He was in the city when he first heard her voice.

Moseying along in the August sunlight to the liquor store he knew carried his favourite black malt rye. It was grimy in New York and the heat was rising visibly from the sidewalk. From the sound of the altercation, a few streets over tempers were rising too.

Turning the corner he saw the source of the commotion. Two groups, standing off against one another, outside what looked like the Russian Embassy. Some kind of protest, it looked like, Logan thought to himself, but as he walked on the signs caught his eye, "No Muties in the Mother Country", "huh, well doesn't that just beat it all", he thought.

There'd been something on the news the night before about Russia declaring itself unfriendly to mutants and debates on the political ramifications, punishments for mutants found inside the borders and questions about asylum, had all been political hot potatoes. Logan stayed out of things, for the most part. Just because he was a mutant, "didn't mean he was brother to every last one of them", he huffed to himself.

He strode on, his smooth gait covering the distance easily. It was then that the breeze turned, and he caught a scent and a voice. Or more accurately they caught him. In all the years Logan could remember he'd never had this sensation before. The scent called to his blood, every sense snapped onto full alert.

In the tiny part of his mind still belonging to him he tried to reflect what was causing this reaction. To rationalise that he was in New York City, and damn thirsty in the heat, that he had a bottle of rye with his name on it and liquor don't drink itself. A voice carried on the air and all thought was lost. Logan crossed the road unheeding of the cabs and buses that hooted and swerved around him.

The scent, was clean with the clarity of youth and under-notes of sorrow and pain, there was anger swirling too but Logan knew at that moment, the scent was his. He quickened his pace, was this someone from his un-remembered past? Her voice, was sweet like wild strawberries, soft and rolling with the cadences of the deep south and gentle but with a determined stand under it. Next to the protesters now, he tracked and saw her.

She was just a girl, struggling along next to the metal barricades the police had put up.  To separate the anti-mutant and pro-mutant protestors. The girl walked on the pro-mutant side, Logan noted.

She was dragging a duffle bag that was far, far and away too big for her. She couldn't even lift it and just dragged it along the ground behind her. Logan started towards her, didn't any of these idiots know she was struggling, they were so damn focused on getting there point across no one had even helped her.

Logan stepped up behind her and grabbed the bag off the ground and up onto his shoulder. The girl started and spun around, pushing her long dark hair out of her face as she looked up at him. Her scent was so much warmer up close, he noticed, and her dark hair was cut by two shocking white streaks.

A gloved hand reached out challengingly towards the bag strap.

"That's mine" she stated, with steel behind her tone and a look which would have made a lesser man drop the bag with a "very sorry ma'am" and run away tail between legs.

Logan just smiled at the sound of her voice, the evidence of the wild within her that his own Wolverine was roused by.

"I know it's yours, I'm not takin' it or nuthin', just saw you was havin' some trouble draggin' it and wanted to give you a hand".

"Ok, well, thank you" she replied hesitatingly. Looking him up and down suspiciously. She must think I'm an anti-mutant freak, Logan realised belatedly. Look at me, running over to her, grabbing her bag, all dressed in flannel and denim and unshaved, looking like I just walked offa some ice field or something.

"I'm not, uh, y'know, I'm not Russian" he reassured her quickly and met quizzical brows. "I'm Canadian, my name's Logan. And, uh, I'm a mutie too".

A smile split her pink lips and Logan felt his world shift around him. He never did this, he didn't get involved in the mutant right struggles, he didn't go near the police or the government and her certainly didn't spill his secrets to every pretty face he came across.

No matter if that face was like an angel, with a scent that called to every part of him to stay close. The girl smiled up at him shyly,

"I'm sorry", she offered, "Ah didn't meant to be rude, but we get some people. And we're all out today, we're from the School, you see. Well, two of our students are Russian, Pete and  Illyana, his little sister. They can't go home now you see with the new laws and it's just..."

She tailed off, tears welling and Logan knew that it was more than her friends that brought her to this place.

She seemed unsure in the city and kept distance between herself and her surroundings. It must be something big to drag her to this place, Logan reflected. Maybe she can't go home either. He felt a matching ache inside himself at the thought of having a home.

He straightened, shaking his head, he as Wolverine, a badass, he didn't care about no home and no memories, about clean sweet scents and lost girls with gloves who made his heart hurt when he hadn't felt it in the last 15 years he could recall and had roamed in. Her voice interrupted his preoccupation.

"I'm Rogue", she offered, with another smile.

And Logan realised these were the first smiles he could remember. She was accepting him as he stood there, she didn't smell scared. He couldn't quite comprehend this, everyone smelt scared, everyone wanted something from him or to do something to him.

The world had not been good to him and often isn't for penniless mutants who wake up in the snow with no home. He knew this, he knew it and it made this girls open acceptance of him, of his words, his motive, his sharing all the more extraordinary.

A shout went up from the other side of the barricade and looking up at Rogue he noticed with regret the smile was gone and replaced with a businesslike demeanour.

"So, are you here to help us with the demo?" she asked.

"I, uh, well" Logan prevaricated.

"It's no problem, you can help me hold the banner" Rogue suggested.

Although suggested, suggests that this was an option, her tone, however, spoke of instruction and Logan knew in that moment that he had found a special soft, scented, steel standing, miracle of a woman.

He knew he shouldn't stay, he knew that a place with mutant attention, TV cameras, police and problems was the last place he needed to be.

But he was next to Rogue's warmth, to her scent and he could not go.