Life’s like getting a passport.
You line up for two hours, hurtling toward a desk clerk at the speed of smell, for 32 blank pages and your vital stats bound in a leather cover. Because the only thing people wanna know is a few details, where you've been and if you're legal. Anything else is incidental.
For most people, obtaining one of these debasing, soul-sucking booklets is a boring process. Their impatience is usually subdued by chewing gum or playing sudoku or chatting with others. Thank god she'd downed that Nyquil and shut the other residents of her head the hell up for a few hours. Otherwise she'd be going mental while everyone else tapped their heels, bitchin' about how slow the line was moving.
For Rogue, she felt like she wanted to dig in her heels every time they moved another step toward the counter.
For Rogue, life is a lot like trying to get a passport... when you're a criminal.
Her hands were clammy. Her eyes were darting around, she knew she looked shifty but she couldn’t bear to focus on anything too long. Her legs were pins and needles, and the half a’ McMuffin in her stomach threatened to make an encore appearance.
That's what you feel like when you're about to slide forged papers across a government agency's table and ask that they pretty please let you out of the country. The same would probably happen to any mutant in this position. With the Registration Act breathing down all their fuckin’ necks, it had managed to sneak in a small bill retracting international movements of mutants without first registering with the Department of Homeland Security. Fuckin' bureaucracies.
But besides the federal laws she was preparing to stamp all over, there was the added secrecy of it all. That she was preparing to run across borders by herself, without telling anyone. Pulling a Logan, so to speak. It felt illicit. It felt criminal. It felt like the last nail in the coffin of betrayal.
She'd never needed a passport before. Back when, she was too young to travel, and by the time she was old enough the X-Jet was all the credentials she needed to get around. But now that she was planning on sneaking off like a bad lover in the middle of the night, she'd have to go low profile. Fuckin' Canadian/American border control and their new passport laws.
She stepped forward, now at the very front of the line and she felt her knees begin to tingle in that telltale way they always did when she was about to get caught doing something wrong. Her mama called them ‘the wiggles’.
"Number 388! Three Eight Eight!" Brushing a white lock behind her ear (and wiping a nervous bead of sweat), she walked brusquely over to the woman who had waved her forward, and practically shoved her papers at her. After a few minutes passed, she seemed to be in the clear.
"How long does it take?" Rogue asked while the woman, who looked younger than she, began typing at lightning speed.
"About a month, Miss..." She took hold of the license, "Drake." Rogue felt her cheeks flare up. That had been John's sick little joke, she hadn't realized that was the name she gave the forger until it was too late. She swallowed down the hurt.
"Um, any chance of gettin' it sooner?" The steady chattering of keys stopped. "Yah see, Ah'm in an awful hurry. Ah just found out a friend a' mine up North is sick, and Ah'd like to get there before the funeral." The woman raised an eyebrow, apparently not thrilled by the Southern sarcasm. Rogue scanned her nametag. "Please... Amanda." The clerk opened her mouth indignantly.
"Fucking freaks!" Both of their eyes flicked a man walking past her desk, crumpling up a piece of paper and temporarily interrupting their conversation.
"Another mutie problem, Bill?" Rogue tensed, and felt her blood run cold when Amanda's eyes seemed to flash in recognition.
"They get bolder every time, don't they know they have to Register to get a’hold of visas?!" He was almost shouting and suddenly seemed to remember there were about thirty people in the room with him. He immediately spotted Amanda, sitting just an arm's length away. "I'm sorry Miss Sefton, I didn't mean to interrupt."
"Uh, no problem Mr. Polock..." Her eyes were still locked on Rogue, though. This was a very bad idea...
"Um, you know, Ah forgot mah coat in the Waitin' Room, Ah'll just go-"
"You don't have to be afraid of me." That was certainly unexpected. Rogue still itched to bolt, not quite at ease. Amanda glanced back at where her boss had been, then leaned forward ever so casually. "I think we might be in the same boat, you and me." Definitely unexpected. Well, she'd managed to get one of the few mutants working in the God damn passport office. Finally some kismet, how refreshing.
"If that's true, then you see mah problem." There was a few seconds wherein she could practically see the cogs turning in Amanda's brain behind her brown eyes. Then a subtle, sly smile broke across her face.
"I think I can arrange something..."
Forty-eight hours later, Rogue had in her mitts the passport promised to her by the clerk. After giving the sending address as Xavier's School, Rogue found out Amanda was a friend of Nightcrawler's, who had been singing the X-Men's praises to high heaven. Rogue sighed; it would be hard to give up the association with the school. It did wonders for underground mutant networking. But if she was going to strike out on her own and not get tracked, she had to be as invisible as possible. She flipped open the booklet and took in her stony gaze and unsmiling face. Born in Tallahatchie Mississippi on March 26th, 1985. Stella Jean Drake. It wasn't at all funny she didn't even get to pick her own name. John chose Drake because he was a prick. Logan's immediate vote was for the name Jean, because even though he was inside her mind, he was still thick and ignorant to the fact she was insanely jealous. And Erik had suggested Stella. It surprised her. He was the only one who'd chosen a purely random moniker.
Her bags were already packed when the brown envelope arrived. All that was left to do was bum a ride to the nearest airport or train station and she'd be home free. Or at least, free of this home. Hah. Runnin' again. What a trip down memory lane.
Logan was sitting in the kitchen when a familiar and yet distant scent hit his nose. He tried to brush it off with a wrinkle of his nose, ignored the slightly disapproving look when he wiped it on his sleeve and tried to actually listen to Hank's lecture on... whatever he was saying. Storm seemed to be fascinated. He tasted cigar smoke and Screech on the back of his tonsils. Screech, that disgustin' Newfie hooch, of all things. The smell was trickling down his throat and finally his limited sense of courtesy dropped like a sack of potatoes and he wandered out of the kitchen without an explanation. It was wafting down the staircase, and he tracked it up into the residence rooms. In his gut, he hoped it wouldn’t lead him to the kid’s door.
Probably because he hadn’t stoked up the nerve and knocked on her door and told her he was stickin' around for a while, burrowin’ in. She was in her room all day, he knew, he coulda gone up anytime and told her the news, but he kept putting it off. Why the hell do I keep puttin’ it off?
Logan could be thick sometimes, but this particular time it was pure denial. Yeah, a thick coating of sweet denial. He knew why he didn’t want to see her but he just kept shoving it back into that mental cage with the more feral aspects of his nature. That way he didn’t have to fix his skewed vision of Marie. Didn’t have to address the fact that every damn time he saw her, even when he saw her that night and rose to her defense, he felt like protecting her and beating her unconscious all at the same time. If he was honest, and opened up that cage, he might even fuckin’ kill her.
He sniffed the air, brows knitting, forgetting the caged emotions for a moment and feeling older, earthier ones come flooding forward. That smell… that smell of tangy metal cage links, spilt beer and snow and gasoline. It smelled like his camper. His poor, totaled camper. The smell of... was that Laughlin City…
There was only one reason he'd smell that, and it barreled into him on the way out of her room. She looked confused by his sudden appearance. He’d prepared himself for that reaction. He didn’t know if she’d be happy he was plannin’ on stayin’ put. Seeing her in that old green coat with the coweled hood, that familiar green dugout bag slung over one shoulder, apparently she wasn't.
"Where you goin' kid?" Looking at her was gut wrenching. She looked just like when she climbed into his truck. Even the naive, wide eyed expression was the same. Suddenly those killing urges were light-years from his mind.
"Ah... uh..." She stumbled over her words, and that made it feel worse, the gut twist, that is. Then she expelled a breath, and for the first time in a long time, she was gonna be open with him. "Ah gotta get outta here, Logan. Ah can't take it anymore." Even knowing it was coming, he was surprised by her response. They hadn't talked much in the last six months.
"Wait, whaddya mean?" His hands were extended, not actually touching her but guarding her arms as if to grab her if she tried to leave. She gave him a look that screamed… something. "Start talkin' Stripes, tell me what's wrong." She rolled her eyes.
"Maybe Ah coulda told yah if you were around before, but it's too late now." He actually did take hold of her now and she forgot how lovely the strength in his hands felt when they were touching her. He breathed deep. Looked at her close. She was older. She wasn’t innocent. He reminded himself not to pop the claws.
"Listen, Rogue, I can't tell you what to do, but where you gonna go, huh?" He asked severely, frowning down at her. She shrugged. "That's not good enough, girlie." Her cheeks instantly went red, and eyes narrowing.
"It's not like Ah'm new tah this. Christ Logan, you met me on the road and Ah was sixteen back then, seemed tah be doin' just fine!" He snorted.
"I remember a scrawny kid in a bar she had no place in, who stole rides and wolfed down expired jerky, gettin' chased by-"
"Alright! Ah know, Ah was there!" She cut in, feeling as though this was taking on a very father-child sort of tone, and not one that she appreciated. She decided the best way to get around this obstacle was to make him not want to be one anymore. “Ah’m twenty fuckin’ years old Logan, Ah can do whatevah Ah want, you ain’t mah daddy and if anythin’ Ah thought you’d want me outta here!” She paused long enough to let him deny it, he didn’t, so Rogue knew she was on the right track. “Last time Ah checked, Ah’m not one a ya’ll anymore, Ah fucked up the most important mission we evah had, an’ Ah nearly killed on a’ your friends!” She couldn’t tell if the sudden intake of breath was him or her. “So if anythin’ you should be drivin’ me tah that station and buyin’ mah ticket for me!”
It hurt. It stung. It was the truth. Logan grit his teeth and opened his mouth but she cut him off.
“An’ don’t say it doesn’t mattah, don’t say it’s nothin’, cause we both know it’s everythin’.” She shucked his hold on her arms, but didn’t run around him like he figured she would. He stared at her. Time was he could look at her and think, God, what’s a good little girl like her doin’ hangin’ around an ornery bastard like me?
She finally let out a bitter bleat, and hunched down to pick up her dropped duffle bag. And the Wolverine had had enough, he wanted to hurt her back, and if the man wouldn’t let him do it with his fists, he’d do it with words.
“I was gonna ask what station.”
“What?” Rogue blinked at him, and those were the doe eyes again, watching as he pulled the car keys out of his pocket and grabbed her bag. Slinging it over her shoulder, she still looked at him like he couldn’t possibly mean it, so he turned and started walking. She really thought she could say those things and he’d still try to make her stay?
“If I’m givin’ you a lift,” he called over his shoulder like a stranger, “what station?”
Life’s a lot like Laughlin City. You blink, and she grew up wrong.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I promise, the next chapter will explain at least half the questions some of you may have. First, we need some Logan point of view. Then, we need to get out on the open road.