There is nothing worse than having no choice. The only reason anyone stays sane is because they can convince themselves that what happens to them is beyond coincidence, beyond bad luck but because of choices, their own and others’. I can understand why she did what she did now. She did what she had to do, didn’t she? It was her choice.

I never used to think much about choices until one bright day in April, when Logan came back. It was amazing how quickly people forgot about him. I never said anything, Rogue certainly didn’t and the story of the rescue on the Statue Of Liberty got old. Jean’s death overshadowed it.

Jubilee, Rogue and I were outside during a free period, smoking cigarettes and studying, being Us. We were in our assumed roles: Jubes the enthusiastic leader, Rogue the mysterious wanted one, me quiet and encouraging. The sweet geeky girl.

“I hate him,” Jubilee announced in her usual, majestic slightly-too-loud way.

Rogue laughed. “You always hate someone. Who is it this time? Did Scott give you a bad grade for English?”

“No, little Miss X-Woman, Scott did not give me a bad grade, Mr. Summers did. And you’re a freak to call him that.”

“It’s his name.”

“You love him, admit it.”

“God, yeah, I love him.”

“You want his body.”

“Oh yeah. Those sexy control freak tendencies, the fact that he’s engaged to Ororo- it only adds to the attraction.”

I laughed and looked out over the lawn, with a clear view of the tall horror movie-esque spiked metal gates, gleaming appealingly in the sunshine. Thinking of Jean, I concentrated hard and mentally urged them to open. Come on, come on, I’m bored, let something happen.

Right on cue, there was deep rumbling, the engine of a motorcycle. I turned half-way, to see Rogue’s reaction. Her deep, dark eyes met mine head-on, daring me to comment and then she gave me a blank smile that didn’t convince me at all. The rumbling continued and as Rogue ignored it and Jubilee talked through it, I watched the gates slide open without so much as an appropriate creak.

My jaw dropped. Literally. For a second I was sure I was a telepath, just like Jean was and that I had summoned him to that very spot, just to break up the monotony. “Wow,” I said softly. But not softly enough.

“What, wow?” said Jubilee and came to sit beside me. Then, as if we were all trapped in a script, “Wow!”

I didn’t notice at the time, but in retrospect, it’s pretty suspicious she didn’t get up and look to see what it was we were wowing about, or laugh or ask anything. She was just silent. There’s a difference between quiet and silent. Her silence was a world of meaning, a void to fill with furious words. Silence could be powerful, austere, frightening even. My quietness was humble, too embarrassed to be anything but geeky.

“He’s hot. Way to go, Kit, I didn’t know you had such good taste, girl.”

I said nothing. Jubilee didn’t recognize him. Rogue was silent.

Logan was back.

---

Being Rogue’s roommate meant I basically knew where she was almost all the time, mainly ‘cause I was usually with her. When we weren’t together, going out or talking or watching a movie- she’d be working out, training or on a mission, studying occasionally.

Her life and interests were pretty clear-cut and the rest was nothing to her. There was the team, which she worked very hard at, me and Jubilee, her best friends, and Remy, her pseudo-boyfriend. I say ‘pseudo’ because he said he was and she (mostly) said he wasn’t. Most people believed Remy but they all (the boys, anyway) wanted to believe Rogue.

I said she was wanted. She was. Rogue was the most wanted girl I’d ever met and she was just barely nineteen. It was her looks of course but it was especially her manner. Maybe it was the people she absorbed or all the stuff she’d had happen to her, but Rogue didn’t seem to need anyone but herself. If she were standing alone at some Xavier’s benefit, probably stunning in some dress she’d just slipped on five minutes before, no one would ever dream she was lonely or lost or embarrassed.

That just wasn’t her. She was unstoppable, deadly, beautiful, clever and brave. But she wasn’t kind. I’d thought she was perfect, but now that it’s all over I know that’s what her flaw was. She was never kind. It was never just calmness with her or having a lazy day, it was all or nothing, life or death, love or hate. Ferocious.

I know for a fact that she didn’t see him for the first week he was there. By the time Monday came rolling around, I was so sick of the tension that I wanted to scream. It seemed only a matter of time before she would jump into bed with him or cut him up into little pieces and hide him under the floorboards.

I was sick of wondering what she was capable of.

Everyone thought Jubes was the daring one, because she was the one constantly moving and laughing and teasing and flirting- never seeming to run out of energy. But she was nothing compared to Rogue. While Jubilee could make out with a perfect stranger, Rogue could stab one. Killing came frighteningly naturally to her.

But the biggest difference between them was that secretly Jubilee did all these things just to shock you, to get attention and a few stern talking-to’s from Xavier, her father figure. It wasn’t boldness, it was a desperate, constant begging for some interest in her. Rogue was really bold because she just didn’t care. She’d killed, played around with Bobby and Remy, disappeared for days at a time, cut herself and she just didn’t give a fuck about morals. I don’t even think she considered them.

I knew there was no limit to what she might do.

I knew I had to stop her.

It finally happened on Monday night. I was in the kitchen, drinking hot milk (it works) and counting sheep (it doesn’t). I heard him first, his purposeful strides, and I felt shivers go down my spine. I can’t say he didn’t have an effect on me. He was more than hot. Logan was just like Rogue, he was beyond all human tendencies. He was practically an animal but worse than that, and better.

The door to the kitchen slammed open. I phased into the kitchen cabinet in a second, just like the year before. Embarrassed, again. I still see him though and something kept me from phasing into the next room and back upstairs, to the safety of my room. I never loved Rogue as a best friend or a dear sister, the way I always swore I did. But I adored Logan, everything that resembled him and everything he was and had the potential to be. If I had the guts, I would’ve phased myself into him and stayed inside, consumed and whole.

He was shirtless, deeply tanned from wherever he’d been and breathing shallowly. I guessed he had just come from the Danger Room, since I knew the team hadn’t been on a mission that night. Rogue was still in our room, sleeping in that light, dangerous way. There was a deep strain in everything he did, in his hunched-up muscled shoulders. He could feel the tension, just like me.

He was so solid. So real. Everything about him was alive and on fire. I wanted to reach out and touch him. Logan was my opposite. Where I was weak, he was strong. Where I fell through floors, floors wouldn’t dare do anything but support him.

I nearly gasped when I saw her there, framed in the doorway. Rogue. And she knew I was out of bed. Would she guess I would’ve gone down to the kitchen?

Even after just getting out of bed, she was magnificent. If anyone made me feel insignificant, she did. Her long, dark hair tumbled down her shoulders, the white streak a testament to everything she’d survived and still hated. Rogue was wearing a little black nightie which was clinging to her every delicate curve. The skin, so white, had a glow and her large dark eyes were staring fixedly at his back. He’d gone still, knowing she was there and waiting for her.

“Marie,” he said simply.

Her name. I felt myself go red knowing something that personal about her.

“Logan,” she countered. Her air was anything but simple. Oh, she may have sounded vulnerable and longing but I knew her. I know her. I could see that evil glint in her eyes. She’d destroy him if she could.

I trembled.

Logan turned around to see her face, usually so calm, go suddenly rigid. Her eyes were filling with tears.

He didn’t move immediately. I silently pleaded for him to see through her façade. But he didn’t. He was too good. Too kind. It had to be that because he couldn’t love her, someone so brave and selfless couldn’t love something so evil. So deceitful. Something. That was exactly the right word, a thing, a malicious thing that just sucked you dry.

Logan embraced her, pressing his lips to her forehead. His eyes were closed. So were hers. After a moment, he broke away and released her from his arms. She looked down at the floor and then back up into his eyes, wrapping her arms around herself. Such an actress. “Why did you leave?” she asked in her low, accented drawl and I just wanted to jump out and strangle her for being so…so…

So much like me?

“Was it Jean?” she asked, tears slipping artfully down onto her pale cheeks. “Did I- Did I remind you-”

“No.” His voice was like thunder, it gave no room for argument. Logan seemed to be avoiding looking at her, keeping his hazel eyes trained on the wall opposite him. But every time she made the smallest move, his eyes flitted in her direction, wanting to slip over her form. The temptation was too much to actually do it though and he did his best to look away.

“Why, then? What was so- What could’ve-” Rogue had taken a step forward with each cut off question, her hands reaching out to touch, then dropping, defeated, to her sides.

“This,” he said suddenly, and grabbing her, he kissed her furiously, as if angry with her and wanting her desperately simultaneously. Desperation clouded his features-he looked drunk, or addicted- giving into his guilty vice.

She was joyful. There was a smile on her face as she kissed him back hungrily and I watched her for a second with a certain horror. Had they forgotten her mutation?

But…nothing happened. His eyes didn’t widen in shock and pain, his body didn’t shake with the effort of keeping his soul inside as she drank it away. They kissed deeply, their hands exploring each other unabashedly.

I couldn’t stand to watch him that way, knowing what she was and how I felt.

She was a murderer and I was in love with him.

Later, in bed, I thought of them in fascination. I think in a way I did love Rogue, or at least appreciated her. Having her around, stealing attention, was what kept everyone from wondering why, why was I always so quiet. Ororo and Scott had spoken to Rogue in great depth within an hour of Logan’s arrival but they didn’t even think to ask me how I was. I didn’t wear my pain like a crown the way she did. As horrible as that was, it was protection. What would I confess if I knew someone would actually listen?

Logan drove me to the brink, for instance. What I wanted to do was to be by his side every day, to be his in that way that everything was. No one could resist him, they were his for the taking. I was no exception.

But it gone too far now. It had been so bad to be Rogue’s little inferior, having the thankless duty of making sure she didn’t cross the line. To be that and have her share a bed with the man I loved was just not acceptable.

Whenever anything gets too hard emotionally, I reduce it to simple fact and conclusion. Okay, by all that made sense, Rogue was a parasite. Her own physical existence revolved around killing others, destroying and hurting with no excuse. She was getting away with it, too. No one could see how monstrous she was. No one wanted to.

Logan could. Logan could see but he was a man and he loved her, probably more than anyone. He was unable to do what was obvious.

Rogue needed to go or I did.

She would.

---

I planned it the way I planned everything. Meticulously. It would be after her workout when any normal person would be sweaty and disgusting but she, of course, would be the embodiment of womanhood, shining. Her headphones would be on, blaring her crap music that everyone loved. Jubilee would be playing tennis. I’d have her gloves on, a twist of irony I couldn’t seem to resist, and I’d shoot her.

What would happen afterward didn’t concern me. I wanted her dead, that was all.

But there was a factor I hadn’t counted in.

When I came into the room, they were on her bed. I had never expected to see him that way, making love to her like that. It was the only appropriate term, it was worshipping her with his body.

She degraded him to her inferior.

I looked down at the gun, feeling scared and embarrassed, like always, But I knew what I had to do and I pointed the gun at him, knowing now who it was that needed killing. Even if she died, I had realized, he’d still be enslaved to her, her memory. Everyone would. She was indestructible. But Logan could be saved. That was all that mattered.

My index finger rubbed the trigger nervously. I loved him.

“Kitty!” Rogue screamed from beneath him and her eyes widened.

Logan looked up from her and something wonderful happened. He saw me. He really saw me, as a person, as someone…real.

It was my choice to lower the gun and to smile at them.

It was Jubilee’s to tackle me and ‘save’ them.

I guess I have a lot of time to think about choices where I am now, in this prison. And Logan, of course. He’ll never forget me now, will he? Never. He’ll hate me. But hey…

Beggars can’t be choosers. And if they do choose, they better be damn sure about the choice they make.