You feel like a candle in a hurricane
Just like a picture with a broken frame
Alone and helpless
Like you've lost your fight
But you'll be alright, you'll be alright

~ Rascal Flatts, "Stand"

---

“I don’t think I can do this anymore, Rogue.”

Those words shattered the world as she knew it. The dreams she had spun around her future turned dry and brittle, fragile enough to blow away on the chill night wind. Marie shivered and rubbed her arms, hoping that he would read it as a reaction to the cold air instead of what he said.

“What do you mean, Bobby?” Marie asked softly. She wanted it spelled out, even though she knew it would tear her up inside. Without the finality of the words, she knew her stubborn heart would hope. The past had taught her that.

“I need to move on with my life, Rogue, and I don’t think I can do that while we’re still together. Our lives are too different now. Your mutation is gone, and you don’t want to be on the team anymore. You want to travel and see the world before you settle down to college somewhere out west. All I want is to stay here and finish my education, and I definitely want to stay on the team, at least while I’m in college. I guess I just think it’s time for us to break up,” Bobby said calmly. His cool blue eyes showed no hint of regret.

Marie turned away from him slowly to look out over the balcony. She had assumed when he drew her out there after dinner that he’d wanted one of the cozy, romantic nighttime talks they’d indulged in so often throughout the past year. Instead, he’d thrown his lack of caring for her in her face, demanded that she acknowledge what she’d only begun to suspect recently. She was still reeling from the pain of it. For many reasons, so much of her had focused on making them work that it was difficult for her to believe the end had arrived.

The few students braving the cool night strolled around the gardens or played the last game of basketball for the night, oblivious to the situation above. Marie envied them that, and yet she wanted to yell, scream, and make them feel her pain. Instead, knowing that she couldn’t afford to appear weak, she let her spine stiffen and swallowed the tears that threatened to fall. She wouldn’t give Bobby or any of her new enemies at the school the satisfaction of seeing her upset. She also wasn’t about to go down without a few words of her own, either.

“Rogue, please say something.” Now there was a hint of fear in Bobby’s voice. She wasn’t reacting the way he had expected her to, she supposed.

Good.

“Rogue, I really think it would be best for both of us,” Bobby tried again, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Marie,” she said quietly. Then louder, “My name is Marie.”

“Whatever. Look, listen to me,” he began, clearly about to start another list on why they were suddenly so wrong for each other.

Marie whirled around. She knocked Bobby off balance, literally and figuratively, and she planned to keep it that way. She pointed a finger at him and sneered.

“You egotistical, selfish bastard!” she shouted at him, backing him against the rough stone of the mansion’s outer walls with that one well-placed finger pressed into his chest and the fury in her eyes. “How dare you decide that you know ‘what’s best for me?’ You don’t even fucking know me! Just because you finally got into my pants, you think that gives you a window into my fucking mind so that you know what I need? I doubt it. All you think about is your wants, your needs. Well, fuck you, Bobby, because you’re about to get a wake-up call!”

“You used me, tried to play with my feelings, all to boost your own over-grown ego and eventually, if you could manage to keep it up long enough, add a notch to your bedpost. Let me tell you, though, lover-boy, that I’m no one’s notch. The only reason I ever needed you was as a front! If I was going out with you, no one would worry about ‘poor Rogue.’ The physical attraction was a plus, I guess, but let me tell you, little boy, I didn’t exactly see fireworks. Ever. So don’t go thinking I needed you for that. My battery-operated boyfriend could at least give me an orgasm, unlike you. No, I definitely don’t need a guy who could barely touch me during our first year together without wetting himself from fear, who was a disappointment in bed once we finally got there, and who can hardly wait to go back inside that goddamn house and start screwing a girl who doesn’t have half of what I’ve got in the brains or the body department. I don’t need you for any reason at all now, and let me tell you, I’m fucking relieved,” Marie finished loudly. Then she lowered her voice. “To tell you the truth, the biggest regret that I have about us, and I have quite a few, is that I wasn’t the one to break it off first,” she told him.

Bobby’s gaze, partly terrified and partly angry, followed her as she headed for the ornate French doors they’d left standing open. “So we’re through?” he spat out.

Marie glanced back at him, her back straight and her eyes darkly amused. “Sugar,” she said sweetly, using one of her mother’s favorite endearments as she deliberately let her accent thicken, “There was hardly ever enough of ‘us’ to be started. Don’t worry, though, we’re through.” She stepped through the doors and closed them behind her.

“That was some performance,” a voice behind her said.

Marie turned to face Logan, her eyebrows raised. “You approve?” she asked, having noted the amusement in his voice.

Logan reached over and gave her a quick hug around the shoulders as she started to walk by him. He leaned close and said, “I was just wondering what was taking so long, Marie.”

She smiled at him bitterly. “I guess I was just trying not to run,” Marie told him quietly.

Logan nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, sometimes you’ve gotta have a reason. Next time, make sure it’s a good one,” he said, and then he turned and walked down the hall towards Professor Xavier’s old office.

Marie’s smile faded as she saw two other spectators watching a few feet away. The two young women stared at her with wide eyes. One of them she decided had no problem with, but the other one was a different story. Her mouth set into a grim line, she approached her target, as a hunter would prey.

Eyes fastened to Kitty’s, she gazed at her for a moment before saying, “He’s all yours, Kit-Kat.” She knew the use of their old affectionate nickname would sting the other woman, who flinched beneath her cold eyes. “Maybe you’ll be willing to settle for the little he has to offer longer than I was.”

With that, Marie walked off to seek the solitude of her room. She noticed wryly that the doors of rooms along the outside of the building closed as she passed by. Sometimes you find the best entertainment at home, she thought. Finally, reaching her room, Marie slipped inside and closed the door behind her. She leaned against the reassuringly solid wood and closed her eyes. It had been so hard to stay strong when all she wanted to do was let herself break down. No one would be able to accuse her of being heartbroken now, not once this juicy bit of news made the rounds. She was glad that she had her own room since taking the cure, even if it made her feel more like an outcast than a resident. There weren’t many who wanted to share a room with the traitor. Despite knowing that most of the students resented her, Marie hadn’t wanted to be cut off from those who still felt like family to her.

The soft bed called to Marie from across the room, and she wearily walked over and let herself sink down onto it. Her body seemed to take that as a signal, automatically curling in the moment her cheek touched the smooth satin of the coverlet. The tears began flowing before she realized it was happening, but she wouldn’t have stopped them anyway. She sobbed quietly, finally letting herself react to the pain in her heart.

So much had gone wrong in the past few months, but Marie hadn’t cried for most of it. Only Professor Xavier’s death had pulled the tears out of her, slow, burning tears that choked her as she muffled them in a quiet corner of the mansion. Now it was as if all the tears she should have cried for Scott, for Jean, and for the horrors that occurred at Alcatraz were flooding out at once. It was cleansing, in a way, but it left her drained. Unable to find the energy even to crawl under the blankets, Marie fell into a deep sleep.

Marie’s eyes felt glued shut when she tried to open them the next morning. She rubbed them sleepily and wondered for a moment why she hadn’t taken off her dress before going to bed the night before. Just like that, the memories came rushing back to her, and she buried her head in her pillow.

Reasons. She remembered telling Logan that Bobby was a reason for her to stay at the mansion, an excuse to keep from running away again. She had begun to understand shortly after taking the cure that she had allowed her growing dependence on Bobby to wind its way through her mind like some kind of invasive weed. At the time, she hadn’t believed that she was getting the cure because of him, but after weeks of mostly her own company as her former friends shunned her, Marie had been forced to admit, at least to herself, that she really had taken the cure because of him. It was such a temptation to try to be normal, and it hurt so much to have your boyfriend flinch away from you. She wanted that all to disappear.

After Marie took the cure, it seemed as if she had made the right choice at first. Bobby was actually willing to touch her. In fact, he was the only one willing to be near her for the most part, with the sole exception of Logan, who was so busy trying to help Ororo keep the school in one piece after the past months of disasters that he had little time for Marie. She understood, but that had made her cling to Bobby even more, all the while realizing that their relationship couldn’t continue much longer. The only time he spent with her seemed to have the singular goal of getting into her pants, which might have been flattering to a less intelligent woman, but to her it was just plain insulting whenever she thought about it. It hadn’t helped that when she and Bobby finally did have sex, it was incredibly disappointing on her part, and the act didn’t get better with repitition. She hadn’t been lying to him when they broke up the previous night. There definitely never were any fireworks.

The only time Marie had felt fireworks from someone’s touch had been the few times Logan’s skin had met hers, the times when he was able to get away from his unexpected responsibilities for a while. Somehow, he managed to find wherever Marie had gone to sulk about her friends’ lack of understanding over the cure each time. They would sit for a while, staring at the sunset or watching ducks lazily swimming in the lake, and he would take her bare hand in his. Even before the cure, Logan had never been afraid to do that the few times he had been back at the mansion. Always before it had been a comfort, two friends seeking companionship and trying to find anchors to a world that felt like it was smothering them sometimes.

Marie had underestimated what it would feel like to have Logan’s bare skin pressed against hers, though. Once she was able to feel the warm, smooth skin of his hand, something happened that caused little sparks to run up her arm and tingle all the way to her toes. She tried to ignore it for the sake of the one true friend she had left, and he never gave any indication that he felt anything odd about her touch. So they would sit there, hand in hand, each lost in thoughts.

Weighed down with the realization that one of her few remaining ties to mansion was severed while the other one was as eager to escape as she was, Marie burrowed under her blanket and tried very hard not to think about what might come next. It was a testament to how much the mutants tried to ignore her now that no one noticed her lack of attendance at meals despite the drama she had recently been part of. She managed to hide in her room for two days, appetite completely gone, before someone pounded on her door.

“Marie, open up. I know you’re in there.” His voice was commanding, and Marie was too tired from the effort of not thinking to deny him. She crawled out of bed, stood up on shaky legs and barely made it across her room to the door.

When she opened the door, Marie’s tired, sore eyes beheld the sight of Logan loaded down with a very full tray which included a huge sandwich, a glass of milk, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. He glared at her until she moved out of the doorway, and then he pushed his way into the room, kicked the door shut, and carefully set the tray on her mostly-clean desk.

“You haven’t been eating, Marie. The first day I thought it was my imagination, but then I realized I couldn’t even tell you had been around anymore. Eat,” he ordered, pointing at the tray.

Marie stared at him dumbly for a few moments before she gave in with a sigh and sat down in the desk chair. She picked the sandwich and took a tentative bite from one corner. As Logan watched, she devoured the thing with much more enthusiasm than she thought she could muster.

Logan made no attempt to talk to Marie while she ate. There were no words of false sympathy. She wouldn’t have believed him anyway. He had never bothered to hide the contempt he felt for Bobby from her. She knew he thought the younger man was an idiot, and just then she wasn’t going to argue with that assessment.

Finally, after she gulped down the glass of milk and had opened the carton of Chocolate Fudge Brownie, he asked, “What are you going to do?”

It was such a simple question, but there were so many possible ways to interpret it. What was she going to do about Bobby? What was she going to do about the others at the mansion? What was she going to do for the next few days? What was she going to do with the rest of her life?

Marie chose to answer the last one. “I think that I need to leave,” she told him softly. She didn’t dare look him in the eye.

“Why?”

Marie hadn’t expected him to be so calm, but when she looked up at him in surprise he was frowning. Disapproval was definitely more along the lines of what she expected.

“I don’t know who I am anymore, Logan. I’m not sure I ever did. Just when I was starting to grow up and figure myself out, I got stuck with enforced multiple personality disorder thanks to my skin, and after I got here I guess I kept changing so that they would want to keep me here, wouldn’t try to kick me out. It was easier to just get along with everyone, not make any ways. But…I don’t think I’m the kind of person who’s good at doing that for long, only I’m really not sure about that either. I need to find somewhere to discover me,” she finished lamely. The rush of words had felt like a relief at first, as if a damn had burst inside of her, but at the end she wondered if sounded stupid and silly to him.

Logan leaned against her desk and crossed his arms. “So you’re not doing this because of some boy?” he asked. She almost missed the small smile that curled at the corners of his mouth.

Shaking her head, Marie did her best to return the smile. “No…well, the dumb boy did make me rethink a lot of things, so I guess in a way, yeah, I’m doing this because of a boy,” she told him honestly. When his eyes darkened, she waved the spoon she was about to dip into the ice cream. “Not like that, though. I really do need to figure out who I am now, and breaking up with IcePrick just made me realize that,” she added hastily, taking a big chunk of ice cream with one swift scoop of the spoon and shoving it into her mouth so that she couldn’t blurt out anything more.

Logan’s eyes slowly lightened, and he nodded. “I’ve said it before, Marie. I’m not your father. I don’t have the right to tell you that you can’t go, but I am your friend. As you friend, I wanted to make sure that you’re doing what’s best for you. I don’t forget my promises,” he said. He leaned down and pressed his lips to the top of her head. When he straightened back up, that smile reappeared again. “I think this time you might have actually thought it through, too. So I’m behind you. Remember that,” Logan told her.

As Marie stared after him, spoon half-descended toward the ice cream again, Logan strode over to her door, opened it, and left without a backward glance. She sat there long enough for the carton to get squishy from melted ice cream before she chucked it into the trash can. Marie stood up and went to her closet, pulled out a familiar green duffel bag and began packing.

Marie wondered if leaving this way was cowardly. In her heart, she knew that it probably was, but recently she’d stopped caring. Her packed bags at her feet, she looked around at the empty mansion. It was a Saturday afternoon in early September, and hardly any of the students or faculty at Xavier’s School for the Gifted wanted to stay inside while the sun still shone warmly down on a world already preparing for winter. They would all be cooped up soon enough as it was.

Footsteps echoed on the marble floor of the entryway. Marie turned to look at the only member of the staff who had remained at the mansion that day. Serious dark eyes regarded her khaki Capri pants and green short-sleeved top. Marie felt the critical gaze stop at the bare skin of her arms and neck, and she raised her chin proudly.

“I’m going now,” Marie stated calmly, staring into Ororo’s eyes.

The older woman nodded gravely. “As I told you yesterday, Professor Xavier’s fund for orphaned and abandoned mutants will provide you with a thousand dollars a month until your nineteenth birthday, even though you no longer have your mutation. That should help you get settled wherever you’re going. He would have wanted it that way,” Ororo said stiffly.

Marie grinned wryly. “Go on, Rogue, and get your newly-human butt out of here, huh, Ms. Munroe?” she asked sarcastically. She held up a hand when Ororo opened her mouth. “Don’t worry about it, okay? I know you think that I made a big mistake, and that you don’t want me here anymore. Well, it was my mistake to make, but I don’t want to be here anymore, either, so at least we can agree on something.”

Ororo closed her mouth. Her eyes narrowed, but before she could think of a reply, the sound of a honking horn echoed through the open front door. Rogue picked up her backpack in one hand and her suitcase in the other. She was nearly out the door when she heard Ororo’s voice.

“Good luck, Rogue.”

“Thanks, but my name is Marie.” She didn’t turn back to see Ororo’s reaction to finally learning her given name; she doubted the other woman cared.

Marie practically ran to the bright yellow sedan waiting for her in the cobblestone driveway. She opened the backdoor with her free hand, slung first her backpack and then her suitcase inside, and then slid in herself. Smiling at the gray-haired man behind the wheel, she said, “The Greyhound station, please.”