She was aware of being followed. They shadowed her, black-clad figures in a sea of brightly dressed New Orleans shoppers. She tried to ignore the fear that made her chest painfully tight. After all, it was kin to another sort of fear she’d sworn to defeat, no matter what the cost.
The sun glinted off of the sunglasses of one of the men in the group. She almost turned, almost looked curiously at him. Not that she needed actual sight, of course. It was simply a reflex. That’s what her husband would have said, anyway, had he been there.
She kept up a steady pace, trying not to let it be known that she realized that they were following her. The apartment where she lived was only another block or two away. It wouldn’t be too long before she could block them out, forget about them. If they were her husband’s associates, angry with him or merely sent to protect her, they wouldn’t come into her home, by force or otherwise. She knew that from too many years of experience.
“She’s aware of us,” the redheaded woman in black said to the man wearing the red-lensed sunglasses who walked casually beside her.
While they weren’t wearing the uniforms of the X-Men, the three men and four women were dressed in black shirts and pants, each suited to his or her own style. The Professor had asked that they be as circumspect as possible in this city where humans outnumbered mutants four thousand to one. After having seen what had happened to some of the less fortunate mutants from this area, the X-Men were all forced to agree.
“I can smell the fear on her. We’re going to have to tread lightly with this one,” the other dark-haired man said. His mouth was twisted up in what was perhaps a habitual sneer, but his eyes held only wariness and determination to catch their prey.
“I’m amazed to hear the Wolverine talk about treading lightly in anything,” the blond man said lightly, a small smile playing across his lips at the glare he received for that one.
“When you’ve hunted the way I’ve had to hunt, Icy, for as many years, then you’ll know that there is always a time to tread lightly when dealing with skittish prey,” the Wolverine replied with a low growl.
“She thinks we’re in league with her husband somehow, and this alone seems to comfort her, for her husband’s acquaintances have never approached her home closely before. She lives mostly alone because her husband is away a lot of the time. I can’t quite read what it is her husband does, but whatever it is, I believe she has no part in it,” the redhead said.
“Are you sure about that? We may not have any definite answers about the guy, but we’ve got plenty of rumor and speculation to go on,” the Wolverine said darkly, glaring at the back of the woman now entering a very neat, modern apartment building.
“Rumor and speculation aren’t enough for us to use against this guy, Wolverine,” the man in the sunglasses said wearily, as if repeating something for the tenth time. The Wolverine just grunted.
They reached the door to the apartment building. Thankfully, it wasn’t in a nice enough neighborhood to use buzzers to get in. The youngest looking woman slid her face into the wall in what everyone apparently though was a normal move, and then she peaked back out again.
“No security systems,” she said. “They’re a very trusting lot, this building’s tenants.”
“And we can definitely take advantage of that,” the Wolverine said. Metal claws slid out of his hands, long and gleaming in the sunlight.
“Wolverine, no! There’s an easier way to get in. Remember, we don’t make any show of violence until we know whether or not she’s involved,” the redhead said, putting a hand on the Wolverine’s wrist. Her eyes focused on the doorknob and narrowed. The air around the group seemed charged for a moment, and then the knob began to turn. “There, that wasn’t so hard,” she said finally, pushing open the door.
They filed in quickly and followed the redhead’s lead up the stairs. The door she stopped at was the second one on the second floor, a dingy yellow thing that was probably supposed to be cheerful. The man in sunglasses stepped forward and knocked.
Marie was certain that she’d seen the last of her black-clothed shadows when she looked out her window and realized with relief that they were nowhere in view. She set down the bag she’d been carrying and sighed. She was glad that her husband was rarely around. It gave her time for what was most important to her: writing. She was currently working on a collection of originally rewritten fairy tales. She had a publisher for them already, and with five stories done, she only had three more to go.
Her laptop beckoned her from the small desk in the main room which was its home. The beautiful machine had been a present to her from Remy, although when he had given it to her, he had expressed scorn that she would ask for something like this for their anniversary when he could just as easily have bought her jewels or pretty clothes. She hadn’t been able to explain her love of writing to him then, and she was sure she never would.
There were times when Marie wondered about her marriage, if it was everything that she had hoped for as a little girl playing with dolls. But, really, what more could a woman whose skin was lethal hope for than a husband whose night-time pursuits were definitely of the illegal kind and a small apartment in a wealthy city where he could hide away when he needed to? Remy had never laid a hand on her in anger, and she had to be grateful for that, she was sure. And she cared for him, even if it wasn’t the all-consuming love she’d longed for as a teenager. Even if he didn’t seem to care all that much back.
Marie sometimes had to admit to herself that Remy had probably only married her because he hadn’t wanted all of the chasing he’d done to be in vain. He’d never married any of the other mutant girls he’d slept with in their gang, the Shadows, back in Mississippi four years ago. At the time, she’d told herself that he also hadn’t looked at them the way he looked at her, his dark eyes flaming red with passion that he couldn’t act on. That he hadn’t whispered in the other girls’ ears about ways to get past their more disfiguring mutations, hadn’t promised them the world and more.
He had. She was sure of that now. Knowing Remy as she had come to in the last four years, he’d have done anything to get his way.
Of course, there was a part of Marie that thought, wistfully, that perhaps Remy really had thought he loved her, during those days of promises and dating. She usually managed to repress those thoughts because she knew them to be untrue. Remy loved himself first, best, and only. It was foolish to think otherwise.
Marie often regretted that she had gotten involved with him at all, especially when, after a year of marriage, she discovered that her husband had decided to become a professional thief because he’d had so much success with it while their gang was still intact. He preferred to prey on the rich humans than to do honest—or at least legal—work. She tried to distance herself in as many ways possible from that part of him while still remaining a loyal, if not loving, wife. After all, she couldn’t divorce him. There would be nowhere else for her to turn, no one to support her. She didn’t have many friends in New Orleans, or anywhere else for that matter, and the ones she did have were barely able to survive on their own. With a GED but no college education and very few skills besides writing, there wasn’t anything else Marie could do but stick it out in her marriage.
Every once in a while, as she sat at her laptop and typed, the half-formed thought of leaving once the book was finished, if it sold well, entered her mind. Marie usually dismissed it, though. She wrote for herself, not because she was sure she’d be a hit. The same little imp that made her mind wander to leaving pointed out at these times that she wouldn’t be publishing the book if there wasn’t a reason she wanted or needed the money. She always answered it with silence.
The knock on her worn door interrupted Marie’s thoughts. Her first fearful thought was that it was her shadows from earlier, coming to interrogate her or worse. She pushed that thought away. More than likely it was her neighbor, Helen, whom she spent some time with every once in a while, when the other woman was bored with her own home life and not wanting to put up with the antics of her two teenage sons.
Marie made sure that the chain latch was secure before opening the door, just in case. She wished, not for the first time, that the door had a little peep-hole so that she could see visitors first, but there was nothing she could do about that. The landlord had specified that any work on the apartment had to be approved by him, and he’d been so slimy the first time she’d met him that Marie avoided contact with him as much as possible.
The sight beyond the crack that the chain provided proved her fear to have been well-founded. Her shadows, the seven black-clad men and women, stood crowded in the small hallway. Was it just her imagination that made the sunglasses worn by the man in front gleam with a red light? Her mother had always said that red was an evil color, but Marie had never believed it. If she had, she certainly wouldn’t have married Remy. Still, look where that had gotten her.
“Hello, Rogue. Mind if we talk to you for a few minutes?” the man asked, as calmly as if he was a neighbor or a casual acquaintance. And he knew her name, the one she’d gone by during her stint in the Mississippi gang. She was pretty sure she didn’t like that.
“Look, I don’t know who you freaks are, or how you’re associated with Gambit, but I want you to leave. Now,” Marie said, making her voice stronger than her quaking insides felt. She used Remy’s street name, the first she’d known him by. Back when she’d been the Rogue, and had more than she did now, in almost every way that counted.
“We’re not associates of your husband, Rogue. We’re here to see that some wrongs that he’s been committing are made right,” the redheaded woman behind the guy with the glasses said.
Marie wasn’t sure what to make of this all. None of the people her husband worked with had ever come to her door before. They’d never asked to speak with her, had never shown any interest in her whatsoever unless they were on guard detail. Add to that the fact that she knew that Remy was involved in at least minor criminal activity, and Marie found herself facing a problem she wasn’t at all prepared to deal with.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said sincerely, hoping that the truth would drive them away. She saw the leader look back at the redhead, who nodded. He turned back to face Marie.
“I believe that you don’t know what’s been going on, Rogue. But maybe it’s time that you found out. You could be the key to helping us fix a very bad situation,” he said quietly, leaning forward intensely. Marie didn’t have any doubts that he meant every word he said.
After another moment of hesitation, she unlatched the chain and stepped back. She did have one weapon that would get rid of them, which she would use if she had no other choice. However, for now she would hear them out.
“Come on in,” Marie said neutrally.
They filed in, one after another, faces grim except for one Eurasian woman who winked at Marie. She smiled back thinly, then turned to see them all perched on any available surface in her small apartment’s main room. One man, the roughest and most dangerous looking of the lot, sat in her desk chair. That should have made her more than a bit upset. No one sat there but her, not even Remy. But she didn’t really care too much now. There was more at stake, it seemed.
“Now, can you please explain to me what exactly is going on?” Marie asked the guy in the glasses. “And who are you anyway?” No use thinking of him as “the guy in the glasses” if she could get his name.
“I’m Scott. This is Jean,” he said, pointing to the redhead, then going around the circle he introduced, “Bobby, Ororo, Kitty, and Jubilee. Oh, and Logan.” He added that last while pointing at the man sitting in her chair, and to Marie it sounded as if he didn’t really like the guy.
“Okay, so I know your names. You know I’m the Rogue. Now, what do you know about Gambit?” Marie still wasn’t ready to trust these people all the way.
“Well, I’m sure that you’ve heard of human groups who are illegally capturing mutants and selling them as slaves for various purposes,” Scott began, looking questioningly at Marie to see if she had heard the rumors.
“Yes, I’ve known about that. But what -- you don’t think Gambit’s helping humans kidnap mutants, do you? He may – that is, his activities may not always be legal, but he’d never hurt one of us!” Marie said earnestly, feeling that she should defend her husband in this case. He really wouldn’t do something so terrible. He knew what it was like to be a single, young mutant trying to escape from people like that.
Scott shook his head. “No, your husband isn’t helping the humans, Marie. He’s part of a group of mutants who decided to take revenge on humans for what they’re doing. They call themselves the Nightstalkers, and they’re starting to gain attention. Not many humans really cared when it was mutants being kidnapped and sold into slavery, but they’re paying attention to the same being done to their own kind,” he said, then he stopped to let the truth sink in.
“Gambit isn’t – he isn’t doing that to humans, is he? Kidnapping them and selling them into slavery?” Marie asked, horror-stricken.
“I’m afraid that he may be, Rogue. We’ve received information suggesting that he’s near to the head of the operation. We don’t have any facts yet, though, and that’s where we were hoping you could help us,” Scott said gently.
“How? Gambit doesn’t tell me anything about his work, not really. I had to drag what I do know out of him, and that’s obviously not as much as I thought,” Marie said bitterly, sinking down onto a corner of the coffee table. She’d been standing since her guests had entered, as on the defensive as she could be, but now she needed something besides her weak legs to support her.
“We know that you and he were part of a gang of mutants in Mississippi. You called yourselves ‘The Shadows,’ and some of the mischief you got into was far more illegal than that of other teen groups. One of the gang’s old members knows us, and he told us about you. Remember Pyro?” Jean asked.
“St. John? You know him?” Marie did remember one of the few friends she still was in occasional contact with. He’d always been there for her, no matter what, and sometimes when she was lonely she’d chat with him online. Talking with St. John had always made her feel better.
“Yes. He came to live at the school for mutants where we work,” Scott told her.
“School for mutants? I didn’t know there was such a thing,” Marie said in shock. If she had, she might have headed straight for it four years ago instead of joining the Shadows to support herself.
“It’s run by Professor Charles Xavier. The Professor got St. John out of jail when he’d been arrested for arson. He earned his high school degree at the school, and now he’s in college, but he’s still living with us,” Scott told her.
“Why didn’t Johnny ever tell me this?” Marie asked, starting to get suspicious. Surely he would have mentioned it, at least!
“He said that he thought at first that you were too in love with your husband to leave him, and then he thought that you wouldn’t leave out of duty or something like that,” Jean said, putting a hand on her arm.
Marie reflexively pulled away, her eyes narrowed. “You’re lucky that wasn’t bare skin, lady. Otherwise you’d be on the floor right now, not exactly conscious, and I’d have your mutation for a while,” she said harshly, eyes suddenly blazing. No one touched her, especially not mutants. It was an unspoken rule that even those who didn’t know her seemed to follow.
“I know, Rogue. That doesn’t scare me,” Jean said with a soft smile.
Marie was unable to process that at the moment, so she turned back to Scott. “What does my having been in that gang in Mississippi have to do with anything?” she asked angrily. These were very strange people, or so it seemed to her.
Scott didn’t answer. Instead, the one he’d called Logan said in a rough voice, “You can say that you’re bored where you are right now. Say that you’ve been feelin’ the need to get some action out in the city. Follow your husband where he goes, help him, gain his trust. Then you might start hearing the things we need.”
Marie raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you think that my husband won’t find that a little strange? I’ve never wanted to take the family business back up, and he knows that. Also, how would I get the information you say you want back to you?” She listed all of the objections she could think of.
The group was silent for a moment. Then the one called Jubilee jumped up and started to pace. Apparently, this was normal behavior, because no one’s expressions changed a bit. It didn’t seem to help her, though, because she didn’t suggest anything.
Finally, the white haired woman Scott had introduced as Ororo spoke up. “What you need are some new friends, ones who are involved in something not quite legal as well, and who are interested in doing more. Some women, perhaps, and a man, who will induce you to become the Rogue once again,” she said.
Marie was awed by the craftiness of the woman’s plan, if she understood her rightly. “But who would volunteer for something like that? And what would they be doing that would be ‘not quite legal’?” she asked.
“As for the second question, we can decide on that in a while. In answer to the first, Jubilee, Kitty, Logan and I will be your new friends,” Ororo said calmly, as if she was commenting on the weather.
The room was suddenly in an uproar. Logan and Kitty were vehemently protesting that they be involved, while Jubilee was jumping around the room excitedly, looking for all the world as if being told that she was going to become a pseudo-criminal was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
“No, ‘Ro’s right,” Scott said loudly, effectively quieting the din. “Logan, your past will help you blend in perfectly with the less-than-legal, and so will Jubilee’s and ‘Ro’s. Kitty, your mutation is one that would be perfect for a thief, and the underworld would just assume that you decided to take advantage of it, just like they all do.”
These arguments apparently made sense to Kitty and Logan, because they finally shut up and stopped shaking their heads. But Marie saw that Logan didn’t look happy with these developments at all.
“Now, Rogue, we have to know if you’ll be willing to help us,” Scott said, looking at her. She somehow got the impression that, despite the glasses, he was staring straight into her eyes, willing her to agree.
She didn’t need much persuasion. If Remy was involved in such a horrible business, then he needed to be stopped. It was for his own sake as well as for the sake of however many human lives would be affected.
“All right, I’ll do it,” she said quietly. “There’s two empty apartments in the loft of this building that are going to be put up for rent in the next week. Their current tenants are sick of dealing with the landlord, who’s as much a piece of slime as he is human. He doesn’t like mutants, but he likes money, so he’ll rent ‘em to you. Just make sure that you keep an eye out and get to him first. Then I’ll ‘meet’ my new neighbors, and we’ll start hanging around each others’ apartments until it won’t seem strange to see us together. Gambit’s due for another visit in a month or so. That should give us some time to get established,” Marie finished. Her voice rang with the old authority she’d used when she’d had to lead sections of the Shadows on trips to find food or shelter. There was no use in being unorganized about this, after all.
“Wouldn’t it seem strange that we move into these two apartments at the same time and you’re instantly friends with us, and then you’re always with us?” Kitty asked.
“No,” Marie answered immediately. “There aren’t any other mutants living in this neighborhood. I’ll explain it to Gambit, and he’ll believe me. He doesn’t pay all that much attention to me anyway.”
“Obviously,” Logan said quietly. Marie glared at him, but decided to ignore that little comment.
“All right then. We’ll leave to start getting things set up. Rogue, so that you know, Logan goes by the name Wolverine at times like this. Ororo goes by Storm. Kitty’s Shadow Cat, but Jubilee’s always just Jubilee,” Scott said, standing up. He smiled at Jubilee as he added that last bit, as if it was a joke between them. She grinned back at him, and Marie found herself longing for that kind of companionship.
Maybe, just maybe, she actually could make friends with these people even while they were working on this problem. It would be nice to have more friends.
“Marie,” she said impulsively. When everyone looked at her, she blushed and said, “My real name is Marie.”
“St. John didn’t tell us that. I guess he was trying to protect you as much he could,” Jean said, laying her hand on Marie’s arm again. This time, she didn’t shrug away. “It’s a beautiful name, Marie.” With that she went to the door and opened it, then looked back expectantly.
Scott smiled at her a little as he left with Jean in tow. To Marie’s surprise, Ororo patted her arm and Jubilee hugged her tightly on their way out. Kitty smiled shyly as she clung to the hand of the blond guy, Bobby. Logan was the last to leave, and the hard look he gave her made her shiver. It felt like he looked all the way into her soul and was disappointed by what he found.
When they were gone she closed the door and latched it, then sat down on her couch. So much had happened in the last twenty minutes that she wasn’t sure how to handle it. One thing was certain, though. She was about to get the kind of adventure she thought she’d left behind. Suddenly, the idea was an exciting and intriguing one. She supposed that she had missed it, after all.
Logan couldn’t get the events of the last hour out of his head as the Blackbird took them swiftly back to Westchester. The way that woman, Marie, Rogue, whatever she wanted to call herself, had talked about her marriage, it was like she didn’t even care that her husband was an asshole who barely had anything to do with her.
From the way he’d seen Jean and Scott Summers interact, Logan was pretty sure that there was such a thing as love, at least for some people. He knew that it took hard work. He admitted to himself that he’d made things even harder for the couple during his first few months at Xavier’s, but eventually the thrill of flirting with Jean to see her blush and make Scott angry had lessened. He’d pretty much given up on that, except for the occasional pass he’d make for the fun of it.
Logan was by nature a very private person. In the last three years he’d had more personal interaction with other mutants than he’d ever had in the eighteen years he could remember living. Ever since Xavier had involved him in fighting Magneto’s failed plot to turn all humans into mutants, he’d felt as if he was as much a part of this group as he’d ever be a part of anything. He wasn’t sure what he felt about that. The fight itself had been fun, and the fights following it, when they’d had to track down Sabertooth, Mystique and Toad after they’d escaped, had been just as exciting, but the whole living part-time at Xavier’s mansion thing was what bothered him. There was a place for him there, and at times he felt he even belonged in it, but he’d still far rather be out on the road, searching for clues to his hidden past.
Of course, Xavier’s money and connections helped his search more than anything he’d ever been able to make fighting in cages across Canada. All the Professor asked in return was that he help the team known as the X-Men whenever they needed it, and that he train some of the older kids at the school in personal combat. Not so much, really, when Logan considered the amount of help the man was giving him.
However, despite his private nature and his desire to let others keep their own lives to themselves if they wished, he couldn’t help but wonder about this Marie. Was she really as innocent as she had appeared, with those big brown eyes, long dark hair and the face of an angel? Or did she know what was going on with her husband after all, and that was what made her so distant about the whole mess he’d gotten into?
Logan just couldn’t tell with her. They’d never heard anything criminal said about her besides what St. John had told them about the Shadows, that Mississippi gang, and that had been more about survival than anything else. Logan understood about doing what you had to just to survive. But you never knew with some people. One criminal activity could excite them so much that they would seek out more and more, and not always the big jobs. As Scott brought the plane down onto the Blackbird’s landing pad, Logan resolved to keep an eye on the woman, just in case.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Story Notes:
A/N: This is what happens when you listen to country music for the first time in months and you hear a song that makes you think, “Wow, wouldn’t it be terrible if Rogue and Logan were in that sort of situation?” And then your muse gets this evil grin on her demonic little face and you know what fear is.
A/N 2:This is completely AU, and another one of those "this has been sitting on my hard drive for years" stories. I think I may have started it way back in 2001. Yeah, that long ago. I'm going to have the same hopes as I have for other stories I've posted lately in that I will actually finish this once I've started posting it.
Disclaimer: Okay, let me think. Do I own Marvel? Nah. Don’t know if I’d want to. Do I own 20th Century Fox? Nopers, although I’m sure the money’d be great. So I guess I don’t own these characters either. Damn. That sucks.
A/N 2:This is completely AU, and another one of those "this has been sitting on my hard drive for years" stories. I think I may have started it way back in 2001. Yeah, that long ago. I'm going to have the same hopes as I have for other stories I've posted lately in that I will actually finish this once I've started posting it.
Disclaimer: Okay, let me think. Do I own Marvel? Nah. Don’t know if I’d want to. Do I own 20th Century Fox? Nopers, although I’m sure the money’d be great. So I guess I don’t own these characters either. Damn. That sucks.
Chapter End Notes:
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