Wir Sind Keine Dämonen

It had taken him some time to take it all in. Little Marie…



Christ.



He couldn’t blame himself, or his influence on her mind for her predatory streak. What aspects of himself did still show in her actions were willing, and still carried a flair of her own. Rogue was something else. The thoughtful companion he shared beer with had shown some of it: the wryness, the dark humor, the controlled energy, and that…something. Across Logan’s mind the image flashed of Rogue whirling on Mystique, bluffing power despite her injury, her face drawn in around those big dark eyes in a glare, and those delicate and so often pouty lips thinning as they pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. In the back of his mind the Wolverine gave an air of ‘I told you so.’



Marie. The Rogue. Predator. Like us.



Logan contemplated the empty bottles along the counter, including the one of Jack Daniels. He had consumed most of it. Rogue had taken three shots, and acted as though she’d only had one. Logan couldn’t tell if she had taken some of his resistance, as he had barely felt a buzz at the slow pace he drained the whisky, or if southern women really could just hold their liquor. She had resigned herself to attempting sleep half an hour ago, and Kurt had done similarly an hour before that. Grey dawn was approaching now, and lit the dim kitchen, lighting the gleam on the beer bottles in pale amber. Logan stared at them and beyond them.



Professor Xavier had arranged to send Kitty and Scott into some government offices to retrieve more files on Stryker and his labs. It would be dangerous, and up until now Kitty had not been trained enough to be allowed to attempt it. Scott, as her instructor, would accompany her to the best of his ability. Xavier had offered to let Logan go as well. He had declined.



The Wolverine stirred irritably at the memory.



Logan snorted. Preserve the files. There’s no one left to kill that they knew of yet. Stryker was on the bottom of a lake, not far from a red-haired savior who should have let someone save her. Logan forced his mind to move toward other things.



Kurt had been nervous tonight. Logan wondered idly if he would run. His mind turned stubbornly back to the X-men.



Xavier had mentioned other things at the team briefing, aside from further files on Stryker. A local girl had been kidnapped by a pair of mutants thought to be working for Magneto, and Xavier worried that his old friend may be making connections in New York. Jubilee, now a newer member of the Junior team, had nominated herself to work the club circuit running recon. Peter had been assigned to follow her, and also report and grade her performance to Scott and Xavier as part of his duties now that he had been moved from the Junior team to the main team. Rogue had been advanced as well. Scott had smiled a little wryly when he announced that.



The kidnapped girl might have been another reason Logan would not go with Scooter and the kitten. It was a mission that hit him somewhere he didn’t like to admit was tender; it would be bad for his badass image. Girl…kidnapped…Magneto connections…Logan had been tempted to glare at Chuck when he assigned Rogue as his partner when he offered to try and track the kidnappers. She had a slightly distant look in her eye, and the same ‘this is close to home’ expression Logan had realized his own face mirrored.



The search would begin in five hours. It was undercover, so Rogue would not be in skin-tight leather. Unnerved to not his own disappointment, Logan eyed the empty whiskey bottle mournfully, gave a tired and growling sigh, and then began clearing the table of the forest of alcohol-scented glass.



Daylight was returning, and to Logan the ensuing day would be simply an extraordinarily well-lit night.



~



They had been to the site of the kidnapping and Logan had picked up a few faint scents: two men, the girl, some important items and something he recognized very faintly, but could not place. He traced the latter scent to a brick wall near the site, and saw strange marks on the brick, gouges as through something had climbed it in the world’s strangest cleats. Now he lurked in the dark corner of a bar back in New York. Two men at the pool table, one tall with long hair of dark ash brown and the other Hispanic with reddish brown eyes, held his attention. He had seen their car outside, too expensive for their grungy selves, and freshly, albeit poorly, painted. Fresh paint Logan had caught scent of at the kidnapping site.



Rogue entered the bar an hour after Logan so as to help avoid attention. Her eyes did not move toward him, but fixed instead on the bartender. Then, absently, they fell on one of the patrons. Her particular mission changed slightly. She was meant to watch the bar with Logan, see if anyone around sparked Magneto’s memory in her head. She ran a gloved hand through the motion of moving hair behind her ear, though her hair was not free. It was bound up and tucked under a ragged green hat she had nicked from John, only dark brown visible where it peeked from under the back. Her finger brushed the cuff of a communicator on the back of her ear, sending a small signal to Logan silently. He did not look her way for more than a cursory glance, the glance every man in the room gave the door as it opened. Every man but a single one sitting off on one side of the bar in a familiar dark coat.



Rogue sidled up on to the stool beside him and ordered ‘something warm and cheap’ with a tired smile to the bartender, who looked her over, seemed about to card her, but changed his mind after looking into her eyes for a beat. She looked like she had been on the road a while, and in her eyes she looked older than the rest of her face or her wrapped-up body. It was cold out. He set a shot of malt whiskey in front of her. Kurt, concealed by an ingenious holographic watch Beast had designed, shot her a look. She met it with passivity, eyes wide in what was not curiosity or surprise, but something equally blameless.



“I felt ze need to get avay,” he murmured. Rogue shrugged.



“Well Ah know we’re strange company, but…”



“No, it is not zhat. I needed to get out of ze mansion. I feel so useless there,” he confessed. Their voices were very quiet, and the televisions and conversations around the bar drowned them out even from Logan’s ears. Rogue looked up at the mirror behind the bar and met Logan’s eyes briefly. They communicated exceedingly well, to a degree that few noticed but those who did notice it found it unnerving. A single long look communicated that Rogue was still irritated with him for trying to take all of this mission on his own shoulders, that this was not a concession to his wishes, but that she would be less involved now, busy as she was helping a friend. Logan snorted a stream of cigar smoke, glaring his acknowledgement as he remained ‘in character’ and went back to watching the other inhabitants of the bar, his focus seeming to linger on the pool tables. Kurt caught her look and subtly followed it.



“Verdammt, I am in zhe vay,” he muttered, putting a hand over his face in frustration as he realized they were on a mission. Rogue looked back at him and touched his covered arm gently. When she spoke again it was in hushed German.



“Don’t worry about it, Kurt, he wanted to do this mission solo anyway. I only disagreed out of pride, anyway. If I can be of help to you, I hardly mind,” she assured. He looked up at her, eyes a little wide and unsure. She squeezed his arm. It was rare that she touched anyone, and Kurt felt oddly privileged, and instinctively nervous as he remembered Logan’s presence. She spoke English again, “Why do you feel useless?”



“Now zhat the repairs are finished, I have nothing to do. I like helping, but I can find nothing to help vith anymore,” Kurt murmured, but he sat up a little. “I do not vish to be a freeloader.”



“So the repairs are done,” she admonished gently, “Ah’m sure you could contribute.”



“Vith vhat? I know how to get by on my own, I know circus tricks, I know scripture. How can this help in an American school like this?” he sighed. Rogue pursed her lips.



“How many languages d’ya speak?”



“Vas?”



“German, English, Romani,” Rogue listed. Kurt shrugged.



“I know some French, a little Russian, Spanish and a very little of Italian, most of vhich I am rusty in,” he admitted.



“Kurt, how many high school-age students are there in the school?” she encouraged. Kurt only appeared more confused.



“Er…”



“Most of them need to take a class in a second language to get into the colleges they want, or they may just want to learn, y’know, t’ go to the more tolerant European countries,” Rogue explained. “You could teach them, Kurt.” She tossed back her whiskey delicately with a slightly exaggerated shudder. Even though she wore a heavy jacket and baggy pants, a few men looked over at her thoughtfully. Kurt stared at her, but his eyes were distant and his thoughts seemed elsewhere. He sipped his beer, not noticing the fact it tasted like piss, because it was American, as much as he had before.



“A teacher?” he murmured. Rogue nodded easily.



“You’re already an exhibitionist. If anyone could keep the attention of a class of teenage mutants with no attention span, it’d be you,” she added. Kurt’s brow furrowed. Rogue made a note to ask Beast if he thought the resemblance to Errol Flynn in the holographic disguise was clever.



“I vould keep their attention because zhey vould be staring at me,” he scoffed. Rogue shook her head.



“If McCoy can make it in congress, surely you could handle a classroom.”



“I have not Herr McCoy’s command,” Kurt disagreed. Rogue looked thoughtful, then grinned a little.



“Ah could be ya co-teacher,” she offered. Kurt blinked a little, then returned her grin.



“Is the vorld ready for us to vork as a team corrupting the youth?” he countered. Rogue snorted, but still smirked a bit.



“Really, though. Ah speak German pretty well now, what with practicin’ and all. Erik would doubtless be real good with all the terminology like ‘nouns’ ‘verbs’ ‘present participle’ and things. And you know there’s few things more commandin’ than me facin’ down groups of teenagers,” she recounted. Kurt sniggered softly, remembering Rogue’s speech before a crowd of young teens who had taken to badmouthing the recently returned Pyro. To that age group and below at the mansion, Rogue’s name was more frightening than that of the Wolverine.



“It could vork,” he conceded. Rogue smiled lightly.



A faint beeping sound caught her attention, amidst the rest of the background noise. Rogue looked up, looking at the mirror instead of turning around. A man at the pool table jerked a device from his pocket, adjusting something on the side until it stopped making noise. A glance toward Logan verified that his attention was on the man intently. Holding the device near his face to see it in the dim light of the bar he bore his teeth, showing chewing tobacco clenched in them on one side. Rogue remembered seeing a can of it on the ground at the kidnapping site. Looking at the man a little more intently, she felt some memory stir. Catching Logan’s eye, she nodded distinctly.



Kurt was looking at her when she slipped out of “mission-mode” while still being aware of two men from the pool tables going out the door, and then of Logan following them. She shrugged.



“I owe you, Jim,” said a voice from behind the bar, and slightly…under it? Kurt and Rogue scarcely heard it, but both looked curiously in its direction. The bartended had moved down the line, and now reached a hand down under the bar, helping someone to their feet. Rogue and Kurt exchanged looks. Few of the other bar patrons seemed to notice, as a group near the pool tables was spreading “fightin’ words” about the two players who had just left and if they had cheated.



The woman formerly hidden under the bar was not tall, in fact she was shorter than Rogue. Her back was to them, and they made a point not to look at her lest they not hear further conversation. The stranger dusted herself off, further inspected the dust covering her formerly fine black jacket, and merely shuffled the garment off.



“You don’t owe me nuthin’,” the bartender assured her.



“The power bills to run something that can hide that kind of metal signature even for just that time must be astronomical, not to mention the mimicry you just pulled off,” she scoffed under her breath. The bartender snorted.



“So was all the cost of all the damage ya did to those folks who tried to burn me down. Call it even if ya must,” he relented. The stranger fixed him with a solemn look that did not quite smile.



“I’ll do that,” she offered, and nodded to him respectfully before she disappeared out the back of the bar. Rogue glanced up in time to see her step through the door marked “employees only” and see the strange, scaled belt wrapped twice around her hips. Kurt did not look in time and frowned a little.



“Kurt,” Rogue said softly, “have ya considered bein’ an X-man?”



“I do not fight well, I do not think. I vanted to be a priest.” He shrugged. Rogue gave a surprised laugh and looked at him incredulously. She was nearly shocked enough to forget her mission.



“You? The Full-master of Flirtation? The sassy swashbuckler and ladies’ man?”



“I did say I vas a naughty Catholic,” he shrugged. Rogue considered this.



“Actually you would most likely be a pretty good priest. As far as the fighting, just consider yourself like those monks who do so much kung-fu. Maybe we’ll get you a really neat sword.”



“Vell, there’s zhat. Vhy do you ask?”



“Consider this your first mission. We’ve gotta follow that lady,” Rogue whispered. Kurt arched a brow curiously. With a suggestive eye movement, Rogue indicated the direction he should look. Following it, Kurt looked at the doorway the stranger had exited through. There was a dusty shape: a paw print.



“Pair that with her conversation, and we have reason to think there’s more to my mission than meets the eye. Come on,” she hissed, and pulled him out of the bar.





~



This mutant hates New York. Her very bones seem uneasy, and it hurts to keep them in one shape for too long. Still, here she waited. She watched with pale green eyes that contrast her dusky skin, even more so now that it is edged in small grey scales. Similar scales decorate hr large feline ears, half-exposed from beneath their usual cloak of hair and headdress as she listened to the two kidnappers and remained very, very still. They have not noticed her yet. The little Asian girl one of the men had zip-tie handcuffed stood between her takers. She prayed to her family’s guardian spirit quietly in Chinese. The listening mutant wanted to shut her ears, but did not want to miss a word said by either of the two men. She curses the little girl’s grandmother, curses lost bets, curses her honor and curses Magneto.



Slowly, she moved along the tree branch. She is so quiet that the wind’s odd shifting of needles and twigs in and below the tree drowned out and sounds of her movement. Still, one of the men stiffened.



“Hey, you think she’s here?” whispers the other one, seeing his companion alarmed. The mutant in the tree stopped moving. Her ears perk a little more, but do not completely unfold; still, she could hear everything she needed to. She heard a faint sound from one of the men as he pulled a device from his pocket.



“Hey, Lady,” he called, waving the device. The mutant in the tree did not react. Her grey scales, however, grew larger, thicker, like armor. She thus blended in better against the tree, in the shadows and the bark behind the leaves. “Magneto gave us your callin’ card. Feel like negotiatin’?”



The mutant in the tree sighed in silent exasperation. They had not the metal detector going after the little diversion she set up with the bartender, and now they had a lock on her again. Damn. Still, she said nothing.



“I am Vince, and this is my friend Throttle. We will be your deal-makers for the evening,” the one with the metal detector declared. His smile was bright, even framed by his long and slightly greasy hair.



“Let me guess,” the mutant in the tree crowed, her voice surprisingly loud, “A psych and a speed demon?”



“Very good, Miss Flux. I specialize in persuasion, and my friend is indeed quiet fleet on his feet,” Vince replied. Throttle took hold of their kidnapped charge’s wrists. The little girl, confused by this whole affair, merely began crying again. Her father had always told her mutants were evil, but she hadn’t expected anything like this. She didn’t understand. Who were they talking to, anyway?



Flux, the tree-bourn mutant, narrows her yellow-green eyes. If she were to make the wrong move, the speedy mutant would run off with the girl. Her tail lashed the air, its scales sticking out more prominently as it arched, like an irritated cat puffing out its fur. She has not let herself be so transformed in decades, but she is irritated and nostalgic, and the use of her mutation and careful control of it helps to distract her.



“What, dare I ask, does Magneto want–as if I could not guess,” she drawls, still not letting them catch a glimpse of her from her vantage point in the tree. She must admit that dense evergreens have their uses for concealment in winter weather, especially with ice and snow about their outer foliage. This tree is vast, in diameter as well as height, and there is a large area from which she could vault from to attack them. Too bad the fast one would certainly have opportunity to dodge.



“He said you would know what he meant by, ‘the usual,’” Vince said. “With distinct stress on that he would not seek to control you via your skeleton. It’s just too much work,” he shrugged. His companion looked over his shoulder at the device Magneto had sent them. He whispered something.



“Any sign of that other signature, the one from the bar?”



Flux could hear it. Her eyes lost some of their yellow tint as she turned thoughtful.



“Will you be quiet!” Vince hissed, scarcely audible to his friend. Flux heard.



“Look at that tree, I bet you anything she can’t hear us,” Throttle countered. “Background noise and all.” The two men looked at each other for a moment. “Look, he said that signature would be from a guy who might come after us. He was in the bar, the other metal-bones guy.”



“Dumbshit, how would he know to come after us,” Vince whispered. Flux listened placidly with the faint ghost of a smirk on her dark lips. As if she couldn’t filter out background noise like ice and evergreen¬–Magneto must be having issues hiring quality lackey’s of late.



“I don’t know, man, but Mags said he would, okay? He said if we didn’t get her to agree in time-”



“Might, Throttle, said he might,” Vince hissed, his voice getting a bit louder involuntarily.



“We’re past our deadline,” Throttle whispered urgently, but more quietly. “What if by ‘might’ he meant that he’d send this guy to finish the job, and finish us?”



“Who might what?” Flux asked innocently, her voice elevated again to illustrate confusion. The two men froze. Vince made a threatening gesture toward Throttle and turned to face her again. Flux let her eyes study her surroundings. Thick evergreen forest behind them, less dense park to one side, and the park had people going by through the winter-barren trees amid trails and paths. She tuned an ear in that direction.



“Look, Mags just wants to study you, learn from you. He has some idea of your age, and he thinks he might be able to help your transforming,” Vince called. “He wants to learn about mutant history from you, and is willing to settle for merely that. If you’ll be so kind as to come down here with us and follow me to meet the old man, Throttle will drop off this sweet little girl back where she belongs.” Vince motioned to the girl in question, who had come to the point of being able to do nothing but shiver, sob and cover her face with her hands. Flux does not like children. Again, she curses the little girl’s grandmother, curses lost bets, curses her honor and curses Magneto.



Faintly, she heard sounds.



Some are unexpected, like the two sets of footsteps following her tracks. Others, like the stalking footsteps approaching from the park, find her prepared.



“I’m coming down to check on her. Give me a moment,” Flux called.



“Ten seconds,” Vince insisted.



“How many humans are in that park, do you think?” she snapped. Vince hesitated. “If there are any, how would it be for them to see me…less than human?”



“Twenty seconds,” Vince holds.



“You had better hope there are no keen-eyed hikers,” she warns. Her thick, armor-like scales retreat, dividing and becoming finer and finer until her face is merely odd-colored skin, and her tail could be mistaken for a strange and thick belt if she wore it right. When she leaps to the forest floor, her baggy pants have been rolled up to her knees, exposing hind limbs more like those of a wiry panther than a human, though they seem elongated and remain proportionate to her human shape even when she stands upright. Her paws are silent, their claws now tucked away. She adjusts her leather gloves as she approaches the two men and the girl, feeling their eyes rove over the grey scales edged in black still visible on her shoulders and upper arms. She wears a comfortable grey tank top, the snow and ice not having any visible effect on her, and her breath makes less than half the steam in the frozen air as either of the two men.



Throttle had picked up his kidnapped charge, heaving her over one shoulder like a sack, and Flux noted the zip ties on her legs as well. They were taut and probably rather painful. Unable to cover her face now, the little girl, no more than six, had a closed face save her open and sobbing mouth. Flux wrinkled her nose. Children, she thought with mild distaste. The device in Vince’s hand gave an urgent beep. Flux locked her green eyes with the red-brown ones of Throttle as Vince’s scent became tinged with nervousness and fear.



“Oh, shit,” Vince groaned, turning to look toward the park fearfully. Flux’s eyes flickered yellow. Throttle tensed, glanced at Vince, and bolted into the forest. Flux grinned wickedly, showing small fangs, and bounded after him on all-fours, deciding to leave Vince to what she assumed was Magneto’s hired “insurance.” Vince turned to see her vanish into the trees, her unnatural limbs giving her an advantage over normal humans but not the same advantage had by Throttle. He ran after them, trying not to hear the sudden approach of thudding steps that soon came up behind him as he came closer to the trees. By the time he half-tripped over a tree root, Logan was right behind him.



“Like kidnapping little girls?” he growled. Vince’s eyes were wide.



“Look, man, it’s just a job-“ but before he could bring about his mutation to ‘convince’ Logan’s support, three adamantium claws were buried in his throat. Logan caught the little girl’s scent, saw the trail of disturbed forest floor, and followed quickly when he heard the kidnapped girl beginning to wail.



~



Flux loves trees. Speed demons do not. Throttle outright hates them. Also hills, bushes, rocks, shrubs, saplings, and especially tree roots: he hates them all. The girl he has kidnapped is lucky he has not dropped her and sent her flying into the air. His fumbling and attempts to zigzag have left him slowed down. He can hear tree bark being shredded as Flux rounds the corner of one of his zig-zags and her paws slip until they release their dull metallic grey claws for traction on the tree roots before her powerful hind limbs fling her forward three of his own stride-lengths. Her leather gloves are rough, worn and textured for grip, and have not made her slide as Throttle had hoped they might. His foot catches on another tree root, this time really unbalancing him so he stumbles and feels a distinct crack of protest from his bones, light and fragile for speed. Specifically, the complaining bones lay in his ankle. He slowed down even more as the pain increased.



He sees a clearing, and feels a thrill of hope because he did not realize Flux had steered the chase toward it. He thinks he may get away just before a decent-sized rock hits the back of his head, he stumbles again, and looses his grip on the girl. His kidnapped charge is yanked from his hands as Flux passes, skidding to a halt in the snowy clearing to turn and make sure he fell. She leaves cold muddy handprints on the shell-shocked girl, whose eyes are now wide open, her throat dry from having screamed for most of her high-speed journey. Throttle lay on the ground, but looked up at the pair of them menacingly.



Flux looks very menacing herself. Her armor-like scales had become so present and prominent now that they made shapes under her shirt, the pointed ends of the ones down her spine poking through the thin cloth. Her tail looked like a weapon, her arms had lengthened a little, her hind limbs were changed enough that she had to crouch slightly to remain upright on them. Throttle charges her, but just before meeting her he swoops to catch the child. A hard blow from Flux’s elbow catches him in the gut and he comes to a sudden halt. The child screams. His speed had made him little but a blur to the naked eye, and he had seemed to materialize in front of her before Flux stopped him. Tilting her head thoughtfully, Flux examined her opponent as he hit the ground, and decided he had ruptured something vital of his with that attempt. She crouched over him, not letting the child see, and snapped his neck with a neat and practiced motion. After pulling a pocketknife from his pocket, Flux turned to her and began to cut the bindings from her legs with clinical care to avoid harming the child.



Eyes very wide, the little girl stared.



“Greetings, Ellen,” Flux said absently in Mandarin Chinese, letting her feline ears arch forward for emphasis before half-folding them again. The little girl blinked.



“That’s my English name,” she replied. “You’re my family’s spirit-guardian, right? Dad says you followed him from China, so why do you call me my English name?”



“I have not been in your house recently. Only outside. I have only heard that name,” Flux replied. The girl’s brow furrowed.



“You are a spirit. Surely-“



“I am not a spirit. I am a woman, a mutant,” Flux interrupted. The girl fell into shocked silence.



“But-but, they…those men…you can’t, my dad says you’ve been guarding the family for-“



“I do not age,” Flux said. She touched the child’s face with a gloved hand to soothe her. “Mutants are not all bad. Your father is wrong about that. Mutants are just like people: some good, some bad.”



“So…you are a good mutant?” Ellen whispered, tears of confusion still shimmering in her eyes. Flux forced herself to transform for effect, and watched the child’s eyes widen as the scales shrank and faded, her ears folded back further, and her legs straightened and righted until the only strangeness was that instead of a normal foot, she had an oddly shaped heel and the balls of her feet were replaced by paws.



“I am neither. Some people are like that too,” Flux explained.



“How can you be not good or bad?” Ellen frowned.



“I rescued you, yes?”



“Yes…thank you,” Ellen said shyly.



“I killed that man to do it, though, didn’t I?” Flux finished. Ellen pursed her lips, her brow drawing in confusion.



“Oh…yea. He was bad…”



“But I didn’t have to kill him.”



“Oh…like the spirits in stories.”



“Rather, yes.”



“Why do you help me?” The girl asked as Flux delicately began sawing the dull blade of the pocketknife through the zip tie that bound her wrists.



“Your father’s grandmother was a mutant. Not too powerful and she didn’t pass it to her sons. She could see the future. I didn’t know that, and I made a bet with her. I lost. In return I watch over your family when I can manage it.”



“Oh,” the little girl said, but looked confused again. The tie at her wrists finally snapped, and Flux tossed it aside.



“My mutation in that I change between two shapes. One is this one, the other is…rather like a cat but not. Because I transform my body heals very fast to keep up with the changes, and that keeps me from getting old.”



“I think I understand…” Ellen murmured. Flux pulled a small syringe from her pocket, and took off the cap. Ellen looked at it curiously. “What is that?”



“You’ve had a long adventure of sorts. I have to take you home, but it will be easier to do that with you asleep, so this will make you sleep,” Flux explained.



“I don’t like shots,” Ellen whined. Flux held her arm gently but firmly.



“You won’t feel this one.”



“I don’t want to sleep,” the child protested. She wanted to say more but the needle was in her arm and the world grew foggy. She swayed a little as Flux capped the syringe and tossed it. She saw a man at the edge of the trees and tried to tell Flux, but fell unconscious. Flux lifted her and stood, but then froze.



SNIKT.



Looking over her shoulder, she saw Logan approaching from the tree line. She rolled her eyes and strode over to a nearby tree. Pulling a large duffle bag from the roots, she sat the girl on it and leaned her against the tree. Flux had been staying in the tree recently, and was rather glad to have ended the chase near it to be able to gather her things. Turning from the tree, she strode toward the center of the clearing, pausing to kick Throttle’s body away. It took her a moment to straighten out her thoughts and return to speaking English. Too many damn languages in this skull,” she thought irritably.



“One moment, please. Let me clear away the debris and I’ll be happy to kick your ass,” she called. She had a faintly English accent mixed with hints of India about some of her vowels. Logan paused, stunned, and watched her finally lift the corpse and toss it to the tree line of the small clearing before facing him, dusting off her bare forearms. She then bent and rolled up her pale baggy pants again, as they had fallen again during the chase. Logan watched her skin darken to a dusky grey, and slowly become covered with scales. She then stood upright, and beckoned him with her muddy gloved fingers.



“You are one crazy little witch,” he growled. Flux grinned brightly in mockery. Then she lunged. Leave it to Magneto. Send someone else with a metal skeleton to prove he doesn’t do scary control-things, as if that were my biggest concern. Bastard, Flux thought. Logan had little chance to think, and instead swiped at her with his claws, watching her dance back on her paws. He swung for those strange legs of hers and she jumped up and forward, her paws striking his forearms to propel her over his head, her tail wrapping around his throat and tightening before she landed.



Choking, Logan retracted his claws, reaching around and simply yanking the offending extra limb and knocking his opponent to the ground long enough for him to press his boot against her neck and take the time to pry the surprisingly strong tail from his throat. He tried to drag her toward him by the tail but her paws struck high on his shins, extended their claws and shredded his jeans, his boots and his flesh as she dragged them down. Snarling, Logan released her tail, leapt back and unsheathed his claws again as she got back to her feet. Slowly, they circled each other, this time their gazes more appraising.



“Nice claws,” he growled.



“I could say the same for you. Utilitarian, maybe, but I suppose that’s a good thing in many cases,” she replied. Logan smirked a little, but attacked again.



~



Kurt panted as he followed Rogue. She had been going at a run since they found the corpse Logan had made. Kurt, used to teleporting, found himself feeling out of shape.



“Maybe…I vill…do some training,” he panted. Rogue snorted with a distracted smile.



“So you don’t want to race then?” she teased. Kurt growled a little.



“Vench.”



“It’s a living,” she joked.



“Vait…don’t you have a sprained ankle?”



“Uhm…Logan didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to be injured on a real mission-“



They both fell quiet upon hearing a distant sound like a roar or a scream. They stopped and looked at each other. Rogue cursed and tried to estimate the distance from the noise with a greater air of urgency.



“Can you teleport to where that was?” Rogue asked. Kurt shook his head.



“I might land us in ze middle of a tree,” he warned.



“Teleport to the top of a tree, take a look around, teleport back, grab me, move ahead,” she conjured. Kurt looked at her, surprised, then vanished in a puff of smoke.



~



Logan flinched at the sound of her scream. She managed to pull away and leap back a moment, and he waited for her to fall. From mid-thigh to very nearly her paw on her left side, she bled. Logan stalked toward her, only to stop, watching the exposed muscle mend and catching a glimpse of dull metal bone. He had been too involved in the hunt to notice. He could smell it past the blood now: adamantium. She winced, and stumbled back again. She healed fast, but not so fast as him. Logan tried to estimate how much slower it was, considering the possibilities.



Cursing, she eyed the rapid disappearance of the wound on his chest from the stolen pocketknife she had lost a moment ago, but she could already move her damaged leg again, and her flesh closed over the remaining damage. She crouched slightly, her hands spread a little from her sides, fingers tense and curled back a little as if to mimic claws. Her hands didn’t change position as Logan attacked again, or even as his claws ran through her belly and into the tree behind her. She gasped critically, letting her eyes loose focus.



She smelled sulfur on the wind for a moment before her own blood filled her senses.



People often underestimated her healing ability once they saw it. The rate wounds on her limbs or skin healed lead them to believe her vital organs healed equally slow and that a really good disemboweling like this could finish her. Logan eased back a little as she choked on some bit of her own blood, expecting that he had done enough damage to kill her. He did not turn at the smell of sulfur suddenly from the other side of the clearing, precluded as it was by a familiar BAMF.



He heard Rogue’s voice and Kurt’s distantly. Then he heard a sound like scraping followed by sounds like ten knives suddenly breaking through skin and leather gloves from the spread and partly-curled fingers of the mutant whose yellow-green eyes were not as glazed as they should be. Logan began to pull back, but not in time to escape the curved and knife-narrow claws Flux buried un his throat and pulled down his chest, cleaving the flesh along the way. She lifted her hind paws to his stomach and kicked him back, removing his claws the rest of the way from her organs as he fell away and allowing her to stumbled a few good paces from him as she finished recovering. She could smell only blood now.



Logan pulled himself to his feet very slowly, coughing blood once his throat mended and glaring at his opponent, who only launched at him and tore further, moving too close too fast and tackling him back to the snowy forest floor and casting red across that natural icy canvas. After a too-long moment, Logan managed to catch her ribcage on his claws and fling her away, but not before she had lay open his whole abdomen and left him unable to stand.



Flux stood again, coughing unpleasantly for a moment, and looking at the mess she had made of him. He was still healing when her lungs were repaired enough for another attack, but she didn’t have too much time. She moved quickly to finish him, but an explosion of dark blue and bitterly sulfurous smoke interrupted her. BAMF! BAMF! She slashed at it reflexively, but found no presence within it.



BAMF! It was behind her. BAMF!



BAMF! Above!



BAMF! BAMF! BAMF!



Flux spun around, trying to spot her opponent. She saw only glimpses: a flash of yellow eyes, the whipping blur of a tail, the unsettlingly familiar blur of a black coat. Finally she retreated from the noise, the choking smoke and in the process moved away from Logan’s still-recovering form. She had been distracted, not able to hear the too-skilled stalking of the girl behind her. Her first indication of Rogue’s presence was a bare hand gripping her arm. She whipped around, feeling an ominous draining even as she buried her claws in the limb that touched her.



Rogue could not dodge the claws that sunk into her upper arm, but she hardly cared. She saw the stranger’s eyes widen and loose some of their yellow hue, turning pale green. Steeled against the flood of thoughts, Rogue was unsettled by their brevity. A burst of thought and impression, but then there was nothing. She could feel the undercurrent of energy being pulled from the strange mutant, who fell to her scaly knees in the snow with a groan, removing her claws from Rogue’s arm to catch herself, blood staining the snow. Mentally Rogue felt a pressure, like a thin barrier, and realized with a shock that this mutant–Flux, she knew suddenly from the confusion of that brief mental glimpse–was blocking it. The first burst of impression boiled up within her and she tried to focus on it. Instead she was distracted as she heard painful sounds of metal scraping metal and fixed her eyes on the curved metal claws of the other mutant. They seemed at once artfully crafted and very painful, the base of each curved blade starting halfway up the finger it extended from, apparently bisecting it. The longest claw was five inches, three of which extended past the fingertip it massacred. Rogue swallowed, glad the blood and tattered leather hid some of that flesh. The scraping sound suddenly turned into a series of metallic strikes as each claw suddenly snapped back into Flux’s hands, causing her to cry out.



Her scales were fading again, too, this time reluctantly. It was as though Rogue were pulling out most every sign of mutation, and it felt like ripping. Flux looked up at her, eyes pained.



“Let. Go,” she hissed. It was not pleading, but did not merit being called a command. Rogue shook her head solemnly. The mental barrier rippled. Let go. The voice was in Rogue’s mind.



“How are you-“ Rogue began. Flux interrupted with a growl that turned into the strangely human sound of a shout. For a moment, Rogue saw pale blue eyes wide open in pain. The barrier released deliberately, and shut, opened and then shut as if tossing mental grenades. Rogue’s head was left reeling.



Image of blood spread over hundreds of bodies in military uniform.



Smell of sickness, a screaming woman running from one of the wards into her, blood and organs everywhere with the stench of pain and excrement and death. The screaming brought so much pain!



Image of flesh being burnt to a crisp–knowing that flesh belongs to you–



Feeling of bones burning, fluid, and the acrid smell of the metal–



Rogue released Flux with a scream, clutching her head, and the disturbing images faded quickly. Kurt was immediately at her side, concerned and glancing at the now unconscious stranger bleeding not-quite-alarmingly into the snow. Rogue could smell the sulfurous smoke lingering about his clothing, smell the faint fear off him, remembered having Logan’s sense of smell and found this borrowed mutation lacking in the olfactory area, but she could hear his heartbeat and his breathing and the creak of his ribcage with each breath and the faint sounds of her nervous system and the trees around them and the wind and Logan getting to his feet and the snow crunching and too much of everything. She covered her ears with a pained groan.



“Rogue?” Kurt asked. She could hear him through her hands and over her own thunderous heartbeat.



“Earplugs. Ah need earplugs; Ah can hear everything,” she whimpered. She heard shuffling and smelled blood as Logan approached her. He pulled a set of earplugs from his pocket. Rogue thanked him profusely and took them.



“I need those around the mansion with all the damn kids,” he professed. Rogue nodded, pressing the foam blocks into smaller shapes and stuffing them in her ears. The crinkly sounds of their expansion made her flinch, but the lowering of volume when they finished was worth it.



“Oh god,” she sighed in relief. Logan delicately lifted her arm for inspection, careful to touch only her sleeve. Only momentarily distracted by the fact his leather jacket was damaged and his shirt had been shredded to the point it seemed to have fallen off, she watched him examine the closing wounds on her upper arm.



“She coulda hurt you much worse,” he admonished, not quite scolding but still irritating to Rogue’s sense of pride.



“Same goes for you,” she countered. Logan shook his head.



“I heal,” he argued.



“And since Ah touched her, so do Ah,” Rogue replied, and jerked her arm away in irritation, attempting to stand. She wavered for a moment and nearly fell. Kurt pushed her with his tail to help her remain upright. Logan arched a brow. Rogue shrugged.



“Mah balance is off,” she murmured. “Must be the ears and lack of tail…maybe muscle memory and the paws thing.”



“Well I activated the pick-up signal on the communicator,” Logan offered. “Scooter should be on his way back from his own mission by now. We won’t be walking home.” Rogue tensed as he wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her as they walked over to the tree where Flux had left the kidnapped girl, but she soon relaxed against him, relieved to have the world stop spinning. Her eyes fell shut for a long moment, then snapped back open abruptly. Rogue’s bare hand clutched her temple.



“Shit!” she cried, as if she’d just remembered something. They stopped walking.



“What?” Logan asked, slightly alarmed.



“She wasn’t with Magneto!” Rogue groaned, her mind clearing and suddenly letting loose the information she had so recently gathered. “But she thought you were.”



“What?” Logan asked again, this time in shock and with slightly greater volume.



“It made sense to her at the time,” Rogue insisted.



“Is she botherin’ ya?” Logan growled, shooting the unconscious mutant a glare even as Kurt tended the few re-opened wounds on her.



“Far from it. Ah just got a flicker of impression and she blocked me,” Rogue admitted, still surprised herself. Logan stared at her. She stared back. Distantly, they both heard the hum of the Blackbird approaching and silently agreed to simply get back to work.



~



BAMF!



Scott and Kitty nearly jumped out of their skin at the sound, and then again at the sight. The steps of the Blackbird hadn’t even gone halfway down yet and Kurt had arrived with a large dufflebag over his shoulder and an unconscious stranger carried somewhat awkwardly in his arms. Adamantium, he reflected, is pretty damn heavy.



“Kurt, who the hell is that?” Kitty exclaimed. Scott merely stared for a moment.



“Does she have paws or is my visor really malfunctioning?” he finally inquired.



“Er, Rogue said her name is Flux. There vas a misunderstanding…”



“Misunder-Kurt she’s covered in blood!” Scott shouted.



“Chill, One-eye, a lot of it’s mine,” Logan called, carrying an embarrassed Rogue, who in turn held the kidnapped little girl, who still unconscious and now wrapped in a blanket. Scott raised a brow over his visor.



“You look like hell,” he told Logan.



“And you look like a pansy. Somebody take the kid,” Logan growled. Kitty smiled a little, but stood up and took Ellen, allowing Logan to settle Rogue into her seat.



“Ah could have gotten up the stairs,” she insisted.



“Best not to take chances. You already fell down twice on flat ground. Buckle up.”



“Ass,” she mumbled.



“Brat,” he countered.



“Bastard.”



“Basket case.”



“Prick.”



“That’s Scooter’s title,” Logan corrected her.



“Vill you two shut up and one of you help me get zhis voman on a stretcher?” Kurt snapped. Rogue shook her head and stood up before Logan could comment, making a concentrated effort to keep her balance. She pressed a few buttons on the wall near the back of the jet as Scott began questioning Logan about the mission. A panel on the wall opened and folded out into a medical bed, which they strapped the stranger to. Kurt kept eyeing her curiously, as if trying to figure something out.



“So, is she the one who gave you your coat?” she asked. Kurt startled a little, but then looked at Flux for a long moment. His eyes widened in recognition.



“Gott in Himmel,” he murmured.



~



Sitting in the seat beside her, Logan watched Rogue nervously adjust her gloves on the quick trip back to the mansion. She looked nervous and uneasy, her teeth worrying her lower lip in a distracting fashion. Finally he touched her shoulder to catch her attention before she drove him insane. She didn’t flinch, and met his gaze almost absently, her dark eyes wide and unreadable.



“You okay?” he inquired.



“Yeah, Ah just…she blocked me,” Rogue murmured, shrugging lightly. Logan tilted his head.



“What about that’s botherin’ you?” he asked. She bit her lip.



“Ah asked Beast one time how likely it was to get a mutation like mine. The odds were…they were pretty unlikely really. Ah asked him the odd of someone else havin’ the same mutation and it was damn near impossible,” she recalled, her eyes distant. Logan let her pause a moment. “She recognized my mutation, and she blocked it like she had practice. It’s insane, but Ah think she knew somebody with skin like mine,” she murmured. Logan squeezed her shoulder and she looked at him again.



“Why does that bother you?”



“It doesn’t,” Rogue murmured. “Ah just…Ah think she could help me get control, but…”



“Ah,” Logan said, understanding. He squeezed her shoulder again.



“Yeah. You get my point. How inclined would she bet to help me after all that,” she sighed.



“Hey,” Logan admonished. “Now you’ve got hope, though, eh?” he offered. She stared a moment, then smiled faintly. He released her shoulder as she smiled and they both settled back in their seats as Scott took them in for a landing.



~



Silence filled the medlab as the tired group X-men stood in awe of the rare thing they all witnessed: a look of surprise on the face of Charles Xavier. Even Dr. McCoy paused from his usual industrious task-working to take it in. Rogue and Logan exchanged glances.



“You’re sure she’s alive?” Xavier asked.



“Professor?” Kitty sounded unsure.



“Never in my life…I can’t sense her at all. It’s as though she has Erik’s Helmet, I cannot sense her presence or thoughts in the least,” he murmured. The X-men muttered amongst themselves. Rogue looked at Logan worriedly.



“You don’t think I did that?” she whispered. Logan shook his head.



“Rogue? Do you know something?” Xavier queried. Rogue felt Erik stir in the back of her mind suddenly. Her eyes went distant as she spoke with him silently in her head for a moment.



“Erik does. He didn’t say anything until you asked,” she murmured. “Her skeleton is like Peter’s muscles because the metal is somehow organic and can change shape and everythin’, but it’s not natural.” She slipped into Erik’s voice entirely for a moment. “There’s not a human lab in the world that could do that, Charles, and she’s avoided me like the plague.” Rogue shook her head to clear it, putting a hand over her mouth.



“Do you need help, Rogue?” Xavier asked. Rogue lowered her hand.



“Nah, Ah’m fine. He just got a little uppity. Flux’s skull is designed somehow like Erik’s helmet, but different. Ya can’t get in unless she lets ya,” she finished. As the rest of the X-men focused on Xavier, Logan instead, having put on a pair of latex gloves some time after entering the medlab, shifted closer to Rogue and massaged her temples. She jumped a little at the foreign touch, but soon melted at his closeness, and the amazing things his fingers did to the muscles around her temples and scalp. Even just his scent, of pine, cigar smoke, and soft but heady and almost spicy musk; she felt her whole body and brain relax and blur. Logan smirked a little when he heard her purring, just too quietly for the others to hear.



“Her name is Flux?” Xavier asked absently.



“Mm-hmm. Something like fluctuate, fluctuation,” Rogue replied absently. She gave a pleased sigh when Logan’s fingers moved to the back of her neck, soothing and working the muscles there. Kurt, not too far away, looked around trying to figure out where the noise, which he did not quite recognize as purring, was coming from. Seeing this and seeing Rogue see it, Logan chuckled. Rogue suddenly realized what she was doing and straightened up from where she had begun to lean forward in her near-stupor. Blushing furiously, she avoided people’s eyes.



“Do you know her mutation?” Xavier inquired. Rogue thought carefully.



“Er…nothing except that she explained it to the little girl. Ah’ve only got a few real recent memories. She…er…blocked me,” she confessed. Xavier’s brow furrowed thoughtfully and he rolled over to the other medical table, where Ellen slumbered. Hank was still working out what sedative had been used on the girl, but her unconscious mind was easy to access. Her childlike mind showed him the scene of rescue, and illustrated it with her own thoughts. One such illustration came from a family legend, and a book made by her grandfather which gave some depiction of the time the family’s guardian spirit had rescued him: a lean cat-like shape the size of a tiger with scales, a whippy tail and strange claws. Xavier opened his eyes.



He looked at his X-men, conversing amongst themselves, and wondered if he trusted this mutant he could not read to sleep in his house with them. Rogue met his eyes as he moved to rejoin the group near the doorway.



“She’s not evil, Charles,” she offered. Logan stood behind her, uneasy but respecting her judgment enough to nod in agreement despite having traded eviscerations with the mutant in question.



“Yes…but she’s not good either,” Xavier countered. Rogue considered this and met Logan’s gaze. Logan rubbed his throat tensely, remembering a little too clearly at the moment how it felt not to have one, however briefly.



“I think he’s got a point.”



“Ah think he’s got roughly ten, twenty if ya count her paws,” Rogue joked, making mock-claws with her fingers. Logan raised a brow. “No, Ah don’t really have ‘em,” she added, though in reality she feared even to try. Xavier chuckled at the looks on the other X-men’s faces as they watched the performance. Not very long afterwards, Scott told them all that there would be a debriefing the next morning and everyone began to leave at last.



Logan followed, but then hesitated in the doorway.



“Hey, Hank?” he called.



“Yes, Logan?”



“You sure you wanna be down here with…”



“It took you more than a day to wake up from Rogue draining you, Logan. I believe that I am quite safe. And in any case, Kurt has volunteered to watch the lab tonight after he goes with Scott to return the human girl to her parents.”



“Logan,” Rogue chided, returning down the hall and taking his arm in her surprisingly strong glove-clad grasp. “Kitchen. Now. Ya owe me, and Ah’m cashin’ in.” Hank laughed at the pair of them.



“Thanks for the concern, Logan,” Hank called.



“No problem, Hank,” the other man replied as the small girl dragged him away. “Anytime. Soon might be nice. Are ya sure you don’t need help?”



“Shut up, Logan,” Rogue said. Shaking his head, Hank chuckled at their antics.



~



Having gone to bed relatively early after sharing a beer with Logan, Rogue was surprised at how late the nightmares woke her. Images from her latest touch had sent her hurtling into the waking world, her nose full of foreign scents and her ears buzzing and sore from the earplugs. She pulled out the plugs carefully and winced as the air conditioner kicked on surprisingly loud, but she adjusted more easily to this level of sound. Also, the ‘gift’ was simply fading. She passed Logan’s room and heard his deep breathing as he slept like the dead. After a fight like today’s, Rogue wasn’t surprised, and smiled faintly as she moved down the hall. She moved quietly, but never silently to her borrowed too-acute hearing. Her bones and her pulse made sound, as did the shifting of her black silk pajamas and the shifting of her weight over the floorboards. She heard shuffling on the roof and smiled lightly. Roughly half of every week that she spent sleepless went to the kitchen with Logan and/or Kurt, but on at least one of those other nights she would try and make it to the roof.



Reluctantly, she replaced the earplugs before attempting to open the window, and still the squeak as she pushed it up made her wince.



Johnny and Bobby still sat apart from each other when together, slightly awkwardly, even as they talked. Of course, at least in this case, they were talking about the manly subject of X-men training and such behavior was just basic male protocol, but Rogue still rolled her eyes before stepping up behind Bobby and plucking the somewhat small glass bottle from his hand and taking a swig.



“Where did ya find rum?” she inquired and plopped down to sit between them, licking her lips.



“Is that what it is?” John asked, his voice slurred.



“Er…in a duffle bag,” Bobby said, attempting innocence but only managing to look tipsy and nervous. Rogue’s brows lifted. “It was outside the medlab,” he added.



“Bobby…” she warned.



“It was either that or take beer from Logan, and then have to face both him and you,” Bobby complained.



“Ooh, he has a point, Roguey,” John hissed. Rogue snorted and took another sip of rum, letting herself savor it a little, as it satisfied a craving she assumed came from Flux. Yet, it also hit her like a stalk of sugarcane dipped in lead.



“Holy hell,” she groaned. “What proof is this?”



“My guess is 376,” John offered.



“4200,” Bobby countered.



“You boys are already drunk and this thing isn’t half-empty,” Rogue scolded.



“You’ll join us soon,” John crooned. “Join the inebriated side…” He raised his hands on either side of his head and wiggled his fingers in an evil mystical motion accompanied by a dramatic “WoooOOOooo” noise.



“Ah drained a healer today, boy, it’d take the rest of this bottle to get me to the same place you two occupy in the land of the foolish and drunk,” she growled.



“At least it wasn’t Logan this time,” Bobby mused. “Yeh’d kick my ass for looking at you, steal the rum, and growl at us, but consider it too unmanly and not-whiskey-like to drink yourself. It’d go to waste.”



“Logan doesn’t mind rum, and he didn’t chase you off,” she corrected.



“Hmm, how did you find this out about rum? What kind of drinking games?” John teased. Rogue glared at him in a manner that could blight crops. John was a little drunk, and could not grasp the full effect. Thus, he just kept talking. “Oh. Sorry. I suppose it would be hard to do bodyshots…”



“John!” Rogue shouted, shocked. He only giggled evilly.



“Did he really carry you onto the Blackbird or is Kitty confused?” Bobby inquired. Rogue blushed.



“He did. Ah was havin’ some issues with my balance and he got it into his head to pick me up.”



“I’m sure you protested greatly,” John added sarcastically. “What with him bare-chested and all.”



“Ah did protest, and he was, as you so graciously put it, ‘bare chested’ which just made me paranoid Ah might drain him, and he was only ‘bare chested’ because he got ripped open from chin to belly by metal claws,” she scolded. John looked peevish for a moment, but then he spoke again.



“As if ripped clothing doesn’t just add to appeal.”



“Yeh’re so fuckin’ drunk,” Rogue sighed. “Ya’ve lost all survival instincts…”



“Bobby, she’s threatening me,” John whined. Bobby threw a snowball at him. John glared for a long moment before fumbling for his lighter. Rogue pulled off a glove and whacked the top of his head with it before slipping it back on. “Ow! Hey!”



“A fireball is not the same as a snowball,” she reminded him sternly. John snorted, but stopped seeking revenge for a while.



“Seriously, though, how do you know he likes rum?” John inquired.



“If ya must know-“



“We must, we must,” John broke in. Rogue ignored him.



“We were discussing the merits of bourbon versus…well most other beverages we could think of. Rum’s not bad,” she offered.



“Weird conversation,” Bobby mused.



“I had been thinking of a weirder one,” John assured. “Well, weird for me to think about. I’m sure Rogue may find it quite normal…ritual in fact…”



“Ya better stop suggestin’ things about me an’ Logan, though, the both of ya,” she growled. Bobby leaned toward her playfully.



“Ooh, or what?” he dared. She shot him a dark look.



“Bobby, if Ah were to knowingly suggest things about yer interests in people right now…” she started. Understanding somehow managed to pierce the alcohol happy-bubble of the Iceman.



“I got it, I got it! Done now!” he cried in defeat. Rogue smirked. John frowned.



“Aww…now I’m curious,” he taunted, shifting toward Rogue. Both Bobby and the all-too-knowing Rogue blushed furiously at the unintentional innuendo thus created. Rogue leaned close to John.



“Ah know ya are, John, don’t make me shout it,” she hissed very quietly in the pyromaniac’s ear. John paled and sat back passively. A long silence passed. Rogue took another sip of rum, savoring it. Casually, she plucked the cap from Bobby’s shirt pocket and closed the bottle. Maybe she could use it as a bargaining tool at some point with their ‘guest’ down in the medlab.



“So…you do like Logan?” Bobby asked suddenly. Rogue hesitated a moment.



“Ah…Ah don’t know. Ah don’t know if either of us are really…if either of us can really love,” she murmured.



“That’s a depressing thought,” John said flatly. “You usually come out here and cheer us up or play our therapist. Why so depressing to yourself?”



“Why are you still so logical, even drunk?” Rogue inquired darkly. She sighed. “Ah just know Ah’m messed up. Ah’m not deluded. Ah know Ah don’t want to try a relationship when Ah’m afraid.”



“You’re not afraid of him,” John said. Rogue blinked.



“No. Never have been. Ah don’t want to hurt him. Ah’m afraid because of how much I want to touch him,” she admitted. “Not to use my power, but to just…” she trailed off.



“I know the feeling,” Bobby and John muttered wistfully in unison. They glanced at each other and quickly away again. Rogue found herself thinking about touch, about hope, and about Logan.



“Ah don’t trust hope,” she said flatly.



“Hmm?” Bobby managed.



“Ah found out somethin’ today that might help me learn control. That gives me hope, which Ah always automatically assume is false hope. If Ah feel like somethin’ good is gonna happen and Ah’ll have somebody t’ trust and all, Ah feel like it’s gonna all fall apart,” she murmured, fingers tightening around the neck of the rum bottle.



“We’re mutants,” John said as if that explained everything, and in some ways it might. “Trust issues abound very nat’rally.” That was one of them. Rogue made a sound of agreement.



“Can’t trust family, can’t trust nature, can’t trust stability,” Bobby listed.



Rogue stared at the woods in the distance and tried to list things that she could trust. She felt uneasy when she realized Logan was high on that short list. She had never met someone like him before. They had connected on sight, and it had only become stronger, more intricate and more comfortable with time. Somewhere between the both of them ceasing to run, saving each other’s lives, mourning their losses and sharing drinks, she had grown to depend on him. The thought frightened her until she realized he depended on her. It was subtle but…



Rogue stood up carefully between the fire-starter and the ice-sculptor, gripping the neck of the rum bottle in one hand.



“Ah’m gonna head back to bed, boys,” she sighed. She leaned over to Bobby and whispered in his ear, “Stop bein’ a coward and tell him.”



“And you?” Bobby countered before she could back away. Rogue paused.



“He’s afraid to know, but he does. Ah let him see it in my face when Ah look at him. You’re afraid to sit close enough to look into his eyes,” she accused. John looked at her nervously when she left Bobby’s side. She bent and kissed him on the top of the head, whispering so only he could hear, “You owe me.”



And she stepped back up to the window and vanished through it.



Later that night, she heard a faint crash down the hall near John’s room, and fumbling around the door, then a laugh from Bobby that was quickly silenced. The door to John’s room snapped shut and something rattled as the entering party moved through the room. Putting her earplugs back in to offer them some privacy, Rogue settled back in her bed to sleep through the dawn, smiling faintly to know that at least someone was getting some.