The first time Logan came home, he was all about Jean.

Rogue told herself that was okay. Jean was staying with Scott, and she herself was only eighteen. There was plenty of time.

The second time Logan came home, she was with Remy. She'd decided she needed to get some experience under her belt before she tried to land the big fish, but she never doubted that Logan would someday be hers.

Unfortunately, it seemed Logan didn't feel the same way.

Now she stood, three years later, at his engagement party.

His engagement party.

The words were so absurd as to be meaningless, yet there it was.

She watched as Mariko, the Japanese woman he'd brought home with him the third time, the one to whom he was getting married in a few months, accepted congratulations on snaring the Wolverine.

Her hand tightened around the stem of her champagne glass, and she was afraid it was going to break. She was afraid she was going to break.

She cursed herself for never having taken the chance. I should have done something, she told herself, had told herself repeatedly in the weeks since the engagement had been announced. It wasn't like he brought Mariko to the mansion and they were immediately an item.

No, it had taken months for them to get together, months during which Rogue had stupidly believed he was falling in love with her. But she never said or did anything. She was simply herself, the way she'd always been with him, and he hadn't taken the hint.

He'd looked a little sad the day he told her -- asked her, really -- about taking Mariko out to dinner. Said the woman missed Japan, would she mind if he missed their usual movie night to take Mariko into Manhattan for real Japanese food.

She'd smiled, confident, loving the softer side of him he'd rarely shown to any but her, and told him not to stay out too late.

Three months later, the woman had moved into his room, and Rogue had requested her room be moved to the East Wing of the mansion. She couldn't take hearing them walk by every night, knowing she'd lost out.

And she wasn't even able to dislike the woman. She was sweet and kind -- a little more self-effacing than what Rogue thought Logan liked, but apparently that sweetness had attracted him.

I'm sweet like that, she thought bitterly, but I always thought he wanted someone more -- kick-ass. And so that's what she'd tried to be. Kick-ass, independent -- not clingy or girly, or needy.

She reached into her pocket and fingered his dog tags. All her hope, her faith in his promise, was gone. Oh, he'd kept it -- he still looked out for her -- but the deeper, underlying meaning that she'd ascribed to it had apparently been wrong. She'd always thought that, "I'll be back for these" meant, "I'll be back for you."

Apparently not.

She made her way through the crowd, surprised yet again by Logan's acquiescence to having such a large party in his honor, a tight smile on her face. She could do this. She'd faced death and survived. Surely a broken heart wouldn't kill her.

"Hey," he said, aware -- as always -- of her approach.

"Hey, yourself," she answered, completing their ritual greeting.

He put a hand on her elbow. "Let's get outta here for a minute," he said, steering her toward the glass doors that led out back. "Too damn many people wearing too goddamn much cologne."

They reached the verandah and stood silently outside in the warm night air for a few moments.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I just wanted--" she began at the same time. They stopped and laughed, and for the first time in their acquaintance, things were awkward between them.

"You first, kid," he said.

She smiled wistfully at the endearment, realizing that that was all she'd ever been to him, all she'd ever be -- a kid he'd helped out. She wondered if they'd ever really been friends, if she hadn't been wrong about that as well, mistaking his protectiveness for something more than just instinct.

She swallowed the tears that threatened and said, "I just wanted to say that you look very happy." Except that he didn't, really. She knew him, and there was something haunting his eyes as he looked at her. Or maybe that was just a shadow from the Chinese lanterns strung along the railing.

"Yeah," he replied, not really answering the question implicit in her words. "So, what's on your mind? You look a little lost."

It's time to bite the bullet, she thought, pulling the tags out of her pocket. "I wanted to give these back," she said, silently cursing the fact that her voice chose that moment to give out, making her words barely audible, even over the muted sounds of the party inside.

There it was again, that flash of sadness in his eyes as he took her hand. "You don't -- " he began, then he blinked and the look, if it had been there at all, was gone. "If that's what you want."

She nodded, no longer trusting herself to speak. He took the tags, equally silent, and put them around his neck. She squeezed his arm and then slipped away silently, away from the party, and out into the loneliness she felt would consume the rest of her life.

She never saw the tears glistening in his eyes as he watched her walk away.

End