The little glances were annoying her. Where are you? Are you safe? Are you happy? Marie had warned her the man was a little protective, but this was ridiculous. Rogue wanted to punch him. Or something else equally violent, she thought, running lascivious eyes over the bulging muscles only partially hidden by the fatigues. She wondered if this was Logan or the Wolverine. She, of all people, needed to know the difference.
“Marie?” The concern in his eyes was cloying, dampening her arousal before it had really begun. So, that would be Logan. He was a fine, fine specimen and her senses couldn’t help but respond to the earthy smell that signalled the nearness of her mate. But he wasn’t, not really. If she pushed a little …
“So. You’re the Wolverine. I was wondering when I’d meet you.” Her vocal cords were sore, strained and exhausted. Was that really her voice? It didn’t sound like Marie at all, but she wasn’t convinced it was really Rogue, either. She shrugged. There would be time. She was a completely new human being, after all.
“Who the fuck are you? What have you done with Marie?” Rogue could smell the Wolverine’s outrage, the reek of fox strengthening with every slam of his heart. Undershot with terror and confusion, unable to comprehend the mix of familiar and unfamiliar. She needed to explain, but a helicopter crowded with strangers wasn’t the venue. Because she might just have to show him, too.
“I’m Rogue. Marie decided to take a little holiday.” How did you explain a psyche so fractured that the person whose body it was didn’t want to be in charge anymore? A life so traumatised that retreat was the only way forward? A person who loved a man so completely that she had submerged herself to create the perfect mate for him?
You couldn’t, particularly when you barely understood it yourself. But this was Marie’s idea, and she suspected Marie was lingering somewhere, willing to help. So she followed her gut and bent forward to whisper into Logan’s ear.
“Trust us, baby. We saved your life, once.” And then her tongue had to taste and her teeth had to scrape and Rogue realised life was a wonderful, wonderful thing. Because he tasted like hers. Maybe not hers alone, but still hers.
XXXXX
Touch, of course, was the big thing. Logan had jumped a mile when her tongue slipped into his ear, and Rogue knew it wasn’t the eroticism of the act that startled him. Not just the eroticism, because, well – that worked. She had smelt his arousal heat up, seen the eyes veer towards gold, sensed the Wolverine as he raised his head to investigate this new entity. This Rogue.
Restraint, restraint, restraint. Rogue chained her own wildness and drew on every piece of emotional knowledge she had. A lot, she reflected. Compassion, from Marie. Bobby’s ability to trust. Pyro’s cunning. Logan’s ruthlessness. And Erik’s genius for manipulation. Dancing in a mad spiral at the edge of her consciousness was a jumble of other intelligences that hadn’t had the benefit of assimilation. Once they’d started the experiments, they’d exposed Marie to one creature after another, moving up through the orders from fish to bird to cat to chimp to human to mutant. They called it science, and observed her behaviour as well as vital signs immediately after each absorbtion. They never noticed the disintegration of Marie’s mind.
Rogue liked to think she was Marie’s idea, but they both knew she was born in darkest recesses of the Wolverine id. She was the primal spirit the man would never admit to wanting, and the unleashed elemental that Marie could not admit to wanting to be. Where Marie had been tormented by the individual personalities in her head, Rogue was their master: she WAS them, a distillation of personalities guided by the most secret wish of a feral spirit. Two feral spirits, Rogue acknowledged. Wolverine and that part of Marie that knew she would never be able to handle him. The part that she took, and built upon, to create Rogue.
“Rogue!” Sequestered in her own head, long minutes had dragged by and she still hadn’t spoken to anyone other than Logan. Her teammates were unnerved by the silence, and she tried not to smirk at their obvious discomfort. No one, except Logan and possibly Xavier, would understand what was going on. But they all knew something had happened, and she was changed.
“I’m OK. They ran a few experiments but nothing too … invasive. When they realised my mutation couldn’t be used to help them, they gave me these rather beautiful tattoos.” She pushed up both sleeves, to display what looked like tribal arm bands. “They suppress it somehow. There must be something in the ink. Or under the skin – I wasn’t conscious when they did them.”
“Slave bracelets,” Mystique spat from the pilot’s seat. “We’d heard they were doing research into mutation suppression technologies, but we weren’t sure how far they’d gotten. Erik may be able to help you if some of what we’ve heard is right.”
The X-men tensed, expecting her to reject any contact with Lensherr. Marie would have done, but Rogue wasn’t Marie. She was already weighing the options with Erik’s own brand of careful analysis. It would be hypocritical to reject the opportunity to know more.
“Thank you, Raven. I’d certainly like to know how they work, and how long I have before the effect wears off.” Rogue slid her gaze to Logan. “Let the countdown begin, and all that.” She licked her lips as she stared into his still-gold eyes. Oh yeah, message received.
It was Storm who broke the heavy silence. “Logan. The kids. Do you know where they are? After … we just didn’t see them again. They must have been taken somewhere else …” her words trailed off as her face crumpled. Her desperation and guilt were tangible.
“There’s another facility. Most of the kids are there, and Iceman and Jubilee. Not sure what the plan is.” Logan’s voice was gruff, his inner conflict patently visible to Rogue. He wanted to run.
“Magneto was thinking we needed more information, a recon mission before hitting that one. There’s kids – normal human kids – there, and he doesn’t want anybody hurt that doesn’t have to be.” Pyro’s voice was quiet, tactical. “This is the war he always said was coming, but he hasn’t abandoned your principles totally, Professor.”
Xavier nodded his head, a show of respect for his once friend, recent adversary and current ally. “We will formulate a plan together, and execute it together. The combined forces of the Brotherhood and the X-men will ensure this can never happen again.”
Rogue spoke, her voice calm and decisive amidst the emotion. “Logan and I will help you get the kids out. Then we’re leaving. Just so you know.” She smiled, serene in the face of their shock and disappointment. Only the twitching muscle at the corner of her mouth signalled her amusement: Logan sat with his mouth open, astonished eyebrows nearly flying off his face. Rogue resisted the urge to wink, but wished he could read her mind. What’s wrong, sweetheart? That your line?
XXXXX
Logan didn’t say a word to her for the rest of the trip, and his military-man persona kept him curt and impersonal throughout the meeting to plan the next extraction. Mystique and Shadowcat were nominated to do the recon; they would be back by 2200 hours, and the mission to recover the kids would move out at 0100. Rogue glanced at Marie’s Hello Kitty watch and winced. Lurid pink. How could she? And she had just three hours to corner Logan and explain.
She found him sacked out in a corner upstairs. Good strategy – might not get much sleep for a while, Rogue reflected. First the extraction, and then they’d be on the road. And if she had anything to say about it, on each other too. Sleep well, Wolvie. Backing away quietly, she decided to say her goodbyes. They wouldn’t be back.
“Professor Xavier?” The weary old man had spoken little throughout the planning session, and Rogue could smell sickness and despair whenever he entered the room. The guards had gossiped each time they delivered her to her tormentors, and she hadn’t been the only one subjected to experiments. What had they done to this man to make him look so beaten?
“Rogue.” He smiled, trying to maintain a facsimile of his usual self. “I hope you are recovered from your ordeal.” The self-hate that crossed his face told her more about what had been done to him than anything else. His blocks. Under the suit, once again impeccable, were tattoos similar to those she wore. And while Rogue’s were a blessing, Xavier’s removed his one defence from the world.
“You saw? You had to see everything?” Rogue’s barbarian soul raged at the cruelty of it. It was one thing to be put through experiments. It was another to be forced to undergo the mental torture again and again and again as each of your students was experimented upon. Herself. Storm. Cyclops. Shadowcat. Colossus. She doubted anyone had escaped, and the professor had been forced to endure their psychic screams. “Oh professor…”
“Thank you, Rogue. It is my burden. You have your own. It was a very drastic solution to the problem, my dear.” Some traces of the benevolent professor had returned, pushing away his own trauma to enquire after hers.
“It was Marie’s solution. I didn’t really get a choice in it – she created me to survive, because she couldn’t.” And she created me for Wolverine, because she couldn’t, Rogue thought, but didn’t share it with the Professor. But suspected he knew, anyway.
“Indeed. You are a very different creature. Marie – if I may call her that – maintained control by compartmentalising. You are the exactly opposite of that – you came into being when she let everything flood together. All the strengths, all of the passions. Was there some level of conscious control, do you think, in what you have become?” The professor had that detached look, as if the question was purely academic, and didn’t involve the living, breathing creature that stood in front of him.
“Yes. She was very controlled,” Rogue snapped, annoyed at the suggestion Marie had simply … caved, or something. “Marie had tremendous discipline, and she took the raw material and shaped it into something she wanted to be. The best, the strongest. The boldest. Into me.”
Rogue heard a heavy tread behind them, and Logan’s breathing rasped heavily in her sensitive ears. “Marie – made you? Created you?” The pain in his voice was mingled with what she hoped was a growing understanding.
“Yes, sugar. And some of her is here too. Just not all of her. Not the parts she couldn’t live with anymore. She gave me a message for you, you know.” Rogue stepped lightly to him and whispered just above the range of his hearing. “She is what I might have been if I’d had the chance. What I wanted to be. For you, and for the Wolverine.”
She felt the shudder rise inside of him, and the heat blasting from his core. Wordlessly, he grabbed her hand – bare, skin kissing skin – and turned her out of the room and into the street, the Professor forgotten. Ten minutes later, they were hidden in the back of a no-name diner, two cups of coffee, black, steaming on the table.
“Talk.” Well, hello, Wolverine, she thought, revelling in his presence. Words of one syllable or less, and what, exactly, is your hand doing with my knee?
“You pretty much heard it all. Except that it wasn’t just about survival. It was about us, too. You needed me, and Marie needed to be me. That simple.”
“Simple? Fuck that. Marie was just fine with me, darlin’. Where’d the hell you get off stealing her body?” If only his hands weren’t playing with her seams under the table, it might be more convincing, Rogue thought. If only she couldn’t smell the arousal leaking from him as they sat close and stared. And scented. And planned.
“Marie was young, and scared, and damaged. She could barely handle Logan, and she knew he loved her, needed her. She loved him, but she wanted you too.” Rogue’s hands stopped teasing, and unbuttoned their way into his jeans under the table. “She wanted the Wolverine. Knew you would never let that happen. So she created me.”
“And you think you can handle the Wolverine, woman? I’ll fuckin’ snap you like a twig. Fuck you like an animal.” His hips were moving, thrusting his cock into her greedy hands with every word. Lacing her fingers with pre-come.
“You promise?” She smiled, a sweetness reminiscent of that girl on the train, and then slipped out of sight. His cock was sweet and hard like iron and she could taste the forest and the soil and the wildness that ran through every living thing. When her tongue got tired of doing all the work, she used her teeth and when they drew blood, she lapped that up too. He came and it was like he was in her head, the pain making everything real and she could just SEE the girl on her knees in a red booth in the back of a diner near the bus terminal in the Garment District. People could see and he was coming and she didn’t care. Hand down her own pants and her own hips jerking and she was coming and now she REALLY didn’t care.
Wiping her mouth and sucking her fingers clean, Rogue rose to her feet and took her seat across from the Wolverine. His eyes were glassy, three quarters post-orgasmic and one quarter pure shock. She smiled indulgently at him, and ran her still-damp fingers across his knuckles. “So sugar, let’s get out of here so you can fuck me properly. I think the kids have learnt enough for today,” Rogue said, nodding across the aisle at four wide-eyed kids who smelled like they’d just seen some really hot porn.
Wolverine stumbled to his feet, threw some bills down, and grabbed her hand to pull her outside. As she sashayed past the opposite booth, Rogue gave the foursome a slow wink that had the boys blushing red and their dates looking speculative.
“Fellatio 101, kids. Don’t forget to sign up for the next course,” she quipped as the Wolverine towed her away. He growled, but still ran his hand over her ass before sliding it in the top of her jeans to stay in constant contact with her skin. Rogue smiled. Logan might take some time, but the Wolverine was hers.
XXXXX
They detoured towards Chelsea, and miracle of miracles, the Harley was still there. Still chained in the yard. The broken glass and blood she could smell made the warrior spirit bellow and they needed to fuck NOW to exorcise the pain and the loss and their sheer anger at yet another fucking invasion.
Begging wasn’t why Rogue had been created, but she wasn’t proud, and when finally, FINALLY Marie lost her virginity, it was on the back steps of that cursed house, straddling Logan’s lap as his bare ass moved on bare brick. Later, she would find glass embedded in the hard muscles, and fuck it must have hurt, but he swears he never even noticed. Rogue’s not sure that she would have, even if she hadn’t pushed her lust and cynicism deep inside and willed Marie to come forward and take this, because it was hers.
She remembers the swirl of his tongue and the heat of his hands as they slid nipple-belly-clit-belly-nipple, but her eyes closed and the world just went away except for the smell and sound and sight of him. And then, as he slid inside, the pinch followed by a slow stretch and pull as he balances her in his huge hands. Her patience evaporates and she squirms and bucks and eludes him, tilting to take him deep and SLAMMING down. God and she can feel him pounding the mouth of her womb and why did no one ever tell her his cock would kiss every inch of her inside and there are wiry curls tickling against her clit and all she can think is “more of that, please”. She rises up, and then down, down, down to his shout and crazy yellow eyes and the clash of hipbones and the grind of her pelvis against his. Frantic need and shaking oblivion just creeping up from fucking NOWHERE, and then she is shivering in his arms, the cold air blowing over her sensitised skin, and crying.
Why was she crying? Rogue tried not to think too hard as she said goodbye to the life another girl had had, and goodbye to Marie. The love, the longing, even the frustration had been all hers, and it was finally ending and she should have that, have him. But now, he is hers, and she knows she will never relinquish this man, this animal. And it is HER name he is chanting – “Rogue, Rogue, Rogue” – as he shakes in her arms, satiated at last.
They shared a cigar in silence, passing it backwards and forwards like a joint and sometimes breathing the smoke directly from him to her or her to him. Her tears were nearly dry by the time Logan mentioned them, tipping her chin up to look into her eyes.
“Hey. What’s going on in there?” Logan had a right to be surprised – raw carnality, followed by tears – but Rogue suspected he knew exactly what had happened. As only another fractured personality could.
“Just saying goodbye, really. That was for Marie, she needed it. But I don’t think she’ll be back,” Rogue said softly, watching his eyes for understanding. They darkened with sadness, but it was the sadness of acceptance.
“I wish she’d had a chance to grow up properly. Without me – pushing her. Sexualising her.” She could hear the self hate, the question as to his motives and intentions, but couldn’t restrain the sad laugh.
“Oh, sugar.” Marie’s endearment no longer seemed forced, Rogue noticed. The need to constantly demarcate who she was had lessened with Wolverine’s understanding. “You didn’t. Not really. If anything, she was angry she couldn’t push you, force you to take her,” Rogue explained.
“Did you know that Marie wanted this from that very first moment she saw you? In the cage? Sixteen and a virgin and she wanted you to fuck her. Hard. But she could never tell you that, and then you were friends and you thought she was this pure thing, and she could NEVER tell you what she really wanted from you, so … well, here I am.”
He stilled, then spluttered in an attempt to disagree. She cut him off – if he was honest, he would remember her arousal in that bar, the eyes that had roamed over his body in a state of shock.
“Little girls feel lust too, baby. Even before you saved her life, even before she had you in her head? She wanted to lick the sweat from your body, sweetheart. She wanted to abduct you and find out exactly how all that hair would feel against her skin.” Rogue undulated against him, closing her eyes at the rasp of coarse whorls against still-bare nipples.
“So – it wasn’t all me, in her head? I didn’t change her, or pollute her or anything?” Logan was close to pleading, even as his body responded to Rogue’s memories of a libidinous Marie.
“You gave her a whole lot of fantasy material, and some … detail … she might not have had otherwise. Those friends of yours in Vegas, out at the Canyon? She SO wanted to try that, Logan.” Rogue laughed at his astonishment, but didn’t want to make light of a serious topic. “When you touched her, she got your confidence for a while. Your shamelessness. But the lust was all hers.”
Still cradled against his body, Rogue felt the sigh as it flowed through him. Absolution. He would never accept it wasn’t needed, so she offered it gladly.
XXXXX
Mystique and Shadowcat returned from recon visibly confused. No guards, other than a nightwatchman who seemed more janitor than jailer, and minimal electronic security. Each of the Xavier kids was teamed with another child, rooming two by two, in a massive facility that was on government land, yet marked as a school: the Sandeman School for Boys and Girls. Professor Xavier looked troubled on hearing the name, but couldn’t put any firm suspicions to his unease. Rogue knew they were all asking the same question: why would the government capture – and even kill – students from one school simply to send them to another? That fact alone suggested maximum caution was needed.
Caution, yes, but no need to complicate the plan if there were no specific barriers to overcome. Two teams would go in – the first by air to secure the place, and second by road to recover the Xavier’s students. Ten assault specialists would play demolition derby, and the ten defenders would use the cover to collect their people and get them out safely. Rogue would be in the second team, led by Mystique, while Wolverine would lead the first. He hadn’t been happy at that idea, but Rogue had insisted: “Those kids need you concentratin’ on them, not me. I’ll see you back here, baby.” She winked, the long sweep of eyelashes a seductive promise. She would be back.
The gates of the Sandeman school stood open as Rogue eased the black van to a halt, her vehicle the second in a convoy of five. Pyro’s signature was evident everywhere, the pall of smoke and charred timber heavy in the air, and Wolverine, too, had left his mark. The door hung on its hinges, its lock sheared away.
Paired with Shadowcat, she moved cautiously through the smoke-filled halls towards the dormitory at the rear of the building. Why were there no children milling about in response to the fire alarm? Surely they wouldn’t allow themselves to be burnt in their beds? Rounding the corner, the two young women were faced with an unpalatable answer: a rank of children, shaven-headed and vacant-eyed, posed in battle formation. Mystique’s impressive combat skills were suffering under a joint assault by two girls who may not have even broken puberty; metres away, Wolverine was snarling and biting in an attempt to keep his claws sheathed so as not to hurt an attacker who was eluding him with mind-bending agility. Rogue would have been surprised if any of the identically-clad children was more than 12 years of age, and every single one of them was targeting an adult mutant with one killing blow after another.
They could not be human. But who had trained young mutants into a pint-size fighting force? Rogue shuddered, not wanting to know the answer, and snapped her focus to getting through to the dorms.
“Shadowcat? Can we go round, somehow?” Kitty Pryde simply nodded, grabbed Rogue and ran straight through the battle, phasing through one child soldier after another. Their gaping mouths and shocked exclamations would have been funny if circumstances had been different.
Behind them, Wolverine bellowed his fury, and blades sang as they surged free of his hands. Someone had done something very, very stupid, and the horror at fighting children had been overcome by pain or bloodlust. Rogue signalled Shadowcat to go in search of the captives, but turned to join the battle herself. She needed to spare Logan as much death as possible. He was too vulnerable right now to have the slaughter of children on his conscience.
“Logan, go! I can’t get through the defenders right now - you need to fight through to the dorms,” she yelled, twin Berettas materialising in her hands. Logan’s three attackers turned to meet the new threat, and two fell within moments, a little round hole in each forehead all that remained of their short lives. He paled at the easy carnage, but she stared back relentlessly. This is Rogue, baby. Lick it up. He nodded once, and then turned to batter his way through the pre-adolescent hoard. Obviously the “so, you’re a killer now” conversation would have to wait.
As he sliced his way up the hall, Rogue slipped her hunting knife from the small of her back, and turned to face the seven kids still blocking the hallway. She growled and bared her teeth in a feral grin that would have been familiar to anyone who had seen the Wolverine fight. She could see the fear her berserker haze was creating, and fed on it. The fury rose up, spilling from her hands like blood as the blade rose and fell in a dance of wicked and seductive beauty. One hungry-looking kid in a shapeless white coat fell to a slash at the back of his knees – another looked identical but the scent said it was a girl, even if her attack was stronger and faster, and needed to be stopped with quick rip through the jugular. A third child - and it was BEYOND weird how similar these warrior children were – darted up and Rogue was down, a chop to her solar plexus making the world leach away into dizziness. But even dizzy, her skill with the blade won out, and the victorious smile was transformed into a rictus as the knife slid through skin and muscle and sinew with delicious ease. Rogue fought back the blackness, and forced herself to acknowledge the three children – two wounded, one dead – who lay around her. We fought, they lost. Pity is for the weak, and these children were not weak. It was a salute of sorts, and a promise to find out exactly which sick bastards had sent these children against her.
She looked up to find the hall had cleared, smoke rolling aside and a path littered with carnage leading to the dorms. Where each of the Xavier kids had a roommate that was probably more jailer than friend. The battle had drawn several more childish faces to the doors lining the hall opposite, and a strange wariness lurked in those identikit eyes.
Suddenly, Bobby was there. “Rogue!” She didn’t know this person well – Marie had cared, but not enough to transmit large amounts of Bobby-memories – but his tortured face was enough to give pause to a stranger. “We’ve got to help them. They’ll fight us to the death, but we’ve got to try and stop them, and get them out of here.”
His guard was a somewhat older child, might even have been 15 or 16. Small, dark, Latina, with a shaven head that couldn’t hide the beauty of feline features dominated by ancient eyes as dark as her own. The girl was crouched in a defensive stance, but didn’t seem to be taking the field against them.
“Well, well, well, Bobby. Get yourself taken prisoner by the prettiest girl around? Don’t YOU do it hard.” Rogue didn’t bother to hide her amusement, even as murder crossed the younger girl’s beautiful face.
Bobby flushed. Wasn’t that interesting. Rogue wondered if he had a guilty conscience, and then remembered Marie’s boyfriend had been shat on – rather royally – by her other self. Marie mightn’t have been a match for the Wolverine, but she was still way out of this kid’s league, and he’d been right to move on. Though looking at the young girl who was standing next to Bobby so protectively, she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d overreached himself once again. Girl was tiny, but still managed to be all long lines and delicious curves, with a mouth that rivalled her own for sensuality.
Aware she had stared just a little too long, Rogue flashed the girl a flippant smile and moved her gaze to Bobby. “People kind of have to WANT to be rescued, Bobby. We can’t go about rescuing them against their will.”
Suddenly, the dark girl spoke. “Some of us have tried to escape, but they caught us. We’d come with you, if you’d promise to leave us alone.” Her gaze was suspicious, shifting from Rogue to Bobby with hard intent. This was a negotiation, neither surrender or grateful plea. “We’d help you get out, then you let us go.”
“Deal. How many of you are there?” Rogue wasn’t one to kick a gifthorse in the mouth, and if Xavier had a problem letting these kids go their merry way, then he’d have to convince them to stay.
“Fifteen. If everyone survived you getting in here. You fight well for civilians.”
Rogue nearly choked. The word “civilians” should not belong in a teenage girl’s vocabulary. Nor should that so-be-it tone when talking about the possible deaths of her friends. Not for the first time, she wondered who the fuck these kids were.
“Um? Rogue? Max? We should be getting outta here. Before anyone else gets killed?” Bobby may have been a dweeb, but no one had accused him of being a dumb dweeb. The two girls moved in unison, the older sheathing a bloody knife while the younger ran into her cell to pull on more serviceable clothes. Still white, still clinical, but the sweatsuit would at least pass on the street, Rogue noted. And the lack of any personal items – a single photograph, a favourite book – was completely chilling.
Max was already briefing them as they walked down the hallway. “Your friend is in with Alec, he’s with us. The younger children are in with X-sixes, and I doubt they’ll come around. They’re … not like us,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “You’ll have to fight to get your people out of there.”
Figures, Rogue thought sourly. Now you’re making us all sorry for you, and we have to kill more of your friends. She stomped down the hall after Bobby and Max, leading the way towards Jubilee’s room. Alec turned out to be a young god – the exact reverse of Max’s dark beauty – and Jubilee didn’t seem harmed by her captivity. If anything, she was pissed, and when Rogue stepped inside the room, sex hung heavy in the air. She tried not to smirk, but couldn’t resist tilting an eyebrow at Jubilee. Receiving a glare in return, she simply mouthed it: “jail-fucking-bait?” Jubilee flushed – an interesting colour on an Asian girl – and looked away.
Rogue and Bobby shared the plan with Jubes as their captors had a muttered exchange, Alec throwing up his hands in disgust before storming out the door. At Rogue’s raised eyebrow, Max shrugged and explained he was passing the message on to the other “X-fives.”
Of the 60-something children abducted from the three safe houses, they were able to recover 55. Rogue tried not to think about who had not made it – and why – and walked numbly through the fracas as they organised themselves into clusters around the children prior to fighting their way out. Max’s friends were weird – scary weird, she acknowledged, with their mostly shaven heads and quiet, assessing eyes. They were older than the relentless little soldiers Logan had encountered in the hallway, but just as deadly. Possibly even more so, Rogue thought, as she watched their identical moves and admired their beauty – uncanny beauty, and not one lacked it. A chill of unease stole up Rogue’s spine. She and Wolverine would be well away from these people and whatever it was that would come chasing them. She had the feeling it would be relentless, because no one let go of perfection.
Numbers were still overwhelmingly against them, but 20 X-men and 15 whatever-the-fuck-they-were X-fives made a powerful escort. With concealment and stealth blown in the first two seconds of the assault, brute force was the prime mover of the rescue, and they had that in spades. More children fell around them as shuffled their little army towards to front door; more children lined up like cannon fodder to be killed by Cyclops’ blasts, Wolverine’s blades, Pyro’s blazes. Rogue prayed that Xavier’s young ones knew they were valued, and that whoever sent these children to die would rot in hell. The compassion kept welling up and biting her at inopportune times, but someone deserved to burn for this. To roast slowly on an eternal spit.
“Watcha laughin’ at?” Wolverine’s words were husky and pained, but he seemed able to accept the atrocity that had been forced upon them.
“Whoever did this. I had this really detailed vision of them burning in hell,” Rogue shared. “How ‘bout you, sugar?”
“Thinking about us getting out of here, away from all this. Sounds good,” he grunted. He wasn’t smiling – probably wouldn’t be able to for a few days – but his mood wasn’t the unrelieved black it might once have been. Rogue shot him a coquettish look as they exited the gutted school and decided to share her surprise.
“That’s good, sugar, ‘cause tomorrow we’re going shopping. How much do you think we should spend on a camper anyway?”
This time, he did laugh. “Should’a guessed. You was just desperate to spend some time in the back of that thing, weren’t ya, girlie?”
She batted her eyelashes as she climbed into her transport and he pulled himself up beside her. “Why, sugar, I don’t know what you mean.”
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