It was the longest, hottest summer seen by Westchester in over 27 years. The longest, hottest natural summer, in any case, and in Rogue’s humbled and honest opinion, it sucked.

Unlike most normal people, Rogue much preferred the icy winds and gloomy rains of winter to the glowing heat of spring and summer.

Yeah, that’s right, a Southern belle from Mississippi, choosing winter as her preferred season. She was a freak even in her weather preferences, and had she been a positive sort of person, she might have gleaned some smidgen of comfort from the fact that, when it came to being different from every other living, breathing person, she was doing a damn fine job. Let no one ever say she was anything but thoroughly thorough.

Her quarrel with summer really, lay with the same thing that seemed to be the root of all the problems in her life – her soul-sucking (energy-absorbing, if one wanted to be politically correct) skin.

You see, summer, in her opinion, was a time for people who could lay about and soak up the heat in skimpy bikinis, have sun cream rubbed onto their backs by drooling boys, take refreshing dips in the mansion’s pool, and bitch with their friends about the state of their suntan - none of which were activities in which she could partake without rendering numerous people comatose, and adding yet more personas to the asylum in her head. Neither of which, in all honesty, were particularly appealing options.

But no, wait, she could take refreshing dips in the mansion’s pool, however any skimpy bikinis would be sadly lacking. Last summer, in his very kind, but seemingly never-ending, crusade to include Rogue in normal mansion life, the Professor had summoned her to his office and, radiating benevolence, had bestowed upon her a kindly smile, and a strange all-in-one black wetsuit, made of slick, black neoprene.

Rogue had attempted a return smile (she regretted that it may, in fact, have been of the ‘sickly and rapidly approaching death’ variety but at least she had tried), accepted the suit with words of gratitude and thanks, bounced out of his study, up to her room, and, without a second’s pause, stuffed the hideous excuse for a bathing suit into the back of her underwear drawer, and there it had remained ever since.

At first, she had experienced twinges of guilt and conscience whenever she glanced at the drawer, feeling slightly bad that the Professor had gone to so much trouble to have the suit specially designed and made, and she, essentially, had behaved like a horrendously, ungrateful cow, but over time that feeling had faded, and she had completely forgotten about the entire thing.

At least, until it had slithered back into her life, approximately one hour and seventeen minutes ago, accompanied by a loud girl, a wad of chewing gum, and an obnoxiously yellow shirt. And in the time that had passed since it return, her life, and anything that had even remotely resembled dignity had been completely and utterly destroyed.

In Rogue’s mind, this proved, firstly, that her instincts had indeed been corrected when they had informed her that no one and nobody should ever wear an all-in-one diving suit, especially when complete with black socks for both hands and feet and a neck brace, and secondly, that the Powers That Be really, really did not like her. Shit.

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One hour and seventeen minutes ago, Rogue had not hated summer. She had not been wildly enthusiastic about it, but then again, since her mutation manifested, she had not really been wildly enthusiastic about anything, perhaps with the exception of ice cream. One hour and seventeen minutes ago, she had been sitting in her room with a trashy romance novel of the highest standing, swelteringly hot despite the air conditioning, acting exactly like every other mutant teenager with soul-sucking skin. One hour and seventeen minutes ago, she had been fine.

But then Jubilee had arrived, bursting into Rogue’s room, accompanied by the unwelcome scent of strawberry chewing gum, and the much more welcome burst of air from the cooler hallway. Rogue’s small room on the third floor of the mansion had always been her haven, but now, with the weather absolutely sweltering, it was more oven than haven. But still.

Jubilee had been typically bouncy, bobbing on the soles of her feet, dressed in flip-flops, indecently short shorts, and a shirt the exact shade of yellow highlighter. She was assaulting all of Rogue’s senses just by being in the same room, and Rogue had had to strangle an indecent urge (brought on, naturally, by the presence of the Wolverine in her head, and aggravated by the heat) to get up and throttle her best friend. This urge intensified to the point of being as attractive as a shirtless Logan when Jubilee uttered the words,

‘Roguey, what are you do skulking inside on a day like this? Get your ass up and out girl, we’re having a wet t-shirt contest, and we need you to judge!’

‘I am not skulking. I am studying for that English exam we have next week, because I want a decent grade. I don’t have the time to judge a wet t-shirt contest if I want to graduate!’

Yeah, okay, maybe she had sounded a little prissy, and stuck-up, or maybe, very prissy and stuck-up if you wanted to get particular, but seriously, had she really deserved what would happen next?

Jubilee was well used to Rogue’s sharp tongue after two and a bit years of friendship, and she merely narrowed her eyes, and replied,

‘I don’t remember ‘A Summer of Love’ being on the study list for Scott’s Lit class.’

God. Damn. It.

‘I was just taking a break.’

Lame. Lame. Lame. Jubilee apparently thought so too, because she pranced across the room like she was walking on sunshine (woohhooo! – CONCENTRATE Rogue…), yanked open her underwear drawer, sending articles flying across the floor, until eventually with a gum-snap of triumph, she produced a black, rubbery object, and threw it at Rogue’s face.

‘Come on, Roguey, suck it up, stop skulking, put on the damn suit, and get your sweet Southern ass outside’.

‘Jubes. We have been friends for two and half years, and in that time I have not once questioned your sanity. Thousands would. But if you think, for one second, I am actually going to wear that thing you have lost your friggin’ mind.’

To her credit, Jubilee had not even looked affronted. The girl had backbone. She had merely yanked the suit from the floor where it had fallen, stuffed it into Rogue’s hands and barrelled her towards the small en suite bathroom, and the slamming the door, the order of ‘Change. Now.’ somewhat muffled by several inches of wood.

Rogue had stared at the suit in her hands and weighed up her options. On the one hand, the thing was clearly a fashion crime and just because a girl could show no skin, it did not mean she did not want to look good, but on the other hand, she was hot, her room was stuffy, she was itching for some fresh air, and she was approximately twenty seven seconds away from death by boredom if such a thing existed. And you know…judging a wet t-shirt competition would give her the opportunity to stare, without seeming too pathetic (i.e. without the adults seeing her watching and thinking ‘Poor, old Rogue, the girl is just like any other teenager, watching the boys. It is just so sad that she can never ever live any of those fantasies that probably flow through her over-heated, hormonal teenage head’).

And so, disastrously, she had come to the conclusion that putting on the suit and heading down to the pool with Jubes, whilst not being the best thing since sliced bread, may not be a terrifically terrible idea. (With hindsight this was a Mistake)

But anyhow, she had shed the many layers of clothes that she was wearing, and wriggled into the neoprene suit. Not, she might add, without a certain degree of difficulty, not helped by the fact that she had attempted to preserve her dignity by keeping her eyes closed the entire time, which culminated in her stubbing her toe, banging her shin, and cracking her head against the wall. Graceful, it was not.

After wriggling into the swimsuit / torture device, she had groped her way along the wall, opened the door, and stepped out. Cracking one eye open a notch, she had located Jubilee’s face, and attempted to read her expression. Failed.

‘Was I correct to never ever even look at this thing, let alone wear it?’

Slowly Jubilee shook her head. She steered Rogue around to face the full length mirror, and commanded,

‘Look.’

Rogue obeyed. The girl in the mirror (was that really her?) still sported her chocolate brown eyes, and long, thick brown hair, complete with weird white streaks on either side, but apart from that, well, Rogue was not prepared to admit that the reflection was actually her. Jubilee however, seemed to disagree.

‘You look fine, Roguey! Like a Southern belle about to go for a swim. Or snorkelling. Or scuba diving. But it’s all fine!’

Was she blind??

‘I look like a Southern belle that’s been dipped in liquorice, Jubes! In fact, I don’t think I even count as Southern belle anymore, I think I just forfeited any right to claim to be Southern when I listened to my best friend and put on all-in-one black neoprene!’

Despite the obvious passion (read: desperation) in her voice, Jubilee remained an unemotional, if rather yellow, stone statue.

‘To be honest, Roguey, I think you forfeited that right when you spent the whole of the last two summers and this entire one to date lurking in your room like an anti social slug!’

Rogue glared. Seriously, why, why, why were they friends?

Why?

‘I am not leaving this room dressed like this and that is final. No argument. I am immovable. Watch me. I am the iron woman. Never going to move. Never.’

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Ten minutes, and a small bout of heavy bribery later, Rogue found herself shuffling awkwardly downstairs, doing her utmost to hide behind Jubilee.

‘Why am I doing this again?’

‘Because it’s time you started hanging around with your friends instead of hiding in your room?’

‘Why am I doing this again?’

‘Because your presence is required to judge a wet t-shirt contest?’

‘Why am I doing this again?’

‘Yeah, yeah, we’ve done this bit.’

Hang on. What…?

‘Actually Jubes…why do you need me to judge? Why can’t you or Kitty or someone do it?’

Jubilee looked up and winked, before skipping across the rec room to the open patio doors.

‘Oh, chica, whoever said the girls weren’t taking part?’

The comment had floated back through the open door, accompanied by a cacophony of screams, jeers, shouts and splashes. Rogue had had to throttle another urge; this time the urge to run screaming from the room and go back to slowly evaporating in her own personal oven, but instead took a deep breath and stepped out into the sunlight.

Again, with hindsight, this was also a Mistake.

Logan was a man of simple pleasures. All he needed was the roar of a motorbike beneath him, the freedom of the open road, and what the kid had once referred to as the ‘three f’s’ – food, fight, fuck, and not necessarily in that order. That wasn’t much to ask, and most of the time those requirements were easy to fulfil.

But spending fifteen years wandering around, travelling from place to place, and, to use Chuck’s words, ‘with no idea of who or what he is’ was getting a little…tiring. He had searched for a decade and a half, and the number of things he had discovered about his past could be counted on one hand. Life really was a bitch sometimes.

And it was that…tired feeling that had brought him to this grotty little roadside diner just outside Westchester. The Wolverine was not a man for whom personal hygiene was hugely important but Jesus, a little disinfectant, some washing up liquid and some food that hadn’t been frozen back in the latest Ice Age would not go amiss.

He had stopped because hauling 300 pounds of adamantium around was hungry work, and he had needed food, alcohol and a piss, in that order. And now, having wolfed down the rather suspect looking burger that had been served, he was nursing a beer, and staring out of the window at the inspiring view the empty road and dusty car park provided.

He told himself that he was just thinking, taking a few minutes out to just consider some stuff…because the Wolverine did not hesitate. Ever. And he definitely did not analyse, contemplate or evaluate a situation to see if it was the right way to go. He was an animalistic kinda guy, not some pansy-assed sap like Scooter.

When he had left Westchester, almost three years ago now, the Professor had told him that he would always have a home there, if and when he wanted it. He had grunted in reply. The Wolverine did not ‘do’ domestic. So he gone running again and the only glance back he had ever spared was for the scared little kid with the big, brown eyes, whom everyone seemed to think nursed some kind of hero-worshipful crush on him.

She hadn’t wanted him to go, and that had been the first time that he had ever felt that someone might actually give a damn about what happened to him, and so, without really considering it, he had given her his one solid link to his past. Which, as soon as he was on the road he had regretted. Immensely. And really he’d quite like that link back. Which was why he was sitting in a diner in the middle of nowhere trying to pluck up the fucking courage to go back to Xavier’s School for the Gifted.

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Half an hour, and a lot of mental effing and cursing later, he swung the motorbike around the last bend and spied the gates to the mansion in the distant. There was a slight tugging feeling inside him, and he ignored the little voice at the back of his mind, that perked up and whispered ‘home’. That little voice was normally well and truly crushed by his inner Wolverine, and really, he’d prefer it stay that way. Much more macho.

Sliding the bike to a halt in a spray of gravel, he leant forward and jabbed the button on the intercom with a gloved finger. While he waited for a response, he spared another brief moment of contemplation, and wondered how the X-Geeks were going to react to him turning up out of the blue.

The Professor was easy to second-guess. He’d smile in that kind, benevolent way, welcome Logan home, ignore the answering glare, and offer him a room for as long as it was wanted. Storm was easy too. She would smile in an equally kind and benevolent way (was it possible that she was mentally channelling the Professor here?), perhaps hug him and tell him she was glad he was back.

Scooter was going to be a laugh. Winding him up ranked high amongst Logan’s favourite pastimes, and the fact that his ‘borrowed’ bike had not survived the road trip entirely intact would make things more interesting. He grinned.

Jean was also going to be interesting. There was some unfinished business there, and flirting with the redhead was going to be really fun, she was a beautiful woman, and the whole Scooter issue was just the cherry on top of the proverbial cake.

He wasn’t entirely sure what kind of reaction to expect from the kid. Marie. Ironically, the face of the girl he had almost let die was the face that he could remember with the most clarity, and images of bolts of white hair and chocolate brown eyes had floated through his dreams since his departure. He wasn’t much one for physical contact, apart from fighting and fucking, but the little voice inside him seemed to think a hug from the untouchable girl might be quite a nice thing to arrive back to.

‘What?’

The intercom by Logan’s left ear sparkled into life with a wheezing crackle or static, and he winced as his sensitive ears registered every snap of sound. He cleared his throat.

‘Uh...I’m here to see the Professor’

‘Name?’

Jesus, whoever the Professor had working as doorkeeper could use some lessons on manners.

‘Wolverine’

‘The claw guy?’

His reputation preceded him apparently.

‘That’s me, bub.’

~Welcome home Logan~

Even the Professor’s mental voice radiated warmth and benevolence.

~You wanna tell the kid at the intercom to lemme in? ~

The intercom buzzed again.

‘Everyone’s out back’

~Come on round. Everyone will be pleased to see you again. And Rogue will be delighted~

The gates swung open as Logan kicked the bike into gear, and roared down the driveway. He parked the bike in the garage, pocketing the keys, and spared the three inch gouge down the side of the black paintwork a regretful look, before wandering through the door that led to the mansion.

The place hadn’t changed at all. Even that hideous still life of the flowers and fruit that he had never seen the attraction of was still there. He sniffed. Smelt the same too; heady mix of scents, ranging from kids, to adults, and the scents of raging adolescent hormones in between. He grimaced as a wave of strawberry bubbled gum scented air hit him, as a girl in an obnoxiously yellow blouse, presumably the one who had answered the intercom, gave him a cheeky wave and darted past up the stairs. He let a low growl rumble up his chest, even though she was out of earshot. It made him feel slightly better.

Where was everyone? The entire place was deserted and quiet, although he could hear the faint sound of splashing, and numerous excitable shrieks. ‘Everyone’s out back’. Of course.

Ditching his duffel bag onto a couch in the rec room, he stepped out through the patio doors into the sun. And hurriedly stepped back.

Fuck, the place was a madhouse. Everywhere he looked there were screaming kids, the younger ones wearing swimsuits in neon bright colours that should be illegal and the older ones showing so much skin that it should also be illegal, although for entirely different reasons.
Grimacing, he scanned the area, spotting Jean and Scott supervising from lounge chairs, Storm and a blue furry guy barbecuing meet on the decking, and more children than he could count in and around the pool. There was however, no sign of Marie, and a quick scent of the air told him she was definitely not present.

He stepped further outside, trying to ignore the grumbling of his stomach as the smell of decent food permeated his senses. That was when Storm spotted him. She smiled brightly, her dark eyes shining slightly, and hurried over from the barbecue to hug him.

‘Logan, welcome back!’

He returned the hug, and the greeting, before turning his eyes to Jean and Scott, who had made their way around the pool towards him, the latter admittedly more reluctantly.
Jean smiled at him, a flash of white, deliberately coy, and said softly,

‘Hey Logan. Welcome back.’

He matched the smile with one of his own, and stealing a glance at Scooter’s incensed face, made sure to let his gaze flick down quickly before replying,

‘Hey Jeannie.’

Then Scott was barging forward, shaking his hand briefly with the words.

‘Good trip?’

Logan grimaced at him, before fishing out the bike keys and throwing them to him.

‘Your bike needs gas.’

Scott glared, caught the keys one-handed and threw them back. Harder than was strictly necessary he might add.

‘Then fill her up.’

Logan grinned. Oh yeah, it was good to be back.

Turning his attention to the blue guy that had wandered over from the barbecue, he rumbled,

‘Who’s the furball?’

In his favour, the ‘furball’ waited for no introductions, stepping forward one hand extended saying,

‘Hank McCoy. Secretary for Mutant Affairs. You must be the Wolverine. I heard you were quite the animal.’

‘Look who’s talking.’

The man was wearing jeans and a shirt, open collar, but a shirt nevertheless, and Logan was fairly sure that at some time or other he had seen him on television in a suit, so it startled him when the man curled his upper lip back, teeth flashing alarmingly white against the surrounding blue fuzz, and let out a snarl he himself wouldn’t have been ashamed to have uttered. With a somewhat feral grin, Logan allowed an answering growl to tear from his throat. Storm looked faintly alarmed.

His eyes roved the poolside once more before returning to the group standing around him. He directed his next question at Storm.

‘Where’s M…Rogue?’

‘Rogue is in her room. She prefers not to be around so much bare skin, for obvious reasons. Jubilee, another student of ours has gone to see if she can be tempted down for a while.’

‘The yella chick?’

Scott sniffed disapprovingly, and Hank McCoy raised an eyebrow in a gesture so similar to one of his particular favourites that Logan was forced to smile. He was about to ask for directions when, on the other side of the pool, the yellow shirted girl emerged from the rec room. She was bouncy, nauseatingly bouncy, and Logan’s sharp ears caught some comment about girls and a wet t-shirt competition, a comment that luckily floated away on the wind before it reached Scott’s ears. And then, from behind her, another girl emerged, slowly, hesitantly, covered from neck to toe in what appeared to be black neoprene. Shit. Marie.

She had changed dramatically in the few years he had been gone, and even from here he could see that his nickname of ‘kid’ was definitely no longer suitable. A steady diet and secure environment had wrought changes in her, filling out her figure properly, and giving her brown hair and eyes a shine and her pale skin a healthy glow. She had always been pretty, if not a little scrawny, and now she was beautiful. He imagined that if she had only looked a bit happier and been smiling she could have easily made the transition from beautiful to totally fucking radiant. As it was, she actually looked…severely freaked out.

He moved towards her around the pool edge, watching as her eyes roved the crowd of children, clearly looking for someone she knew. She hadn’t seen him yet, and as she stepped forward a bit, she tucked a lock of wavy brown behind her ears, and he could see the mahogany colour of her hair still clashed with the bolts of white that framed her face. She was blushing now, a rosy hue staining her cheeks, clearly sensing the more than several sets of eyes trained on her.

Most of the males with libidos were looking at her, and it was pretty clear to Logan that just seeing her down here by the pool was a pretty rare occurrence, something that made him inexplicably angry. Either it was that, or they were staring because of what she was wearing and he imagined it was a combination of both. The black neoprene suit looked a bit like what professional swimmers wore, and covered every inch of skin, making sure that everyone was protected from any life-absorption that might otherwise have gone on. It might have looked vaguely ridiculous had she not filled it out so well. From a glance, Logan would have estimated that she had grown since it had been made, and it clung to every curve, emphasising her hips, her long legs, her ass, her…Catching himself he realised that he had stopped moving and was gaping openly. He could imagine the looks of amusement on Storm and Scott’s faces. Goddamn it.

‘Hey, Rogue, over here!’

Somehow she had still managed not to notice his presence, despite the fact that more than three quarters of the crowd were now gaping openly, watching his reaction and waiting for her to stop being so blind, and notice the large man with claws standing to her left. As it was, she looked rather relieved at the call, and swung round, looking as though she was going to run for cover to the shelter her group of friends provided. Turning his head to look for the guy that had hailed her, Logan recognised the spiky blond hair, blue eyes, and all-round American poster boy appearance of the boy. Bobby Drake. Damn the Iceman. Still Rogue looked pretty happy to see him, if the look of sheer relief and gratitude was anything to go by.

Unfortunately for all involved, Bobby and his group were standing directly behind Logan, and in turning to look for her friends, Marie’s eyes had landed directly on him. They widened in shock and she froze, swallowing several times.

He gave her a weak grin, cleared his throat and managed to utter the words,

‘Hey, kid’

He thought he saw a brief flash of annoyance in her eyes at that, and really he could understand it. Judging from that figure she was a long way from being a kid. He clamped mental handcuffs on the Wolverine who was suggesting scenarios that involved striding forwards and kissing her senseless. Bad idea. For several reasons, the most obvious being that he wasn’t suicidal, although come to think of it, that would be a good way to die. He made a mental note.

Recovering from her freeze frame, Marie stepped forward until she was about four inches from the end of his nose. He blinked rapidly and refocused.

‘Miss me?’

She grinned at that.

‘Nah, not really.’

Two and a half years in Westchester had done nothing to quiet her Southern drawl, and he found that he was glad for that. He returned the grin, treating her to a full-on smile that he very rarely let loose.

And then she was hugging him, and he had a warm armful of vanilla-scented girl, brown hair and neoprene. He returned the hug, and cursed the hay fever that made his eyes prickle. Then, as suddenly as she had reached in, she drew back, pausing and looking into his eyes and for one extremely shocking moment he thought she was going to kiss him. He put his increased heart rate down to palpitations. She leaned in a tiny bit closer, and then, then, then, she slapped him. Hard.

He had metal for bones, so it didn’t exactly hurt. In fact, judging from her wince it hurt her more than him, but he was still shocked, indignant and slightly off-balance. If he hadn’t known that he was the Wolverine and no-one smirked at him, he would have said that that was exactly what Marie was doing. She stepped back, the corners of her mouth turned slightly up, and tripped over someone’s towel. Clearly not wanting to take the unprecedented dip, she grabbed onto the nearest solid object in an attempt to halt her fall.

Unfortunately for the both of them, the nearest solid object happened to be his left arm. 300 pounds of metal can be useful in a fight, but there was a reason he had never much gone in for anything that involved good balance. She shrieked, he yelled (a fact he would later vehemently deny) and they fell in an ungainly tangle of limbs, straight into the artificially blue water of the pool.

He rose to the surface, coughing and spluttering, shaking wet strands of hair out of his eyes, and growling. Water he did not like, swimming he did not like, and people laughing at him he did not like. And indeed all the way around the pool gales of laughter rang out because the untouchable girl that everyone was afraid of had just dunked the Wovlerine who everyone was also afraid of. Unintentionally, but still. Obviously it was still excellent comedy. The little fuckers.

Not sparing one glance for Marie, he pulled himself through the water to the side with a series of strokes and rose up out of the water as gracefully as he could. Turning he saw Marie already sitting on the side of the pool, her hair a matted tangle around her shoulders. She was biting her lip, and staring. He looked down.

His clothing was plastered to him, white t-shirt clinging to every muscle, and jeans riding dangerously low on his hips, revealing several inches of skin. She was still staring. He swallowed. A wolf whistle broke the silence, as Jubilee ran forward with a pink tiara in her hands. She placed it neatly on his head before he could stop her and announced,

‘I pronounce you the winner of the wet t-shirt contest’

He snarled at her, ripped the stupid tinsel contraption from his head and shoved it in her direction.

‘I ain’t taking part in no stupid school girl competition darlin’’

The girl did not even look alarmed.

‘Ah Wolvie, I heard all ‘bout your intimidation techniques from Roguey here. And she’s still staring at ya so I think she agrees with the verdict. Wear it for her?’

‘WHAT did you just call me?’

Jubilee took a step back this time. Sensible girl.

He looked at Rogue. She was still staring. He quirked an eyebrow at her. Her eyes snapped up to meet his and she scrambled to her feet, blushing furiously.

‘Uh well, yeah. Welcome back, Logan. Sorry about, uh…well, you know. And um…you should definitely win…I mean I’m the uh…the judge…so yeah, the crown is uh…yours.’

‘The judge, darlin’?’

She bypassed red and headed directly for maroon.

‘Yeah, um, Jubes’ idea. And I should really go change out of this wet uh…wetsuit…’

And with that she turned and ran.

Now Logan was no expert on homecomings, but he was almost positive that what had just occurred was not how it was really supposed to go.

It was hot. It was stuffy. It was dark. Rogue could not sleep. And she was starving. All-in-all, the perfect combination. Today, it was safe to say, had not been a good day. In fact, it had pretty much sucked. Apart from the stunningly shiny silver lining that was Logan’s return.

Truth be told, she couldn’t believe he was back. It had been two and a half years since he had left, leaving her with dog tags, a promise and the certainty that he’d come back for her. A certainty which had faded somewhat with every passing month with no contact, until eventually she’d stopped believing he’d be back at all. After all, really, what was there for him here? A bunch of mutants who, combined with her, had almost got him killed, healing factor and all, a seventeen year old ‘kid’ whom he’d given a ride, stabbed through the chest, and played saviour to, all in a matter of days, and a medical room that had become far too familiar because of said ‘kid’. She would have run for the hills and never looked back if she was him.

Shit, she was hungry. And bored. Flopping onto her back, she stared at the ceiling, one arm thrown above her head, and contemplated the day’s events. Stepping out to the poolside earlier had taken a lot of courage on her part, and she had been wondering why the hell everyone was staring at her (surely the suit wasn’t that stupid??). Bobby’s voice had been the most beautiful sound in the world, and then she had turned towards said heavenly sound, and seen him.

Her first reaction had been to stare. Do a double take. Have a secret heart attack. God, he was gorgeous. Two and a half years on the road, drinking, fighting, and fucking had done absolutely no damage to his looks. The mercies of a healing factor, she supposed. She had appraised him, drinking in the sight, from the tips of his boots, to the mussed tips of his dark hair, windblown and scruffy. His t-shirt had been the perfect fit, not ridiculously tight, but tight enough to emphasise the movement of muscles as he shifted, and his faded blue jeans fitted snugly in all the right places. Ahem.

He was masculinity perfected, even his bloody voice growled and oozed that rough-tough factor thing he had going on. She was nineteen, almost twenty, and his mere presence was enough to reduce her to thirteen year old, hormonal school girl behaviour. It was ridiculous really. Demeaning. And the worst part was she really didn’t give a damn.

Of course, after she had stared at him for an eternity, things had gone slightly wrong. She had managed to retain a few vestiges of pride by not gushing exactly how much she had missed him. Thrown those last vestiges to the wind by throwing herself at him. Quite literally.
Although, he hadn’t seemed to mind, and had hugged her back just as tightly. In fact, if he hadn’t been the Wolverine, she might have sworn she heard him sniff.

And then, just as things had been going well, pure irritation had swelled up inside her, anger that he had left for so long without a word, and then just swanned back in as though everything was normal, anger that he had left in the first place. And she had stepped back, and slapped him as hard as she could.

Where the hell the courage to do that had come from, she had no idea. But fuck had it hurt. More her than him, an advantage of metal bones, but she thought she had gotten her point across. He had stared at her, shock filling the piercing hazel eyes, clouding them, and she had to wonder whether any woman had ever slapped the Wolverine before. Although judging from some of his memories (yes, she had been peeking, what of it?) he had certainly deserved it.

And then, as if hugging him and slapping him hadn’t been enough, she had proceeded to dunk him. Oh yeah. Go Rogue. Nice move. Thrashing to the surface of the pool she had planned to apologise, but then he had heaved himself out of the water, with surprising grace she might add, for a man of his weight, and she had frozen. Guh. Even thinking about it made her throat go dry. Apparently Jubilee’s insistence that any guy that looked good dry, looked twice as good wet, was completely correct. Because, holy fuck, he had looked…edible.

Anything she had planned to say had simply stuck in her throat and she had stared, eyes drinking him in. When she had finally managed to meet his eyes, one eyebrow was raised and it had been obvious he had known exactly what she was looking at. Not fair.

Mesmerised by the look in his eyes, she had only vaguely registered the exchange between him and Jubilee before muttering some garbled crap of an apology / excuse and running. Like the true coward she was. Everyone thought Jubilee was the yellow one, but she was seriously starting to wonder whether they should switch wardrobes. If that heinous McKeith woman was right and you are what you eat, then she should be living entirely off custard and bananas. And writing in yellow highlighter and…She winced and shut off that train of thought. What was wrong with her?

After she had retreated to the haven of her room she had showered for a very long time, in an attempt to wash the blush off of her cheeks, and then locked herself in her room for the remainder of the day, only sneaking down to get dinner about an hour after everyone was usually gone. Just to make sure and all that. Sure, she and embarrassment weren’t exactly strangers but even so, today of all days, she didn’t particularly feel like revelling in the fact she had made an ass of herself. And she was not in the mood to deal with the teasing that was surely destined to come.

Despite consuming some cold and slightly stodgy lasagne, she was now starving. A glance at her bedside clock told her it was now two thirty-seven precisely. She had been lying in her hot dark room for three hours, and she was no nearer sleep now that she had been said number of hours ago. And she really was hungry. And craving a beer. Or at the very least something cold and very alcoholic. Courtesy of the Logan in her head. She had been craving cigars too, when she had first absorbed him, but she had beaten that particular desire around the head with a pointy stick until it had died. Logan might be able to heal from any amount of damage done by lung cancer, but she certainly couldn’t. Unless she touched him, and that was never happening again. Ever. Neeeevvverrr eeveeerrrr. Shut up, brain.

She turned onto her side, pulled the covers up to her chin, tuned out the murmurings of the people in her head and forced her eyes shut. She was going to sleep. And that was final. And she wasn’t going to move until that happened.

Unfortunately, pulling the covers up to her chin was a mistake, and she stubbornly endured it as long as she could before breaking her non-moving rule, and shoving them down to her waist, her face burning slightly.

Mmmmmm beer. Cold, bitter, alcohol, cooling her down…Rogue gritted her teeth. Fuck this. No one was going to be up at half past two. And clearly sleep was so far off the agenda it might as well be in Tokyo, so she was just going to get up, sneak downstairs and find something to satisfy her beer craving. And then tomorrow she was going to slap Logan again, because he was entirely to blame, both for the sleepless night, and the beer craving. Urgh.

Slipping her arms into a silky robe, she forwent slippers and her customary gloves because the likelihood of anyone being up was so low it was almost negative. Apart from that boy who didn’t sleep. But she’d just avoid him.

Stepping out into the hall, she welcomed the cool wood of the floorboards below her feet, and padded down the stairs and across the foyer to the kitchen. As she tiptoed past, she absently noticed that hideous still life that hung in the hallway. It really was ugly, and she had always wondered why the Professor kept it. His taste was normally impeccable.

She could see the rec room light was on, and so she avoided it, slipping past the door like a wraith, whatever the hell that was. It was a strange power that boy had. The ability to change channels with his eyes, and the inability to sleep. As far as suck-ish powers went, it was right up there with her own.

She slipped into the kitchen; turning on the small lights above the counter, figuring that having the main one on might attract too much attention. Checking the freezer, it appeared her luck was finally in, because there was a pint of cherry ripple ice cream, and another of fudge. She couldn’t be assed with a bowl, so she grabbed a spoon and dumped the cherry ice-cream onto the counter. Then, bending double, she rummaged in the pasta cupboard, removing bags and bags of pasta and rice, before finally coming across the three bottles of beer she had hidden at the back, several weeks ago, in case of Loganish emergencies. Figuring that settling the food craving would be enough to crush the beer one, at least for a while, she stuffed two of the beers into the fridge to cool.

The ice-cream was blissful. No other word for it. Just. Blissful. Cool and sweet. It really was her one weakness food-wise. Sadly, she had only taken a few spoonfuls when she heard the low rumble of voices in the room next door. Great. Unless she was supremely lucky, she was about to get company. The kitchen was the favourite night-time haunt of mansion residents; she knew this from past experience. Oh God, please don’t let it be Bobby. She could not face a poorly disguised third degree about the Logan Scene right now. Don’t let it be Bobby. Please God, don’t let it be Bobby. Not Bobby. Not Bobby. The door swung open a few inches and the smell of cigars permeated the room. Oh Holy Mother of Moses. It was Logan.

She had to give him credit. He didn’t blush or fidget when he saw her. She did both. Coward. Instead he merely raised one eyebrow and said,

‘Doesn’t anyone sleep around here?’ in a tone that suggested he was not altogether displeased to see her.

She shrugged.

‘I guess not.’

Seriously, why had she never won medals for her stunning ripostes?

He opened the fridge. Scanned it briefly, frowning. He looked confused. Presumably he could smell the alcohol, but couldn’t see it.

‘You got any beer?’

‘This is a school’

‘You got anything other than chocolate milk?’

So a hatred of chocolate milk was something they shared. Bobby had always remarked how bizarre was that she could eat chocolate ice cream by the gallon but wouldn’t touch the stuff in liquid form. She had never thought it was all that remarkable. Taking pity on Logan, she grinned.

‘Fridge. Left vegetable drawer. Stuffed behind the cabbage.’

He smirked, and rummaged for a second, before discovering the bottle, flipping the top and draining half of it in one gulp. He sighed in satisfaction, and she did the same, watching the play of muscles in his throat as he swallowed. Noticing her watching him, he proffered the second bottle.

‘Surely you shouldn’t be encouraging me to drink?’

‘I’m not your father, kid, I’m your friend.’

A somewhat contradictory statement but she let him off because it was three in the morning. She took the bottle.

‘Whose is this anyway? Scooter wouldn’t keep beer in a school, Jean drinks that awful weak beer that tastes like piss, and Storm’s a gin and tonic girl.’

Rogue grinned, and took a swig before answering.

‘It’s mine’

‘Yours?’

‘I’m legal, aren’t I?’

He grinned at her, and raised the bottle.

‘In that case, cheers.’

He sat down and they both nursed their drinks in silence for a moment before he looked up.

‘So, you and Bobby, huh?’

What had given him that idea? Oh…the ecstatic expression on her face when he called her over earlier.

‘It’s not what you think.’

Up went the eyebrow.

‘No, seriously, it’s not. He’s just a friend.’

Logan nodded.

‘What is it he does?’

‘Iceman’

He grunted, presumably not particularly impressed.

‘What about your other friends? That lot down by the pool?’

‘Jubes can produce sparks of kinetic energy from her fingertips. Kind of like fireworks. It’s actually pretty cool. Kitty, sometimes we call her Shadowcat, can walk through walls. Well, anything solid actually. Very useful when we’re doing something illegal. Not that we do. Often.’

He looked amused. Blushing slightly, she carried on.

‘Remy is kind of like Jubes, but he projects his energy into objects, makes ‘em explode. And the Professor reckons he has some empathetic abilities as well. We call him Gambit. And then there’s Piotr. The big bloke with all the muscle? He can turn to metal. Pretty much invulnerable to harm. He’s Colossus.’

Logan’s forehead wrinkled.

‘Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine. Iceman, Shadowcat, Gambit, Colossus? You’ve all got codenames.’

She nodded.

‘Yeah. We’re in training to join the X-Men when we complete college. We’re a sort of back-up team at the moment. Junior X-Men.’

Logan sputtered out a mouth of beer, slamming the bottle to the table.

‘The Professor is letting you train as X-Men? What the fuck is wrong with him? You’re kids; you’ll get fucking slaughtered out there!’

She glared at him, copying his action with the drink.

‘Bullets bounce off Piotr. Bullets phase through Kitty. Remy can create bombs without a second thought. Bobby can turn to ice. I can kill with a touch. Believe me, we would not be the ones getting killed.’

He glared. She glared. He sniffed. She sniffed. Eventually he lowered his gaze, and took a last swig of beer.

‘So what do they call you?’

She wondered whether his brain had been affected by the sniffing and glaring contest.

‘Rogue’

‘I thought they called you Rogue in everyday life.’

‘They do. You’re the only one that calls me Marie. I never told anyone else. But they’re not stupid, they know Rogue isn’t my real name and so they’re happy to call me that. Jubes doesn’t have a fancy nickname either. She’s Jubilation Lee, so we just shorten it to Jubilee and leave it at that.’

He grunted, clearly not interested in Jubilee’s name.

There was a silence, whilst she tried to sort through, file and categorise the many questions she wanted to ask. She couldn’t decide which to ask first and was determined not to seem too pathetic by jumping in with questions about why he had come back, and whether he was staying, and, god forbid, whether he had missed her.

Clearly she had taken too long because he spoke again.

‘You happy here, kid?’

She looked up in surprise, the question not being what she had expected.

‘It’s fine. I have security, education, friends, what more can I reasonably ask for?’

‘You didn’t answer the question.’

She shrugged. It was a good question actually. Was she happy at Xavier’s? Happier than she’d been since her mutation kicked in certainly, yet, hiding in her room day after day, seeing the flickers of fear and the flinches that affected everyone when she came near, the wariness of the younger students, even of her friends on occasion, and not being able to touch anyone, having to keep her distance from everyone she cared about? Well, if you could show her someone that could deal with that and still have an honest claim to happiness then she’d eat her diving suit.

‘You’re the only one that doesn’t flinch away.’

Shit, she had not meant to say that out loud. A look flickered across his face that she hadn’t seen before, passing too quickly for her to get a handle on what it meant.

‘I’m sorry, kid. I thought you’d be happy here.’

What the hell was he sorry for? Jesus, he wasn't responsible for her. There was no other option for her but to stay at the mansion, so what the fuck was the point in pitying her? She didn’t want his pity. She was sick of pity.

‘Like Ah said, Logan, Ahm fine.’

Her emphasised Southern drawl betrayed the truth of that statement. She drained the last of her drink and stood up. Time to go.

‘Ahm gunna try and get some sleep now. Ahll see you tomorrow. We can catch up then.’

His nostrils flared slightly, and she had a horrible, creeping suspicion that he could smell the anxiety and the uncertainty and the lies she had just told him. Bastard. He nodded.

‘Fine. Maybe we can go out for a drink or something.’

Her brain stopped. Like a date???

‘You can buy. You owe me.’

Ah. That would be the first referral to the disaster by the pool earlier. She felt red spreading over her cheeks in an unstoppable flush.

‘Uh…sure. For the record, Ahm sorry ‘bout earlier. Ah didn’t mean for that ta happen.’

He snorted.

‘G’night kid.’

‘Night Logan.’

She moved away to the door, dumping the ice cream carton and the bottle in the trash as she did so. Logan could take the blame for the beer if Scott decided to go through the garbage. God knows why he would but you never know. Slipping out into the hallway, she was moving to close the door when she heard it. A whisper, spoken quietly and clearly not intended for her ears.

‘I missed you, Marie.’

Marie. Not kid. Marie. She tried, and failed to stop the stupidly large smile that was spreading over her face at the statement. He had missed her. Logan, the big, bad Wolverine had missed her. Drawing her robe more tightly around her, she hurried up the stairs to bed.

That night she fell asleep with a smile.

#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

‘Good morning, Logan. Do come in.’ Charles Xavier’s voice echoed through the wood of the door. Logan paused, hand raised, ready to knock. Damn telepaths.

The study he entered was awash with morning sun, the light bouncing of the dark wood furniture, making it gleam. The floorboards were worn, the walls lined with books, and dark red rug covered the centre of the floor. The whole place smelt of books, floor polish and coffee. It hadn’t changed much.

The Professor was seated behind his desk, and Logan noted, not without some amusement, that the sunlight caused his bald head to gleam in addition to the furniture. The Professor gestured to the pot of coffee on his desk.

‘Would you like some coffee?’

He shrugged.

‘If you haven’t got anythin’ stronger.’

The Professor looked slightly amused.

‘It is eleven o’clock in the morning.’

‘Not a time of day I usually make a point of witnessing. Couldn’t this little meeting have waited?’

The Professor smiled, and amusement coloured his tone as he replied.

‘Yes Logan, but unlike you, some of us have other work to do.’

Logan grunted, and accepted the proffered mug. The coffee was steaming hot, black and bitter. He inhaled and the industrial strength scent stung his eyes and nose, and made his head swim. If it tasted anything like it smelt, he wasn’t going to sleep for a week. Might explain Cyclops’ permanently agitated behaviour. He leant back, crossed his legs at the ankles and eyed the Professor over the tips of his steepled fingers.

‘So then, Chuck, why d’you want to see me?’

‘You’ve been away a long time, Logan. I was wondering how your journey was. Why you returned. And whether you were planning on staying.’

‘Can’t you jus’ read my mind?’

The Professor smiled tolerantly.

‘I could.’

‘But you won’t.’

‘We’ve had this conversation before, Logan. The mind is not a book to be…’

‘Readily opened and perused at will. Sometimes the mind has to discover things for itself. You said.’

Sometimes this man was so self-righteous it hurt. But he was looking at him expectantly, as if he thought Logan was going to describe his last two and a half years in detail, and intimately disclose all of his reasoning, and future plans. It had never been in his nature to share personal stuff, although admittedly, if he had known the answers to the Professor’s questions, he might have been more willing to share.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Did any of the leads I gave you lead to anything?’

‘Most of ‘em were dead ends. Found a couple of scraps of information; some stuff about my time in the army – the phrase Weapon X was bandied about a fair amount, mean anything to you?’

The Professor frowned faintly, but shook his head.

‘I can’t recall anything of that name having come to my attention, no.’

‘Apparently I spent some time in Japan. The man that told me thought I was looking for something, didn’t have a clue what though. Basically, I found fuck all of any use.’

Yeah, two and half fucking years, and he was still the clawed guy with no past. And if what he remembered of his life was anything to go by, he was destined to remain like that.

The Professor sighed.

‘I’m sorry you didn’t find anything. I know how much this means to you.’

If anyone else had said that, with the exception of Marie, Logan would have gutted them. He hated pity, it was pointless and it was patronising. The trouble with the Professor was any sucker could tell he was one of these rare human beings who actually cared. A lot of people would offer their sympathies to the clawed guy who was failing to find his past, but if his experience of life was anything to go, very, very, few of them would actually mean it. Unfortunately for him, the Professor was one of these people, so gutting was off the list. He settled for a grunt instead.

After a few seconds silence, Chuck seemed to realise that that part of the conversation was over, and he moved on.

‘So, is this a fleeting visit? Are you just passing through or are you planning on staying for awhile? You are welcome to remain at the mansion for as long as you wish.’

Logan shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Hadn’t really thought it through this far. Thought I’d come back, check on the kid, regroup, that sort of thing.’

A knowing glint entered Xavier’s eyes. Logan did not think he liked it.

‘Ah yes, Rogue. Have you spoken with her since that little…ahem…incident by the pool yesterday?’

Logan grunted in affirmation. He really really did not like the look of that glint.

‘She’s missed you, you know. We worried about her at first.’

He raised an enquiring eyebrow.

‘It was…awkward…after Liberty Island. She had absorbed so much of you, so quickly. It took her time to sort through her head. She still retains a few of your more…unique…characteristics. She has quite the impressive growl, and your sneering look down to perfection.’

Logan grimaced. A thought struck him. He glared.

‘She told me that you’re letting them train as Junior X-Men. With a view to joining the team after graduation! You can’t seriously be considering letting them out on missions – they’re kids! It’s not a game out there, it ain’t safe for the likes of them!’

‘Have you expressed that particular view to Rogue?’

Logan’s mutinous look told the Professor all he needed to know.

‘Rogue is a remarkably talented young woman. Her grasp of hand-to-hand combat and martial arts is excellent, or so Scott tells me.’

‘You let Scooter teach her martial arts and combat??’

The Professor smiled broadly.

‘You were not around.’

‘What?’

‘If you have no immediate plans to move on Logan, then I would like to offer you a teaching position here, training the Junior Team in martial arts, and hand-to-hand combat, and teaching some basic Physical Education to the younger students.’

Logan glared darkly, slightly shocked.

‘I ain’t no teacher, Chuck. I don’t fucking do domestic.’

‘And I wouldn’t dream of asking you to. I am merely asking for a few hours of your time each day, in exchange for a reasonable rate of pay, free keeping and board. Your time off, your free periods and your evenings are yours to do as you choose. We will not interfere. And of course, if something comes up, we will understand and arrange for you to leave at once.’

Logan shook his head as if trying to clear water from his ears.

‘I’m sorry, Professor, I don’t think you understand. I don’t ‘do’ children. I’m not a fucking teacher!’

‘I know you aren’t Logan. But you could be.’

He shook his head. The entire image was fucking ridiculous.

‘No fucking way, Chuck, sorry.’

The Professor smiled sadly, but nodded his acceptance.

‘Yes, I feared that would be your answer.’

He reached out and shook Logan’s hand.

‘You are of course welcome to stay as long as you like regardless. I meant it when I said you’ll always be welcome here. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to discuss Rogue’s first mission with Scott. It will just be a pick-up but I’m thinking of sending Scott along to mentor her and cover her back.’

Logan stood up, and slammed his hand down on the desk, knocking over his, unfortunately un-drunk, and now cold cup of industrial-strength coffee.

‘You’re asking that pansy-assed idiot to cover Rogue’s back on her first mission?!’

The Professor nodded calmly.

‘There is no-one else around to do it, and Scott is the best fighter we have.’

‘I’m better.’

‘Yes, but we want Rogue to have a consistent partner on missions, so she can get used to having one person covering her back. You aren’t going to be around for that.’

‘Fuck it Chuck, there ain’t no-one going to cover that girl’s ass on missions but me, you got that Bub?’

The Professor smiled broadly.

‘Are you saying you’ll take the job?’

Logan finally understood the expression ‘Cat that got the cream’. The bastard. He couldn’t teach, he was the Wovlerine for crying out loud. But if he didn’t Rogue would end up with Scott covering her on missions. He couldn’t be trusted not to fuck that up, and if he did and Rogue got hurt…Logan was going to have to skewer Scott and then skewer himself. He had promised to protect her. Fuck it.

It had been a trap and he’d walked straight into it. He glowered at the Professor and ground out,

‘Fine. I’ll take the damn job.’

The Professor beamed, handing over a thick brown envelope.

‘Excellent. The envelope contains everything you need to know. Anything else, ask Jean, Ororo, or myself.’

Logan couldn’t help but notice he hadn’t added Scott to the list of potential minders.

‘One condition Chuck. If we’re going to do this, we’ll be doing it my way. I don’t want no interference from you, or from One-Eye. I run my lessons how I like and I teach them what I like. If you don’t like it you can fuck the whole thing.’

The Professor nodded.

‘Of course, Logan. I have the utmost faith in your professional capacities. You start teaching at the beginning of next year; the first term begins in just under three weeks. That will be plenty of time to prepare. I will talk you later about Rogue and the mission. Now…if you’ll excuse me, I really do need to speak with Scott.’

No prizes for guessing what the main topic of that conversation was going to be he thought. He lips tightened.

‘Fine.’

Slamming the wood door behind him, he strode furiously through the corridors, heading back to his room. He looked at the envelope in his hands.

Holy fuck.

He had just become PROFESSOR Logan.

#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#

(Rogue’s POV)

‘Shit! Shit, shit, SHIT!’

Rogue flung open the door to her room, yelping as it reverberated off her desk and almost knocked her out.

Slamming it behind her, she flung a heap of books, papers and files in the vague direction of her bed, and swung around, frantically scanning the room for her jeans, and wincing at the heavy sound of the mountain of school work connecting with the floor as it missed the intended target. With a groan of relief she spotted her jeans and a black vest top thing hanging off the back of a chair, partially obscured by her dressing gown, and lunged for them.

Unfortunately for her, she failed to factor her favourite scarf and the loose handle of her wardrobe into the equation. Her feet tangled with the silky green accessory, she reached for the wardrobe door for balance, the knob came off in her hand and with an extremely undignified shriek she collapsed in a furious heap.

Cursing loudly, she attempted to get to her feet, only to collapse back to the floor with another shriek, this time of fright, when the door flew open for the second time, to reveal a panicking Logan.

‘Jesus Christ kid, what the hell are you doin’ in here??’

She glared up at him from her furious heap on the floor (now complete with flaming cheeks), and practically spat,

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

With hindsight, probably not the best question she could have asked in the circumstance, but hell, she and embarrassment were old friends. In fact, she was starting to think maybe they should forget friendship and just get married. Oh God.

Logan was eyeing her, and now, obviously having assured himself she was in no immediate danger, the panicked look in his eyes had been replaced by one that clearly showed he was trying not to give into temptation and collapse to floor laughing his ass off. She glowered at him and his mouth twitched.

‘It looks like you tried to dance the tango with your feet tied together.’

Staggering upright, she reached down, unwound the scarf from her ankles and deposited it on her pillow.

Collecting her jeans from the floor, she brushed her hair back from her face and tried to look mature and composed. This was totally ruined when he glance down without a somewhat amused glance, and she realised a random bra was dangling from the leg of her jeans. She waved farewell to the last shreds of her dignity. And decided she had better explain.

‘I’m meant to meet Jubes and Remy in town at half seven. It was her birthday yesterday, and Remy bought her tickets for some show thing and apparently there is this massive surprise, and she’ll kill me if I miss it, and my last class ran over, and then I had to talk to the professor after, and then I got stuck in traffic and now …’

‘You’re late.’ Logan stopped her in mid-flow, glancing at the clock on the wall of her room. He shook his head in amusement. ‘I’ve yet to meet a woman who could get somewhere on time.’

She glared at him.

‘I was on time last time I met up with you’

‘In all technicalities, you were half an hour early.’

The urge to slap him again had never been so strong. She settled for throwing a pillow instead.

‘Shut up! I’m late, so get out of my room, I have to change!’

He grinned.

‘Can I watch?’

‘GET OUT!!’

The last few words left her mouth as an ungodly shriek.

~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

(Logan’s POV)

Still chuckling, Logan ambled back to his own room, two doors down the hall.

He had been back at the mansion for two weeks now, and even during that short time, his relationship with Marie had gone from strength to strength. He’d asked to talk to her after accepting the job from Chuck, and the panicked expression on her face had told him she thought he was going to leave again. When he told her he was sticking around indefinitely, she’d lit up like a Christmas tree, and according to Storm, it was the happiest she had looked in months.

Since then, they had fallen into the habit of eating dinner together on a daily basis, seeing as Rogue’s friends were more often than not out partying. That had been the only time he saw her for the first few days, until she walked into his room one evening to ask if he knew anything about the Russian Civil War (discovering he could describe it intimately and in fact if pressed, could speak some Russia, had been something of a surprise to say the least) and ended up staying the whole evening to watch the first hockey game of the season. Apparently his sweet, little Marie had no problem watching a bunch of guys beat the crap out of each other with large sticks.

After that, there was no getting rid of her. For the next few days she turned up after dinner, regular as clockwork and just made herself at home in the corner of his room, accompanied by some essay or textbook. He helped when he could, read, if there was anything available or otherwise just sporadically threw stuff at her until she gave up working and curled up next to him to watch a film. Jean had made some comment about how attached she was getting, and how sweet it was, and he’d just growled at her. Until the next evening when Marie had been nowhere in sight, and when he had gone to find her, discovered Jean had given her a lecture on not crowding him and hanging around being a nuisance. After that he’d gone to find Jean, and threatened to do a lot more than growl at her if she told Marie he didn’t want her around again.

It was a most bizarre feeling for him, simply enjoying someone’s company. They had become friends, good friends in only a few weeks, and Logan was a man who, as a general rule, did not have friends. Ever. In fact, if Wolverine had ever felt something akin to fear, he would have said that the way he seemed to have sunk seamlessly into life at the mansion was scaring the fuck out of him. As it was, when that feeling arose, he merely went to the Danger Room and beat the crap out of a holographic Sabretooth. Ah, therapy.

Tonight it seemed, the kid was going out with her fervently irritating yellow friend. He frequently had fantasies about gutting Jubilee. He didn’t give a damn whether or not she was a student; she was quite possibly the spawn of Satan. The thing with the whipped cream and pink hair dye had been enough to put him off her for life.

Stretching out on his bed, he figured he should maybe start on something resembling a lesson plan, considering he began teaching in four days. Really, he was trying his damned hardest not to think about that, although it was difficult, what with One-Eye running in flapping circles trying to sort out every last detail of his classes for the new term. Seemed hugely fucking pointless to him, but maybe, seeing as Rogue was out, he should perhaps at least figure some ideas on how he was going to run the classes. The Junior X-Men training was sorted. He had seen Scooter fight, and he knew exactly where the weaknesses were going to be considering they’d all been taught by him. Ironing out those weaknesses would be step one, and then after that he figured he’d just teach them every dirty trick in the goddamned book. No-one ever said nothing about playing fair.

As he was contemplating this, the door to his room flew open with a crash, and an extremely flustered Rogue appeared. He swallowed. She looked good, nice jeans that fit in all the right places, a black vest top, and a dark green jumper with a deep v-neck. He blinked. Eyes up, eyes up, eyes up.

He was about to make a remark on her appearance but her hurried question stopped his thought process in its tracks.

‘Logan, if you were a fuck-me boot where would you hide?’

He stared at her. What? The hell? Was she serious? Apparently she was, because there was no trace of a grin or of any amusement. And apparently she was also expecting an answer. Fuck.

He said the first thing that came into his head.

‘Under the bed, darlin’’

She vanished, leaving the door open. He heard several more crashes from down the hall, winced at a particularly loud one, and then heard a cry of triumph. Well, it could have been a cry of triumph. Either that, or she’d hit her head on the underside of the bed.

She re-materialised in his doorway, moments later, her outfit now complete with a pair of knee high black boots. With heels. He swallowed. Stared. Swallowed again.

‘Logan?’ She was doing that heinously irritating thing where you wave your hand in front of someone’s nose.

Apparently she had asked him a question.

‘Yeah darlin’?’

Rolling her eyes, clearly realising he hadn’t heard a word she’d just said, she snapped,

‘Two questions. One, how the hell do you know where a fuck-me boot might hide? And two, I need a lift into town.’

The second part wasn’t a question, but he didn’t have the heart to refuse her, especially not when she was in that get-up.

‘One, I imagined I was one and two, Scooter hides the keys to the flash cars, but we can take the truck.’

She squealed, and dashed from the room, a cry of ‘Move it, sugar!’ floating back over her shoulder.

He rolled sideways, and seizing his battered leather jacket from the back of the door, headed out towards the garage, following Rogue down the stairs. The animal in him was taking great delight in noting the way the combination of tight jeans and high heels emphasised her ass, and glancing sideways he caught Scott’s disapproving eye as they moved through the foyer. He popped the middle claw. He was the Wolverine, for fuck’s sake.

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(Rogue’s POV)

Exhausted, Rogue collapsed onto her bed. What a night. The traffic going into town had been just as hideous as the traffic coming back and she had made the opening credits of the show by a whisker. The show itself had been an all-singing, all-dancing concoction that reminded Rogue strongly of one of those awful, sweet cocktails that taste horribly fruity. Give her a beer and a cage fight any day.

Remy and Jubilee had stayed out, and gone clubbing, Remy agreeing even though she knew he hated all of those trendy night clubs that Jubes and Kitty haunted. It appeared that keeping Jubilee happy was one of his main priorities and he had agreed with all of her ravings about the show, although Rogue had seen him wincing and rubbing his ears and eyes at least four separate points during the show. The man was so whipped it was almost pathetic.

And now, on coming back, she had figured she’d just go and hang out in Logan’s room, like had become routine (she still found it slightly amazing he wanted her around, but the Jean incident had put paid to any doubt in the matter), and maybe help him with lesson plans or whatever it was he had been planning to do, but no. On entering his room earlier, she had found a six-pack of Molson’s on his pillow, with a note attached that read,

Magneto trouble. Had to go. Taken Scott, Storm and the Blackbird. Jean is watching mansion.
The beer is for you, figured you might need it after the yellow terror’s show. See you later.

She smiled at how well he knew her (and Jubilee), grimaced at his appallingly bad handwriting, and sloped gloomily back to her room.

Settling the beer on the floor next to her, she kicked off her boots, grabbed a bottle and settled down to endure a night of worry and await the Blackbird’s return.

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She must have fallen asleep, because when she next opened her eyes, her room was gloomy and dark, and her head was muzzy, filled with dancing images of blackbird’s, dancing cocktails and, bizarrely, a fuck-me boot that look scarily like Logan.

She swallowed, wincing at the throbbing headache that had taken up residence in her temples and at the fact she was till fully dressed. The glow of the clock by the side of her bed read 3:33.

Swinging her legs sideways, she wriggled out of her jeans, probably resembling a worm attempting a horizontal kig, and tugged off her jumper, leaving her in vest top and underwear. Deciding she really couldn’t be bothered to change anything else at this ungodly time in the morning, she levered herself up to bury under the covers, and turned sideways to look at the stars, that shone in through her window (John had set her curtains on fire that first time he’d been in her room, and somehow she had never gotten around to getting them replaced). And that was when she saw him.

A dark silhouette stood, framed by the starlight, watching her from across the room. Her heart had morphed into a Formula One car and was hammering so hard she thought it might actually win the race. Holy crap.

‘Logan?’

Her voice came out as a bizarre mixture between a croak and a squeak and was strangely loud in the utter silence that surrounded them. They both winced.

‘What the hell are you doing in my room?’

To his credit, he looked apologetic. Or at least, she thought he did, it was really pretty hard to tell. He cleared his throat.

‘Sorry. Bad mission. We got out okay but…It was…I was just…’

Jesus, he was stuttering, it must really have been bad.

‘You look peaceful when you sleep.’

Oh-kay. Coming from anyone else that admission would have sounded scarily stalkerish and even so, she couldn’t help but wonder when he’d seen her sleeping. Probably when she was unconscious in the medical lab. Wasn’t that just great?

And now, apparently she had taken too long to reply, because he was moving towards the door.

‘Hey, no it’s fine. I was just a bit shocked that’s all. Why don’t…why don’t you stay here? Bed’s big enough for two, and it’s supposed to help when you can’t sleep, having someone else near.’

She definitely couldn’t see his expression now, but she could imagine all too painfully clearly. Jesus, what was she thinking??

Only…

Oh crap, he was moving towards her.

Shit.

Crap.

Shit.

The bed creaked as he lay down, not really designed to carry three hundred pounds of metal, and she couldn’t move for shock. He didn’t move any closer, just stretched his arms above his head, and sighed.

‘Thanks.’

In only a few minutes, his breathing had evened out and he was asleep. Apparently she was an extremely effective tranquiliser. She considered poking him awake, and asking for more details about the mission, as clearly something had not gone to plan, but one look at the haggard expression on his face, rendered her immobile. It could wait until morning, and really, last time she had woken him up, she had received three metal blades through the chest for her trouble. Definitely an experience she did not care to repeat.

She settled for studying his profile in the moonlight, forcing herself not to react to his closeness, and the fact that she could smell him and she wasn’t wearing anything…Oh God. Her heart lurched, and adrenaline and sheer panic crashed through her with the force of one of Storm’s tsunamis.

She backed away as fast as she could manage, tangling herself in her bed clothes, and cracking her head on the bed post. He grumbled in his sleep and turned towards her his hand falling on her bare arm. She froze. And then relaxed. He was wearing gloves. And a long sleeved t-shirt. Okay. Breathe, breathe, and breathe. Soul-sucking was off the agenda for tonight.

Forcing herself to relax, she settled back down and resumed her study. Obviously he had showered and changed before coming in, but she could still smell the faint scent of blood, and an odd tangy scent, that smelt like electricity. His hair fell over one eye, and as she moved to brush it carefully back, she noticed a small circular scar, healing over on his left temple. It was deep and nasty-looking and the skin around it was darkened, scarred. Ouch. Clearly there had been a fight, and a bad one at that. She moved a finger, cautiously tracing the scar, moving too quickly for her skin to have any effect.

He sighed softly, and rolled more towards her, trapping her against the wall, the hand on her arm moving down to lock around her waist. She rolled sideways in an attempt to escape, and he took this opportunity to spoon himself behind her, clearly not one for pissing about even when completely unconscious. His nose buried into her neck, protected from her skin by a thick curtain of hair.

Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.

This was really all she had to say on the subject.

He huffed a breath into her shoulder, and she stifled a whimper. She was going to complain about him taking advantage in the morning, although she was aware that he had no idea what he was doing. Trouble was she liked it all a little too much.

One of his legs wove between hers, and some irritating voice in the back of her brain pointed out he was wearing soft pyjama bottoms of some kind.

Clearly this was going to be a long night.

And by God, was she going to kill him in the morning.

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Ungh. Unghgngg.

That was pretty much the first thing Rogue thought when she woke up the next morning. She made three basic mistakes. The first was rolling over onto her side. The second was cracking open one eye to check the time. The third was attempting to think at all. God.

She felt like she had spent the night in a bush. Her throat was scratchy, her head hurt, and in fact she felt generally drawn out and hung-over. Probably the result of a six-pack of beer (Logan’s fault), a very disturbed night (also Logan’s fault), and the crick in her neck that was a result of holding herself stiff the entire night (also possible to blame this on Logan). God, she hated him.

She wasn’t sure quite why she was awake, it was just gone eight o’clock and she never woke up this early, but she was almost positive she wasn’t up to considering this mystery too closely. That was until the Professor’s voice rung out loud and clear in her thoughts. Mystery solved. Hello, Sherlock Holmes.

{Rogue?}

[Ungh.]

The Professor’s responding chuckle sounded painfully loud in her sore head. So she was never at her best first thing in the morning, what of it?

{Rogue? I’m very sorry to disturb you, but…}

The thought in her head was cut off as she was distracted by her door flying open, and Logan appearing, fully dressed, including boots, and looking quite disgustingly cheerful. Clearly he was somewhat recovered from his strange mood last night. She glared at him balefully. He chuckled.

‘Morning, kid. Get your ass out of bed. Emergency meeting, upstairs lounge, fifteen minutes.’

He swung on his heel, leaving the door open behind him, presumably off to cram in a cigar before this ‘meeting’.
She’d kill him later.

Turning her attention back to the Professor, she apologised for her short attention span.

[Sorry, Professor]

{What happened?}

[Logan]

The Professor seemed happy to accept just this one word as an adequate explanation and really, she wondered what that said about them.

{Anyway, my dear, as I was saying, I’m very sorry to disturb you, but your presence is required at a…}

[Emergency meeting of the X-Men, upstairs lounge, fifteen minutes?]

There was a mental silence.

{Rogue?}

She smiled.

[Logan]

Once again the one word was enough.

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Really, Rogue thought, as she hurried to the lounge on the second floor, sometimes she was actually a miracle worker. It was Sunday morning, and by some insane turn of events, she was up, showered and dressed by a quarter past eight, and, even more incredibly, she had achieved this feat in no more than fifteen minutes. Give the girl a medal.

Or so she thought, until she walked in and Storm exclaimed,

‘My goodness Rogue, you look terrible!’

Rogue gritted her teeth, forced a smile, and replied,

‘I had something of a disturbed night.’

She made sure not to look in Logan’s direction, but the pointed nature of her comment was enough, and she saw him shift slightly in the corner of eye, Logan’s version of squirming.

Giving the lounge a swift scan she noted all the members of the X-Men present and correct, apparently she was the last. Scott and Jean were seated on one loveseat, both looked starched and correct, whilst the couple on the other loveseat were an entirely different story. Remy was slouched against the back of the seat, his long legs seeming to take up metres of floor space, and a ruffled looking Jubilee was next to him, slumped against his shoulder, seemingly asleep and drooling slightly.

Bobby was on the floor, Kitty between his legs; the fireplace supporting his back, and his chest supporting Kitty. Neither looked particularly alert, but at least they were conscious. Piotr was sitting in a deep armchair in the corner of the room, his large frame filling the entire chair, which could easily seat both Jubes and Rogue together on a good day. His face was set in a mask of calm, and he appeared as stoic and unruffled as usual.

Hank was standing in one corner of the room, his not-quite- joke about shedding on the furniture meant he usually remained standing. He was a sight for sore eyes this early in the morning, the combination of his blue skin, blue jeans and red and white striped shirt making him look uncannily like a tube of toothpaste.

Logan was leaning in the other corner of the room, just as quiet as Piotr, hazel eyes piercing. Rogue could sense he was uncomfortable, and she wondered why, he had said that they had got out of the mission okay. As she watched, his nostrils flared a couple of times, scenting the air and that only increased her feeling that something wasn’t right. They were in the mansion, for god’s sake, why would he need to check for any unusual scents? He knew all of theirs like he knew his own name.
Ahem. Yeah fine, bad example, but the point still stood.

Seeing as every other seat was taken, Rogue joined Storm on the sofa, folding her legs underneath her. Clearly the rest of the team (with the exception of Jubes and Remy obviously) had also picked up on the not-quite-right vibe because the room was filled with silence, and that was very unusual. She distracted herself by watching the ticking of the second hand on the clock.

At eight seventeen and thirty-four seconds precisely (God, she was tuning into Scott), the door swung open, and Rogue turned, expecting Professor Xavier, as you know, per usual. He certainly appeared first, wheeling through the door, looking exactly the same as he usually did, but he was followed, by not one, not two, but three other adults. And a little girl. Now that had never happened before.

Over in the corner Logan stiffened, lip curling slightly in a feral snarl, and it was obvious from his posture and body language that he was not happy about this. Not happy about this at all. And really, she couldn’t say she blamed him. Especially when a patch of air shimmered in front of the little girl and a large silver wolf appeared before their eyes, snarled right back at Logan, and then slunk to the girl’s side, where she wove her fingers through the fur at the scruff of his neck and held on tight. Rogue swallowed heavily, her dry throat returning. Something was very, very wrong.

The X-Men were no strangers to strangers. Mutants turned up every few months, waifs and strays from all over, searching for a place of salvation in a world of hate, but these, these people were different. She didn’t have to have Logan’s animal instinct and enhanced senses to know that danger hung around these three like a cloak.
They were mutants, no question of it. They say if you’re gay, you develop Gay-dar and the ability to spot those like you, well she was a freak, in fact, she was a freak among freaks, and if anyone had a…a…’freak-dar’, for want of a clever or witty name, it was her.

There was a shift of movement in the corner of eyes, and she turned, ignoring the voice inside her head that screamed at her not to turn her back, to see Scott, gripping the edge of the love seat, his knuckles white. From this angle she could see his profile, and she stifled a gasp as she caught sight of a gash, several centimetres deep, marring his neck, from the base of his jaw, stretching down into his shirt. It was red, angry looking, and she was reminded instantly of the gash on Logan’s temple that she had seen the previous night. Holy shit, clearly last night there had been a severe deviation from the plan. If there had even been a plan, and if Logan had been in charge then she doubted it.

She heard Bobby clear his throat, and looking at him, she saw his eyes dart to Scott, to the newcomers and back again. He looked at Xavier, but it was Logan who spoke.

‘Who the fuck are you people?’

He appeared to be trying to control his instincts somewhat, but his words rumbled a little at the end, and he took a deep breath, clearly trying to remain in control.

That went out the window when the little girl frowned, and moved her hand to the wolf’s head. It snarled ferociously at Logan. Who snarled ferociously back, curling his lip, hazel eyes burning. The wolf took a few steps forward, Logan straightened up. If it had been in any other situation it would have been hilarious, the sight of the Wolverine (she had a sneaky feeling that Logan was not in the driving seat at the moment, if you got her drift) and an actual wolf having a macho competition. It was uncannily like watching him and Scott facing up to each other, but Scott’s counterpart was a lot hairier.

And when Logan’s growl upped a little in volume and he stepped forward, and the wolf, clearly sensing it had met its match, flattened itself to its belly and crawled backwards, Rogue found herself frantically strangling the hugely inappropriate desire to laugh hysterically, despite the present circumstance. A choking gasp escaped Jubilee; clearly she had no such self-control, and she was red in the face and shaking with the effort of suppressing her laughter. The tall-dark haired man shifted his gaze to her, and she stopped abruptly, shrinking closer to Remy.

Rogue felt sheer irritation welling up inside her at this, and she turned to Xavier,

‘Someone had better start talking.’

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There was complete silence throughout the room, and as Rogue scanned the various faces, she saw absolutely no hint that anyone was going to begin an explanation.

‘Look, what the hell is going on??’

Her voice came out high-pitched and slightly squeaky with panic, and despite the current situation she saw the corner of Logan’s mouth quirk up. But still no-one was speaking. She turned to the Professor.

‘Professor? What’s happened? Who are these…these…’, she searched for a word that didn’t sound vaguely insulting, ‘…people?’

The Professor sighed, and Rogue noticed for the first time how tired he looked, and she wondered whether he had slept. When he spoke he sounded weary.

‘Relax, Rogue, everything is fine. I’m just trying to work out where to begin.’

At these words, the tall blond-haired man shoved his hands into his pockets and leant back against the door frame.

‘Perhaps we should begin at the beginning?’

Logan snarled, the animal in him clearly screaming for respect. The blond man smiled at him, more than a hint of mockery in the expression.

‘Or failing that, perhaps with an introduction? Stripes there on the couch is looking at me as though I eat kiddies for a living.’

‘My name is Rogue.’

Her voice was quiet, cold, but he didn’t seem bothered in the slightest.

‘And my name is Alex. Now then, first name terms, isn’t that better?’

Another snarl ripped from Logan’s throat, this one much fiercer. The lazy smile on the man’s face widened, and he stepped forward.

‘Someone’s feeling a wee bit grouchy this morning. Didn’t we sleep well?’

Logan stepped away from the wall, lip curling, and with a deadly sounding ‘snikt’, his claws shot out from his knuckles, the adamantium gleaming in the sunlight. Anyone with sense would be running like they were training for the Olympics right now, but this man smiled, a light dancing in his grey eyes, and stepped forward as well, removing his hands from his pockets.

He unfurled his hands and held them out from his body, palms up. A metal swish echoed through the air, and Rogue watched, feeling her eyes widen in horror, as five long snakes of metal grew out from his palms, coiling through the air around him, until he was surrounded by a mass of twisting metal rope. His smile widened.

‘They call me Tendril.’

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Logan’s eyes were tracking the process of the metal ropes as they furled and unfurled in a web that Rogue had the feeling you really didn’t want to get caught in. Tendril grinned, the spider at the very centre of the web.

‘Want to try your luck wolf man?’

Logan’s eyes darkened, hazel bleeding into flat matt-black and he let out a furious growl, tensing as though to pounce.

{E-NOUGH!}

The mental voice made everyone in the room wince, and Rogue clapped her hands to her forehead, trying desperately to stop the painful ringing of the mental command. It had the desired effect on Logan however, as he swallowed hard, fists clenching as his claws slowly slid back in. Rogue knew how much effort that must have taken, and how hard it must be for the animal in him to just back down from a fight.

The voice had had no such effect on Tendril however. He was smiling, metal still twisting, regarding Logan with the sly eyes of a man goading his prey.

‘Scared of a fight Wolverine? And they told me such tales.’

A ripple of fury ran through Rogue at this, and she removed one glove slowly. The blond woman standing towards the back of the group noticed this, and she moved forwards.

‘Alex, enough!’

She sounded commanding, formidable even, but the words had no effect. Alex didn’t even move, didn’t even appear to have registered the words until the third man stepped forward, touching three fingers to the small of his back. Alex looked over his shoulder at that, and their eyes connected for a second, before he exhaled sharply, and the metal tendrils coiled back carefully, melting into his palms, the skin closing over them. He stepped back. The woman muttered, ‘Well done, Marcus’ before the Professor spoke again, addressing the three.

‘You have come to us to ask for our help. We did not judge you, despite the obvious reasons for mistrust. We have agreed to lend you our support, and we ask nothing in return. But if any behaviour like that is ever displayed again inside my home, then I will turn you over to Magneto myself. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Crystal.’

The Professor smiled at the woman, it was a little frosty, but a smile nevertheless, which in Rogue’s eyes displayed some quite remarkable self-control.

‘Now, perhaps we might start with some introductions? Preferably without any more displays of arrogance and bravado.’

‘What do you want to know? Real names? Code names? A quick life history?’

‘You can skip the life history.’ Logan did not sound friendly. Unsurprisingly.

The woman stepped forward first, clearly appointing herself group spokeswoman. She was very…very…once again Rogue attempted to find a word that wasn’t rude or insulting. She failed. Again. The woman was strange that was all. Perhaps some might say beautiful. She was petite; small and slim, and if it wasn’t for the aura of danger, Rogue might have used the word breakable. Her hair fell midway down her back, and was a very pale blonde. It would have been pretty, except for the fact that it was interlaced with multiple streaks of white, silver, and very pale blue, and her face was highlighted by two thick locks of vicious black. In conjunction with her bizarre hair, her skin was so white it was almost translucent, and her eyes, in stark contrast, were bright shiny black, strange streaks of glowing silver whirling in their depths. The overall effect was slightly creepy.

When she spoke her tone was clear, sharp, and if Rogue were to hazard a guess at her personality, she would say they were looking at the very incarnation of the phrase ‘does not suffer fools gladly’. She introduced them briefly, pointing and saying a name, and Rogue was strongly reminded of the weekly sessions of Show-And-Tell she had suffered through in primary school.

‘My name is Tia Whitley. Bolt. This is Alex Larson, Tendril, and Marcus Hunt, DeathTouch.’

At the last two names, she indicated first the blond man, and then the tall, thin man standing at the back.

‘And her?’ That was Logan, straight to the point as usual.

Tia smiled, and gestured the little girl forward. She came reluctantly, clutching at the scruff of the wolf’s neck and dragging it forward like a soft toy. It seemed ‘oddly’ reluctant to go anywhere near Logan.

‘This is Leyna. Leyna Allerdyce.’

Over in the corner Bobby stiffened. In fact, all of the Junior X-Men drew a breath at that. Of all the surnames the little girl could have had. Logan however, either appeared not to notice, or just plain didn’t care. Pick one.

‘Does she have a ‘nickname’?’
There was no mistaking the slightly sneering tone of voice, and Tia straightened up slightly, her tone cutting as she replied,

‘No, Wolverine, she is seven years old.’

The girl tugged at Tia’s sleeve, brown eyes staring up at her beseechingly. Tia looked confused, and to her credit, neither of the two men seemed to realise what Leyna wanted either. Eventually the little girl turned to Logan, perhaps feeling that he had earned her pets respect and therefore he warranted the introduction most. She pointed to the wolf at her side,

‘Freddie.’ She announced solemnly.

The hazel eyes on the wolf remained fixed firmly on the floor, and had it not been an animal, Rogue would have sworn it looked embarrassed.

There was a brief moment’s silence. And then Jubilee started to laugh.

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Jubilee’s laughter was infectious, and soon the entire junior team was laughing, and at least half of the senior team were stifling smiles.

The blonde women rolled her strange black eyes, the blonde man looked faintly bored, but a slight smile was gracing the third man’s face. The wolf continued to stare resolutely at the floor.

The little girl, Leyna, beamed happily at the reaction she had caused, seeming to revel in being the centre of attention, and as they watched her, she frowned slightly, and a patch of air in front of her began to shimmer. Streams of coloured light swirled around and eventually they formed into a tiny baby dragon, bright green with small leathery wings. It fell to the floor with a flop, before rising unsteadily into the air, slightly lopsided, the expression on its face one of sheer concentration and oddly human, like that of the wolf.

After a matter of minutes during which almost all the laughter died away, a shocked silence taking its place, the dragon managed to steady its flight, and hovered, almost straight, level with the little girl’s nose. She smiled hugely in satisfaction, before looking around the room. Her eyes fell on Logan and she beamed at him, the skin between her eyes crinkling again as she appeared to concentrate.

The dragon flapped its wings once more and made steady, if wobbly progress up and across the room, until it was level with Logan’s nose. He swallowed, clearly completely at a loss for what to do, which was, Rogue thought, something entirely new for the Wolverine. Although possibly quite reasonable. She saved it up to laugh about later.

Logan’s eyes darted first to the Professor, and then to Rogue, clearly looking for some kind of assistance. Rogue looked at Leyna. She continued to beam at Logan, before tilting her head to one side. The dragon mimicked her action, and when Leyna blew gently, so did the dragon. Unfortunately what Leyna’s seven year old brain had apparently failed to comprehend was the humans breathed, but did not breathe fire. Dragons were a whole other story. Logan yelped in shock, and probably pain. Now was the time that the rest of the team should really be jumping into action and helping him, but to be honest the whole scene had a fatally humorous air to it. And it was only going to get better.

The little girl’s eyes filled with panic and shock, and clearly devastated at her mistake, she frowned again, waved a hand vaguely in the air, and a bucket of water with arms and legs appeared, hovering over Logan, upended itself and deposited its contents all over his head.

That finished off Rogue’s self control, and despite the situation she keeled over laughing, unable to contain it any longer at the sight of Logan, dripping wet and incensed, eyebrows singed and mutton chops gently smoking. Before long the entire room was howling with laughter, as Logan spat water from his mouth and ran his fingers over his singed hair, his expression murderous.

Leyna looked terrified, and, obviously in an attempt to apologise, she frowned again and a teddy bear fell from the ceiling. It was a nice gesture thought Rogue, but sadly for Leyna, seven year old girls and something-year-old Wolverines do not look to the same things for comfort. Logan looked like he might impale the bear on his claws, particularly when he caught sight of Scott’s face, which looked like he’d just lost his virginity whilst winning the lottery and being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Thankfully, Alex stepped in.

‘Leyna, I don’t think you should bother the Wolverine. Why don’t you focus on Freddie? He’s fading?’

A quick glance at the wolf showed that yes indeed, he was slightly fuzzy around the edges. Leyna looked mutinous.

‘I like Wolfie man.’

Alex stepped closer, and bent down to whisper in her ear.

‘He eats little girls like you for breakfast.’

Instead of looking scared, the child looked up at Logan with a combination of awe and worship in her large brown eyes. Logan looked perplexed and decidedly uncomfortable.

It was the Professor’s turn to step in.

‘I think perhaps an explanation is in order.’

There was general chorus of relieved and enthusiastic yeses. He smiled, before turning to the three strangers.

‘I think perhaps it might be more fitting if you explained. It is your story after all.’

Tia took the floor, it already being blindingly clear that the two men were not much for conversation.

‘Five years ago, my brother, Marcus and I were recruited to Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants.’

This statement was met with a rumble of anger and discomfort and the hostility in the room went up several notches. The Professor held up a hand.

‘You wanted an explanation. Hear our guests out.’

Tia smiled and continued.

‘For the first year or so, we were part of smaller missions, surveillance and the like. Magneto trained us, taught us to develop our powers, to use them for offensive purposes. He protected, gave us a home, made us believe that we were far superior to humans in every way.’

‘You believed that shit?’

The Professor glared at Logan. He fell silent.

‘Magneto can be very…persuasive. Control comes easily to him, something which I’m sure you in particular, Wolverine, will be able to sympathise with.’

Logan grunted. Tia continued.

‘Two years in to our time with the Brotherhood, we met Alex. We started as comrades and we became friends.’

‘Spare us the fucking sentimentalities.’

‘Logan, be quiet, or leave.’ The Professor was glaring now, and he was projecting his thoughts as he spoke them aloud, making them ring throughout the room. Tia eyed him.

‘Friendship is a rare thing for those who follow Magneto, Logan. The Brotherhood is not bonded by friendship, or by a feeling of brotherhood, but by fear, and hatred. A bond of friendship was a rare thing. Anyway, after another six months or so we were very much central to the Brotherhood. Marcus was second-in-command. Magneto told us of a weapon, a powerful weapon that he believed he could use and manipulate. He told us that with this weapon we could win the war. We would take control and we would be Gods. We believed him. Had no reason not to.’

‘A weapon?’

Scott’s interested appeared piqued and he spoke up for the first time.

‘Leyna.’

Rogue felt her eyebrows rising towards her hairline. How was a seven year old girl a weapon? Clearly she had a power of some sort, but illusions were hardly a weapon with which to win some kind of epic war. She felt perhaps that she should voice this opinion.

Alex smiled grimly.

‘Yes, Rogue. I think many people would make the mistake of believing that Leyna is not dangerous. She is seven is she not? Just a little girl. It is not what Leyna can do that makes her dangerous, but what she is capable of.‘

‘Which is?’

‘You watched her a minute ago, and what you saw was a little girl casting illusions, correct?’

‘Uh…,’ Rogue sensed that this was quite probably one of those trick questions she had always hated so much in tests.

‘That would be where you have gone wrong. What Leyna can do is something that has not been seen before in the mutant world. You know of Callisto?’

Storm growled.

‘The speed freak?’

Alex nodded.

‘She possesses another gift. She can sense other mutants, and their powers. She can tell what they can do and how powerful they are. One thing she had never been able to do though, is tell whether or not a child has the mutant gene. She cannot predict which children will manifest. Except with Leyna. Even when she was a child, just a six year old little girl, Callisto could sense her powers. Sense something different about her. Leyna is a Class Five mutant. One of only two Class Five mutants we are aware of in existence.’

Logan raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

‘She’s an illusionist. It isn’t unheard of and it certainly doesn’t warrant Class Five status.’

Alex frowned slightly.

‘That is where everyone goes wrong Wovlerine. They believe that what Leyna can conjure are mere illusions, just visions, tricks of the mind.’

Rogue could see the potential consequence of what he was implying being huge.

‘You’re saying that…what she conjures is real? How is that possible? They vanish, they fade.’

‘Leyna does not ‘conjure’ things, Rogue. She possesses the ability to bend the boundaries between reality and fantasy. How often have you wished that you could just erase an event of the past? Turn it to dust, and have it float away as a mere imagining? Leyna could do that. She could kill all of you, simply with the power of her imagination. Or she could bring more of you to life. Create creatures in her mind and breathe life into them, have them walk, control them. Simply by imagining, she could create Magneto an unstoppable army, completely under her control. She’s just a little girl. But with one thought, she could destroy us all.’

#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#

There was a stunned, and somewhat horrified silence.

‘Oh my God.’

Jean was doing a pretty good job of voicing Rogue’s thoughts. Everyone in the room was watching the girl, who had lost all interest in the proceedings and was currently plaiting the tail of a miniature horse into tiny plaits, humming happily. Freddie lay on the floor eyeing the tiny pink creature with a mixture of superiority and disgust. Even the previously expressionless faces of Hank and Piotr showed alarm. Tia seemed to sense this because she stepped forward.

‘Leyna isn’t a threat yet. She’s too young for that. She doesn’t have the requisite mental control to permanently erase or permanently create events or people. Like you said, she’s just a child.’

No-one looked particularly reassured, and it was Logan that spoke next, asking a question that showed unusual perceptiveness in Rogue’s opinion.

‘There’s something I don’t understand.’

‘Only something? Lucky you.’ Jubilee’s muted murmur was still loud enough for the people around her to hear, and Logan glowered.

‘Shut it, yella.’ He paused. ‘They say mutations manifest at puberty because of the increased emotional stress. Leyna’s seven. I don’t understand why she has manifested. Her power shouldn’t be active for another four or five years yet at least.’

Tia closed her eyes briefly.

‘I was really hoping you wouldn’t ask that.’ She turned to Alex, clearly hoping he would explain. He shook his head, mouth curled in distaste. After a moment’s silence, the taller man, Marcus, stepped forward and spoke properly for the first time.

‘The reasons for Leyna’s manifestation and for our switching alliance are the same. As Alex said, we travelled and fought as part of Magneto’s Brotherhood for the better part of three years before we met Leyna. Magneto believed us loyal, and we had given him no reason not to trust us. When he first told us of this weapon we were just as intrigued and exhilarated at the potential as he was. We were put in charge of her care and her training, a task we agreed to whole-heartedly, the idea of an unstoppable weapon being fatally attractive. Mystique was sent out to collect this weapon.’

It was Jean that interrupted this time.

‘Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying that you willingly agreed to turn a little girl into a killing machine in order to achieve your own ends?’

Tia replied, her tone heated.

‘No, of course not! We were aware that this weapon was a human female, but at the time we had no idea of her age. We believed that what Magneto was doing was morally right and that whoever she was; she would be honoured to serve his cause.’

After a pause, Alex continued the story, Marcus having stepped back, making it clear that he had told his section of the tale.

‘When Mystique arrived, we got a bit of a shock. We had been expecting, I don’t know, some kind of Goddess…’

His sentence was interrupted by every female in the room snorting in disgust. Alex grinned.

‘…so you can imagine our surprise when they produced a seven year old girl, and not only a seven year old girl, but one that showed absolutely no sign of any kind of mutation. She was completely human, normal as they come.’

Logan’s frown was even deeper now.

‘So she was jus’ a normal kid when you got your hands on her?’

Alex nodded.

‘We expected Magneto to be upset, angry, disappointed. His ‘great weapon’ was the most ordinary little girl any of us had ever seen. But he was strangely upbeat. Seemed excited. We were confused, of course, but we had faith in our leader. However, the next day, he received word of a FOH incident down South in Mississippi, and so he sent Marcus and I down to deal with it.’

He paused, closing his eyes briefly.

‘When we left, Leyna was just a little girl, scared, terrified even, and confused, but normal. When we returned she was…not so normal anymore.’

‘She manifested?’ Rogue figured that was a reasonable guess.

‘But why?’ Logan appeared to be reading her mind.

‘Mutations normally manifest at puberty purely because, with all the excess hormones flowing, periods of emotional stress are frequent and much more extreme. However, that is not to say that a mutation cannot manifest earlier, if the correct amount of pressure is applied using the correct methods.’

The room had fallen completely silent, and Rogue was grappling with the strange feeling of being overwhelmed with curiosity and a desperation to know more, and the feeling that somehow she really didn’t think she wanted to know what happened next. Logan looked devastated.

‘What do you mean the ‘correct pressure using the correct methods?’ He snarled.

Alex closed his eyes again, and Tia stepped closer to him. He wrapped his arms around her. Again, it was left to Marcus to fill in the silence.

‘Let us just say that white hot irons being branded onto skin again and again would cause ‘a period of heightened emotional stress’ even in the toughest of adults. You can imagine what something like that would do to a seven year old.’

Oh God. Oh God. A wave of horror rose in Rogue and she drew in a couple of shaky breaths, tears pricking her eyes and threatening to spill over at the very idea that someone would, could, do that to a little girl. She was just a little girl.

Marcus’ smile was grim.

‘She was just a child. They took her from the foster home in the dead of night, scared her half to death, and tortured her, just so that they could use her as a weapon to destroy thousands of innocent people.’

At these words, a strangled sound escaped Logan’s throat, and he left the room, movements rushed and jerky. The door slammed shut behind him, rattling on its hinges.

Rogue looked at the Professor. He shook his head.

‘Let him go.’

There was silence for a few minutes, everyone trying to digest the horrific reality of the situation, until Tia spoke again.

‘Marcus and Alex had left the camp. I…I…I could hear the screaming. Every night, but I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t do anything to stop him. By the third night, it went silent, but somehow that was worse, because I knew she had to be broken. When they went into feed her that morning, there was a wolf by her side. Magneto was ecstatic. He had his weapon. He had broken her, and now she was his to brainwash, to use, to destroy.’

She looked up at the X-Men.

‘We had to do it, had to try, we couldn’t let him have her. We just couldn’t.’

‘So you ran.’

‘Yes.’

#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#

‘Running wasn’t easy. It took time, longer than we would have liked, and planning. But eventually, Marcus and I left, taking Leyna with us. The actual act was surprisingly simple. We were supposed to be her guard. Alex stayed behind, playing the old friend who has changed sides. He made it clear to Magneto that his loyalties lay with him, and I suppose because he wasn’t related to Marcus and I, Magneto believed him. Of course, he wasn’t thinking particularly straight at the time, he was beyond furious at the loss of Leyna. Anyway, Alex remained in camp, feeding information out to Marcus and I, and because of this we managed to evade the Brotherhood for a month or so. We kept on running, moving from place to place every few days, never staying still long.’

Alex took up the story.

‘But it didn’t take long for Magneto to become suspicious. The way that he would receive word that Marcus and Tia were in one place and then when he sent out a team, they would have completely vanished. He isn’t stupid, he knew there must be a leak, and naturally he suspected me first. We knew that our time was running out, but we weren’t prepared to give in. We knew of the X-Men, of course, almost every mutant in America knows you, and we realised that you were our only chance of keeping Leyna out of Magneto’s clutches. Unfortunately we had no idea how to find you.’

Tia stepped up again, the story flowing from each of them in turn.

‘And that was when we got lucky. Magneto had exactly the same thought that we did. He realised that Marcus and I would go looking for the X-Men. We were trained fighters; he knew that we knew we couldn’t evade him forever. We could stand and fight, but we would lose and we would die, or we could find the X-Men. It was obvious which option we’d pick. And that was when we saw our chance. We had no idea how or where one might find a member of the X-Men but Magneto did. So Alex suggested setting a trap; a trap to lure in the X-Men’s best fighters, and pick them off, one by one. The Brotherhood easily outnumbers the X-Men, and Magneto knew that taking out Wolverine, Storm and Cyclops would decimate the team. Even if Marcus and I did find you after that, there was no way you would be able to protect Leyna.’

Alex again.

‘So I suggested to Magneto that we set up an ambush, host an event to lure you in; something odd enough to cause you to investigate but not threatening enough to send the entire team. Magneto agreed to it, seeing it as an opportunity to destroy the competition. My plan was that I would feed the ‘where’ and ‘when’s to Marcus and Tia and then, when your team arrived, Tia would be able to take everyone out of commission for a few minutes, preferably before anyone got hurt. It was easy. It was simple. We wouldn’t need to find the X-Men because you guys could come to us. And it would have had the added advantage of really, really pissing Magneto off.’

Jubilee spoke up for the first time, disbelief in her voice.

‘So basically, you set up a death trap for Scott, Logan and Storm, in order to locate us, so that you could ask for our help?’

When put like that, it didn’t seem to make much sense, thought Rogue. Alex glared.

‘Look. We had been on the run for months. We were exhausted, hungry, and running out of places to hide. In short, we were desperate, and the more desperate you are, the cleverer and better essentially stupid plans look.’

‘De man has got dat damn right,’ murmured Remy.

Rogue ran through the large amount of information that had just been divulged. A couple of things still made no sense at all to her.

‘I don’t get it. This plan of yours; yeah, it was fairly stupid, and had more holes than a badly knitted jumper, but the way you set it up, it could have worked. But it didn’t.’

Tia looked puzzled.

‘How do you draw that conclusion?’

‘Because Scott has a gash the size of the Grand Canyon gracing his neck, and Logan came to my room last night looking like death warmed up, and believe me, with his healing factor, that’s quite the achievement.’

It was the turn of the Professor to do some explaining and he wheeled his way forward.

‘Last night, I was using Cerebro; just scanning. Over the last few days, something hadn’t seemed right. I had been detecting large groups of mutants, who all seemed to be converging on one place. An abandoned military base just south of Alkali Lake. But from what I could tell, all these mutants were fairly low grade. Class Two, Three at most. They didn’t have the makings of any kind of army, but we haven’t heard anything about any sort of mutant conventions. There appeared to be no real threat, but I was curious, so I sent Logan, Storm and Scott to check it out, simply to scout around for information and see what was going on. I did not even consider the idea that there might be any danger.’

‘So how…’ Rogue was cut off by Alex.

‘I presume everyone here has seen that odd bronze helmet that Magneto wears. It acts as a mental shield, blocking him from Cerebro. While he is wearing it, the Professor cannot trace him, correct?’

Xavier nodded.

‘Well from there, it was a simple step to select fifteen odd of our best fighters, and equip them with similar helmets. Magneto knows the Professor, and he knew he would be intrigued by such a large gathering of mutants, for apparently no purpose. I was in charge of the battle tactics, presumably Magneto thought that as I was setting up the only chance at survival my friends had, that my loyalty was assured. I set it up so that a few waves of the weaker members of the Brotherhood would attack first. To Magneto, I justified this as a way of sapping the strength from your team, before sending in our concealed fighters to finish them off and I knew the idea of playing with them would appeal to him. Of course, the real reason was that I knew Logan, Scott and Storm could take the weaker mutants easily. This way, Tia had time to use her talents to take everyone in the vicinity down, whilst everyone else was distracted by the battle. At least, that was the plan.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘Everything was in place. Your three had just arrived and we were preparing to send out the first wave of attacks. Marcus and Tia were concealed, waiting on standby. But then Magneto got suspicious. I have no idea what triggered it. Maybe we had been too arrogant in presuming he had fallen for the front I had been maintaining. But anyway, he ordered me out along with the first wave. I had no choice but to fight. To hold back in anyway would only have made him more suspicious. I knew Magneto would expect me to go for the strongest fighter first so I targeted Logan, thanking whichever God that was watching that he was the one with the healing factor. Turned out I needn’t have worried so much. He was more than a match for me, although I got in a few good scrapes.’

‘The mark? On his temple? That was you? You call that a good scrape???’

Alex had the grace to look embarrassed.

‘Yeah. I feel bad about that, but I had to do it. And the man heals.’

‘It still bloody hurt.’

Rogue swung round to the door, smiling widely in greeting. Logan was standing there, clearly having gotten over his earlier loss of control. He had leaves in his hair and his knuckles looked red and suspiciously raw. The Professor smiled.

‘Logan. Nice of you to rejoin us.’

Logan gave a brusque nod, and retook his place in the far corner of the room. He shot Rogue a swift smile.

‘What happened next?’ It was the first time Kitty had spoken, and she sounded like a child, eager to hear the next part of a story.

Alex sighed.

‘Before we go any further, perhaps we should explain what Tia can do.’

Tia yawned idly, before raising her hands, palms upturned, much like the position Alex had assumed in his earlier display. She clenched both hands into fists, and then sharply unfurled them. A sharp cracking noise filled the air as she did so, and Rogue winced, horrified, thinking it had been her bones making that noise. At least until she saw the crackling blue of electricity filling Tia’s palms.

‘You can wield electricity. Nice.’ Storm sounded impressed.

‘That’s not all.’ Frowning in concentration, Tia raised her palms slightly and after a few seconds a cloud of swirling black began to form around her hands. The lightening crackled, flashing and dancing through the clouds. The bright silver swirls in Tia’s black eyes were alive now, crackling and forking as dancing electricity, and Rogue could smell the acrid scent of energy, the likes of which she had smelt on Logan the previous night.

The Professor looked impressed and awed.

‘To hold the power of the storms in one’s hands. That’s quite the gift you’ve got there.’

Tia smiled her thanks, relaxing and allowing the lightening and the accompanying thunder clouds to dissipate.

‘It has its restrictions. I can make the cloud spread over large areas, but the further I spread it and the more people I encompass; the weaker the force of the lightening when I zap them. I can kill if it’s very short range, or only two or three people, between four and about forty it’s a severe shock, enough to cause unconsciousness, but only just, and any more than forty and you’ll barely feel a tingle.’

Rogue was seeing the light.

‘So you planned, essentially, to electrocute the Brotherhood?’

Jubilee spoke up again.

‘But the X-Men were fighting with the Brotherhood. So the plan was to set up a death trap for Scott, Storm and Logan, in order to ask for our help, where you expected them to fight a battle and suffer through a mild electrocution?’

Tia grinned sheepishly.

‘Well…the electricity wasn’t going to be enough to do any real HARM. You’d just get a bit of a headache.’

Marcus spoke up, clearly feeling the need to do some defending.

‘And it worked as well. The cloud spread, Tia zapped, and before we knew it we had our own little zombie scene going on. We had a few minutes before anyone started to wake up, so we dragged Alex out, and went to get Leyna from where we had told her to hide. When we came back, Alex was still out for the count, but you lot had completely vanished.’

He turned to glare at Logan, who shrugged.

‘Guilty as charged.’

Rogue rolled her eyes.

‘Come on. You KNOW he has a healing factor. Didn’t you have the sense to ‘factor’ that in?’ She winced at her own terrible pun.

Alex spoke up again.

‘He has a metal skeleton. We figured he’d conduct electricity better than most and so would be down for longer. We thought the adamantium would erase the advantage Logan’s healing gives him. Clearly we made a minor miscalculation, because when we returned, there was neither hide nor hair to be seen of any of the X-Men save for a black dot that was the jet disappearing into the distance.'

All eyes turned to Logan. Rogue voiced the question.

‘You walked away, AWAY, from a room full of unconscious members of the Brotherhood? No massacre?’

Logan looked majorly affronted.

‘Knew I had ta get out. Couldn’t leave One-Eye and Storm behind. I had to cover their asses.’

He shot a grin a Scott that was just pure Logan. Scott appeared highly irritated.

Alex was watching Logan, looking considerably suspicious.

‘Seriously? All those bastards at your mercy and you just walked away?’

Logan rolled his eyes.

‘So, I kicked Sabretooth. Once. Twice. Multiple times.’

Alex looked highly disappointed.

‘The bastard is a healer.’

‘Yeah, an’ I had to make damn sure he wasn’t going to get up as quickly as I did.’

Up went a questioning eyebrow.

‘I got him where the sun don’t shine. With steel-capped boots. Like ta see the oversized pussycat grow those back.’

By the time that sentence was out of Logan’s mouth, every male in the room was wincing, and every female was rolling her eyes. Logan looked faintly smug.

‘Anyway…’ apparently Tia thought it was time to get the ball rolling again. ‘We weren’t protected by those helmets things so we knew the Professor would have at least sensed Leyna. We got as far as the fuck away from Magneto as we could and sat down to wait. Cyclops and Storm picked us up just before dawn.’

‘And here we are. End of lesson. Any questions?’

Remy spoke up.

‘Remy got a question. De little girl. Remy ain’t doubting what you said, but to Remy, the chere not look like a girl dat been tortured.'

All eyes flickered to Leyna, who had abandoned the miniature horse, and was twirling a finger through Freddie’s fur, turning patches of it sparkling pink. Remy had a very good point, thought Rogue. She’d lived with Logan’s memories haunting her dreams for years, and she knew that a victim of horrible torture did not look like that.

‘We think it is something to do with her power. She doesn’t really seem to remember. We think perhaps that her mind has changed it from an event to some kind of horrible dream. I don’t think Leyna actually views what happened as reality. Her mind is protecting her sanity, and she can escape it during the day. At night it comes back to haunt her.’

Marcus’ explanation made sense, in Rogue’s opinion. It fit with what they had been told of Leyna’s power, and it fit with what she knew of the mind protecting itself. She knew that Logan couldn’t clearly remember what had happened to him, except when it revisited him in dreams. She felt another stab of sympathy.

‘So…what happens now? Magneto has found, and lost, this extraordinary weapon that could win him the war. He’s got to be furious. He’s going to want that weapon back. At any cost. Problem is we’ve got it.’

The Professor nodded.

‘An excellent summary, Jubilee. I must confess that I am not entirely sure where we go from here. It is certain that Magneto will want Leyna back, but I sense he would be reluctant to actually attack the mansion, despite the fact he must know that that is where she will be.’
Huh?

‘Why?’ Rogue had aimed her question at the Professor, but it was Logan that answered.

‘Magneto is a soldier. If he’s going ta fight a war, there are certain tactics he’ll follow. If he was certain of an easy win, then maybe he’d attack the mansion, but he ain’t gonna be so sure now, seein’ as we got Leyna and the Fearsome Threesome over there. If he wants ta fight, he goin’ ta try and pick us off, one by one, or, if he’s forced ta stage a battle, he’ll want to do it somewhere where we don’t have the advantage ‘a bein’ on home ground.’

The Professor looked pleasantly surprised.

‘Exactly.’

Jubilee looked baffled.

‘So…what exactly DO we do?’

The Professor smiled slightly.

‘We know he will come for Leyna eventually. And I think we are all agreed we cannot let that happen.’ There was a series of nods. ‘So we wait him out. Eventually he will have to attack the mansion if we leave him no other option to regain possession of his ‘weapon’. So we prepare. We sit tight. And we wait.’

#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

Rogue felt like her brain was about to explode. To think, that only an hour ago, she had been angry at Logan for her disturbed night of sleep, confused by the little episode in the middle of the night, and worried about her appearance. Now she had a whole host of other things to worry about.

Magneto had tortured a seven year old. Said seven year old girl had the power to destroy the world. The mansion was now a safe house for little girl and her motley gang of rescuers. Magneto wanted this girl back. Badly. And the Professor, their great and trusted leader, well, his plan was just to WAIT IT OUT.

Was he insane? Could he seriously not see that this was a really bad idea?

God, her head hurt. She needed some form of distraction from the entire horrible affair and she needed it now.
She was so distracted by her need for distraction that she jumped out of her skin when she opened the door to her room and discovered Logan standing, looking out of the window, his back to the room. She felt a strange sense of déjà vu.

‘Jesus, Logan! You scared the life out of me! Are you planning on making a habit of this?’

He smiled slightly, looking apologetic, but ever so slightly distracted. His hair was nicely mussed, as though he had been running his hands through it, although, she reminded herself sternly, now was hardly the time to be noticing this.

‘Sorry, kid. Didn’t mean to frighten you. Jus’ don’t feel like I can think too much at the moment. Needed a distraction.’

Having him in her room again, after the bizarre affair of the previous night was distraction enough, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

‘Um…yeah.’

Oh great, her sparkling conversation was back. He raised an eyebrow.

‘Logan, what do you think the Professor is doing? I mean, he HATES war and battles and all of that. Why is he suggesting we just wait here for the Brotherhood to attack? Shouldn’t he be trying to come up with some clever, tactical plan to diffuse the entire situation? I mean…he’s Professor Charles Xavier.’

Logan looked at her for a second, and then turned away to look out of the window.

‘I got no idea. Maybe he honestly thinks this is the best way. Maybe he ain’t got no other ideas. Or maybe, he can’t stand tha’ thought of what those fuckers did to that girl, and he wants blood.’

‘This is the PROFESSOR, Logan.’

‘Probably option 2 then.’

He groaned, running his fingers through his hair, and rubbing the back of his neck. She strangled the irritating voice inside her that was ordering her to offer him a back rub. This is Logan, little voice! Stop having inappropriate thoughts.

‘God I need a break.’

He looked amused.

‘It’s nine o’clock in the morning.’

‘See, and this is why nothing good can ever come from getting up early. All cockerels should be strangled. All alarm clocks should be smashed. In fact, they should just go the whole hog, and make mornings illegal.’

If Logan had looked amused before, he now looked like he was trying not to collapse laughing.

‘Yeah, kid, you were right. You need a break.’

‘Any ideas?’

He grinned. Slightly maliciously. Uh oh.

‘Danger Room.’

Wriggling into her black leather ‘X-Suit’, Rogue wondered what it really said about her and Logan that when they were stressed, the first thing that occurred to them to do was to head for the Danger Room and kick the shit out of whatever poor unsuspecting target they could find.

But then again, in approximately two minutes, she was going to have the privilege of seeing Logan in tight black leather, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to care. The sensible part of her brain was suggesting that, after the little fiasco down by pool, perhaps it would not be such a good thing for her to be in close proximity to a sweaty, and perfectly, ahem, outlined Logan. Sadly for her, the sensible part of her brain was about to be throttled by the part that really really wanted to perv over her best friend.

Ah sanity.

Reaching up, she pulled her hair into a ponytail, pretty and practical, or so she liked to think, and swung round to reach for the door. Sadly, she had somewhat miscalculated, and she cracked her shin on the low bench in the middle of the room. She howled in pain, kicked the bench, yelped as she stubbed her toe, and then proceeded slowly and extremely carefully to the door. There was really no need to start acquiring bruises before the sparring session begun.

~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@

Stripping off his t-shirt, Logan reached for the ridiculous black leather ‘X-Suit’ that was the team uniform. He hated the thing with a loathing that was probably unnatural when directed at an inanimate object. But God. It was creaky, tight, hot, and could put some really uncomfortable pressure on certain parts. A joke it might have been, but there were moments of pure insanity, when he actually considered Scooter’s suggestion of yellow spandex as preferable.

With some difficulty he zipped the ruddy thing up, and stretched off as best he could. He was just about ready when he heard a howl of anguish from the female locker room, followed by a resounding crash, and a yelp. He combined wincing and smirking in an expression that, when he looked in the mirror, made him appear as though he’d been bashed around the head with a baseball bat. Attractive, bub.

Seriously though, could the kid not make it anywhere without coming a cropper over the extreme clumsiness that appeared to be something of a genetic fault? If she was this accident-prone in everyday life, he was kinda worried about how she’d actually cope sparring against him. Despite feeling like she’d been hanging around him forever, he was acutely aware that sparring was something they had never done. He wasn’t sure why, but a rogue part of him was suggesting it was because if he saw her in tight black leather, the ‘kid’ image he was trying his utmost to keep in place might just explode into a rather nasty casualty. And really, what with the situation-that-could-only-end-in-Armageddon upstairs, he didn’t need to add the moral problem of lusting over a kid he’d promised to protect into the bargain.

Still, Chuck had said she had talent, and he supposed it was about time he actually saw what his best student was capable of.

~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

Rogue had just about finished stretching off when Logan entered the Danger Room. She barely shot him a glance at first, due to the fact that she was bent double at the waist finishing off a lunge. After a few seconds of silence, in which she could hear him shifting, he asked,

‘Ready?’

God. She swallowed hard, which was quite hard when her head was almost level with her knees, and tried to banish the inappropriate thoughts that flooded her head at the sound of his voice, which was deep, growling, and for some unknown reason, slightly hoarse.

Unbending, and staggering slightly as the blood left her head in a tidal wave, and nodded.

‘Yep.’

She could only thank the Gods that she had gotten the word out before she actually took a proper look at him. Because at that moment, all higher brain function ceased completely.

Oh. God. Of. All. Things. Holy.

He was…beautiful. She didn’t care that if he’d been a mind-reader, he would have been knocking her out for applying such a word to him, it was true. His hair was ruffled, no longer in the two bizarre points, and she felt a compelling urge to run her fingers through it, as he had so obviously been doing. His hazel eyes were slightly darker than usual, presumably with excitement at the violence to come. And the leather. Well. What to say about the leather?

It outlined every inch of him to perfection, showing the strong slope of his back and shoulders, the curves of his arm muscles, and the broadness of his chest. And as for…well…to put it politely, he might as well have been wearing nothing for the amount it left to the imagination.

Rogue swallowed heavily. God she was going to self-combust. She was actually going to melt into a small puddle on the floor. And man alive, would she die happy.

Logan was moving towards her now, with a predatory grace that made Rogue’s stomach twist with heat, and she wondered if he always looked like he was about to eat his sparring partners. Was it entirely abnormal that that idea was not entirely unappealing?

@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@

It was official. Logan needed to listen to the advice of the voices in his head more often. They had said this was a bad idea, kicking up a fuss barely seconds after he had heard his mouth suggesting it, and fucking hell had the bastards been right.

She looked…sensational. No other word for it. He had entered the Danger Room to be presented with a perfect view of Rogue’s ass, as she bent double and stretched. He had stared for several seconds, waiting for his brain to reform and start working, and fighting off his conscience which was declaring that thinking of Rogue in this way was really really wrong. Even if it did feel really really right.

Seconds later his brain kicked in, and he actually managed to form a sentence instead of standing there staring.

‘Ready?’

Well. It hadn’t been a sentence, and his voice had sounded disturbingly rough even to his ears. However, it had the desired effect, and she straightened up, similarly eloquent in her response. He’d seen her eyes widen as they took him in, and smelt a sudden spike in adrenaline and desire. Oh fucking wonderful. That was just what his self-control needed right now.

In an attempt to take his mind of how she smelt/looked/might taste, he assumed a fighting stance, and closed in.

He had almost reached her when she finally moved, and he had been starting to wonder whether she was just going to stand there frozen and try and stare him down. But she was moving now, circling him warily, easy grace present in her movements that was definitely not there in everyday life.

He tried a couple of simple jabs, which she easily knocked back, trying to get a feel of her style, of her strengths and weaknesses.

Fifteen minutes later, he was still trying. And wondering whether one of the things Scooter had taught her was how to be totally and utterly unpredictable or whether that was just natural instinct. She moved well, she blocked well, she parried well, she attacked well, in fact she did just about damn well everything well, and seemingly without even thinking about it. Chuck had been right when he had said she had talent, but he was thinking now might be the time to find out whether or not he had been right in assuming One-Eye had only taught his students how to play nice…

~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

There was definitely a gap in Scooter’s curriculum, thought Logan with satisfaction, as he pinned Marie to the mat for the third time in ten minutes. Clearly dodgy fighting techniques and moves which might, by some people, be considered highly unfair were not a part of Marie’s repertoire.

Wriggling underneath him, she thumped him on the shoulder in an unspoken demand to be let up. He grinned down at her.

‘Make me.’

~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

Make him? Make him?

Rogue was pissed off. Really, really pissed off. The session had started out well enough, although she was pretty much certain he had been taking it easy on her, and she had been able to watch with growing pleasure as he tested her defences and time and time again and she managed to repel his attacks, and even get in a few of her own.

Of course, the downside to this was that the more exercise they did, the hotter they were getting and right now Logan’s hair was very very mussed, and from her current position trapped underneath him, she could not only feel every single part of his body pressed up against hers, she also had an excellent view of a droplet of water (apparently Logan had take the liberty of splashing his face with water during their five minute break) which was slowly tracing a path down Logan’s neck, heading towards his collar. She had a compelling and very inappropriate desire to lick it off, and taste his skin.

God, she bet he tasted good.

But now, now the bastard was starting to play dirty, and she knew that he knew damn well she couldn’t shift him off her. And she really didn’t like being teased. Looking into his slightly feral eyes, Rogue grinned. Maybe he wasn’t the only one that could play dirty.

@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@

Logan shifted slightly as a grin that could only be described as pure evil spread across Rogue’s face. The sensible voice inside him suggested that perhaps teasing her in this position might have been a bad idea.

This was confirmed a moment later, when Rogue, after experimentally testing his hold, arched up against him in a way that could only be described as wanton.

Fucking hell.

He took a deep breath, and tried to control himself. He hadn’t really noticed before, but suddenly, with her hips as good as thrusting against his groin, he couldn’t help but register how her eyes were dark, her cheeks slightly flushed, and her tangled hair spread out around her shoulders in some kind of mahogany halo that really shouldn’t have looked as good as it did. She looked like hells angel. God.

He must have let more than a little of what he was feeling leak into his eyes, because when he wrenched his eyes away from the line of her neck, and his thoughts away from how she might taste and looked her in the eye, she was staring back at him with a look of pure lust, her pupils blown wide open. She shifted again, and he had to bite back a groan at the sensation, frantically trying to quell what would be a hugely inappropriate hard-on.

He let his eyes drift down to her lips, which was a mistake in itself, because almost instinctively, he found himself drifting closer, wanting to taste her, wanting her to surrender to him. Her skin didn’t even register in his lust-fogged brain, and the fact that she, who was always so careful and controlled, wasn’t pulling away either, should really have told him something. But no.

She shifted again underneath him, pulling a knee up slightly, and some distant part of his brain was pointing out that he probably shouldn’t be letting her do that, but God, he couldn’t bring himself stop her.

She smiled up at him, the expression full of teasing, desire and just a touch of evil, and God if he was able to resist that. He leaned down further, his lips mere centimetres from hers, leaned in until they were sharing the same air, and he could smell the desire wafting from her in waves, mingling with the scent of her hair.

She exhaled shakily, and it was his turn to smile evilly.

She allowed him the upper hand for a few minutes, before shifting slightly sideways and…and…kneeing him in the groin.

MotherFucking…ShitFuckingHell…JESUS THAT…the little…GOD THAT HURT.

Gasping for air like a dying fish, Logan just registered, through a blood red haze of pain that Marie had rolled him off her, and was now standing slightly to one side, apparently waiting for him to regain composure.

However, even with the addition of the healing factor, that had been incredibly fucking painful, and fuck, he was going to gut her if he ever managed to stand upright.

And what was worse, he now had the feeling that she was trying very hard not to laugh. Sucking in a whistling breath through clenched teeth, he attempted to fix her with something like his usual glare. It might have lost the full effect due to the fact that his eyes were watering, but it must have worked to some degree because the kid now looked distinctly nervous.

And fuck, was she right to be. He was the Wolverine, no-one ever dared to get him in the balls, and he was going to show her what happened to anyone stupid enough to try...he sucked in another wheezing breath and tried not to yelp with pain. Maybe he’d just wait a few minutes first…allow her to recover composure and all that…

~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

God. OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod. What had she done? She had kneed Logan in the balls. What was she thinking? Why, why, why had her brain decided that was a good idea? Had her brain in fact made any decisions at all here? Or had her knee gone rogue? Oh God.

Logan was gasping on the floor at her feet, alarmingly red in the face, and she had no idea whether to try and help him, or to wait for him to recover so that he could skewer her like a kebab, or to just obey her instincts and run like she was training for the Olympics.

Logan rolled sideways, and fixed her with his I’m-The-Wolverine-And-No-One-Messes-With-Me-Bitch glare, which, despite his watering eyes, was still highly effective.

Examining the faintly murderous glint in his hazel eyes, Rogue, choosing option three, turned tail and ran for the changing rooms.

@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

Slam!

Diving for the safety of the women’s locker room, Rogue slammed the door shut safely behind her, and leant back against it, exhaling and resisting the urge to melt to the floor in a puddle of emotions.

Logan was going to kill her later, no doubt about that, but now that she was safe (for Logan would never enter a room in which the word ‘tampon’ was uttered on a regular basis), she couldn’t help but feel a touch of ‘Wooohooooyeah!’ in amongst the humiliation/shame/embarrassment/terror.

Because seriously…she had taken on the Wolverine and she had won. Rogue grinned.

Just wait until she told Jubilee.

Later that evening, Rogue was secreted away in her room, with just a good book and a pint of ice-cream for company. Unfortunately, Jubilee had decided to spend the day shopping at the mall, and without the chance to gloat ever so slightly over her victory, feelings of apprehension and nerves had been building up inside Rogue until she had felt like she might explode.

Despite the continued ridiculous heat, she had spent the day locked up in her room, under the pretence of ‘doing homework’. Although in actual fact, she had spent several highly useful hours over-analysing every second of the combat session.

Not that it had gotten her anywhere. She couldn’t make head or tail of Logan’s strange behaviour. Seriously, what was wrong with that man? Half the time she was ‘kid’, half the time she was the ‘best friend’, but earlier, had she not kneed him where the sun don’t shine, she could have sworn he was going to kiss her. She wished he’d make up his mind exactly which she was going to be, because really, she had never been much of an actress, and all this role-swapping was really quite tiresome.

None of this had been helped by the fact that, when she eventually ventured out of her room to find food, at around six-ish, she had had the misfortune to bump into him in the kitchens. She had expected him to be furious/glaring/ready to gut her, but instead he had moved aside to let her pass, smiled politely, and said ‘goodnight’.

Two things were strange about this. Firstly, Logan did not do ‘gentlemanly’. Grumpy and hostile was his default setting, and she highly suspected his sense of social etiquette might have been surgically removed at birth.

And secondly…Logan was no more familiar with the concept of going to sleep at dusk than he was with the concept of manners. Neither ever occurred to him. So what was he doing politely bidding her goodnight at six in the evening?

In fact, really, did anyone go to bed that early once they had passed their seventh birthday? She didn’t think so. It was really most strange, and the oddity of the situation was doing wonders for the fast multiplying flock of butterflies in her stomach.

~~~~

Four hours later, Rogue decided she might as well give up on her book. Well, in actual fact she decided to call it a day when she awoke with a start to find her cheek glued to the page with drool, and, after a quick glance in the mirror, realised she had black ink imprinted over a large portion of the left side of her face. Just great.

She showered, for the second time that day, and allowed the hot water to wash away the remaining aches of the Danger Room session. Of course, she slipped on the floor getting out of the shower, but luckily missed cracking her head on the wash basin by about an inch.

Sadly, when she checked in the mirror, hot water and soap didn’t appear to be doing anything about the ink. Apparently that stuff had staying power. Kind of like Logan. Although, she really didn’t need to be thinking about his ‘staying power’ right now. Not when she was a third ‘best friend’, a third ‘kid’ and a third ‘that bitch who tried to castrate me’.

God, shuddup up brain.

Ambling back into her bedroom wrapped in a towel, with another one swirled around her hair; she pulled on her oldest, comfiest pyjamas, and collapsed onto the bed with a magazine.

Seconds later she was springing into the air with a shriek of fright as her door slammed wide open to reveal a dressing-gown clad Jubilee. Who shrieked at her in return, somewhat resembling a banshee that had fought an epic battle with a box of felt tips (her dressing gown, although not yellow, was formed of masses of multicoloured squiggles in various eye-aching shades and was probably illegal in 26 states), before slamming the door, and eyeing Rogue with the practiced gaze of the long-suffering best friend.

‘Jesus, Jubes! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?’

Rogue hissed, trying to keep her voice down out of respect for the multiple people who were probably asleep; although this might have been somewhat in vain, in the aftermath of the shrieking/slamming.

Jubilee didn’t even look put out.

‘You shrieked at me first. I was only responding. Anyway, I got your note…wassup?’

Rogue glared at her, remaining silent.

‘Come on, Roguey, I can tell summat’s wrong. You’ve got that pinched nose look think you do.’

Rogue heroically resisted the urge to look in the mirror to check.

‘No I DO NOT.’

Jubilee stuck her tongue out, bouncing down onto the bed, and curling up in the corner.

‘If you say so. Come on, spill! Piotr told me that you and Logan fought in the Danger Room, and he’s been in a foul mood all afternoon.’

‘What?! A foul mood, why?’ Rogue was vaguely aware she sounded slightly desperate, but her brain was repeating the same mantra on loop and there was no space left for voice control around the ‘OhGodDon’tLetHimBeReallyMadAtMeOhGodDon’tLetHimBeReallyMadAtMeOhGod….’

Jubilee however, was either completely oblivious to Rogue’s inner turmoil, or she was torturing her on purpose, simply shrugged and replied,

‘Well, you know what Wolvie can be like. He’s had a scowl black as Sabretooth’s heart on his face all afternoon, but whether that’s to do with you, or whether it’s because he’s been trailing fairy dust…’

It was quite a compliment to that statement that it actually manage to distract Rogue at all, but she blinked in shock, assaulted with pictures of a sparkling Logan, that were, quite frankly, rather bizarre.

‘What?!’ She sputtered again.

Jubilee grinned.

‘The little kid that came with Magneto’s ex-henchmen. Let’s just say she’s wielding her potential ability to destroy the world like a girl after my own heart. Appears she’s taken summat of a shine to Wolvie.’

‘Oh.’

There were so many potential issues and questions relating to that statement, but right now Rogue didn’t have the mental strength to summon any of them. Jubilee apparently saw no such qualms when it came to Logan having a seven year old stalker, because she merely resumed bouncing excitedly and impatiently demanding information.

‘Come on, Roguey, don’t change the subject chica! I want to know what happened with you and your wolf man!’

‘He’s not ‘my’ wolf man.’

‘TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!’

The sudden blast sent Rogue reeling back with a wince, and she glared at her best friend, before vehemently spitting,

‘I tried to castrate him.’

Wow. Someone call the record books. Jubilee appeared to have been stunned into silence. Rogue decided that she had better explain.

‘We were fighting, and it was fine, and then he started playing dirty, no, no, not playing dirty, fighting dirty, like dirty tricks and stuff, and he pinned me, and I said to let me up, and he said ‘make me’ and I got mad because he was being such a jackass, so I kind of wriggled against him a bit and he went all funny and I swear on the Professor’s bald head he was going to kiss me, but then I kneed him in the groin, and he was like groaning, and gasping, and I didn’t know what to do so I ran away, and I’ve been avoiding him since thennnnnnnnnnnnn.’

Rogue finished that sentence on a wailing note of despair. Jubilee appeared not to be reacting at first, and Rogue wondered whether she was in shock. Perhaps a slap might rouse her? Banish that thought.

Suddenly, Jubilee broke off from staring at her as though she had sprouted antennae, and leant forward slightly, wrinkling her nose, as she studied Rogue’s face.

‘Roguey? Why do you have the words Chapter 13 printed on the side of your nose?’

Rogue had honestly never wanted to kill her more.