Dr. Hank McCoy stared at the X-rays before him. Very different from Logan, where the seams of each added metal section could be clearly seen, Rogue’s metal skeleton was smooth and eerily natural-looking. “This,” Hank said, tapping the x-ray of her skull, “this should be impossible.”
Rogue sat cross-legged on the edge of the table behind him, which looked like it belonged in a small boardroom. To her left sat Professor Charles Xavier. To her right, Logan lounged in a chair that was tilted back so he could rest his heels on the edge of the table.
“I know. It’s weird, isn’t it?” Rogue mused.
Hank shook his head, and gave a lengthy explanation concerning atomic structure, energy requirements, chain-reactions, and something about nuclear power.
“I’m a walking hydrogen bomb?” Rogue sounded utterly lost, and mildly disconcerted, but also bizarrely amused.
“It’s the only explanation that I can think of for how your mutation created the amount of energy necessary to do this with adamantium.” He tapped a claw to the x-ray of her skull. “How it directed that energy and so perfectly formed the adamantium into natural shapes is something truly astounding, but I think it has to do with the way that you copy or mimic the genetic activity of any-”
“Hank? You lost me five minutes ago, and I don’t think I can take much more,” Logan groaned.
An amused look flickered across her face for a brief moment. “Don’t suppose ya have any suggestions for controlling my skin or anything?” Rogue inquired in droll tones, raising her gloved hands and wriggling her fingers mock-menacingly.
Hank straightened his glasses. “I will be most interested in studying the mechanism of your mutation further, Rogue, and in the process I think I may find some answers for you.”
Rogue nodded slowly, but appeared far more resigned than hopeful.
“That simply leaves the matter of what you want to do next, Rogue,” Xavier said.
She looked at him distantly, her face once more a mask of reserve. Marie had never really bothered with plans: only destinations and experiences to be had. Yuriko had once planned almost ever facet of her life, only to have it all smashed like so much glass at the hands of William Stryker. Rogue felt relaxed by the idea of not worrying about the details now and then, especially now that she felt truly invincible; she also felt very, very vengeful. She turned her head and met Logan’s gaze.
He knew she could tell that he was feeling pretty vengeful, too. While they had waited for the blackbird to pick them up in Canada, Logan had practically interrogated Rogue about William Stryker, and everything she knew about him. Her reports had matched the ones given by a blue and German mutant that the X-men had picked up the previous day; his name was Kurt and he had been placed under mind control in order to attempt to assassinate the U.S. President. While Hank had run his initial tests on her genetic sample, Rogue had spoken with Kurt, in a voice that was mostly Yuriko’s. She had apologized for abducting him, and he had offered some spiritual advice.
Marie had become an atheist in reaction against her fundamentalist upbringing and what her family had thought not only of mutants, but of uppity young girls; Yuriko had been a buddhist in a philosophical rather than religious sense. Rogue had thanked Kurt politely, but her heart could not be tapped by more than the poetry and peacefulness and sentiments behind his words, and his more lofty suggestions of ultimate goodness in the world had only made her feel bitter and dark for not believing them.
When Rogue turned to face Xavier again, she said simply, “I want to prevent Stryker from his dream of starting a war. He was planning something big, with Kurt and that little display. I think we should stop him before he implements anything further.” She knew Logan would hear the deliberateness of her words, and sense her true intentions; she did think that Stryker was up to something, but all she really wanted was an opportunity to go back and take him down.
Xavier had observed early on that Rogue’s mind was difficult to get a handle on, with the outer layer of noise caused by the ghosts of excess personalities, and the complexity beneath that of two fully formed minds merged into a seamless whole. He could not passively feel for her emotions as he might do with anyone else in the mansion, and he lacked Logan’s keen senses for the hard-to-detect false tones in her voice.
Soon, an X-men meeting was being held. Logan sat at the edge of the room, smoking near the window. Rogue sat at the far end of the table, sitting nearer to Logan than to any of the others, as Xavier and Scott talked strategy.
Rogue and Logan interrupted frequently: Rogue with statistics and information about the base, including the emergency rear exit; and Logan with biting commentary on the stupidity of some of Scott’s plans. It was only when Rogue gave the details of where Stryker had gotten his mind-control drugs that a snag was thoroughly reached: the illusionist. Xavier assigned various areas of research to Scott, Hank, and himself, and ended the meeting.
By then, it was late into the evening.
Rogue promptly vanished into her room. She had been on her own so long––as both Marie and Yuriko––that being around so many people and keeping up the impression that she was socially competent and keeping her distance and being polite all at once, took a toll on her mind, and even just the near proximity to so many strangers made her skin itch with the urge to flee. She slept fitfully for a few hours, not bothering to undress before getting in bed. When she awoke, she thoroughly enjoyed the indulgence of having a shower and hot water to wash away the cold sweat of nightmares. Then she changed into her last set of clean clothes, and headed downstairs.
It was late into the night, but not totally silent. Rogue moved through the mansion like a shadow, taking in the sounds and scents. She paused in the main T.V. room, and watched a psychic boy channel surf by blinking forcefully. He did not look tired, or show symptoms of insomnia, so when he told her that he didn’t ever sleep, and implied that he didn’t need it, she was not surprised.
She went to the kitchen and rummaged around in the fridge. A soft groan of relief escaped her throat when she found a brand of Japanese beer hidden far in the back: three bottles. Rogue seized one, shut the refrigerator door, and sat cross-legged on the kitchen counter next to it. She was barefoot, and wore only jeans, a tank top, and a pair of comfortable but ragged-looking silk gloves that went halfway up her arms and probably had not originally been fingerless.
Logan found her sitting there in the dark, because she had not needed to turn on the lights. “You see in the dark, too, then?”
“It’s dark?” Rogue mocked.
Logan snorted. “You owe me for that beer. It’s one of mine.” To emphasize the point, he took one of the other bottles from the fridge. “What are you doin’ up, anyway, kid?”
“I’m not a kid, Logan. I’m far older than I look.” She snorted. “And I don’t usually get more than a few hours of sleep at a time.” She shrugged, taking a sip of beer.
Logan twisted the cap off of his. “Nightmares?”
With a dark look on her face, Rogue flexed her fingers, which gave two soft metallic pops. “Yeah. You, too?”
“Yeah.” He leaned against the section of counter opposite hers; an island of countertop in the middle of the large kitchen. He was watching her face closely. Even though colors were never as vivid when seen in the dark, he could still otherwise see her expression clear as day.
She looked oddly war-torn for someone so young. Rogue ran her bare fingertips in random designs through the condensation on her beer bottle. “You know, the first time I heard Stryker talk about you, I immediately started to envy you, if only because you’d escaped,” she said quietly, her expression a perfectly smooth mask except for the slightest narrowing of her eyes: well-trained emotional reserve. “That was before I overheard anything about how they had messed with your memory. When I first heard that...I envied you even more. Not only had you gotten away, and escaped that Hell, but you didn’t have to be haunted by what you’d done.” A shadow crossed her features almost too quickly to be seen: a flicker of pain and guilt.
Logan didn’t answer immediately, but when he did, he asked, “What do you think now that you’ve met me?”
She gave a bitter, twisted smile that left her eyes looking cold and almost dead. “I think it’s about six to one, half-dozen to the other, really. Keep that in mind, wontcha, Sugar?”
He thought about it. This time he couldn’t see nor hear any traces of artifice or manipulation in her, and she smelled like painful honesty. “Alright.”
“Promise?” She looked younger, and warmer, just for a second, and it wasn’t fake either.
Logan tried to figure out why it almost made his breath catch silently, and why the hell he answered, with perfect honesty: “I promise.”
Then she smiled a little, and it all seemed worth it. When she tilted her head back as she took another pull of beer, her hair fell back from her face and left exposed the long lean line from the end of her chin, along her throat, down to her collar bone; below that, her dog tag caught the moonlight with a dull gleam.
This woman is damned dangerous, Logan noted. Somehow, this did not prevent him from staring at the movements of her throat muscles as she swallowed, and the wet shine of those lips of hers wrapped around the mouth of the bottle. To distract himself, he asked, “Where do you get that random bit of southern accent from?”
Rogue set her beer aside for a moment and tugged idly at a fraying part of her glove. “Marie was from Mississippi.”
“How old were you when you ran off?”
Her eyes snapped up, looking into his as her face became a darker mask than a moment before, just out of reflex. He had surprised her, and the momentary tension in her muscles showed it, even as she answered smoothly, “Sixteen. I was on the road and the streets both, respectively, movin’ around for a couple of years or so. I tried to settle in Alaska, but after half a year there was an––incident with another mutant, and I had to run again. It didn’t take me long to realize that this time I was being chased.” Again, she reached for her beer.
Logan nodded. “What was the incident?”
Rogue shook her head. “A local boy manifested at the diner I worked for. Whenever he talked, he breathed out a little puff of flame. After he realized what he was doing, he tried to bolt, and ran headlong into me. Another diner had spilled coffee on my gloves, so I’d just taken them off to put on my spares, so he hit skin.” She shook her head. “Just a stupid bit of every-day chaos, really.”
Logan smirked a bit at that. “Sounds like a normal morning around here, at any rate.”
Rogue showed a hint of curiosity. “How is it here, really?”
He shrugged. “Lots of teenage mutants, complete with angst, hijinks, and repair bills you wouldn’t believe.”
She swirled her beer thoughtfully, listening to the hiss of carbonation. “Why do you stay around?”
It was his turn to tense at how probing the question was, and the implications of what the asker knew just from looking. “Lotsa little annoying things: loyalty to Chuck, for what he’s done to help me; the opportunities to kick bad-guy ass that being a superhero provides; and who else is gonna keep these optimistic do-gooders alive when they start to get too close to real war-type fightin’? Not Scooter––that’s for damned sure.”
Rogue smirked faintly. “He’s a stiff and authoritative type, isn’t he?”
“As anal as the rod he’s got permanently shoved up his ass,” Logan added.
Rogue chuckled a little, and sipped her beer. The look she gave him was half-amused, half-curious. “There’s somethin’ else, though...”
Logan finally glared at her, even as his mind automatically drew up the image of a certain smiling red-head with bright green eyes. “And it’s none of your business.”
“Okay, fine. I’m sure I’ll pick it up from the local rumor mill eventually,” Rogue sighed, but there was a hint of a teasing smile on her lips. Her dark eyes peeked out from under thick dark lashes and a few loose strands of ice-white hair.
Despite his annoyance, Logan had to admit that he’d like to see that look on Rogue’s face more often. There was some kinda spitfire hiding under all the cool and dark she wore. It didn’t have the heat of an open flame; it wasn’t visual and obvious, but instead it was subtle and rather alluring. It was possible to get lost in that kind of heat. “Damned teenagers,” he muttered lightly.
Rogue’s smiled widened a little, and she relaxed enough to lean back and rest the back of her head on a cabinet door. Then she suddenly went tense again, and her eyes opened wider––not out of fear, but instinctively to catch more light. She leaned forward, listening.
And Logan heard it, too.
“Black hawks,” Rogue hissed, a low growl rumbling up from her chest.
Logan stepped up to her, and saw her eyes narrow faintly. “I need to get to that patch of wall behind you to set off the alarm.”
Rogue moved aside quickly, easing around him with fluid grace.
The silent alarm went out as soon as Logan tapped the right button on the hidden panel in the wall, alerting the house’s psychics. Logan heard Rogue strip off her gloves. One fluid flex of her hands caused an almost musical assortment of clicks from her fingers: things snapping into place. She headed for the main hallway and stopped in the center of it. Logan paused, meeting her gaze as she squarely faced the main window.
“I’ll cover this weak spot. You get upstairs,” Rogue whispered, her voice heavy with focus and malice, but something determined and protective as well. She unsheathed her claws.
Logan nodded and left her.
Students were already vanishing into escape tunnels as Logan made his way upstairs and the first black shadows of soldiers appeared at the windows.
Logan situated himself around the first corner, hidden. What’s the situation, Chuck?
They all seem to be wearing helmets with interior designs similar to Magneto’s. I cannot effect their minds. Jean, Storm, and Scott are with the children. Hank is sealing off the lower levels well enough that he may need weeks to reopen them. Kurt has been kind enough to assist me in getting aboard the blackbird; however, we cannot fit everyone in the plane.
Logan unsheathed his claws. How many will still be in the hangar?
Several of the older students, Jean, and Hank have volunteered to stay behind. There are enough supplies here below for a dozen of us for several weeks, if necessary.
We’ll stall them. The first crash of broken glass downstairs. Rogue is with me. Logan himself was startled by how much trust was implicit in that thought, and how easily he gave it, but there had been something about the way she had moved, from the moment she’d heard the helicopters, and the tone of her words.
Xavier sounded relieved, but still gave off a sense of unease at the vicious tones of Logan’s thoughts. Thank you, Logan.
Then Charles’ voice faded, and Logan could hear the not-quiet-enough steps of the soldiers moving down the hall. He could hear the first couple of doors being opened and searched. Logan waited, and heard the eruption of chaos downstairs when other soldiers met Rogue, just as his own first target stepped close enough and spotted him. Before the soldier could cry out, Logan’s claws stole his voice.
There were a lot of soldiers. All black-ops, and probably quite good men, when they weren’t sent to kidnap children in the middle of the night.
Word got out over their radios that there were hostile mutants, resistant to force, and more men flooded in. Logan heard an almost-scream from downstairs and leapt off a balcony and into the fray below. Rogue had half a dozen sets of tranq darts in her; they had slowed her down already and she was getting only slower, for all that she was still on her feet and fighting, but the men attacking her were doing far more damage than before. Logan landed in front of her, taking down the three men closest to her and giving her the critical time to pull the damned things out, but her vision was still blurred. She could smell Logan, and was able to make sure that her claws never landed on him, even as she fought through a hazy drug-fog for a few minutes.
Then her world cleared abruptly and she was able to once more wreak havoc with all her power and skill.
Logan had to admit it; she was good. She was quicker than him, and moved like a cat. While most of the men she took down had more mass, even with her adamantium advantage, as well as height and reach on her, she took them down with ease: tripping them up and hitting them ruthlessly wherever they were vulnerable. He had never seen someone hamstring three men in one move before.
When she moved to stand beside him as the enemy pulled back to regroup, Logan felt a totally unfamiliar instant connection: this sense of having totally reliable support, and faith in the fighter at his side. Distantly, he wondered if this was part of that “teamwork” nonsense Scooter always babbled about. If so, he doubted that the pansy really had any idea what he’d been talking about. This comradeship with Rogue was something solid, and primal, and outright barbaric.
And he and Rogue both squared-off to face the many guns they heard preparing to fire. Rogue was already smeared with blood, some of it her own around the bullet-holes her shirt, and Logan, his shirt already in shreds from previous automatic gunfire, just snarled and roared, “If you’re gonna shoot me, SHOOT ME!” and unsheathed his claws loudly as he marched toward the soldiers.
Then everyone froze as a replying voice shouted, “Don’t shoot ‘im!” And the war zone grew suddenly quiet. Soldiers stepped aside, letting one man move up through their ranks.
“Wolverine. Is that you? You haven’t changed a bit. All these years...” His boots were loud in the silence with every step he took.
Then Rogue caught his scent and instantly gave an deep and utterly hellish growl that sounded like it should have come from a creature three times her size, and Stryker paused, disconcerted.
Half a dozen black-ops flashlights fixed their beams on Rogue, seeming surprised to see a young woman when they had thought that her growl had indicated a hellhound or something similar. Rogue bore her teeth and glared. “They aren’t here, you sonofabitch. You can’t have them any more than you could ever have me. Get the fuck out of this house,” she snarled.
Logan’s gaze finally focused on the aged face of the man whose signature graced the adamantium on his skeleton. He faintly recognized that face, and felt an instinctive anger at the sight of it. Stryker knew about his past, and the other man’s knowledge was so close that Logan could taste it.
Logan took a step forward.
The sound of half a dozen specialized tranq guns being cocked gave him only momentary pause; it was Rogue’s voice, barely a whisper, calling, “Sugar?” that actually made him stop. It pissed him off like nothing else, but she was probably right. And she’d somehow gotten that promise out of him not half an hour ago.
“Get out of my house,” Logan growled, “and leave the kids who live here alone.”
Stryker all but sneered, but some of the men around him were shaken. These hardened men had been trained to fight with honor, and to obey orders, but the former had always been their reassurance. Breaking into a house and taking children was something a bit too close to home, and their orders––to break into a hostile military base to capture hostile mutants terrorists––did not seem to apply in this huge house, where most of the bedrooms that men had searched had shelves of stuffed animals and glitter-framed pictures of young kids and their friends. And they could see the dog tag around Logan’s neck, that marked him as a fellow soldier, while his words marked him as a man protecting his home. Not even the sight of his metal claws could fully shake the feeling of wrongness some of them felt. Stryker sensed the unease in his ranks.
“You always were at home in militant places,” he countered.
“You won’t find anything like that here,” Logan said firmly. Dark clouds were forming outside, and it was beginning to rain and rain hard all of a sudden. The temperature of the air was dropping like a stone, too.
Before Stryker could reply, a foot-thick wall of ice began to form, starting at the floor and ceiling and moving to meet in the middle. Before it closed in and completely sealed them off, Logan added, “You won’t find anything at all.”
Rogue looked over her shoulder, seeing Bobby Drake’s face through a gap in the wall––a hidden door leading to a hidden passage––and his hand pressed to the wall, trails of frost emanating from his fingers all the way out to the ice barrier. Storm was behind him, her eyes glowing white.
“Jean sent us up to bring you guys down before we seal off the hangar,” Bobby whispered, gesturing them over urgently.
Rogue sheathed her claws and flinched as Stryker planted a bomb on the ice barrier. She could hear its timer clicking too quietly for human ears. Logan still hadn’t moved. “Logan?”
Slowly, he turned to look at her.
She started to reach for him, then hesitated, remembering that he was nearly shirtless and that she was gloveless. To compensate, she jerked her head toward the door.
He followed her through it, and shut it behind him. Bobby turned on a small flashlight and lead them down the narrow corridor. Logan couldn’t stop clenching and unclenching his fists, and his knuckles itched.
“When we see him again,” Rogue said, too quietly for Storm or Bobby to hear, “and if ya still really wanna know, I’ll touch him, and I’ll tell ya everything I get from him.”
Logan was stunned momentarily, and looked at her face, reading only determination in her expression. “Thank you.”
She only nodded, and tucked her hands into her pockets, holding her arms close to her body. When she felt Logan’s fingers brush across her spine, over the bloodied fabric of her shirt, she instinctively tensed, but relaxed consciously when he did not pull away.
Logan observed her patiently, until he felt her shoulder blades ease down to a more relaxed position. His touch lingered, moving up and down in a few lazy swipes. He felt her shiver, once, and heard her heartbeat quicken, and reluctantly stopped touching her, letting his hand return to his side.
Rogue’s throat was tight, and her face was slightly flushed. After a few moments wherein she recollected herself, she whispered, “Thank you.”
He only nodded, and by then they had reached the hangar.
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Chapter End Notes:
I still have no clue where this is going.