Chapter Two

Like arriving home to your locked apartment and finding your knick-knacks rearranged, Rogue knew as soon as she pulled into the drive that led to the remains of Charles Xavier's mansion that something was off.

She stopped Logan's motorcycle halfway up the drive instead of continuing on to the boathouse that gave her access to the intact lower-levels of the mansion. Rogue shrugged off Logan's leather jacket and laid it across the saddle of the motorcycle. She slid into the shadows caused by unruly hedgerows and ruined masonry and crept along with ears and eyes alert to anything out of place.

Mutant hunters were first to come to mind as Rogue stealthily slipped through the shadows. After Magneto, mutants became persona non grata; even more so than before the attack, with standing orders for the police to arrest or shoot them on sight.

Garden-variety looters would be preferable.

Rogue silently sidestepped a pile of bricks and the back grounds came into view. Her heart clenched and her stomach dropped as she saw the graveyard and the mound of dirt that used to be Logan's grave.

No!

All thoughts of looters and mutant hunters fled at the sight and Rogue dashed across the grounds. "No, no, no!" she chanted as she ran. She slid on her knees the last few feet, grass and dirt staining the legs of her jeans; gloved hands sinking wrist deep into the mounded earth. This time she didn't attempt to hold back the tears that streamed down her cheeks as her head twisted from side to side searching for any sign of the grave robbers.

But, aside from the pile of dirt and the hole in the ground where Logan's arm should've been, all was as it should be.

A shrill, animal-like keen erupted from her throat.

Rogue hadn't been lying when she told Kitty she'd come here to wait for Logan; what she'd omitted was the role Logan's buried arm played. After the Hulk ripped Logan in half, Logan had to retrieve his legs in order to heal. However, when Logan lent Rogue his healing ability after her arm was shot off by one of Cable's goons, her arm had completely grown back. So Rogue was unsure, now that Logan was unencumbered by the adamantium, if he needed the arm they buried or if he'd re-grow the limb like she had. Her inner-Logan was no help in this matter since he couldn't remember life before the adamantium.

If he needed that arm then she'd failed him; failed to protect a piece of the man she loved.

She had no idea how long she'd sat there in the damp fall night air, her hands reflexively clenching and unclenching fistfuls of dirt, when twin cones of light illuminated the graveyard. Rogue didn't flinch or whip her head around; she already knew who those headlights belonged to.

When she returned from Tennessee two months prior she'd been shocked at the beautifully maintained state of the graveyard--in stark contrast to the overgrown, neglected condition of the rest of the grounds. Two days later their mystery benefactor was revealed when, in the early morning hours, a black limousine pulled into the drive. The chauffeur opened the door for a tall, dark-haired man with mustache and Vandyke beard: Tony Stark--Iron Man. His hair was mussed and his expensive, tailored suit was rumpled. He shuffled unsteadily to Wolverine's grave where he stood with shoulders slumped and head bowed.

This scene would repeat twice a week, sometimes more. Always unkempt, Stark would stand before Logan's grave until his chauffeur shepherded him back to his car. Rogue would watch him from her various vantage points on the mansion grounds and, she knew, Stark was well aware of her presence. They never spoke. If Stark noticed her watching him, he'd nod and go back to staring at Logan's grave. Every Monday a grounds crew arrived to care for the graves.

She listened to the opening and closing of car doors, the crisp crunch of shoes on grass, the stumbling falter of those steps, an astonished curse.

"Rogue, are you all right?" Tony Stark asked. He stank of liquor and a headache-inducing mixture of ladies perfumes.

"Did you do this?" Rogue rasped, uncaring in her anger and despair if her question offended him. While she believed his guilt and grief over his role in Logan's "death" to be genuine and believed him an ally, even allies have agendas of their own.

But if Tony Stark was offended he showed no sign. "No," he replied as he walked the perimeter of the graveyard, checking the other graves for signs of vandalism, "I'm not a return-to-the-scene-of-the-crime sort of guy."

"S.H.I.E.L.D?"

Stark shook his head, "I'm not as privy to their day-to-day operations since we decided to see other people but, while S.H.I.E.L.D certainly isn't above a bit of grave robbing if it suits their purposes, this doesn't scream S.H.I.E.L.D to me."

"Care to elaborate?" Rogue challenged.

"Well," Stark began, "those wacky S.H.I.E.L.D scientists do love their DNA samples and here we have a veritable smorgasbord of powerful mutants all laid out and only a single grave is disturbed. No," he shook his head again, "a collector did this, that's my guess."

Rogue's eyes narrowed. "What kind of collector?"

Stark finished his survey of the graves and stopped before Rogue. He eyed the damp, cold grass with distaste but eased himself down upon it; the hole that was Logan's grave gaped between them. "Mutant memorabilia has become a hot commodity. The items showing up on the online auction sites--belt buckles branded with an 'X', genuine costume swatches, and the like--are pretty innocuous and most likely fakes. However, for the rich mutant-hater whose den just wouldn't be complete without that perfect mutant trophy over the fireplace, there's the black market bone trade. Logan's arm that you buried, the claws retained their adamantium, didn't they?"

Rogue nodded. The claws on that arm were imbedded deep in Magneto's chest when the rest of the adamantium was stripped away; or that's how Storm related it. Stark would know better considering he was there.

Stark plucked a blade of grass and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. "Then I'd say someone came here searching for X-Men memorabilia to sell and got lucky with a metal detector. Is anything else missing?"

"I don't know," Rogue shrugged. "I haven't been inside yet." And, she mused, the likelihood of anyone finding the concealed entrance to the sub-basements in the boathouse was slight.

"Then you weren't here when it happened?" he inquired.

Rogue shook her head, "No, I went into the city to see someone. I discovered this," she nodded at the hole between them, "as soon as I returned."

"That's probably for the best," Stark stated. Rogue didn't agree. She'd have loved catching the grave robbers in the act; they'd be laid out on the grounds, nothing but twitching masses.

"If this was a private collector," he mused, "our chances of getting it back are slim, unless they brag about their find. If it's a black market supplier, however, they'll know what a prize Logan's arm is and will start putting feelers out for a buyer ASAP. And, when that happens, we'll pounce."

"You keep track of black market dealings?" asked a dubious Rogue.

Stark traded the ruined blade of grass for a small stone from the dirt pile. "I keep my ear to the ground." Rogue arched a single eyebrow. "All right," he amended with a roll of the eyes, "I pay people to keep their ears to the ground and report back to me. I have a rather large room filled with high-powered computers and the highly-caffeinated technicians to run them that I like to keep busy."

"Every cliché in the book, eh?"

Stark offered her a wry grin, "You can't be a brilliant, billionaire playboy without them."

An idea then occurred to Rogue, "And these high-powered computers and caffeinated technicians, could they locate, say, a remote cabin in Canada with only landmarks to go by?"

"Oh, undoubtedly."

"In that case," Rogue stood on stiff legs and brushed the dirt from her gloved hands on the seat of her stained jeans, "care to give a girl a hand?"

To Be Continued...