Marie's silence cuts through him like the most desperate of sobs. His mind is choking in an avalanche of memory, a sickening blur of faces and names and murder and death, but the scent of her tears drags him clear of James Howlett's fugue. Suddenly, he doesn't give a damn about trivial shit like who the fuck he is.

It's who she is that counts.

“Darlin',” he rasps, and drops to his knees, easing her desperate hold on the woman she's cradling in her arms. “Not your fault. She forced you.”

“No! She needed me to know! She thought this was the best way,” the girl insists, an edge of desperation snapping at the heels of shock. “She sacrificed herself to ...”

The words are lost to a wail, quickly followed by loud, noisy sobs that immediately make him suspicious. She's got something going on, so he feeds the 'path exactly what she'd expect – bemusement at a woman's tears. Annoyance, even. So many crying women, he thinks, and drags their faces to mind, an endless parade of tedious female histrionics. (Marie never made a sound when she cried. Rogue was too fucking angry to bother, slaking herself with death and destruction.)

Grief and regret are rolling off her in great, acrid waves, but there's intent there too. Her fingers clutch hopelessly at the other woman's clothes, but as they do, they form shapes. Words.

Five minutes, she signs. Be ready. She's barely ghosted out the words before she launches into another bout of near-hysteria, sobbing “Mama. Mama!” over and over again.

Good smokescreen, doing what they expect you to. He'd taught her that.

“All they're gonna see is a girl, and you give 'em that, kid. Give you the element of surprise every time,” he stresses as they speed away from the town. Things had turned to shit at the fights, but she'd grabbed the shotgun behind the bar and held off the locals until they made it to the camper. She'd done well. Cool under pressure, tactically sound, too. He should train 'er up.

Logan snorts with mirth, dismissing her enquiring look with a flick of his hand. Who'd ever heard of a girl assassin?

Four hours later, he's still trying not to think about what it might be like to have an apprentice. Someone to teach, to shape, to mould.

Someone who moves like liquid silk, and looks like a fallen angel.

Not that he's allowed to look.

Yet.

Just in case we're in any doubt about your motives here, Logan finds himself thinking as he stares at Marie. You reckon you did for her, but you had one hand on your rod the whole time, boy. Nothing but a goddamned pervert.

The growl rolls through him before he can call it back, and Marie's wails hit another register. Her hands, though, are moving swiftly, easing off of Mystique's boots off to delve inside. She moves so quickly that he doesn't see what she slides into her cleavage. He fills his mind with images of her breasts, perfect curves heavy in his hands, delicious little nipples standing hard and when he sucks …

He throws in an image of long, sweet kisses, and the sense memory of Marie's body, warm and pliant above him. Even cuddling. He senses the moment the Phoenix yanks away her attention, and deep in his gut is a ball of shame that he knows is pure James Howlett. Pussy, Logan swears, and returns his attention to Marie.

Her grandstanding is drawing to a close now, her shoulders starting to shake with genuine emotion. He knows that she has some sort of plan – girl's a tactical genius, there's always a plan – and he can't know what it is. All he can do is help her to stay focused.

“Let her go, baby. Let us take care of her,” he whispers, pulling her into the shelter of his body, even as she continued to clutch at the corpse.

“She was my Mama, Logan. My real Mama – and she loved me,” Marie says, and he's never heard her sound like this – so broken. “She loved me so much she gave me away so that no one could ever use me against her. And I killed her.”

“No, Marie. She chose to die. For you,” he insists, praying it's the truth. Praying there's a fucking reason behind all this, and that it's not just another colossal cosmic joke at Marie's expense.

Marie relinquishes her hold on the woman they'd known as Mystique and turns her face into his collar. She barely breathes it, murmurs so softly that no one other than a feral would have registered anything at all, and there's so many things that she could have meant.

He tries not to think about it, and ruthlessly squashes any sort of hope. But ...

“Not just for me. For us all.”

Looks like he's gonna have to get used to owing Mystique, he thinks, trying to push his gratitude away lest the witch returns. He's struggling, until the thought is knocked from head by sheer astonishment. And fear.

“Uh – Marie? Any way we can tell her that?”

Because Storm is striding across the lab, eyes completely white, her entire being cloaked in a nimbus of electrical energy, stray bolts of lightning working their way free to explode against the ceiling or floor in front of her.

She doesn't bother to take the elevator.

A small tornado propels her upwards, and the ceiling simply incinerates around her as the weather goddess bursts out of the lower levels and into the main part of the mansion without ever exchanging a word with her colleagues.

“Oh, fuck,” the yellow girl says, and even stick-in-the-mud Summers nods in astonished agreement as burnt plaster and debris rains down around them.

*

“Go Stormy!” Rogue exults, and rudely stomps all over Marie's concern. “Yeah, yeah. She's a big girl. You're playing with the big kids now, kiddo. Give the woman the respect she deserves and be thankful for the fucking backup,” her ruthless alter-ego advises. She's not having second thoughts, she's not, Marie thinks desperately, but there are so many people inside her head that are so much better at all this stuff ...

“Maybe it'd be smarter if ...”

“Nah. Has to be you. You know it has to be you,” Rogue insists, then retreats, leaving her alone. Almost alone. It's too soon, she has no real voice yet, still pure knowledge and memory, but Mystique is as real to her as Logan's arm about her shoulders, or the floor under her feet.

“Guess I'm going up then, mama,” she thinks, and pushes herself to stand, tugging the feral up with her.

“C'mon sugar. We got a job to do.”

*

“Where are you going?” Scott winces at the panicked question in his voice, knowing it should have been a demand.

The Wolverine huffs and ignores him – so far, so usual – but Rogue offers him a gentle smile that leaves him blinking in astonishment.

“The elevator,” she says, and … yes. That part had been obvious.

“Lambs to the fuckin' slaughter – there's nothing they can do, Marie,” the Wolverine protests, but she frowns and pushes his objections aside.

“It's their battle too, Logan. The X-men created a monster, the X-men are going to take her down. And the X-men need their leader,” she said, slipping her hand through his elbow as they stepped inside the elevator.

The cold, vengeful practicality was the Rogue he knew, but the warmth of her hand on his arm, the slow of fellowship and support – that was new. Marie, he thought, testing the sound. From now on, he'd be calling her Marie.

*

“Anybody else think us all arriving in one little steel box is like – muy estupido?”

“Shut up, Jubilee.”

“But Roguey!”

“Mah name is Marie.”

“Yeah, yeah. Got that. It's like – we're all here! Kill us now!”

“So go out the fucking window, or up the stairs, girl! Quit your bellyachin', ” Wolverine snarls.

“Well, who died and made you a million years old? There are no windows in the medlab. Or stairs.”

Wolverine simply raises an eyebrow, as if waiting for the penny to drop.

“Oh. Note to self: my secret underground facility is gonna have more than one way out.”

Scott looks almost affronted, while Beast nods his head in amused agreement and Gambit snorts with mirth. Roguey though – she's still staring straight ahead, completely out of it.

She did just kill a woman. Who turned out to be her real mom.

Total suck, Jubilee thinks, then berates herself for even noticing the pun.

What? She's funny, okay? (And fucking scared.)

The elevator dings.

*

It's raining upstairs.

Hank distracts himself by trying to figure out how Storm has managed to lower the humidity to the point where there are no visible clouds, but a whirling gale that moves through the halls, pushing them ahead of it with rain so hard that it stings their skin.

He has no idea what the plan is, or even if there is a plan at all. Wolverine had been rather succinct on the matter - “We find the bitch, and hope Storm has fried her” - and Scott's pale face suggests he hadn't quite thought through all the eventualities they might face.

They were setting out to kill a friend.

Rogue – Marie, as she insists on being called now – is uncharacteristically quiet. Her voice has changed, much gentler rhythms than she used to have, and there's a different tang to her scent, so it is possible she simply isn't Rogue any more, he allows. What he doesn't know is what that means. Is she stronger? Weaker? An X-man or not?

She certainly moves through the corridors as if she's perfectly at home, checking one room after another as they progress along the main corridor. She still works seamlessly with the Wolverine, and directs the rest of the team as if born to command.

Mystique's child. Perhaps she was, Hank can't help but think.

*

Really, they should'a just followed the trail of fire and destruction, Marie huffs. Here's Storm, and here's the Phoenix, and looky here! There's a big old tornado taking on the scary telepath.

The Phoenix is standing at the far end of the dining room, hand extended to vaporise chairs and tables as they hurl towards her on the relentless wind, and the other extended towards Storm herself, beckoning her closer.

The weather goddess unleashes a volley of lightning bolts, and the witch does nothing to avoid them, throwing her head back in ecstasy as they explode around her, drinking them in. She's absorbing the power, Marie realises with a shock.

Welcoming it.

Storm's nimbus of energy is flickering around her, burning blue hot, incinerating everything that she comes into contact with, intentionally or otherwise. Marie counts a dozen balls of lightning zooming around her, tiny planets to her blazing sun, and her passage across the room is marked by footprints scorched into the wooden floors.

The Phoenix is a creature of fire, Marie wants to scream. You can't defeat her that way.

(She doesn't have to, Rogue murmurs. She just has to keep her busy. Focused.)

Logan rescues her from having to think about that by bending down to breathe into her ear.

“What are we doing?”

Marie isn't sure who growls the answer, and tries to ignore the primitive thrill that rockets through her as she sights her prey.

“Stalking her,” she says lowly, knowing that Beast will catch it too.

“We get close, we bring her down.”

“Inelegant but effective,” Beast snarls, and they move in concert, letting the wind pick them up and throw them at their target. She barely notices their presence, at first.

The three predators spring in perfect unison, their bulk knocking the Phoenix to the floor. Her screech is inhuman, outrage and frustration and aeons of anger erupting from her body. Two of her attackers, she flings away, their claws scrabbling at thin air as she throws them the full length of the room. Marie, she keeps, hanging in mid-air, her prisoner.

“So you turn on me at last. Oh, I've been waiting for this. It's going to be so much fun!” she coos, bringing the smaller woman closer and closer until their lips meet.

“See? Not even your skin can hurt me, child. I am untouchable. Unbeatable,” she stresses. “Let me in, child. We'll have so much fun.” The Phoenix cups Marie's cheek with one hand, the other sliding up and down, up and down across her breast, thumb catching the nipple with every pass.

Marie lets her breathing roughen and her mind fill with erotic images. She shifts closer to undulate under those busy hands, tilting her head to lick along the other woman's bottom lip. “Oh God, open,” she moans, her hand already fishing inside her bra as the Phoenix closes her eyes in momentary bliss.

She wasn't the only one set on distraction, Marie realises after a moment. Even as their tongues tangle, Marie can feel the tap-tap-tap of the Phoenix's mind at her own, and carefully pushes forward one occupant after another. Sabretooth's special brand of insanity makes her attacker flinch, and Daddy – well. Daddy makes her pull away, blinking and pale.

“World needs to look after its little girls a bit better, don't it sugar,” Marie says sadly, and yep, that does it nicely. Even the suggestion she might be some sort of victim sent the Phoenix – or maybe Jean – into spiral of rage that left no room for clever mind tricks.

Nothing more dangerous than a fucked-up little girl, Marie thinks bitterly, hands moving quickly behind the other woman's neck, flicking the head off the cartridge to expose the triple-needled syringe. Unless it's an assassin you should have never trusted in the first place, she thinks sourly, slamming the needles deep into back of the woman's neck. As close to the brainstem as possible, Mystique was telling her anxiously. For maximum speed in reaching the brain.

Reach the brain already, she begs, as an invisible, intangible hand grabs her about the throat, threatening to separate her head from her body. It shakes her like a puppy, for the sheer fun of it , Marie suspects, then flings her up the wall opposite. Anytime now would be good, Marie groans as the Phoenix amuses itself by trying to leave a woman-shaped mark in the plaster. Cure, my ass - if anything, the witch is getting stronger, incapacitating every person in the room one by one.

“Jean!” Marie screams, as blood starts to trickle from Scott's nose and ears. “Stop! You don't want to do this,” she begs.

The Phoenix raises an eyebrow. It's the most human expression Marie has seen on the other woman's face in days, sheer disdain for the thought that anyone would dare to second guess her.

“Jean is gone, and you weren't even friends,” she points out. “She couldn't even decide what she hated most – the fact that her boyfriend wanted to fuck you, or the fact that your boyfriend didn't want to fuck her.”

“You just don't get it, do you bitch? That stuff? All the petty little things? That's because we're human! Not perfect, not all-powerful, nothing particularly special.” The intangible punch slams into her belly, doubling her over even as she writhes halfway up the wall. Undeterred, Marie gasps out the words Jean Grey desperately needs to hear, even if the Phoenix objects.

“Jean was being Jean, then. Not Dr Grey, certainly not the Phoenix. Just another woman. Sure, most of the time she was a stuck-up bitch, but sometimes she was fun! Sometimes she relaxed enough that we could see who she actually was inside - and we liked that person.”

Her windpipe pinches shut, then, that invisible, malicious hand denying Rogue her last breath.

Dark spots bloom, and half a dozen voices clamour for attention on the edge of her consciousness. No, she protests. Don't want to talk about the Phoenix.

Sorry. Stole your lives and now I'm taking you with me.

Rogue. Come back. Stronger than me, y'know. Strongest of us all.

Logan. Sugar. Love you.

Love you all. Weird. Guess it's because you're me.

I'm you ...

We …

*

Someone is howling, filling his head with the most woeful noise. If he could only wake up a little to beg them to be quiet, perhaps he might find some peace. The light stings as he cracks his eyes open, and it seems to take forever for anything to come into focus.

And then he sees her crumpled at the other end of the dining room, blue in the face, and he realises it was him, all along.

“Marie!”

He is broken, dragging something twisted behind him as he shuffles across the floor. Of no consequence he thinks. He is whole enough to give her what she needs.

“Out of my way!” he snarls at the group clustered around her. “Somebody go hang that witch of yours,” he suggests, nodding towards where Jean Grey is thrashing and moaning, fighting the effects of the Cure right down to the very last cell in her body.

Storm smiles, ice-cold, and he realises it's not safe to say things like that anymore. The X-men lost their mentor, then their leader, and now their moral compass. Jean Grey can't expect anything other than short, sharp justice. It goes against every Christian principle, but there's too much of Logan in him to care.

Not when the only person the bastard ever cared about is dying slowly in front him, her lungs starved of oxygen and her brain already shutting down. The rattle in her breath tells him her windpipe is crushed, but that's fixable. It's only been minutes, he tells himself as he falls to his knees. The damage to her brain … he can't think about that. She's tougher than anyone he knows. She can take from him, and heal, he calms himself.

She will heal, he panics as her skin stays inert under his fingers. Heal, Logan orders inside his head, and heal, Wolverine howls his grief. The rattle stops, and his ability to be gentle vanishes, his hands roaming her skin looking for somewhere – anywhere – that will trigger a response. He refuses to add this girl's name to the list of lives he has destroyed.

“Jesus, sugar,” she moans suddenly, and he realises he was so caught up in his panic, he missed the moment when her skin began to buzz. “You don't need to do this,” she slurs, voice bruised, and he laughs bitterly because – need? His need for her? Always his downfall.

He clutches at her, refusing to let go even as his vision begins to blur, and he hears the blood vessels start to pop inside of his body. Still he forces his strength into her, more and more of him, and it's only when his legs give out that he severs the connection.

She hovers over him, concerned.

“Logan? Sugar?”

She wants to crawl into his arms, that much is clear. He wants to let her, but for her sake, he's not going to.

“No, ma'am. James Howlett,” he says stiffly, and backs away, refusing to catch her eye.

He has made victim enough of this girl, and has no intention of letting it happen again.