Rogue walked into the woods, looking for Logan. She had seen him from her window an hour before, crossing the lawn and disappearing into the trees. She thought a walk in the woods would be a nice way to spend this crisp fall morning, and if she could find Logan and walk with him for a while that would be an added bonus.

She always liked these woods, and she was constantly surprised by how alone one could be in them. She would have expected them to be full of kids from Xavier’s whenever classes were out, but she very rarely ran into another student there. “Kids these days”, she thought and laughed at herself. But it was true that mutant children, like their “normal” counterparts, did not spend much time enjoying the great outdoors anymore. When they weren’t studying, they were playing video games, watching t.v., surfing the ‘Net, playing sports on the manicured lawns, or off to the malls. Rogue liked doing those things part of the time, but she needed to spend a little time with nature each day or she got stir-crazy.

Aimlessly, she meandered through the trees, watching above her head for birds and around her feet for any interesting creepy-crawlies. And keeping an eye out for Logan’s broad shoulders and crazy hair, as well.

About twenty minutes into her walk, she started hearing sounds in the distance – sounds of branches breaking and low thuds of things hitting the ground. She stopped, listened, wondered if she should be scared. She walked quietly a little further, curious. The sound of more branches breaking made her stop and consider heading back for the school grounds.

But then she thought maybe it was Logan, and maybe he was in trouble. She had to go check it out. Determining the general direction of the struggle (if that’s what it was), she turned a bit to her left and slipped as quietly as she could through the trees.

---

“Fuck,” Logan growled to himself. Then “FUCK!” he roared to the whole woods. He walked faster, he started to pant. His head scanned from side to side as though looking for something he had lost, but he could not have told you what. He stopped, half turned, tilted his head to look straight up into the trees above him.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what that bastard Stryker had said. That he was just an animal, and that’s all he had ever been. So many times that’s exactly what Logan felt like. Angry and confused and frantic, like an animal trapped in a situation it does not understand by beings it does not trust.

He had chosen to stick with Charles Xavier’s group – to give himself a purpose and a place, to make himself less an animal perhaps. But what was he really doing here, what was he doing anywhere - ~Who am I, where do I come from, what have I done, and what are these FUCKING things doing in my HANDS?!?~ Even after all the years of living with the metal in his bones, the rage still hit him sometimes as hard as it ever had. Looking into Stryker’s face, hearing his voice, hearing his *laugh* -that had made it worse than ever.

Logan started to shake with frustration. He was just so damned STUCK in his life. Sometimes stuck in his emptiness. He wanted… what the fuck did he want? Things he could never have – his memories, another chance, hands that weren’t weapons. Oh, but he also wanted to use what he had, didn’t he? – to rage, to kill, to shred everything around him. His shaking intensified, the tips of his claws broke the skin on his knuckles and he grimaced.

Then he let go. With a great moan he let his claws shoot out to their full extension. His shaking ceased the instant he stopped holding his body back, and he shot into action. He spun, shooting out his right arm, and a six-inch tree trunk was cut like butter. As the tree fell, he threw out his left hand and impaled the trunk with his claws, then tossed the tree aside like a toy.

He roared, spittle flew from his mouth, and three more trees met similar ends. Not getting enough resistance from the trees, he turned his fury on a large boulder. Using it like a punching bag, he chipped small pieces off with each swing of his fists, sending sparks flying.

That was not enough to tire him out. He turned on himself, slashing his thigh open with three razor-sharp talons, raking the claws of both hands down his chest and ribcage, then falling to the ground and digging at it as though he could find his answers at the core of the earth. His blood flowed freely down the front of his tattered shirt and pantleg.

His desperate movements began to slow. He staggered to his feet.

---

Rogue saw him getting up from the ground. She broke into a run toward him. “Logan!” she cried as she drew near.

Before she could take another breath she was slammed back against a large tree. One of Logan’s hands held her by the throat and the other was drawn back ready to deliver a deadly blow, claws fully extended. His eyes were feral and lacking in comprehension, his nostrils flared, and the muscles of his jaw spasmed. He increased the pressure on Rogue’s throat, and her vision went blurry. With a sharp CRACK, Logan’s fist drove into the tree above her head, sending bark splintering down into Rogue’s hair and face and shaking the very ground on which she stood.

With his claws still embedded in the tree, the nearest a mere half-inch from Rogue’s scalp, he gathered a fistful of her hair and held it tightly. Slowly, he released the pressure of his other hand on her throat. She blinked at him and her bottom lip trembled. She listened to his breath, which was surging in and out of his lungs in huge blowing gusts as his shoulders rose and fell. The smell of his blood nauseated her. She could feel the warm sticky dampness of her own blood trickling down the back of her head.

Rogue looked into Logan’s eyes. Holding her gaze, he brought his hand up from her throat. He raised the tip of one claw before her face. His breathing slowed. His eyes narrowed. Very slowly, he lay the tip of the claw on the skin of Rogue’s cheek. She held her breath and closed her eyes. With excrutiating gentleness, Logan drew the claw slowly across her cheek to her upper lip. It lingered there. Rogue opened her eyes.

Suddenly, Logan snapped his hand back, sheathing his claw in the same motion. A small red line appeared on Rogue’s lip, and a drop of blood ran down into her mouth.

Logan tilted his head forward, bringing it next to Rogue’s face – so close she could feel the heat that radiated from his skin. He rested his forehead on the tree’s bark, letting his cheek hover an inch from Rogue’s. His bloody, torn shirt moved against the front of her jacket as he breathed. Closing his eyes, he simply stood like that for over a minute.

Rogue was afraid to move. The tip of her tongue slid out to touch the cut on her lip. Over Logan’s shoulder, she watched the breeze fluttering leaves on a tree branch. ~Everything’s okay. Everything’s okay. Everything’s okay.~

When Logan’s eyes opened and he lifted his head, he looked so tired. His claws slid out of the tree trunk and his arm fell to his side. His eyes met Rogue’s for a fraction of a second before sinking to the ground. Without a word, he turned from her and walked away, his shoulders slumped like a broken man. He walked through the path of his destruction, and about fifteen feet away he sat down on the ground, rested his forearms on his knees, and hung his head.

Rogue touched the back of her head and winced. She looked at her hand and wiped the blood on her pantleg. Timidly she crossed the distance to where Logan sat. He did not look up as she approached him. She reached out her hand, let it hover near the back of his neck. She curled up her fingers, extended just the pinky, and every so slowly she drew it across the flesh on Logan’s neck -drawing a line left to right, feeling the pull as her skin began to draw his soul into hers. He did not move, but she saw his hands twitch.

The split in the back of her head healed. The line on her lip disappeared. There was no rage left to draw from him. What she took from him in those few seconds of contact was sadness, pain, humiliation, regret… and a great tiredness. Rogue had never felt so exhausted and hopeless in her life. She withdrew her hand, took two steps toward the mansion, and sank to the earth in tears.