Touch was the first thing she lost. The ability to touch another living being without draining them until they lay lifeless at her feet.

The next thing she lost was her home and her family. Her parents, until then so loving and caring, decided that they could not - would not - have a mutant in their home. They saw her as a spawn of the devil, reject by man and God. They sent her away, without any money, without any hope.

Still shocked because of what happened to David, she didn't fight them.

The third thing she lost was her innocence. She lost it on the road, the first time she touched a trucker who wanted the kind of payment she couldn't give. He didn't die. The next one, however, did, and others followed him. And she lost her ability to feel guilt.

The fifth thing she lost was hope. Hope that she would ever be loved, hope that she could ever touch again, hope that she would even survive to see her next birthday.

The sixth thing she lost was the ability to care about others, simply because she was too busy just trying to stay alive.

The seventh thing she lost was Marie. She died on the road, and in her ashes arose the Rogue. Marie was touch, home, innocence, morality, hope and kindness.

Rogue was not.

Rogue was the girl who'd hid in Logan trailer, not because she trusted him or felt some mystic bond with him, but simply because she had nothing left to lose.

Rogue was the girl who'd stared into the face of death and found that in some ways, it was better than the alternatives. She'd felt death twice, and had each time been pulled back from the comforting darkness.

She sometimes wondered why. After all, she was death incarnate. Shouldn't it be natural for her to be reunited with the darkness that had created her? Logan didn't seem to think so.

The others thought it was so endearing, so romantic that he was willing to sacrifice his life to save her. No one bothered to look beneath the surface and see what Rogue already knew - that the Wolverine saw death as freedom and not loss, just like she herself did.

And maybe that was why things had turned out the way they had - on the balcony, in the cold February air, four days after he'd returned. They'd stumbled into each other in the rec room one night when neither of them could sleep - she because of insomnia, he because of nightmares. They'd talked a little but mostly just watched and wondered, until they realized just how alike they truly were.

She wasn't sure who had made the first move, but they had ended up on the balcony, only half-dressed, but too desperate to care about the cold. That silent, chilly night had been the first.

It wasn't the last.

What they had...it wasn't love, because both of them had long ago lost the ability to feel that particular emotion. It wasn't gentle, because neither remembered gentleness. It was need, and want, and desperation, just like them. It was the need to feel the only thing they still had left - life. It was the need to feel alive in a way that one only felt when staring into the face of death.

Need to prove to themselves that despite the fact that they no longer felt guilt or love or hope, they were still alive. Need and desperate wanting - to feel alive and to feel the rush of near-death, because they really had nothing to lose and thus could enjoy what others couldn't.

It was really a game of chicken, played with the Lord of Death himself. They both knew that it was a game they would eventually lose, but maybe that's what made it so alluring. Maybe it was because each touch, each night could very well be the last. Maybe it was because they wanted to forget the world, if only for a brief moment. Or maybe it was because they both craved the companionship of someone who didn't fear them, lethal as they were.

Because even between brief, skin-on-skin kisses, and caresses by razor-sharp adamantium claws...there was no fear. There were risks and pain and ecstasy and need...but never fear.

Even as Logan claimed her mouth in a searing kiss or left rough bite-marks on her shoulder, even when there was nothing between them, even as she felt his very life force being drained from his body by her skin...he was never afraid.

And even as she could feel the cold claws on her skin, even through the faint pain from the small cuts on her body, even as she knew that one wrong move could kill her...she wasn't afraid.

Not because she counted on Logan's healing factor to save her, but because they both had only their lives left, and were determined to enjoy it while they could. Enjoy it in a way that was only possible for those who no longer cared.

And they truly didn't care.

Not about the X-Men, who had offered them a place to stay. Not about the place they lived at the moment. Not about the student, or the adults, or even the Dream. Rogue had wondered about it, but had eventually realized that it made a twisted kind of sense. After all, if they unable to love, and unable to hope, then why should they be able to care?

They didn't care about the others' friendly gestures, either. They didn't care about trust or compassion, sentimentality or vulnerability. And while Rogue did sometimes admire the other students' ability to open up to each other, and thus open themselves to possible pain, she didn't like the trait in herself. To her, vulnerability was a weakness, and weaknesses should be dealt with. Weaknesses could lead to compassion, and compassion could force her to care.

She didn't want that. If she cared, she would only be hurt again. She preferred things as they were - of need and want and pure desperation. She preferred to feel alive through passion and pain, through claw-marks and games with Death, rather than through the pain of betrayal and loss.

They had both lost more than enough already...and they both knew the meaning of 'betrayal' too well.

But if they didn't trust, and didn't care, they would be safe, at least for a short while. If the result was that other people started to avoid them, then that was just a bonus. If they didn't socialize with others, they wouldn't be hurt. No, not hurt - betrayed. They had to care to feel hurt.

Hurt might a part of the human nature, but neither though of themselves as completely human. Human meant joy and sadness, love and hate, weakness and strength. Human meant having a soul, to be able to care, to hope, to love, to feel guilt.

Rogue and Logan had both lost those emotions a long time ago, and with them, their souls and humanity. Darkness was left, endless and strangely comforting.

Like Death, darkness treated everyone equal. It didn't betray - as darkness, how could it? It didn't bring pain, because in death, pain did not exist. And most importantly of all - like them, it did not care.

Darkness was night, their nights together. Nights of risks and thrills and desperation and pushing themselves just a little bit further.

And every morning, they would be just a little bit more exhausted, him from the draining of his powers, her from the healing of her cuts and bite-marks.

Every morning they had come one step closer to the edge, one step closer to endless oblivion.

And they continued their game.

The End