.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t told them about her, have you?”
With a grey-clouded, bitter sigh Fury shot Logan a weary look, one that spoke of too much fighting: a soldier getting tired of it all, but still planning to fight forever. “No. I haven’t. You know me, Logan. I play everything close to the vest, and we both know that quiet is always a better weapon than noise.”
“Whose weapon is she?” Logan asked, his voice bitingly cold.
“Her own, now that she’s out of that place.”
Logan examined the slip of a girl, too thin for reasons he didn’t want to think about while he was still planning on controlling his rage. The wind hid her face behind her hair, and she had folded her hands under her arms to keep them warm. She was whiteness and a dark swathe of hair, and didn’t look like she could scare the daylights out of the general public and their paranoid leaders. “Is she coming with us?”
Fury took another long pull from his cigarette. “I’ll ask. Give me a minute.”
Rogue was more huddled than she had looked from a distance, but her gaze were on the compound. Her eyes looked haunted, but the look on her face was stern and almost fierce. She turned to look at Fury before he was actually close enough to hear, and when he stood right in front of her, she explained simply, “You’ve got some metal in your bones, too.”
Fury clenched his teeth as he felt the pins in his forearm and shin hum very faintly. “Don’t do that,” he said tersely.
Rogue smiled a little, but it was brittle and closed-lipped. She looked burnt out, and her eyes were almost black, the thin shards of green like dim lights in a dark house. “Sorry. My sense of humor is gonna need some time to recover before Ah can be allowed around other people.”
Fury stepped closer to her. “What about them?” He jerked his head toward the Blackbird.
Rogue glanced at it, but her gaze fixed on a figure standing a little bit away from it, watching her and Fury. She flexed her fingers. “You mean, ‘what about him?’” Tilting her head to one side, a shadowed look crossed her face. Her accent abruptly faded, her words taking on the clarity of enunciation of Erik, the smoothness of her own drawl, and a touch of the midwest. “I can feel the metal in him––sense it, like Erik does.” Rogue took a ragged breath. “I can’t be around the X-men right now. And I have some things to make up for, as it is.” A pained, guilty look crossed her face, making the green in her eyes all the brighter
Fury knew how to spot the more dangerous and harmful forms of guilt, and he didn’t like the look of the one Rogue was ready to carry on her back for the rest of her life. He seized her shoulder and pushed it against the tree, turning her so she faced him. “No you don’t, girl.” He spoke in the calm, clear, and blatantly confrontational voice of an army captain. “Did you save everyone you could who needed savin’?”
Rogue’s lips pulled back from her teeth for a second, almost a snarl, but her eyes shone like glass; although she didn’t let any tears fall. The shards of green seemed unnaturally bright, almost glowing. “No.”
Fury shook his head, clearly not believing her. “I said everyone you could, not everyone they put you next to.” He squeezed her shoulder harder. “Did you do everything you could within your abilities, soldier?”
Rogue hesitated, but straightened up a little. “Yes,” she said softly.
“Did you fight every way you could?”
“Yes.” Her voice was a little stronger.
“Did you leave anyone behind?”
Rogue shook her head. “No.”
“Did you lead everyone out of that Hellhole who didn’t create it?”
Rogue’s eyes were brighter, now with something other than tears. “Yes.”
“Look at them, Rogue. Some of ‘em aren’t in the plane yet. Look at the kids whose lives you saved,” Fury commanded firmly, and pointed at the jet.
Turning to look, Rogue felt herself easing, somehow, relaxing faintly. She gulped silently and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“I’ll ask you again: did you save everyone you could have saved, who needed savin’?” Fury said slowly, every word sharp.
Rogue turned and met his gaze, all hints of brittleness gone, tempered away by the heat of justified anger and a protective kind of pride. She put a hand over his arm where he was protected by his sleeve. “Sir, yes, sir,” she replied, a hint mocking, but her smile was as much grateful as it was relieved, and it shone like a hunting knife. She was beautiful, but terrifying.
Fury nodded at her, and released her shoulder. “Good. Don’t pull that shit.”
Rogue’s lips twitched in amusement, but she raised a hand to her temple, massaging it a little. “Thanks for shakin’ me out of it. Carol has this goddamned Hero complex, but there’s so much of her in my head it’s hard to tell when she’s gettin’ to me.”
Fury raised his eyebrows. “And you’re gonna tell me you don’t have hero issues?”
Rogue shrugged and plucked the more-than-half burnt-up cigarette from his hand, careful not to touch his fingers. “Only about as much as you do. Probably a little less.” She took a pull off of the cigarette, exhaled slowly, and handed it back.
Fury shook his head. “Those things’ll kill you ya know.” He took it back gingerly.
Rogue stuck out her tongue. “Bleh. Not really my deal anyway. But Erik used to smoke, Carol was havin’ trouble givin’ it up before all this, and Ah’ve still got some of you bouncin’ around up here, too.” She snorted and crossed her arms over her chest again. “Ah suppose it’s better than when Ah used to crave Lonestar. That crap is disgusting.”
Fury was tempted to ask who it was who craved that godawful beer, but just shook his head again. “You’re insane, but I admit you’ve got a better excuse than most.” He dropped the butt of his cigarette and snuffed it under his heel. “Where do you plan on goin’?”
Rogue tilted her head up and looked skyward thoughtfully. “How far away are your S.H.I.E.L.D. boys?”
“Not too far off. Maybe a few miles.”
Rogue smiled enigmatically. “Good. Then Ah’ve got time.” She paused. “Tell Emma that Ah’m headed home, and remind her firmly that she shouldn’t mention me or my existence to anybody at the mansion. Ah’ve gotta talk to a few friends of hers Ah’d been workin’ with before...all this. Gotta make sure the school’s still goin’. Ah’ll be waitin’ for her when she gets there.” An odd look crossed her face and she touched the side of her head again. “Damn, it’s awkward havin’ her dead lover in my head. She messes up my thoughts somethin’ fierce. Ah don’t have anything remotely resemblin’ a goddamned home.” Rogue said it with a hint of defiant pride.
Fury blinked twice in quick succession, but showed no other hint of surprise. “Ah. That explains a surprising number of things.”
Rogue snorted. “Yeah. As ya can guess, Ah won’t stay there long, once she’s back.”
Fury nodded. “You’re a runner.”
“And what would you call your life?” she countered.
He shot her a glare.
“Just because you’re always chasin’ somebody doesn’t mean ya ain’t just another kinda runner, Nick.” She looked down at her feet and smirked as she hovered a couple of inches off the ground. “Me, Sugah, Ah fly.” She flashed a brilliant grin and shot up into the sky like a white-and-brunette bullet.
Fury watched, mildly flustered. Mostly, he felt more tired than he had ever felt before, and wondered if he was getting too old for this. When he walked back up to Logan, he found the man’s unlined face to be a depressing sight.
Logan had watched the exchange curiously, trying to figure out what was between them, and had found that he could not name it. Fury had been afraid of the girl, but had also looked at her the way Logan knew he looked at his men, when men worked under him: protective, but in a harsher way than anything affectionate. The girl had acted with respect, but not deference; she liked Fury, which was odd enough, but she had also seemed to know him, better than Fury knew her, and that was outright bizarre. “I guess she’s not comin’ with us,” Logan mused.
The scowl on Fury’s face deepened. “No.” Not today.
“Who is she, anyway?”
Fury took a deep breath, and reached for another cigarette from his pocket. “She’s an insane and infuriating girl who knows too damned much.”
Logan looked thoughtful. “I’m lookin’ for somebody like that.”
Fury made an inquiring noise.
“What do you know about the Statue of Liberty?”
With the practiced ease of a soldier and a spy, Nick did not tense in surprise or show any hint of nervousness. “Magneto did it, and there was a huge fuckin’ cover-up.”
Logan nodded toward the compound. “And Bucket-head was in there.”
“Who’re you lookin’ for?”
An odd look crossed Logan’s face: something like reluctant and annoyed affection. “Just a girl who sent me some letters.”
So she did get to you,Fury thought, but gave Logan an irritated look, and shook his head. “Keep talkin’, hairy, and this time try to say somethin’.” The ‘play to expectations’ game. Don’t even think of her name. It was an all-too-common game for him: convincing himself, for short periods of time, that he honestly knew nothing. He was good at it too, but then it was often his job to lie.
Logan snorted. “She knows more than she should, and I want to know why she bothered to tell me. She knows about my past, Nick.”
A pause, just a couple of beats of silence––Fury often had a gift for timing––and he asked,“D’you think that you know her?”
“I don’t. All I know is her handwriting, her scent from the letters, and that she’s a computer genius of some kind.”
Fury looked at Logan, and saw the differences that had unsettled him before. He was relieved, knowing what had caused them. Logan looked better, more sane; and yet he was run ragged, hunting the ghost of Rogue. “So her letters stopped. And you found on the statue...what?”
“Blood. Not much; she didn’t die there. But she bled there.”
Fury nodded.
They stood in silence for a few moments, until Logan’s head perked up and he turned it to one side, listening. “Your boys are almost here. Did the black hawks get louder over the years, or somethin’?”
“They do have a little more power than they used to.”
“Good luck with ‘em, Nick.”
“Same to you, Logan.”
Rogue arrived back at Emma’s school that night, and recieved a letter the next day––special delivery air-mail. It was addressed to Carol Danvers, but Rogue recognized the handwriting on it and knew he’d just been avoiding using her name. It was a short note that said simply:
Write to the bastard so he can get some goddamned sleep, already.
He’s been looking for you.
--Fury
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