Title: Questionably Wrong
Author: Evelyn Benton
Rating: Young Adult
Date: 04/25/03
Genre: Romance, Angst
Fandom: X-Men (Wolverine/Rogue)
Archive: Stellar Phenomena, WolverineAndRogue.com, and FanFiction.net; all others, please ask.
Disclaimer: Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel own X-Men; I own this non-profit fan fiction; no copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: Please note that this takes place between X-Men and X2: X-Men United.
Summary: If age is just a number, how can they write-off their other issues?




A little blonde-headed boy of about seven or eight years was running around the convenience store located somewhere in Canada, his arms stretched out like airplane wings as he made a roaring sound to illustrate his fantasy. The boy came to an abrupt stop when an obstacle ended up in his way. The boy’s head slowly and dramatically looked upward until he finally set his sight on the face that went with the gigantic body.

The man said nothing. He did not have to. The boy quietly took a step back, allowing the intimidating man to walk down the aisle toward the register.

Logan, the Wolverine, pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his blue jeans. He opened it to retrieve a twenty dollar bill when a crumpled paper fell onto the floor. After handing the store clerk the money, Logan reached down to pick up whatever it was that had fallen out of his wallet, but the little boy had been watching him like a hawk and beat him to it.

The boy, with the wadded up paper in his hand, took a step back and began to unfold it.

“Gimme that, boy,” Logan commanded the boy, but the boy was unimpressed by Logan’s harsh attitude.

The boy’s face lit up with a big smile. “She’s pretty. She your wife?” he asked innocently, his twinkling eyes returning to examine the crinkled photograph more closely.

Logan looked around for a brief moment to make sure the boy’s parents were out of sight. He assumed it was the boy’s mother outside pumping gas into the twenty-year old station wagon with the paint peeling off of it.

In a rapid motion, Logan jerked the picture out of the boy’s hand, folded it, and shoved it in his wallet where it belonged, out of sight and out of mind. “Beat it, you little snot,” Logan ordered, replacing a select word with “snot” as a last-minute form of self-censorship in front of the child.

After getting his change back from the clerk, Logan grabbed the six-pack of beer off the counter and began to walk away, but the boy was standing in front of the door, arms crossed.

“I said get lost,” Logan told the boy, his voice growing impatient.

“Or what? I’ll let you go if you tell me who she is.” The boy was cocky and determined, and Logan had to admire the annoying brat for his confidence. A cruel thought crossed Logan’s mind, and his lips and eyes hinted at a wicked smile.

After making sure the clerk was busy with the next customer and that the boy’s mother still had her back turned away, Logan shot out his claws on his free hand.

The shock made the boy’s arms drop from across his chest to his sides. His mouth opened wide for a moment, then closed. His eyes became moist and his lower lip started vibrating rapidly. Logan stepped around the child and headed for his bike, or rather the bike he had “borrowed” from Cyclops.

The child was still standing by the door, frozen in place.

“Mom!” the kid screamed at the top of his lungs.




In his motel room, Logan lay on his side. His left hand propped up his head, while his right hand held his beer as he mindlessly watched some old, black and white movie.

Logan’s idle gaze wandered from the television to his wallet, which sat atop the bedside table. He leaned across the bed, sat his beer down on the table, and picked up his wallet. He searched inside it only for a moment before finding what he was looking for.

He unfolded the picture and looked at the individual in it. How could that boy in the store really think Rogue was his wife and not his daughter or some other young relative? It was a complicated issue, and he did not want to think about that at the moment.

Logan lay there in the silence of his room, the sound of the television disappearing from his world. He remembered back to when the picture was taken shortly after he and Rogue had recovered from their experience on top of the Statue of Liberty. Some of the students at Xavier’s school had wanted to take pictures of Rogue’s new look, so somebody grabbed a camera.

Before leaving the school for what would be an indefinite length of time, Logan had come across the developed pictures long forgotten on a coffee table. No one was around, so he took one for himself to remember the “kid” he vowed to protect--as if he needed a picture to remember her.

The girl he had met only days before the picture was taken appeared older, more mature in the photograph thanks to her experience with Magneto. Still, her youthful good humor was clearly evident in her eyes as she posed with a mock-serious look in imitation of a model. The white stripes in her hair framed her face and made her look more mysterious, yet more vulnerable at the same time.

Then again, it would be best if he refrained from thinking about her appearance, or anything else about her.




He rolled over with a barely audible moan of exhaustion. A creaking noise across the room seemed to echo into his sensitive feral ears. It was a door opening. A faint, hazy light drifted into the room for a moment, followed by another creak and the sound of the door shutting.

After a few moments, the cool air from outside the door finally floated to where he lay. His sweaty body unconsciously rejoiced at the brief, pleasant feeling of the cool air meeting his skin.

“Logan,” she softly drawled, her southern accent more evident than usual.

His heart was pounding so loudly that he could hardly hear her. Her voice sounded like a forgotten memory resurfacing. Surely she was not actually there…

“Logan,” she repeated, this time with more of a sing-song tone.

He opened his eyes and rolled onto his back. Then she came into his line of vision.

A heavenly creature was the only way his mind was able to interpret her presence. The ivory portions of her hair that traced her face gave her skin a porcelain glow. She looked as if she would break if he looked at her for more than just a few moments. She was wearing a white, silky-looking gown that was held together by one golden button in the front. The deadly flesh of her arms was covered with long, white gloves.

“Logan,” she purred in a throaty, primal voice as she slid into bed beside him. With a teasing smile on her face, she put both index fingers into her mouth, clamped down on the material of her gloves, and pulled her hands out of her gloves. She held her bare palms in the air over him, as he looked on with a confused, even frightened look.

“Kid, what--what are you doing?” he stammered. He pushed himself into a halfway sitting position and leaned back against the headboard of the bed as far as he could. She took this as an invitation to crawl on top of him, straddling him.

She smiled at the physical evidence indicating that she had his full attention. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, seductively pulling the white bed sheet off of his bare chest and down to his waist. “Times have changed, things have changed,” she insisted. “I’m no longer a little kid you have to fear loving the way we both want you to. The way we both know you do…”

“I never--” he began, but his words were cut off by her removing her gown and letting it slid down her shoulders and onto the bed, from where she pushed it onto the floor. Her bare body was exposed to him, leaving his mouth speechless and his eyes going over her body in worship and desire.

She leaned down over him, allowing her hair to fall from behind her shoulders and tease his bare chest. His breathing was becoming shallower and shallower as the tension in the room thickened. His senses were heightened, and his primal, feral nature was fighting to take control over his rapidly-fading restraint.

Her swollen lips placed a kiss on his chest over his heart, and her lips stayed there. He could feel the life draining from him. In instinctive defense, his claws came out and went into her chest, through her heart.

Both remained like that, each draining the life out of the other.




Logan’s eyes flew open as he struggled to catch his breath. Dreaming about her, especially in that way, was wrong. “It’s wrong…so damn wrong,” he breathlessly said aloud, hoping he could convince himself of that in case the ending of the dream had not succeeded in making a point.

He had to convince himself his feelings were wrong, and that was all there was to it.




Back at Xavier’s school, Rogue lay in her bed. She squinted her closed eyes shut even tighter, but tears managed to escape anyway. She mentally told herself how wrong it was to dream about Logan, despite her feelings for him, but she could not help it. As long as their dream never became a reality, everyone would be fine.

And if she told herself enough that her feelings were wrong, she might eventually believe it.




END