Now we've traveled far
But are we any nearer
There's a feelin' we're reaching for
In the fields where it all began

Listen, do you hear
I thought I heard a promise
But that empty feeling grows
And I'm scared that I will forget
-- Texas "Like Lovers (Holding On)"

---

Twenty was too old to know nothing about sex.

Rogue understood this as she understood many things--by recognizing its existence while continuing to hold it at arm's length. There were a lot of things she understood without thinking about them--the fall of a woman's hair against her neck and the way the train systems worked in northern Germany and how long someone could stay outside in the cold before frostbite started creeping up upon them. They were the kind of things that she didn't realize she knew until she thought about them--the kind of things that were always there, hiding, waiting.

When she reached out the thoughts came, but sometimes she didn't know that she needed to reach out.

Gambit caused her to reach out. The way he smiled did strange things to her stomach, and the way he brushed against her sometimes made her reach out for memories of what should come next.

For the first time in three years, everyone was silent.

---

Asking for advice was never something she'd had to do. Forced confinement to her head seemed a boring enough fate that the three who shared it never hesitated to intrude on her life, shoving forward at times she wished they'd simply leave her alone.

No one shoved forward now, which was why she decided to go and look for them.

--

He was twenty seven, he told her. Twenty seven, and quite hateful of the world as a whole. But then there was Charles, always Charles--and with Charles hate was something that could be forgotten for a while.

Rogue knew how that could be. Charles--and yes, she called him that in the dark recesses of her shared mind--could make you forget how much you hated.

There was Charles, he told her, but Charles never was enough. Not enough to stop all of the hate--because the one thing that could have stopped the hate was love.

He loved you. Rogue knew that, as well. Had seen it in the Professor's eyes every time he was forced to confront the actions of the man he had cared for.

Laughter, then. Always hollow laughter. Not enough love. Not enough love and not in the right places.

Images slipped away too fast, because they were the memories of fantasies and fantasies were never very strong when left unfulfilled for so many years on end. She saw a young Charles Xavier and she saw a young man who loved him--in all the wrong ways.

I'm sorry. She whispered it as Erik started to cry.

--

He was seventeen, he told her. Just seventeen--and maybe not a very popular seventeen as she well knew. That date with her had been the best thing that had happened to him, and he'd been so happy that Marie--quiet, sweet, gentle Marie--had liked him. Not anyone else--him.

But before her?

There hadn't been many girls, he told her. There hadn't been many girls and now there wouldn't be many more. He was tainted now. Tainted.

Tainted.

I'm sorry. She whispered it as David started to cry.

--

He didn't know how old he was, he told her. He didn't know and he didn't care--and it really didn't matter anyway because fifteen years as a fully grown man was enough time to learn anything you really needed to know to begin with.

So you know what it's like.

It was none of her business, he told her. None of her business what he knew and how he knew it, and if she was so damn interested she could go out and get a god damned book.

Help me. She whispered it as Logan disappeared.

---

It was the first time anyone had closed a door on her, and at first it surprised her that doors could be closed. In three years time she'd never learned how to stop thoughts flowing in, and the knowledge that someone who wasn't even supposed to be sentient could control her mind better than she could frightened her.

He was good at evasion. She tried to distract him and he chuckled and told her to try harder. She tried to simply take what she wanted, but he shook his head and told her that she'd have to do better than that.

She begged, and he laughed.

It took Gambit kissing her neck through the softly woven mesh of her scarf before she realized the truth.

Logan simply didn't know.

Flirting with Gambit was something that was new and exciting and frightening, because for the first time in three years it was something she did without any input from her constant companions. None of them seemed to know the first thing about flirting and touching and the kind of things that happened when the doors were closed and the thin fabric of her shirt let her feel everything that her charming thief wanted her to.

She could feel David and Erik, watching with a kind of sick fascination as she learned what touch and taste and smell and sight could do to a body, as she learned the ways that a twisting in her stomach could be so good. They watched because they didn't seem to know anything about it, and for once she felt like she was teaching them.

Which was foolish because they'd stopped growing the minute they'd been trapped inside her head, where as she grew every minute of every day--more when a pair of bright eyes stared so intensely into her own and taught her things that didn't seem possible. But pressed up against the wall, the hands on her body so gentle, it was impossible to concentrate on the feelings inside her head, so she could almost believe they watched to learn.

Logan was the one who worried her, because Logan hadn't said a word since the first time Remy had laid a hand on her.

But he was the one who watched the closest.

---

She tried to have it out with him three times, ignoring the absurdity of talking to someone who, for all intents and purposes didn't exist. Logan--the real living breathing Logan--had wandered in and out of her life at infrequent intervals, never seeming to care much one way or another if this visit was his last. He tried to seem like he did, but the older she got the easier it was to read him. And Logan simply didn't want to care.

And that was fine with her. Caring, as she had learned early on in life and re-learned repeatedly from Erik--caring was for those who didn't mind living in perpetual pain.

Logan was like Erik. He just didn't think it was worth the pain.

And having discovered that, Rogue knew where to look to find the answer to the question that had been bothering her since the beginning of her relationship with Remy.

She had always assumed Logan to be a man grounded in instinct--a man whose every move was dictated by the main animal drives--for survival and reproduction. Nothing she had absorbed from him had ever lead her to believe otherwise.

It had really never occurred to anyone that his need for the former would overrun every urge for the later.

She dug the memory up early in her twenty-first year, and that was when she discovered Logan's secret.

He hadn't had sex in fifteen years.

---

It was a sick obsession, once she turned it over in her mind. Logan, the animal man who everyone knew couldn't go more than a week without sliding himself between some woman's thighs--

Celibate.

The words didn't fit right in her brain, and she spent many a night scrambling desperately through his memories, trying to grasp the shred that had eluded her--the piece that was missing.

'I don't understand,' she said softly. 'I don't understand.'

He growled like he always did when she brought the topic up. 'I said it was none of your business,' he told her. 'I said you should just stay the hell out of it.'

'But you could have had anyone.' And for Rogue, who could hardly have anyone at all, that was something impossible to comprehend. Remy was the only one who had ever seemed to want her, deadly skin and all.

'It's not about who you can have,' he told her--and she could hear him disapproving. 'It's about who you trust. It's about staying alive.'

And she wanted to tell him that it was supposed to be about love--but he had already laughed at her enough. She couldn't take any more today.

'That's right kid,' he told her. Keep your mouth shut about things you don't understand.'

---

Gambit was perfect. He chased when she ran and he knew what fun was. Forever wasn't a word he seemed to know, and it wasn't a word she ever wanted to. Forever was big and important and well enough if you didn't make your living fighting against people who wanted you dead, but for Rogue--for Gambit--

Right now was all they ever needed to say.

Rogue still flashed her impossible smile and thrived on being the almost untouchable vixen. Remy still flirted outrageously with every woman who crossed his path. Every once in a while they talked about how it might be better for them if they were apart--

"Not just yet," she'd whisper with that secret little smile that said she trusted him.

And the smile that curled his lips told her he understood as well as she did, and the hands that touched her body were a vindication. She laughed at Logan for as long as Gambit left her the mental capacity to think. She laughed at him because who was he to talk about things she didn't understand.

She understood. She knew what it felt like.

---

She was twenty-two when Logan came back home again, and it seemed odd to actually see him after spending so much time treating the one in her head like a real person.

There was so much she didn't know, she mused as she watched him. Five years with a testy little bit of him tucked away in her head, and she had yet to learn what made him tick. Of anyone, she should understand him--but she couldn't. He was foreign in a way that seemed to intrigue her.

He sensed her heightened interest with the instincts of any hunter turned prey. And the eyes he let rest on her changed. Where once they looked at her and seen a friend, seen someone to protect, to keep safe--

Now they saw complication. Danger.

They saw a woman, and she knew better than anyone that contrary to popular belief, being a woman was not the way to Logan's heart. Because women were dangerous, and he was very, very careful.

Too careful. Not a week later she woke up to find him gone again.

---

Life went on and didn't go on--changed and stayed very much the same. Gambit was Gambit--fun and exciting and infinitely more entertaining than the prudes who lived inside her head. Being with Gambit was a constant education in how to wallow in the good that life could bring and ignore everything else.

It was a lesson she was long overdue learning, and when Erik and Logan protested inside her head, she told them to shut up. Erik sputtered for a little bit, but Logan was the one who worried her.

'You're more of a fool than I thought, kid. Which is saying a lot.'

'What are you going to do about it?' She taunted him a lot now.

'Nothing,' he said. 'I don't have to do anything. Just don't come running to me when you figure out what a fool you are.'

David was quiet now, quiet and strangely grateful. Caught in eternal suspension--always a seventeen year old boy surrounded by men--he thanked her every time she let him see a bit of her life, every time she let him grow up.

But Logan wouldn't shut up. The one in her head wouldn't shut up, and when the real Logan came back a few days later, she was torn between screaming at him and tossing him up against the nearest wall to see if he had learned anything in the past five years.

She didn't have to decide, though, because he did it for her.

---

"You've grown." It was a stupid comment, the kind of comment that he always seemed to feel the urge to make. Like reassuring himself that she had been young, and the sudden fit of adultness was something new and surprising.

It wasn't, of course. She hadn't changed much after turning twenty--but she let him have his illusions.

'I don't need illusions to think you're still a kid. You act like one.'

'Shut up, Logan.'

The fear was irrational, that he could somehow hear what the five year outdated version of himself was whispering in her ear, but his face stayed blank and his eyes darted around in something that she almost wanted to call nervousness.

"Yeah, I've grown." It seemed like years since he'd spoken, but time seemed to work differently inside her head sometimes.

"That's good."

And that's all they said.

---

Logan stared at Jean's ass. He stared at it when she walked by and leered at her when he know Scott and everyone else could see. Once Rogue saw him leaning into her in a dark corner, and she couldn't figure out why. Why he stared at her ass if he knew he wasn't going to do anything about it.

'Because it's a fine ass,' he told her. 'Why wouldn't I stare at it?'

She knew that it was foolish, her growing obsession with Logan and Logan's sexuality. It was strange and foolish and more than a little perverted, but she couldn't help but watch as he rolled through the hallways, watch the way he moved as if he was perfectly aware of every muscle in his body and how they worked together.

He exuded sexuality. Magnetism and sexuality and the kind of things that made her insides melt in that way that was very familiar by now. It wasn't attraction to him, Logan--

'You think not?' He loved to poke at her pride when she least expected it.

'I know not.' And it was amazing how stubborn she could sound inside her own mind.

He just chuckled.

--but it was the way he moved. The way he owned everything that came within five feet of him.

The way he owned her when she came within five feet of him.

It didn't seem fair.

'Life isn't fair.'

'Shut up, Logan.'

---

She was sitting in front of the piano, idly running gloved fingers up and down the ivory when he found her.

"You play?" He sprawled next to her on the seat and leaned back so that his elbows were resting just above the keys.

"Sometimes." Her finger pressed a key a little to hard and a clear C filled the room. "Not very well."

The grimace he twisted his face into could have been called a smile. "Then let's get out of here. Haven't talked to you in a long time, Marie. Why don't you ride with me."

She blinked. It was hard to remember sometimes that talking to the Logan trapped inside her head was different than talking to the real one--and she had to bite her lip to keep from informing him that she'd talked to him that morning, and really didn't have anything left to say.

"Sure." It was easiest to agree, because he was within five feet of her and he owned her. And despite what she told herself--despite everything . . .

She was still morbidly curious. She wanted to know how he'd lived fifteen years without touching any of the woman who had thrown themselves at him. She wanted to know why he had stayed by himself when he could have had anyone he wanted.

'I already told you. It's not about who you can have.' His voice sounded tired, but then it always sounded tired when the real Logan was around.

'If it's not about who you can have, then what is it about?' She was tired too, and she snapped.

'It's about who you want to--'

And she made the mistake of letting a stray thought of Gambit drift past, and she almost heard the jaw that didn't exist as it snapped shut.

'I knew you wouldn't understand.'

He was looking at her strangely. "You okay?"

She nodded, tucking her hair behind her ears and sliding away from the seat. "I was just thinking."

She froze when a finger tapped the side of her head, just above her hairline. He wasn't wearing gloves--no reason for him to be wearing gloves--and his skin that close to her skin scared her. "What?" Her voice was a little shaky.

"Am I still in there?" He'd never spoken about being in her head before, and after she'd discovered the secret she was almost sure she knew why. She was almost sure--but not sure enough because if Logan had really been ashamed, the Logan inside of her wouldn't have acted so--

'Pissed?'

'Shut up, Logan.'

"Sometimes," she whispered, and she was upset that she skittered backwards. She knew him, she knew that he wasn't the frightening, intense sexual creature that made grown women fall over their own feet.

It didn't help.

He gave a sigh, and the finger flicked at a strand of her hair. "Sorry, kid. I never meant for that to happen." And his voice sounded truly remorseful as he finally uttered the apology that came five years too late.

'Apologize?' He sounded downright testy. 'I saved your life.'

She mocked him. 'No you didn't.'

"It's okay," she muttered. It was okay.

"Let's go." His hand was hot on her arm, and she wondered if he'd found something in the past five years that had made him change his mind about things. . .

Because the hand on her arm felt so good.

---

"What's it like?"

He gave her an odd look. "Canada? I kind of thought you'd been there, seeing as it's where I found you."

She gave him a smile and tossed another one of her french fries to a couple of pigeons. "I wasn't really paying close attention."

It wasn't the question she wanted to ask him, but she had been talking to him for an hour and she couldn't seem to make herself form the words. It was none of her business--

'Damn right.'

'Shut up, Logan.'

--but she still needed to know. Because the obsession was getting stronger and stronger, and now thoughts of Logan not having sex were leading into thoughts of Logan having sex, and she wanted to ask him all of the questions that the Logan in her head just sneered at.

'Take a guess why I sneer,' he told her.

'You never used to talk this much before.' She was resentful, because now it seemed like she was spending half of her time talking to him in her head.

'That might be because you're spending half of your time thinking about me.'

It made just enough sense to be dangerous.

Logan was staring at her again. "You weren't talking to me."

She froze, and the ghost of Logan laughed as she realized she had spoken out loud instead of inside her head. The flush filled her cheeks before she could stop it. "I was just--" She groped for something to say.

His eyes narrowed, and she wanted to escape the intensity of that look. "You were talking to me. Inside your head."

He knew her better than she knew him, which was definitely not fair.

"How often does that happen?" He was leaning forward now, inches from her. Just inches.

She swallowed. "A lot, lately." She tried to force a smile, but it wouldn't really come. "You're really crabby."

He broke into a rough smile, and this time she managed to call up a shaky one of her own. "I'm crabby, am I?"

"Only when I talk about certain things." She didn't think about the words until they left her mouth, and then she simply sat praying that he wouldn't pick it up wouldn't pick it up wouldn't--

"And what things might those be?"

'Shit.'

He mocked her this time. 'Shut up, Marie.'

She went for broke. "You get pretty crabby about sex." And she played the innocent for all she was worth, staring at him with that fake smile she'd managed to keep her lips curved up into.

There was so much intelligence behind those eyes--keen intelligence of a predator who always knew danger. "I see." And one brow arched into a perfect curve. "You talk about sex a lot with the people in your head?"

It seemed so condescending that she winced.

"I see." He picked up her coat and held it out to her, and they really didn't say anything at all for the entire walk back to his bike. He climbed on and waited as she settled stiffly behind him.

He drove.

'What the hell do I say to him now?'

The silence inside was deafening.

When Gambit confronted her later that day, it wasn't the silence that was deafening.