Wake from your dreams
the drying of your tears
today we escape
we escape

She was alone, again. She was always alone. She couldn't sleep as well. However, that was something she was used to, something "normal." She reveled in the feeling of the night, as she did before, back home, when she was still "Marie." It was perhaps the reason why she couldn't sleep, but perhaps it had less to do with the comfort of the past and more with the thought of the future.

Logan.

He was coming home. She had called him, and he was coming. The thought wrapped around her like a favorite quilt and she could no longer hold back the rush of sleep...

Pack and get dressed
before your father hears us
before all hell breaks loose

He was coming home. Back for Rogue, like he had always promised. He had called her several times over the course of the past five years. He'd even got one of those voicemail thingies so that she could call him, and he could check it wherever he was. When she'd called last week, he'd felt very grateful that he had succumbed to that useless piece of technology.

She needed him, and he was coming.

But as he neared the house with every passing mile, he began to wonder, what should he do when he got there?

Breathe keep breathing
don't loose your nerve
Breathe keep breathing
I can't do this alone

It was nine days since she had called him, and the tiny part of him that was still in her, the tiny part that had survived Ms. Marvel, told her that he was close.

And the closer he drew to her and the mansion, the more afraid she became. Afraid that maybe he wouldn't like what she had become. And what had she become?

In her mind's eye she saw herself, a tepid mix of herself and the others she had absorbed -- Wolverine, Magneto, Ms. Marvel. One would venture to think that she was most disturbed by the woman, but she had sorted through that, on her own as usual, and integrated the woman into her psyche as best as she could. No, it was not Ms. Marvel's influence that had made her call Logan. It was Magneto's, or rather, Professor Xavier and the X-Men's reaction to her second absorption of him...

Sing us a song,
a song to keep us warm
for there's sucha chill
sucha chill

He still did not know why she had called him, why she had needed him to come home, but he didn't need to know to hop on his borrowed bike and push that little red button to get himself from a crowded rowdy redneck bar to that stately school in New York. He only knew his girl was in trouble, and he had made a promise that he wouldn't let that happen. He failed before, and maybe he had again, but the thought didn't stop him from bursting through the door of the mansion and frantically searching for her, to help her, to make it all right.

Logan found it odd that her scent was nowhere on the ground floor, nor anywhere else in the mansion, as if she had never been there. Indeed, when he did find her room, it smelled as if she hadn't left it for months. When he opened the door, and saw his Marie sitting on her bed, skin and bone as if she hadn't eaten in too long and so pale that one could have mistaken her for an underworlder, he knew why he was there.

Marie needed him to take her away from here, and he was going to help her get out of this place with all he had.

You can laugh
a spineless laugh
we hope your rules and wisdom choke you

She heard him drive up, heard him running through the halls, and when he opened the door to her room she saw his heart sink. He knew she had spent three months in that room. Three months without human contact. So the first thing he did was sit on her bed and pull her into his arms. He hugged her with everything he had, with all his love, and for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, she felt love.

Then he stood up and told her to get some warm clothes, and a hat and coat because they were going on a road trip, and wouldn't be back for a while. And she smiled, the first smile since perhaps he was there, and hurried to collect her things. She smiled because she knew Logan wouldn't mind that she was a freak among mutants, that her skin was poison, that she had a strange woman rattling around in her head. She knew that he wouldn't mind that once again Magneto was in her, she knew that nothing would stop him from loving her. And as they drove away she didn't look back.

She simply wrapped her arms tighter around Logan and looked up at the sky, and she thanked every star in the heavens for him, and she knew she wasn't alone. She would never be alone again.

We hope that you choke. That you choke.
We hope that you choke. That you choke.
We hope that you choke. That you choke.