Wir Sind Keine Dämonen

Logan made his way toward the kitchen, catching Marie’s scent in the hall and fully expecting that he would need to buy another case of beer much later in the day, since both of them would most likely finish off his current stash. They hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to talk in the last couple of months, repairing the mansion, upgrading security, testing security and in Logan’s case acting as security; Rogue was still in training to take up that duty.



His stride as he made his way through the hall and down the stairs was not the tread of a curious spectator or a wary guest. He was at comfort here now, even the animal within him was, and his urge to run had waned a little. He could smell his sweat and blood in the fabric of this place now, and Marie’s. Prowling the mansion felt less like exploring and more like checking his borders.



He felt as though one of those borders might have been trespassed when he stepped into the kitchen and found Rogue conversing with “The Incredible Nightcrawler.” It took him a moment to notice they were speaking German. Kurt paused in mid-sentence and looked toward the doorway.



“Ah, Herr Logan, you are avake as vell?” he inquired with a light smile. Logan marveled at the blue mutant. How anyone could look like him in a world like this and turn out so…earnest. It truly boggled his mind. He grunted a greeting. Rogue turned on her stool and offered him a grin.



“Hey, Logan. Come sit with us,” she offered, gesturing toward the stool beside her. Kurt was on the other side of the bar, his tail swishing calmly. Logan shrugged and took a seat. Kurt had apparently brought beer. He recognized the brand as the one Rogue had mourned with after Jean’s death. So that’s where she got it…



“Kurt was telling me about the first time he met another mutant,” she explained.



“Understandably, I hadn’t caught that before,” Logan said. Rogue shrugged.



“My German’s gettin’ rusty. Erik’s started to fade a little bit,” she admitted, but then paused thoughtfully. “Well, some of him has.”



“Good to hear,” Logan murmured. Rogue nodded.



“But his brain has its uses. It got me through some online college courses without havin’ t’ read ‘War and Peace’ save to find page numbers for documentation,” she explained. Logan tilted his head.



“I hadn’t thought about that,” Logan admitted. Rogue shrugged. “So, Elf, you mind repeatin’ your story a bit?”



“Not at all,” Kurt assured, glad the other man had accepted him into the conversation. He had known Logan only in a work setting as he helped with the mansion repairs, making great use of his teleporting and wall-clinging abilities. He told Logan about the mob in Berlin, the stranger escorting him to the church.



“So she had advanced senses, you think?” Logan inquired.



“Ja, she caught my scent vhen I vas in the alley,” Kurt explained. As he continued his story, Logan looked a little curious, as if something were trying and trying to click in the back of his mind.



“Green eyes,” he murmured. Kurt tilted his head.



“Ja. I thought it seemed odd. From vhat I could tell her skin vas rather dark.”



“I don’t suppose she had a weird belt?” Logan asked.



“Ja, vith scales.” Yellow eyes turning upward, Kurt considered a moment. “I think they vere the same as the scales on her ears…do you think she had a tail? All these years it hadn’t occurred to me, but you mentioned the belt and?” He left it hanging like a question. Rogue appeared curious as well.



“I think I saw someone like that once, is all,” Logan murmured, and described the woman he saw in Canada. Kurt’s eyes were wide when he finished.



“Pawprints?” Rogue asked.



“She left claw-marks on ze rafters,” Kurt murmured. Logan raised a brow.



“What kind of marks?” he asked.



“Like a big cat’s,” Kurt described and held up his tridactyl hands, deft fingers curled forward to illustrate claws.



“Not…” Lifting his fist he gestured to the effect of his own claws. Kurt shook his head.



“Nein, though some of the marks were thin, like they vere from knifes on the edge off her fingers,” he assured. Logan swirled his beer contemplatively.



“Sounds like you boys have somethin’ in common,” Rogue added after a long silence. The two men looked at her, then each other. Logan shrugged.



“We both meet weird women?” he mocked. Rogue rolled her eyes.



“Never mind,” she sighed. “Add her to our list of weird and potentially dangerous mutant folk, at least.”



“Vithout a name?” Kurt wondered. Rogue blinked.



“Ah guess you got a point.”



“She’s at the top of my list of unnamed mutants randomly viewed in fight bars,” Logan suggested. Rogue raised a brow.



“And Ah’m on the ‘named’ list, then?”



“Only one on it so far.”



“I have only met my mystery benefactor, the X-men and their enemies,” Kurt mused. “That I know of, anyvay.”



“My friend Jack said his brother was a mutant. I saw him play drums at one of the shows but he had t’ leave before we met,” Rogue said, taking a sip from a half-empty bottle Logan belatedly realized was Jones’ soda. He had been planning to lecture she and Kurt, and felt a little put out.



“Jack?” Logan asked.



“He…oh it’s been a while since Ah talked about him,” Rogue murmured. “Ah met him on the road. He was an old Blues musician on tour with half a dozen others. They were good but not perfect, known but not famous. Ah traveled with him for nearly half a year. He was like a father to me.” The other two mutants watched her as she finished her soda and reached for a beer. Logan took the cap off for her and she took a swig. “Probably from Magneto, some mutants attacked us. We got away, but he was a little cut up. Ah didn’t want to hurt him anymore, so Ah told him I’d start runnin’ again. He said he’d only let me ‘cuz he didn’t think he could protect me, gave me some money and saw me off.” Rogue wiped her eyes quickly, not really dropping any tears out of sheer effort of will. Logan rubbed her back gently.



“Didn’t mean to make you open any old wounds,” he apologized. Rogue shook her head with a sad smile.



“Ah kinda meant to tell ya about ‘im. It’s not so bad. Ah feel better that Ah remember, at least. Ah couldn’t reach him when Ah tried once Erik was locked up. His number was out of service. It’s good that Ah remember him,” she concluded. Kurt nodded.



“I feel the same vay about the circus. A man came and tried to purchase me for his freak show, and vhen that failed he bought the whole circus and still tried to put me in his freak show. My whole family and many of the others left the circus. Soon after that I came to America to be on my own. My family could work outside the circus but I vas not, and had to keep cooped up or hidden in places. I figured if I vas going to hide I might as vell do it somewhere more interesting that the places I’ve been all my life,” he explained. Logan regarded the other mutant. A circus family. It made sense, now. Rogue leaned toward him playfully.



“Logan, you’re surrounded by entertainers. We should convert you. I’m thinking Broadway,” she teased. Kurt sniggered. Logan shot her a dark look.



“No way in Hell,” he said flatly. Rogue stuck out her lower lip.



“You don’t sing?” She sounded disappointed.



“No. I don’t.”



“Not even show tunes?” she pleaded.



“Especially not show tunes.”



“No ‘Boy from Oz’?” Rogue pouted. Kurt, who had seen ‘Boy from Oz’ accidentally after a mix-up meant he had stowed away on a plane to San Francisco without meaning to, almost did a spit-take with his beer. Logan blinked in confusion.



“What?”



“You could be the ‘Wolverine from Oz’, Logan,” she suggested. Kurt doubled over laughing.



“Rogue...” Logan warned. Rogue smiled easily.



“Ah’m just jokin’ with ya, Logan. Ah know you’d never allow skin-tight shiny gold pants around you unless an attractive redheaded woman was wearing them,” she assured. Logan blinked a few times.



“What pants?” he sputtered. Kurt, who had managed to calm himself into mere sniggering, gave another short burst of chuckling. Rogue rested a gloved hand on Logan’s arm to calm him.



“Just pretend Ah had the whole conversation from ‘you’re surrounded by entertainers’ forward with Scott instead of you, and all will be well. Ah still may use it on him later, anyway.” Logan considered this.



“Alright, but I’ll only tolerate this on the grounds that it will later be used to pester Scooter.”



“Sure thing, Sugah,” Rogue assured him. Logan shook his head but quirked a faint smile when she looked away. Her hand unconsciously lingered on his arm until she reached for a beer, not seeming to notice. Logan marveled that she let her guard down like that around him. He had seen her in day-to-day life for just over two months now, and he had seen the way she acted, learned the subtle language of her actions. She had worn a t-shirt and long gloves today, just the barest strip of skin showing in between, even that much chasing off all but the half-dozen people she had cautiously let into her life. Well, except Logan. She had leapt into his life throwing caution to the four winds.



Now she wore black silk pajamas, which she admitted gaining a taste for from Erik, but they covered her skin better than a nightgown and felt more dignified when she moved sleepless about the mansion at night. Her gloves were thin black cotton that she only wore for those same sleepless nights should she run into someone she didn’t want her skin to suck dry.



Logan watched both her and the newer mutant talk, letting himself fall quiet awhile, save the odd grunt or comment. It felt good, sitting at the table with Marie and the blue German guy wasn’t as annoying as he’d feared. Logan felt that he could spend more nights like this.



Thus, began the trend that would become habit, therapy and tradition.



~



The mission had been brief, and Logan’s continued absence afterward had been as well. There had been whispers here and there by certain brave souls about whether he would return to the mansion or to wandering. Those who dared whisper were still not so brave as to do it anywhere near Rogue, but she would have done nothing even if they had. She knew he would be back; he had left two cases of Molson’s in the refrigerator. Yet his return left everyone in some state of surprise, if only because he had only been away two weeks and the shortest of bets had been a month.



Rogue was not surprised; the beer had run out.



Unknown to both of them for the moment, the day he had returned, he was not the only one doing so and he would be almost as irritated at his own surprise as with the other returnee.



Everyone was surprised.



Everyone but Rogue.



Lazy afternoon had filled the mansion. Most students wandered aimlessly, raided the kitchen, or wandered carelessly about the common gathering places about the school and generally lazed about. Marie sat on a bench in the large hall near the kitchen. She had offered Logan a light smile, a greeting, and a cadet-like questioning on the mission that left him slightly impressed, if only because she kept it up while messing with the ragged piece of musical instrument in her lap without falter throughout her queries. She had found an old acoustic guitar in the attic, and had spent over an hour tuning the damn thing. No one approached her, or seemed willing to question the focused girl with a pair of gloves folded beside her and a guitar in her lap. Logan leaned against a convenient doorway near her, awaiting the fulfillment of Rogue’s promise to eventually play for him. Idle chords sent shivers through the dust moats caught in the sunbeams streaking from the windows as she finally began to play. Rogue’s eyes were shut. Logan watched. Occasionally kids would pass through, giggling. Rogue hummed a little, mimicking the piano tune her memory played her. Her strumming hand tapped the beat as the notes began to swell, and then trail away.



She acted.



A burst of sound, a riff Logan grinned wickedly to hear, followed by a sound like train tracks escaping the guitar strangely under her hands. Jethro Tull, Logan was pretty sure it was.



In the shuffling madness

Of the Locomotive Breath…



Train tracks and whispered lyrics, her voice so quiet only Logan heard it. Her lips forming the shapes of the words playing in her memory seemed wicked and loud despite their silence. Half-lidded, Rogue’s eyes were focused as she played, even managing to mimic the place reserved in the song for a flute solo on the guitar strings, much to Logan’s surprise. It was a short song, but powerful even as the last chords grew quieter and quieter, trailing to an end. Rogue looked up thoughtfully, then smiled brightly and blushed when Logan started clapping and a few others joined in. Then the lazy afternoon invaded again, she turned her eyes to the doors of the hall, then to Logan. Her face was still flushed from performing.



“There was some excitement this mornin’,” Rogue said passively. Logan contemplated an unlit cigar.



“Yea?”



“Yea. I don’t know why yet,” she said. They passed again into comfortable silence, Rogue slipping her gloves back on. Logan could sense whispers and tension in the mansion, and hear Rogue slightly breathing the tune of the song she had been teasing from the guitar, Locomotive Breath, she might have whispered. He shut his eyes to focus on it, but just then the main door at the end of the hall opened. Rogue’s eyes opened first. She registered no surprise. Logan stiffened, eyes snapping open and glaring. John–“Pyro”–either did not notice him, or ignored him. Lifting his gaze from the floor, the former traitor looked at Rogue. She looked back, and set the guitar aside, her gaze drifting from the bruises on his face to the way he hid his hands in his pockets. Logan felt other people watching now. The quiet was as ominous as the whispers.



John slowly strode up to Rogue and stood before her, their legs almost touching. He opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it with a restrained rattle of breath. His expression was hidden to all save Rogue, but Logan could sense the anxiety, the fear, the guilt, the shame and the sadness. Rogue saw it in John’s eyes and in her own mind. She arched a delicate brow at him, a gesture somehow more tactful than Logan’s in this particular case, but only just. John lowered to his knees and rolled a little so his back rested against the leg of the bench Rogue sat on and his arm brushed her denim-clad calf beside him. His expression was a mask again. Rogue moved to stand and he gently touched her forearm, covered by her long opera glove.



Rogue looked into his desperate eyes. He knew she would understand. Surely she had gotten enough of his mind at Bobby’s house to know him even better than she had before. Her eyes moved to his hand, her expression becoming slightly concerned. She took his hand in her gloved ones, turning it over, examining it, lifting his other hand and treating it similarly. Her survey was gentle. John’s palms and wrists were wrapped in bandages and still smelled of burns and ointment. Slowly, Rogue knelt and let their eyes meet levelly.



“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know Magneto would…that he was…” he trailed off helplessly. Rogue waited patiently for a moment, watching him with ancient eyes. John grappled with words and they failed him. Finally he merely touched her– one of his unbandaged fingertips along the strip of skin between her glove and shirtsleeve. Logan felt his spine stiffen and a growl rise from him in instinctive reaction. John’s touch had been brief, but he gave a shuddering gasp and Rogue tensed, eyes loosing focus as they turned inward. John shivered and leaned forward from emotion as well as sudden weariness. “I’m sorry, Rogue,” he whispered, and felt a gloved hand stroke his hair as well as hold his head away from her skin as he pressed his brow to her shoulder. He, too, had been starved for touch of late, starved of comfort. Her fingers were so gentle. The fingers John knew were lethal and so often curled into fists comforted him. For the first time in months, he felt a little bit safe.



“Shh, Johnny,” Rogue replied. Her free hand gave a quick wipe at her eyes absently, but Logan noticed. Gently, she held John for a moment, and he gingerly pulled back, face again stern, but his eyes very red. He swallowed thickly. The stares from around the hall were all but tangibly heavy now. Rogue looked at John very solemnly. She appeared angry, and a little unforgiving. John stared back, feeling a static emptiness between his chaotic thoughts and his conscious demeanor; it was not unlike both disbelief and guilt. Gesturing, Rogue lifted a gloved hand with her index finger up. ‘One minute,’ it said wordlessly. She snapped to her feet and strode from the hall–all woman, and perfectly impassive.



John could only wait. He tentatively glanced around the hall. He saw people unobtrusively hanging in doorways. Animosity ran high. Some of them were at least a more honest audience. Logan was giving him a glare that competed with Mr. Summers’ in potential to do great damage. Bobby hung out a doorway, his face that of a person watching a trial. Rogue was John’s judge today. If she could forgive him for siding with the man who had tried to kill her and mutate the leaders of the world, the rest of the mansion may well follow. Scott and Storm stood near the doors he had entered through, like stony bailiffs. Finally, Rogue returned. Her approach was silent at first, and only Logan looked up expectantly before she announced herself:



Click. Ka-snap. Click. Ka-snap. Click.



Rogue held the open lighter for a moment, but then closed it again. Ka-snap. Just like John had done every minute of every day some time long ago. Kneeling again, she rolled the lighter between her hands–one gloved, one not.



“Ah found it on a recon mission a month ago. Real basic data gatherin’, but it gets us out in the field,” she explained, voice blatantly scolding. John’s jaws clenched. Rogue’s gaze remained fixed on the lighter, and the delicately held it in the fingertips of her ungloved hand.



“ It was outta fuel and…” She turned the lighter to show a large dent in the metal on the other side. John’s gaze flickered from hers to the lighter, back and forth. “The dent won’t come out.” Click. A practiced movement, and the lighter’s small flame reappeared. Rogue stared into the tiny fire, and when she breathed on it, it danced and grew, roiling toward John with the brief touch of his powers she had taken. Ka-snap. The flame vanished. The lighter was shut. Rogue’s eyes bored into his. I know you, they said. John understood. The lighter had been with him since the beginning. It had run out of fuel, and become less useful while he was with Magneto. John had wanted to keep it, and had tried to. Still, it got lost. Broken and empty, Magneto had tossed it aside and offered Johnny flamethrowers that hid in his sleeves. Rogue had found the abandoned lighter, taken it apart, fixed it, and given it fresh fuel. It was a symbol.



She held it out to him. Her hand was ungloved.



John’s lips parted, but no words escaped them. The unforgiving Rogue who trusted no one was offering him forgiveness, giving him back his old life and a new start all at once–he, the traitor. Closing his mouth again, his throat tight with emotion, John took his lighter. Rogue gave him a small, secret smile. He should have known. Raising his empty hand, John tapped the side of his head questioningly. Rogue nodded, slipping her other glove back off as she stood. Then from her back pocket she pulled a narrow, ornate little wooden box. John’s eyes became glassy.



“I thought I’d-“



“John,” Rogue said, giving a slightly sad look. “Erik hates Blues,” she sighed. John smirked a little. Rogue pressed the box into his hand and moved onto the bench again, lifting the guitar back into her lap. Checking its tune for the umpteenth time that afternoon, she was aware of watching eyes, buzzing whispers and John’s hands caressing the old wooden box before opening it. She played a bluesy tune with a strong backbeat that she swayed to a little, almost imperceptibly. John pulled out the silver harmonica. A wailing jailhouse sorrow of a song cried from the tiny instrument to accompany the guitar strings. The two of them were rusty, out of practice, but they worked together knowledgeably. The whispers came to a halt under the music they created.



Just barely, Rogue opened her eyes and glanced up at the audience as she played. Most of the passive watchers were trickling away. Scott and Storm shot her soft smiles and left. Bobby relaxed against the wall, enjoying the music. Later, he would join them and they would all three of them discuss important things, but for now he only watched, and remain still. At last her eyes fell on Logan, who had since lit his cigar. He looked at her a little curiously, but she saw a faint pride in him and her smile widened. Then she shut her eyes and she and Johnny played and played.



~



It was his fourth mission since Jean’s death. He couldn’t move. Assurances of recovery escaped him; he always healed. Thus, they left him alone. No one questioned him, and no one waited with him. Logan doubled over in his seat and tried to stop the floor and his feet swimming so sickeningly in his vision. He heard footsteps climbing into the blackbird, but could smell only his own sweat and illness. What had they put in him with those darts? Damn FOH bastards. Friends of Humanity, my ass, he thought.



“Logan…” The voice was Marie’s and he tried to tell her to go away and that he would be fine but it came out in a groan. The next thing he knew there was coldness on his fevered flesh, an icepack on the back of his neck. The world cleared a little.



“Dear god,” he choked. Marie’s hands pulled at him, pulling him up so she looked into his eyes. Her face was stone and concern.



“Get up, Logan,” she commanded, and the next thing he knew she was half-carrying/dragging him down into the hangar, then up the stairs. He was murmuring nonsense and sweating. Even Marie could detect the scent of the poison from him now, and he could smell her worry.



“How are ya carryin’ me?” he mumbled.



“Ah’m only halfway carryin’ ya, Logan, and Ah’m not exactly a fragile flower,” she told him solemnly, leading him to his room. She was wrapped up, today: turtleneck sweater, black pants, boots, and gloves that went halfway to her elbows under the sweater. Logan knew his fever was overheating her, could smell her sweat and his. She kicked open his door weakly and dragged him to the bed. “Damn, Sugah, they got you bad,” she hissed. “Ah wish Ah’d been there instead of monitoring all the feeds and taking recon from here.” Logan had a brief fever-dream of Rogue kicking FOH ass. It was intriguing. When it was over he felt her tugging down the zipper of his uniform and protested.



“Damn it, Logan, yeh’re already overheatin’, let me help!” she spat, and Logan could do little but consent. It was bad enough he was weakened, but Rogue in a temper that so thickened her accent was a force to be reckoned with on any day. Logan again hit strange fever-dreams. He came out of them to the feeling of cold: a wrapped icepack along his spine, another around his neck, and a cool rag cleansing the sweat from his face, chest and dabbing at his hair. He felt the coarseness of sweatpants around his legs and hips, untouched by the ice that eased the fever away.



“Rogue…please tell me you didn’t bring that icicle in here?” he managed. When he opened his eyes, her relieved smile dazzled him.



“Good to see ya coherent, Logan. Ah got these from the medlab myself. Hank asked about ya after he saw the samples. Those darts were designed to take out healers, Logan,” she told him. He groaned.



“Not…goin’ out,” he growled.



“You’re healing factor can’t take all the toxins and things, Sugah,” she whispered. Logan was falling into cold dreams now, not much better than the melting, boiling hot ones before. He floated in the aches, pains and cold for a long time. He felt a warm touch of fingers, brief and hesitant, stroke his face. The dreams stopped. Logan wondered idly if death had kissed him.



He woke slowly, the icepacks now lukewarm on his skin. Moonlight slid between the curtains over his window. The smell of sickness still came off him, escaping his very pores, but it was stagnant now, and dead. He rolled toward the edge of the bed and nearly stepped on Rogue, collapsed on the floor. He cursed fervently.



“Marie!” he barked urgently, rolling her over to look into her face. She was still covered from head to foot, and now smelled of his illness. When he lifted her, he amended his previous observation: she was missing one glove.



“Mmm…Logan?” she mumbled, brow contracting.



“What did you do, Marie?” he demanded. Her eyelids fluttered.



“Needed to reset yer mutation or get some of the toxins out…did both.”



“Damn it, Marie, you don’t have a healing factor!” He pulled her off of the floor, relieved when she managed to put some of her weight on her feet.



“Yeah, it doesn’t target my mutation. Ah just need rest, Logan,” she breathed. Logan set her gently on the bed and rummaged around in his dresser before finally pulling on a long-sleeved flannel. He sat beside her and felt her shift to press against his warmth, despite the fever she gave off. He stroked her hair.



“You’re a stupid girl, darlin’,” he admonished. She opened one dark brown eye and drowsily glared at him with it.



“A stupid girl who saved your stupid ass, Sugah,” she growled. Logan found himself smiling a little. “Ya probly still need some rest, too, Logan. Ah can still smell the stuff in ya system.”



“Yeah. I suppose.” He rested beside her idly. “You sure you want me to sleep here if I might still be havin’ fever dreams?”



“Ya only let the claws out a couple times,” she murmured. “Both into the mattress insteada me. Ah trust you.” She nestled herself against his flannel, ungloved hand tucked under the pillows. Logan felt drowsiness overcoming him. He stroked her hair. “Ya want me to sleep somewhere…Ah can get up,” she offered. Logan’s fingers gripped her hair very gently.



“Sleep,” he commanded. Rogue mumbled against the idea, but slowly fell asleep against him. Logan listened to her a moment, then followed.



~



The sound of the shower woke him slowly the next morning. For the first time, Logan wondered how much time had passed since the mission. He hovered for some time in a doze untroubled by fever or aching. It felt good. His hand reached out and when it fell on empty sheets he tried to remember what he was reaching for. The door to his bathroom opened.



Dressed in her own jeans and a loose button-up flannel of Logan’s unbuttoned just low enough to glimpse the top of her breasts when she leaned forward to towel her hair more thoroughly, Rogue looked…



Logan swallowed. When did she cross that girl/woman line when he wasn’t looking?



Rogue stood upright again, towel draped across her shoulders so her wet hair slapped it when she tossed it back over her shoulders, a tangled mess of chocolate mahogany streaked with white. She saw him awake she gave a faint smile and Logan saw the dark circles under her eyes, from sleeplessness and sickness. She was in recovery now, and no longer smelled like poison. Instead, Rogue smelled like warm skin, honey, something smoky and Logan’s shower soap.



“Hey, Logan.”



“Hmm. How long have I been out of it?” he grumbled.



“A couple days,” she told him and stepped over to his nightstand, pulling on her gloves. She sat down heavily on the bed.



“You’re still sick.”



“Mmm,” she grunted noncommittally. Logan sat up next to her.



“Dizzy?”



“How’d ya tell?”



“I heard you almost fall down in the shower and you shake when you’re standing,” Logan told her. Rogue cursed a little, but looked up when he rubbed her back. “Thanks.”



“Two more and we’re even,” she teased. He ruffled her hair with a snort.



“Can ya walk to your room?” he inquired. Rogue contemplated the distance for a moment and slumped against him.



“Feel like bein’ a crutch to a poor ill little southern girl?” she sighed.



“Poor little girl who can drag my adamantium ass up the stairs needs a crutch?”



“Your fault,” she countered. Logan gave a ragged sigh, then suddenly seized her about the waist as he stood up, and heaved her over his shoulder, causing her to yelp in an amusing fashion. “Logan!”



“Your voice is working well enough, making noise like that,” he mused as he headed out the door and into the hall.



“If my head weren’t spinning Ah’d show you how well my boots work, kickin’ your ass like-“



“Rogue?” Scott called from a too-nearby doorway. Logan paused. Rogue looked up through her hair.



“Hi, Scott.”



“One-Eye,” Logan greeted over his less Rogue-inhabited shoulder. They could both see the fearless leader raise one eyebrow over the rims of his shades.



“He’s my chauffer today. Ah’m a bit ill,” Rogue explained casually. Scott shook his head.



“When do you think you’ll be well enough to get back to training,” Scott said. Rogue rested an elbow against Logan’s lower back and her chin in her hand to look at Scott more earnestly.



“What trainin’?” she drawled.



“What…what do you mean?”



“Ah’ve been doin’ recon for months, Ah took care of the situation in Magneto’s old warehouse…”



“Do you think-“



“Scott, in a real situation off that damn trainin’ mat of yours, Ah could probably kick your ass. Maybe not today, but usually,” she assured. Both men stood speechless for a moment. Finally, Logan grinned cheekily as if to claim no fault in this despite enjoying it immensely, and saluted Scott briefly.



“See ya, One-Eye.”



“Later, Scott.”



They traveled again down the hall. Out of the corner of his mouth, Logan assured her, “I owe you a beer.”



“Oh Hell yes.”