Knock. Knock.
She couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to know.
Knock. Knock.
Something was telling her it was now or never.
“Storm? Storm, are you awake? It’s Rogue,” she whispered in the pre-dawn darkness of the hallway.
No answer.
Well, that wasn’t too surprising, since it was barely six o’clock in the morning and she had knocked with all the force of a dying gnat.
Maybe she should just go back to bed and wait for Jean to come talk to her like she said she would when she and Scott got back yesterday evening from wherever they had been for half the day. She had her suspicions, based on the touchy-feely body language and contented expressions the couple displayed, but she kept them to herself. If Scott and Jean wanted to enjoy a little ‘out of school’ lovin’ that was their business.
She moved away from Storm’s door and started to walk back to her own room, but then it hit her again, that feeling of urgency that had awakened her from the first sound sleep she’d had since Logan left. Like an invisible hand, that sense of ‘do it now, right now’ had pulled her out of bed and down the hall to the staff quarters. Initially, she’d gone to Jean and Scott’s room, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to knock on their door. What if she interrupted something?
So she came to Storm’s room instead, partly because her teacher had always been so compassionate and partly because she slept alone, when she slept at all. Everyone knew Storm was something of a night owl.
She knocked again, this time with more conviction.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
A light appeared under the door and Rogue heard what sounded like a low groan that was more pain than annoyance.
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” the weather witch barked, adding sarcastically, “It’s not like I was sleeping or anything,” as she flung open the door to her bedroom.
Rogue opened her mouth to apologize again, but her view of Storm’s bed took her breath away, rendering her speechless.
There, sprawled on the cream-colored silk sheets was a battered and bloody Wolverine, shirtless and sound asleep.
A thousand questions flooded her mind. Why did he come back? Why didn’t he come to her? When did he get back? How long had he been in Storm’s bed?
Anger, jealousy and betrayal rose up to do battle with the fear and concern that gripped her heart, each one vying for dominance in an emotional cage fight that threatened to rip her insides to shreds.
For one agonizing moment, Rogue was paralyzed, unable to do anything but stand there looking from Storm to Logan and back again, her eyes filled with tears and accusations.
By the time Storm realized what had shocked the young girl so, Rogue had found her feet and was running down the corridor, back to her own room in the next hallway.
“Rogue, wait!” Storm called to her, stepping out into the hall and trying not to raise her voice loud enough to wake the entire student body. “Rogue! Come back! It’s not what you—“
Slam!
Storm winced at the ferocity of the sound that echoed through the entire dormitory wing. Clearly, Rogue had shut her out for now, if not for good.
Closing her own door softly, she turned to the unconscious figure on the bed.
“Oh, Logan, now look what you’ve done.”
---------------
Rogue flung herself on her bed and sank her teeth into her pillow to keep from screaming. She didn’t give a shit about waking people up; she was afraid that if she started howling like she wanted to she’d never stop. And then what would she be? A mental patient, that’s what, a candidate for the nut hatch.
Who’s the human siren?
Oh, that’s just Marie. Used to be one of those mutant X-Men superhero types. Way I heard it was she lost her powers and then one night she just went crazy, started screaming and hasn’t quit since.
Poor thing. Pass me some of them ear plugs, will ya?
Her sad attempt at humor was really just her mind’s way of protecting itself from the pain, raw and fierce, that threatened to ravage her soul, smashing her childish dreams of a life with Logan to smithereens. Oh, she’d tried to tell herself that she didn’t need him, that his leaving was a good thing, because without him around to protect her, she would have to grow up, take responsibility for herself. But one look at his dog tags had laid that lie to rest and resurrected all her hopes that one day soon he would come back to her, like he said he would, and that he would see her as the woman she had become instead of the kid she used to be.
But that day was never going to come. Logan didn’t want her, not now, not ever. The truth was simple and the proof was overwhelming. He’d wasted no time in leaving her that first day. She’d been touchable for barely an hour when she heard him ride off to God knew where. He’d stayed gone a week without as much as a phone call to find out if the secret he’d lied to protect was still her own. And last night he came back, but not to her---to Storm.
She should have seen that coming. If he couldn’t have Jean, then it made perfect sense that he would be attracted to the gorgeous weather witch, with her soft, cocoa-colored skin, snow white hair and warm, kind smile. But she hadn’t seen it coming, not at all. Not until it hit her right between the eyes.
Christ, could it get any more humiliating? Just yesterday she had poured her heart out to Storm, literally crying on her shoulder about how much she missed Logan, how lonely she was without him, how she would always love him.
Well, not anymore. He’d made his choice. Now she had to make hers—stay here and live a miserable, empty life watching Logan find happiness in another woman’s arms, or hit the road and live a miserable, empty life on the run—alone. It wasn’t even a contest. She was outta here.
She should probably stay long enough to find out if her power had skipped out on her permanently or if what happened with Logan was just a ‘hiccup’ like Jean thought it might be. She’d give them a day or maybe two to figure things out, but then she would go and this time there would be no reason to come back, not even if Logan came after her. Especially not then, because now she understood that taking care of her and being with her were two very different things to him and she didn’t want one without the other.
She was done bleeding for Logan…bleeding…Logan…
Something about that stuck in her mind, wouldn’t let go, kept repeating.
Logan…bleeding…Logan…bleeding…Logan is bleeding!
Holy shit!
The image slammed into her conscious mind like a race car impacting a brick wall. She had been so caught up in whose bed he was in that she hadn’t fully registered the fact that he’d been beaten to a pulp. Flashing back to those horrible moments in the hall outside Storm’s room, she forced her mind's eye to narrow so that she could see only him. He was covered in blood and bruises. And was that a footprint on his chest?
She was off the bed, across the room and out the door before she even felt her feet touching the floor.
What the hell happened? How long ago had he been hurt? She knew his healing power sometimes worked slowly, especially when there were internal organs and intricate networks of nerves and blood vessels to repair. The healing always happened from the inside out, so cuts and bruises could potentially stay open to infection for hours if allowed to wait until his body did its own work. He was unconscious last she’d seen him, obviously in no shape to tend his own wounds.
She had to help him.
More than that, she had to assure herself that he was actually healing, that whatever or whomever had done this to him hadn’t pushed his healing ability too far. Until last week, she would never have even considered that possibility, but that was before she had seen her own power seemingly vanish without warning. Absurd as it seemed, she couldn’t take the chance that his mutation might have abandoned him, too.
As she rounded the corner to head down the staff corridor, she froze in her tracks as she watched Storm enter her room carrying a small basin of water and some clean towels.
He doesn’t need you. He has her.
She leaned against the hallway wall, her heart cracking into a thousand pieces. A sob clawed at her throat, struggling for release. She closed her eyes in a vain attempt to keep the tears from falling. Briefly, she fought to remain upright, denying the urge to give in to the anguish crushing down on her, but it was too heavy. Her knees started to bend as she leaned into the hallway wall and she felt herself sliding down the smooth wooden surface, expecting to collapse into a helpless heap on the carpet.
Startled by a pair of strong hands gripping her shoulders and hauling her to her feet, she felt a surge of hope zing through her veins.
Logan!
But then she opened her eyes and hope died yet again as she found herself staring not into Logan’s caring eyes, but at her own tear-streaked reflection in Scott’s dark glasses.
“Rogue? Rogue, what happened? Rogue!”
She didn’t hear a word he said. Instead she slumped against his chest and welcomed the oblivion that claimed her troubled mind.
---------------
Logan lay on Storm’s soft, cool bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, slowly sporadically, becoming dimly aware of his surroundings for a few minutes and then slipping back into the blackness in his head that was never completely quiet. In one of the moments when he could almost see the light pushing against his eyelids, he thought he heard Storm calling to Rogue.
No, Storm! Don’t let her see me like this!
He was still healing from the beating he’d taken in the cage. He’d wasted no time in leaving Jack’s establishment after his last and bloodiest brawl. He probably should have waited until more of his internal injuries were healed, but as soon as he was able to handle the motorcycle, he was on it, heading back to the mansion—to Rogue—as fast as that damn bike would go. With every mile, he drew closer and closer to her and that as much as anything else gave him the strength to keep riding through the night—through the pain—zooming along the nearly deserted highway.
But almost two hours later, when he reached the outskirts of the school property, he was forced to stop. The vibration of the bike had escalated the pain in his lower back from an annoying throb to a constant excruciating squeeze on what Logan guessed were his kidneys. Before leaving the barn for good, he’d visited his favorite tree and pissed a river of red, proof positive that six angry Marines constituted a force to be reckoned with, even for a Wolverine.
The six soldiers were from the same unit as the two he had brutally dispatched the night before. Aware that the Wolverine was more than he appeared, they demanded a shot at him, all at once, six against one. Jack had refused at first, but then Logan proposed that if each man would pay double the entry fee, he’d take them all on as a unit. Not one of them had hesitated even for a second to fork over the five hundred dollar fee, cash on the barrel head. All of them fought with rock hard fists, steel-toed boots and a raging desire to avenge their comrades who Logan had toyed with like a cat torturing a pair of mice before delivering the final knock-out blows.
His regenerative power had been pushed to the limit and then some, but in the end, the Wolverine prevailed, mostly because his bones were unbreakable and theirs weren’t. He left three of them unconscious on the floor of the cage. Two were sporting shattered knee caps and the last one gave up when Logan dislocated both of his shoulders.
Jack and Smitty tried to talk him into waiting until morning, but he told them he’d just as soon collect his share and go. They paid him not only his half of the night’s receipts, but every penny of the Marines’ entry fees.
“I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that in my whole life, and probably never will again,” Jack had told him. “You more than earned this.”
He had waved good-bye and, after a bit of a shaky start, pointed the bike south and kept going until the pain in his back demanded he get off the damn thing. The geeks weren’t expecting him until morning anyway, so he had decided to just rest there in the woods—a mere stone’s throw from where his Rogue slept—and let his body heal as much as possible before daylight. He wouldn’t be of any use to Rogue if he arrived at the mansion broken and bruised.
It never occurred to him that Storm might find him first.
---------------
“Logan,” Storm tried again. Nothing.
She cursed herself for a thoughtless fool for flinging the door open like she did and letting Rogue—of all people!—get an eyeful of Logan sprawled out on her bed.
“Logan.”
She’d been calling his name every few minutes since she’d found him about two miles from the mansion, lying against a tree along the two-lane road that intersected the main drive. He’d been coherent enough to really answer her only once, when she had asked if he was strong enough to get back on the motorcycle.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Great. Climb on the back. I’m driving.”
“No, you’re not.”
“It’s either that or I fly ahead of you, wake Jean and the professor and let them take care of you in Med Lab.”
“Fine. You drive.”
Storm had been on one of her midnight flights, her answer to warm milk and a weighty book, when she found him. He looked like he’d been chewed on by wild dogs, and she tried to ask him what had happened, but other than that once, he hadn’t spoken.
By tacit agreement, she had helped him up to her room, peeled off his jacket and shirt and was just about to gather what she needed to wash the blood from his not yet healed cuts when Rogue’s knock had interrupted her.
Storm was back now from gathering water and towels and her heart went out to Rogue as she began washing the body of the man the young girl loved so much. She wondered silently if the Wolverine knew, let alone appreciated, what Rogue felt for him.
Still gently moving the soft, damp cloth over his skin, Storm was all but hypnotized by the combination of her swirling motions and the quiet rhythm of his chest rising and falling with each breath. So she nearly jumped out of her own skin when his hand suddenly clamped down on her wrist.
“That spot’s clean enough. Hurts. A lot. Let it go,” he croaked, his voice rough but stronger than when she first found him. His eyes remained closed.
“OK. Sorry.” She lifted the cloth from the boot print on his chest and replaced it on his shoulder where a deep cut still oozed red. “Is this alright?” she asked, applying as little pressure as she could and still get him clean.
He grunted. She took it as a ‘yes’.
“Storm?”
“Yes, Logan?”
“Don’t let Marie see me like this, OK?”
She started to tell him the truth, but decided against it. For his sake, because he needed the rest and the healing more than he needed the truth, she did for him what he had done for Rogue. She lied.
“I won’t. You rest now.”
No answer.
“Logan?”
He slept and she continued her careful ministrations, smiling as she realized that the Wolverine not only appreciated Rogue’s feelings for him, he returned them as well.
---------------
Rogue came to just as Scott reached Med Lab. She knew instantly that the arms that carried her, though strong and confident, weren’t the ones she had dreamed were holding her, protecting her, come what may. No one felt like her Wolverine.
But he’s not your Wolverine anymore, is he?
She couldn’t stifle the groan that escaped from her throat as she shifted in Scott’s arms, trying to wrap herself into an even tighter ball against his chest.
“Rogue, we’re in Med Lab. You need to let go so I can put you on the bed,” he told her.
She kept her eyes closed, but she unwound her arms from his neck and let him set her gently on what was really more of a gurney than a bed, with its thin mattress and metal rails. The stark white sheet literally crackled when she pulled her knees to her chest and turned away from him.
So now it would begin, the questions, the probing of her mind and her body, all in the name of ‘helping’ her. Oh, well, the sooner they got started, the sooner she could skedaddle.
She sat up and looked around the room. Jean was there, on the other side of the gurney, adjusting some machine or other. Scott was talking to the professor. It looked like they were disagreeing about something.
Rogue’s voice drew everyone’s attention.
“OK, everybody, let’s get this over with.”
---------------
“Read it for yourself, Scott. I’ve done it and re-done it, twice. There’s no mistake,” Jean said, more than a little exasperated with her man for doubting her ability to read a simple DNA test result. Who’s the doctor here, hmm?
“Nothing? Not even one marker, not one allele out of place, not even by some microscopic fraction?” he queried.
“No, hon, whatever has changed, it isn’t showing up in the basic structure of her DNA, which for the moment, leads me to believe the event was a fluke, a ripple in the time-space continuum, an episode of the ‘The Twilight Zone’, whatever. What it wasn’t was a reason to give Rogue any hope that her skin is no longer deadly.” Jean spoke quietly, not wanting to be overheard by her patient, who was currently doing her best to lay motionless in an MRI tube while it mapped every inch of her skin.
“We’ll have to wait and see if the scan reveals any anomalies on or directly under her skin,” Jean continued, “but if that comes back normal, too, then it looks like we’re going to have to go through with the professor’s idea, whether you like it or not.”
Even from behind his glasses, Jean could see Scott’s expression darken as he shouted, “We can’t do that! It’s barbaric!”
Jean scowled at him and tipped her head toward the MRI machine.
He lowered his voice again. “I don’t care if they do volunteer; we can’t knowingly put students at risk like that, Jean. What if she panics or just simply holds on too long? She could kill someone! Has anyone thought of what that would do to her, let alone the poor ‘volunteer’?”
“Undoubtedly, it would devastate her,” Xavier interjected as he rolled up next to where the couple was talking. “Which is why the first volunteer will be me.”
Both Jean’s and Scott’s jaws actually dropped, simultaneously. Jean recovered first.
“Professor—Charles—you can’t do that. What if—“
“Jean, I am well aware of the risk. I am also aware that I am the only one powerful enough to force her to break the connection without doing any real damage to me. The worst that should happen will be some fatigue on my part and a short-term gain in psychic ability for her. That is, of course, if her mutation is still intact.”
“Well, we should at least wait until you’ve had a chance to teach her some control. You said she asked you about helping her, like you helped Scott and Storm and me,” Jean reasoned.
“Listen to yourselves! This is exactly what Rogue said she didn’t want to do to her friends, remember?” Scott pleaded.
“Scott, we are out of options and out of time. She plans to run. She’ll give us today, maybe tomorrow, to find an answer one way or the other, but then she will go. I can’t turn her loose on the world in her present condition. We all have to know. This is the only way.”
The MRI machine began to whir and beep. Jean went to check on its progress, leaving Scott and the professor to hash out the ethics of the few choices left open to them.
“What about Logan? He’s back and he’s the other half of this…problem, anyway. Why not use him instead?”
Scott knew Logan was back because Jean had told him. He hated that she could sense that mongrel from ten miles away, let alone three doors down.
Choosing to ignore Scott’s apparent lack of concern for the Wolverine’s well-being, Xavier said calmly, “For the very reason you just said. He’s the other half of the equation, so if she touches him and nothing happens we will still be at square one.”
Scott sighed, resigned to the fact that his mentor and his lover were about to embark on what might arguably be one of the most dangerous missions they’d ever attempted—and they wouldn’t even have to leave Med Lab to do it.
End Chapter 6
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry this took longer to get posted than I had hoped, but a few other ideas demanded an audience first.
Chapter End Notes:
Chapter 7 is underway, but knowing me, that's no guarantee it will be posted before next month. However, hope springs eternal...