Logan waited for his next challenger to enter the cage. Bumfuck-nowhere, aka Laughlin city, didn’t have much to offer him by way of opponents, especially not compared to what Logan liked to call his “day job” back in New York, but it made him money, and while he was on a lengthy break out from under Chuck’s roof, he had to pay his own bills. Thus, he found himself beating the snot and blood out of redneck assholes in a chain-link cage.
The next guy came in. And down he went, pretty damned quick, too. Logan went back to his corner, deciding to let the next guy get a few hits in first.
A breath of fresh air reached him as somebody came in from outside, and Logan inhaled it deeply, savoring how different it was from the smoke and body odor and alcohol smells surrounding him. Something other than the cleanness of the air caught his attention: the smell of a woman, the smell of metal, the smell of wool soaked in slush, and the faintest trace of blood.
He turned to look at her, blatantly suspicious.
She was looking at him as she pushed back the hood of her cloak. She was young and had short-cropped dark hair, longer in the front so that the white streaks framing her face reached down just past her chin, but the rest was cut up at a sharp angle so that the style formed a bob at the back; the pale skin at the back of her neck peeked over the edge of her heavy scarf. Her brown eyes were so dark they were nearly black. She was pale and a little too thin, but her face was mask-like and reserved. Her gaze dropped to the dog tag around his neck, lingering there before scanning the rest of his body and returning to his face. Something about the look on her face almost made Logan want to reassess his original estimate of her age. There was more than appreciation of his body in that look; there was something wary and something unshakably calm, and something else that was totally and utterly unafraid.
Rogue waited until he was distracted by his next opponent before her hand moved up to touch the adamantium tag dangling just below her collar bone, under her scarf. When the fight announcer called the man she was watching Wolverine, Rogue suppressed a shiver.
Yuriko had known that name.
Rogue sat at the bar and ordered water. When the bartender set it in front of her with a glare and wandered off, Rogue allowed herself to pop her knuckles. The metallic sounds were oddly soothing. She sipped her water and watched the fight.
The Wolverine was lovely to watch, and Rogue found herself tempted to remove her cloak and scarf, because he skin felt suddenly too warm. She resisted, and looked away, pulling her gloves on a little tighter as she recalled her limitations. Still, she felt a little warm. To distract herself, she watched the news, and let herself get irritated at a few politicians.
Later, Rogue could hear the fights ending, and sighed in relief as the crowd began to leave. She scanned the truckers who lingered, hoping to see one she could ask for a ride from without being forced to threaten their lives within an hour, when they would reach for her. In preparation for her performance she hid behind a mask, her features softening as she widened her eyes a little, and made the effort to look like a runaway; years fell from her appearance, and she looked sixteen, for all that she felt one-hundred-sixty. She found herself distracted when the Wolverine, now wearing a shirt and a leather jacket––to her disappointment––strode up to the bar and sat a few seats away. The youthful mask fell away, melting like a snowball in a furnace.
Again she met his gaze. He was looking at her suspiciously. It occurred to Rogue that he might be able to smell the lingering traces of blood from the clothing in her bag. She revealed nothing. Marie had never been able to hide her emotions––unless she was lying: an art at which she had excelled––but Yuriko had been raised in a culture that valued reserve as one of its highest virtues, and Rogue had benefitted from it. She held Wolverine’s gaze for a moment and then glanced away, looking back at the television.
Inwardly, Rogue winced as the news chose that moment to mention the “m” word: some story about the mutant problem and dangerous mutants. A hint of unease flickered across her face, and she clutched the strap of her bag more tightly. Her fingertips itched and her knuckles ached. She lifted her bag to her shoulder in preparation to leave, but then she realized that Wolverine was looking at her again. He looked angry, too, and like he was trying to figure out where her reaction was rooted: against mutants, or against those who vilifed them.
Then he was distracted as one of his opponents from the ring approached him, and said some very stupid things, accusing the Wolverine of cheating. Rogue watched curiously. When the tall bald man ignored the Wolverine’s warnings and pulled out a knife, the shout of alarm rose unbidden from Rogue’s throat and she slid halfway off her seat. Her body was tense and her free hand fell out to her side, instinctively held out in preparation to extend her claws.
And then Logan released his, and Rogue’s breath caught in her throat. She almost growled when the bartender took out his shotgun, but did not move. All eyes in the room were on the Wolverine, and she could not risk them turning to stare at her, too.
She watched him slice the bartender’s gun, and her body tensed when he looked at her again, as though silently asking if she wanted to try something similar. He was rage incarnate for a moment, but faltered when he saw something other than hate or lust in Rogue’s gaze––he could not identify what he saw––and then he sheathed his claws and left.
The sound of the door swinging shut behind him acted like a trigger, sending Rogue shooting after him. She hid in his trailer. If anyone had bothered to ask what she was thinking, she would have cursed at them in two dialects of Chinese and a smattering of French.
He found her sooner than she had thought.
“Hello.”
“Get out.”
“I don’t think you want me to,” she said simply, sitting up and shouldering her duffle bag.
That stunned him somewhat. “Like Hell I don’t.”
Rogue held her breath and lifted one hand so that he could see the tattered fingertips of her gloves. Then she extended her claws.
His eyes opened very wide.
“Hell is where I came from, Sugah. Somethin’ tells me you did, too.” The claws snapped back in. She never once looked away from his face.
“Who the fuck are you?”
She gave an odd, bitter smile, making her look ancient despite her otherwise apparent youth. “My name is Rogue,” she said; her voice was bitter, too, but not as cold as before: tinged with something like southern spitfire.
Logan stared at her for a moment, then jerked his head in the direction of his truck. “Get in.”
Rogue leapt from the trailer with surprising gracefulness. She followed him to his truck and got in on the passenger side, putting her bag on the floor. She sighed heavily and popped her neck. Logan seemed uneasy at the familiar metallic noise.
To distract himself, he started the truck’s engine.
“I know about you,” Rogue said lightly. “I...well, not me, but Yuriko was meant to be like ‘Wolverine two-point-oh’.”
“Who?”
“It’s really, really complicated,” Rogue sighed. Then her brow furrowed. “Do you...he said something about your memory.”
Logan was suddenly glaring at her very sharply. “Styker?”
“Yeah. Do you remember?”
His jaw clenched. “No. I don’t remember anything before the last twenty years, ever since I woke up naked and bloody in the middle of bumfuck nowhere,” he growled.
Rogue’s brow creased with a mixture of concern and sympathetic anger. “Shit. And I thought what he’d done to me––to Yuriko was bad.”
“Who is she?”
Rogue hesitated, adjusting her scarf. “Uhm. I...she’s.” A look of sincere and pained confusion marred her featured. “It’s weird, okay? Havin’ two people in my brain and half the time I can’t tell which one I am because all of her memories just kind of merged with mine and I woke up and I’m Rogue. It’s really, really crazy, and I know I’m not making sense, but just know that this is messed up, okay?”
Logan raised an eyebrow at the random touches of something like a southern drawl in the way she spoke. “Are you a telepath or something?”
“Oh, God, to have it that easy,” Rogue groaned in exasperation, pushing the heels of her palms against her eyes. “No. I’ve just got killer skin that sucks the life and souls and mutant powers outta people, and apparently if they hang on long enough that I kill ‘em, then I steal other weird fuckin’ things like metal bones because I’m a class-5 mutant with a mutation determined to steal anything of possible advantage from anyone I touch and the power to do it!” she ranted.
Logan leaned back in his seat a little, obviously a tad stunned.
Rogue held her breath for a moment. “I was yelling that last bit in an angry fashion, wasn’t I?”
“Yeah. Feel better?”
She took a deep breath and let it out, slumping back in her seat and untangling her fingers from her hair, lowering her hands to her side. “Fuck yes. Thanks.”
Logan was trying to wrap his head around all of what she said. “So your skin killed this Yuriko woman.”
“Yeah. But it also took my––it took her mutation and her memories and personality and––well...” She unsheathed her claws again, wincing slightly because two of her fingers hadn’t quite been in the right angle and a few tendons got scraped.
Logan reached for her hand, pausing when she flinched instinctively. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“But I might hurt you,” Rogue countered ruefully. She took a steadying breath and held her hand upright so her claws pointed up and away from both of them, and then held it out for him. “Just be careful of my skin.” Her gloves only went to her wrists, and there was an inch of bare skin between their hem and the long sleeves of her shirt.
Amazed that she smelled of neither lies nor fear, Logan held her arm gently, his fingers just an inch below the bared skin, as he examined her claws closely, the metal all too familiar. “You shouldn’t have been able to take the metal.”
Rogue shook her head. “It has something to do with my being a class-5, according to Stryker.” Her eyebrows lowered in a look of anger. “He was huntin’ me down. He had Yuriko under some kinda mind control, and sent her after me when I managed to get away. She had to stay away longer than he’d anticipated, and the drug started to wear off enough that she made her aim purposely bad, and touched my skin. She held on tight and wouldn’t let go for anything. I––she didn’t want to go back.” Rogue swallowed thickly. “She didn’t have to.” She looked too old for her face, and too pained.
Logan looked away from her claws as she sheathed them, and into her eyes, reading the pain and anger, the coldness and the toughness in her. “You okay?” he asked softly.
She looked away, pulling her hand back slowly, almost reluctantly. He’d given her the only non-violent touch she’d felt in––well, far too long. “I dunno. It’s a strange thing to wake up ragged and covered in blood in the snow when the last thing ya really remember is looking at the body of someone you just killed and knowing it’s yours even though you also know it isn’t.” She looked at him again, and smirked bitterly. “And then here I run into you just over a month later. Small world, huh?”
Logan settled back into his seat with a sigh. “No kiddin’. Jeez. I came out here to get away from these kinda coincidences.”
“Er...Stryker-related ones?”
“No. ‘Isn’t-it-a-small-world’ ones. They’re pretty common back at my day job.”
“Day job?”
“I’m a superhero.”
Rogue blinked twice in quick succession. “Superhero...Okay.” She tried to suppress the amusement in her voice, but found that she couldn’t.
Logan snorted. “Oh like you can talk. What kind of a name is ‘Rogue’ anyway?”
“What kind of a name is Wolverine?”
His head snapped around so he could glare at her, but he couldn’t help the faint smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth. “My name’s Logan.”
Rogue hesitated. “I used to be Marie.”
His eyebrows raised at that.
Rogue shrugged a little. “With both Marie and Yuriko up here, neither name feels quite right anymore. Rogue, does, though.”
“But you’re still Marie. No offense, but you just don’t look like a ‘Yuriko’, kid.”
Rogue shook her head. “I’m...not really. I look like her. I talk like her now and then when I get mad, since Yuriko’s emotional range tended to be more limited, but...I’m not her anymore. You’d be surprised how hard it is not to say ‘I’ instead of ‘Yuriko’ and to talk about her in the third person; it makes me feel crazier than almost anything else––even with bits of other people I’ve touched still swimming around in my head. I’m something in between the two, and Rogue sounds pretty good to me. It’s better than ‘Lady Deathstryke’ by any measure.”
Logan raised an eyebrow.
Rogue reached under her scarf and tugged at the chain around her neck. She re-latched it and handed the chain and tag to Logan.
It was adamantium, like his, and did indeed bear the name Lady Deathstryke. He ran the pad of his thumb across the letters, and handed it back. “Fine. Rogue.”
Rogue put it back on and looked at him curiously. “So...now what?”
Logan ran a hand through his wild hair. “...Shit. I’ve gotta call Chuck.”
“Who’s Chuck?”
“Bald really-strong telepath with a serious case of the morals, and also the leader of the superhero-team.” He reached across her lap to get to the glove compartment.
Rogue shrank back instinctively, her gaze locked onto his hand and arm, but the passive look on her face showed that this was more courtesy than nervousness or fear. “Ah. I see.” Her nostrils flared as soon as the compartment fell open. “Uhm. There’s food in there.” Her eyes were a little wide and she felt suddenly all too aware of the dull ache of her empty stomach.
Logan seemed a little amused by her reaction, and snagged the bag of beef jerky once he’d got ahold of the communicator. “Hungry, are ya?”
“I haven’t eaten in a couple days.” She did not look away from the bag of jerky.r32;r32; Logan snapped the glove compartment shut and tossed her the half-empty bag.
She caught it deftly. “I like you,” she said quietly, and began inhaling the jerky.
Logan gave an amused snort and opened his communicator as he started turning his truck around to head back east.
Xavier’s voice on the other end: “Logan! I’m surprised to hear from you quite this soon...”
“Neither did I.”
“Oh, dear. What’s happened, and how much property has been damaged?”
Rogue laughed abruptly at that, and sniggered when Logan glared at her for eavesdropping, not that he could blame her.
“Nothing quite like that, this time. I just ran into somebody. Her name is Rogue. She knows a Helluva lot about Stryker.”
Rogue finished her jerky and set the empty bag in the seat between them. She gave a low purr, enjoying the lingering flavor on her tongue.
Logan shot her an odd look, as Xavier asked questions.
She didn’t notice, as she seemed to be slumped in the corner formed by her seat and the door to his truck, curling up there with her eyes shut. As her mask eased a little, her face had a permanent, albeit faint, exasperated and concerned look as she tried to relax.
It was a very bizarre moment for him to realize that she was beautiful.
“Sorry, Chuck, what was that first one? Uh-huh. And all the ones after it?”
Rogue smirked, trying to figure out what the Hell she’d just gotten herself into.
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Chapter End Notes:
~flails arms~ I have no idea where this story is headed after this!