Morning sun moved gradually across the back of my head, an after image behind closed eyes. The feel of the leaves below my fingertips, an all encompassing sensation. I was the conduit. Energy seeped out of the one plant, through me, and into the other. I could feel the slow pulse, packets of energy - time taken at the pace of a plant. This training was something akin to meditation. I had put myself through it for the last three years.

The result? The forging of my mutation into something controllable - not just the instinctual urge to survive at all costs. My body resisted the process continually, it twisted away from my control, seeking to drain the life force from both plants, the healthy and the ailing - it did not discriminate, life energy was life energy.

I ignored it and the warm patch on my shoulder. I was making good headway.

Slowly, my awareness began to react to something more than the suns radiant heat. I concentrated harder on the exercise. However, at that moment of realization, the specific focus began to fade.

I reached for that balanced feeling I had achieved a few fleeting seconds before, but it was futile.

My attention turned outward towards the new stimulus.

As soon as I focused on it I knew. My heart rate picked up Immediately, a tremor passing over my arms, which after barely touching the plants for so long, now ached. I withdrew, dropping them to my sides, blood rushing to fingertips.

The heat, this energy beating down on my back, was not the sun. This was life force. I could feel the hairs on my arms standing up. I released the breath that had trapped itself in my lungs.

“You energy was always the brightest thing around, I can feel its heat from here,” I breathed.

“So, you took up gardening?”

That familiar voice, I suppressed another tremor. These next few moments were so... crucial.

Placing hands on the table top, I levered myself upright. I knew I had grown since he dropped those dog tags into my open palm and not only in regard to the control of my dangerous mutation. Three years had changed me. I had been seventeen, almost eighteen, when he had been drawn to protect me, literally with his life. As I stood I turned to meet the hooded gaze, my eyes only slightly below his.

“Little Rogue,” he said quietly.

I said nothing allowing him to absorb my adult appearance, giving myself time to scrutinize him more closely, see what changes the three years had wrought in the man who had saved my life.

He was unchanged. He was as I remembered.

Not for Logan the mismatch between memory and actuality, the disappointment, the sense of mortality. Only the old black leather jacket with the red striped sleeves, seemed to have escaped the time warp.

The personality remained unchanged too. After sharing his life force, I had retained an imprint of him within me. There really could be no secrets between us.

My heart was trying to push its way between my ribs. Was its beat reciprocated, or was this just another stop on his nomadic journey?

When he had closed the main school doors on my perplexed expression, his only feelings toward me had been those of guardian, protector to a youngling.

He had offered his heart to Jean and she had turned him down, hurt him. Wolverine always wanted the unobtainable the challenge. He had considered himself alpha male in the den - he had wanted the alpha female. Human relations were not that simple. He knew she was Scott’s, but still he pushed. Pushed until she had said plainly. I had envied her the conquest and had tried hard not to let it color our friendship once he had left.

Control can be manifest in many ways.

It had been easy, well, easier with Logan gone. His life force so far distant, the only daily reminder that which resided in my own imagination.

But, now?

I took another tardy breath, reaching for the gloves that lay beside the two plants. I had taken to wearing a body hugger, protection for everyone else and a certain freedom for me. I felt rather than observed his eyes sweep my body. I looked up from the gloves to watch his expression. His gaze came to rest on the grey streak at my forehead. Our ordeal. I could not help raising a hand to touch it.

The movement released the trapped moment, he flowed closer - I almost backed into the table. Again, control. I lent back a small amount, but maintained eye contact. I was not a child, scared of adult emotions. Not now. I stood my ground.

“Did you find your answers?” I asked, keeping the waver from my voice.

Don’t blink, don’t look down, don’t show fear. I felt like I was gritting my teeth. The alpha female is not afraid - she is confident in her power. I was determined to win this situation.

He drew up a few inches in front of me, his life force scorching. To my senses he glowed.

“I missed you.” He took a breath, “Very much.”

I held his gaze. This was the moment, the crux upon which all else turned. Oh, these few moments were so important. I imagined looking back at this precise second with regret... and pushed that thought aside. I would make him notice me as a woman, not a child. The woman that had waited for his return.

“I can still feel you - inside my head. ” I paused. “I have missed you too.”

I can safely say that at that moment, I had never wanted to kiss someone so badly, but even with the hard won control, it would be risky. Logan’s glance slid to the plants at my side. Turning his head, his body staying in place, pinning me at the table - not that I wanted to move away. He motioned to the plants, a raise of his hand.

“On the way in here, Kurt said you’d been practicing. Got pretty good controlling your mutation.” He paused and his gaze swung back to mine. “Funny, that was the first thing he said to me after ‘Hello’.”

I met the gaze unflinching. “I have had an incentive to learn this control, one that has kept me going, pushing me. Because of that incentive, I have achieved much more than I ever thought was possible.”

His life force swelled, I could feel it reaching out to engulf me. Yet, at the same time there was trepidation.

“An incentive?” He looked quizzically, the protective humor was riding just behind his eyes, that humor that protected from hurt feelings.

He wondered if I had found another, if he was too late. I tilted my head slightly leaning forward just the smallest amount.

“This moment.”

My control was rigid my face the only exposed skin. I concentrated all my energies there. Whatever happened next, he would not suffer for it. I was determined. I had considered this potential scenario from a million different angles, and more times - over and over.

He leaned in. My mouth was a bare inch from his, our eyes still locked, looking for any signs that this was a misread.

“Do you trust me?” I said simply.

Moments frozen in time.

“Little Rogue,” he breathed again.

Our skin touched, my mutation rising up, a daemon roaring. My body strained to tap into the huge resources of energy that Logan carried. I clamped down. Hard.

I drew in a breath of air filled with the smell of him. His arms pulled me tightly to his body. As our lips met again, I channelled some of my energy towards him - my instincts trying to react against my mental clamps. This small stream was inconsequential compared to the huge resources he carried so nonchalantly. Yet, his body cried out for it, I could feel him absorbing this small offering into that part that was weary and fatigued - despite his regenerative powers, the part his soul inhabited.

His hands warmed two patches on my back, mouth warming the rest of me.

Slowly our flesh parted. Yet through the moisture molecules between us I maintained the contact.

“I feel...” He paused stroking a finger tip over the grey streak. “I feel you inside me, around me.”

I could sense the part I was feeding responding to the energy input.

“I only give back a small measure of what you gave to me.”

My eyes followed the motion of his fingers. He bent suddenly and kissed me again. My control held. Soft yet hungry, passionate but careful. All in one common pressure.

“I will never leave you again.” This last was directed quietly into my ear as his arms tightened again around me. I gripped his neck with my arms, my gloved hands running through his wolfish hair.

He drew his head away from my ear. “How long can you maintain your control?”

Ever the practical thinker.

“As long as I am conscious.”

“Does that include…”

“Sleep? No. I cannot control my body’s instinctual urge to draw from any contact while asleep, not yet.”

He smiled and cocked his head, “I can live with that.”

“I have lost count of the times I dreamed you would say that.”

I pulled off my glove and allowed my fingers to caressed his cheek. His eyes closed in an almost catlike manner, only to open as slits, he smiled again.

“Little Rogue.”

“Big enough for you Wolverine,” I responded, a crooked smile turning my lips up.

“It took me three years to realize that it wasn’t Jean I had fallen for.”

“I forgive you.”

With that, I kissed him back with the full passion I had stored and nurtured for all that time. My control was functioning in the background now as if sensing that he was not ‘other’, but truly a part of me, perhaps, due to my previous infusion of his energy. I did not spend too much time considering the reasons, I was just quietly grateful that it was so at this moment. I felt his body reacting. A low growl escaped him. He drew back momentarily,

“I did not come back just for this.”

He took a couple of deep breaths. I knew he was still having to come to terms with my new adulthood. I was not a child looking only for protection. Yet, even as that child, I had harbored a woman’s desire for him.

“I know,” I whispered in his ear.

His gaze dropped almost embarrassed. We had connected now at long last, yet he possessed a certain bashfulness. I knew that this was the interior exposed, completely unguarded, no barriers.

“How far... how far can this go?” He finally asked.

I smiled. “Honestly, I don’t know. The only guy I went to first base with was in a coma for two weeks.”

“You mean you’ve never...”

I shook my head. “There hasn’t been anyone I wanted to be with, since you walked out that door.” I glanced in the direction of the school entrance.

He hugged me to himself again.

“I’m so sorry for going.”

“Don’t be. You needed to find answers to your memory loss, and... and when you left, in your eyes, I was too young.” I paused.

His arms were still about me, he lent back slightly, getting a better look at me.

“I realized what I had done, when one day the memory of Jean’s face started to become fuzzy - but how you looked as I left, was as clear as if you were right there. I knew then, I had to come back, that I had made a mistake. I only hoped I wasn’t too late.”

“We have shared the parts of ourselves most people don’t even know they have. It was bound to have an effect at some point.”

I placed my hand over his strongly beating heart.

He smiled again and squeezed me, his eyes fixed on a point over my head.

“Well, I’m back now and I don’t intend to leave again - unless you’re with me.”

“Wherever you need to go, I’ll be with you.” I said without hesitation.

“What about your life here - I don’t settle easily.” He sighed, “Perhaps we should take things slowly?”

In response I gripped his head between my hands and pressed my lips hard to his, our teeth met slightly. I turned my head and our lips opened. His mouth tasted of male and cigars, our chemistry mingled. Again the almost subvocal growl. I withdrew a bare half inch.

“Logan, we have had three years to think. I for one, do not need any more thinking time. You are the one I have always wanted to be with, and, it seems you have decided the same. I’m not made of glass. Don’t worry.”

“How did little Rogue get so wise?”

“Long hours of practice and self denial,” I said, my smile growing as he scooped me into his arms, his warm breath on my neck.

“You have the same room?”

I nodded unable to speak around the beating of my heart. This was how I had imagined it. How many have their favorite day dream made reality? Not many.

My life was about to change so radically, I felt the change happening in me, around me.

I was feeling the way I did when I stood up too quickly, giddy, not quite attached to reality, this crossing from the mundane to the dreamlike. His presence enveloped me, I closed my eyes and buried my face in his neck, as he strode out of the conservatory.

A moment, or was that an week later? We arrived outside my door, he looked down into my eyes.

“This is what you want?”

I could feel the heat radiating off him. Is this what I want? Hell yes! He read my eyes, my scent, my tightened grip on his shoulders, the slow smile.

“Shoot me now.” I said.

His brow creased, then he smiled and nodded. I was alluding to the cartoon duck. Logan had on a few occasions, indulged in a little guilty cartoon watching with me, before he left - so long ago.

“Do you want to shoot him now or wait ‘til you get home?” Bugs asks Elmer.

“Shoot me now! Shoot me now! Daffy screams...

He opened the door and we crossed into another life.