Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry again for the delay posting. I've not felt well for the past few weeks and it's making it difficult to get any work done. Enjoy and please review!

Chapter Five

Deep U-shaped valleys framed by snow-capped mountain peaks. Clear, blue-green lakes surrounded by pines. Stretches of tree-lined highways--all blending together into one.

Rogue rubbed her eyes and clicked to the next photo.

Yes to that mountain range, No to that twisting river--this was how she spent her days.

Paul Morrow sent her the photos in groups of 250-300; anymore and her eyes began to cross and the images bleed together. He wouldn't give her a straight answer when she asked for the grand total of pictures she needed to go through, probably tipped off by Tony Stark after her mini flip-out at the word 'thousands'. Paul just reiterated that Canada's a big place.

When Rogue wasn't busy with pictures, she was busy exploring Stark Towers. She would have preferred to go out--anyplace that wasn't these four walls, but, Sunday evening, the weather had turned rainy and all the following week was drizzly and cold. And Rogue wasn't willing to risk a relapse and the inevitable days of forced inactivity that would entail.

Now she was recovered, Tony Stark quit letting himself into her suite. This pleased the Logan in her head--until the dinner invitations began. Rogue had dined with Stark every evening since her recovery. They didn't leave Stark Towers; Tony Stark is a paparazzi favorite and being photographed out and about with Stark would certainly lead to those gun-toting soldiers with orders to shoot on sight. So they ate in Tony Stark's penthouse, their meals catered by New York's finest eateries. The Logan in her head was alternately sullen or snarling during those evenings. Consequently, Rogue would return to her suite at the end of the meal with a splitting headache.

Rogue completed this latest batch of photos, grabbed Logan's leather jacket and the computer tablet, and went in search of Paul Morrow. The Stark Industries employees she passed in the hallways no longer eyed her with suspicion as she strolled past, a big change from earlier in the week when she had to flash her visitor's badge at everyone she encountered. The woman at the front desk, when Rogue inquired after Paul Morrow, pointed her to the Gamma Building.

Rogue dashed through the rain, ducked under the yellow caution tape, and into Gamma Building. She found Paul and his counterparts, Franks and Christensen, in a basement level lab installing a bank of computers.

She'd first met Joshua Franks--dark skinned with a boyish grin--and the slightly sullen Eric Christensen with his reddish-blond hair that flopped over his eyes a few days earlier when she'd wondered into their "Bat Cave". After introducing his fellow computer virtuosos, Paul had shown her a large wall monitor featuring a map of Canada covered in red, green, and yellow dots.

The red dots, Paul had explained, stood for the photos she'd marked 'No', the green for those marked 'Yes', and the yellow stood for all the photos she had yet to go through. Yellow dominated the map.

Franks had then shown her some of the auction websites he and Christensen were monitoring for Logan's arm. Those sites and their listings featuring dead mutant body parts left Rogue disgusted and sick to her stomach.

After a quick round of hello's Paul left Franks and Christensen to complete their work in the Gamma Building lab and walked with Rogue back to the main building. He took the tablet computer from her, downloaded the photos, and replaced them with a double batch. "To keep you busy until Monday," he explained, "I have this weekend off."

Rogue took the tablet back, "Any big plans?"

"Yeah: sleeping!" Paul grinned.

Rogue then returned to her suite. There would be no dinner invitation from Tony Stark tonight or the weekend ahead. He and Bonnie/Brenda had jetted off to Paris that morning for some Stark Industries business meetings and to walk the red carpet at a nightclub opening. They were expected to return sometime Monday.

Rogue exhaled a sigh of relief.

She liked Tony Stark and appreciated all his assistance, but Rogue was beginning to feel like a princess in a tower. She needed time away from these four walls, even for just a little while. Rogue looked out the windows at the grey skies and steady drizzle; if only the weather would cooperate.

Rogue pushed the button that lowered the blinds and flopped onto her bed. With any luck, the rain would stop by tomorrow.


* * *


It did.

Saturday dawned chilly and overcast with only a 30% chance of rain in the forecast. It was as lovely to Rogue as a clear, sunshiny summer's day. She requested a backpack be sent up with her breakfast bagel and tea. She ate quickly, rolled-up a pair of oversized bath towels and shoved them into the non-descript black backpack along with the tablet computer. She shrugged on Logan's leather jacket, grabbed the keys to his bike, and took off.

Rogue rode through the grey morning back to the ruins of Charles Xavier's mansion; that princess in a tower feeling receding in the open air. She parked the bike next to the lake house and negotiated the piles of broken masonry to the graveyard.

Logan's grave was fixed as Tony Stark had promised it would be. But Rogue's own guilt could not be so easily mended. If I hadn't gone to Kitty's that night I would've been here to stop the thieves, Rogue chastised herself.

Darlin', that arm would've been stolen either way, Logan-in-her-head contended, You wouldn't have seen or heard anything down in the sub basement. It wasn't your fault.

Rogue shook her head: it was her fault. She'd gotten impatient and left and now Logan's arm was in the possession of God knows whom doing God knows what to it. A vision of Logan's arm mounted like a rack of antlers brought angry tears to her eyes. She wanted to scream and break things; she wanted a set of claws like Logan's to carve a path of destruction until Logan's arm was found. She balled her hands into fists.

Rogue could feel that same frustration from the Logan in her head yet he reiterated It ain't your fault.

She walked the grounds until her anger and self-loathing slipped into the background then returned to the lake house where she spread the pair of bath towels on a relatively dry patch of ground and began going through pictures on the tablet. When her eyes began to cross, she sat the tablet aside and watched the movement of the water until late afternoon when her stomach began to grumble and complain. Yet Rogue was reluctant to pack up and go.

There was food galore in the sub basement; she could spend the night here and return to Stark Towers in the morning. Both Stark and Paul Morrow were gone until Monday, she wouldn't be missed. Except she would be. Tony Stark would inevitably have eyes keeping track of her comings and goings. Rogue could just picture Stark armoring up and zooming back from Paris if she didn't return tonight.

Rogue reluctantly shoved the computer tablet into the backpack and pushed to her feet. The bottommost towel she'd been sitting on was dirty and soaked. She rolled it inside the dryer top towel and rummaged through the lake house for a plastic bag to stuff them in--she didn't want to risk damaging the computer.

Rogue drove slower and took the long way back into the city. Her stomach still rumbling, Rogue stopped to wolf down a pair of chilidogs before returning to Stark Towers.


* * *


Tony Stark returned Monday afternoon gloomy and distant, in direct contrast to Bonnie/Brenda who was all smiles as Stark's chauffeur collected her shopping bags to carry inside the building. Stark remained distant throughout the week and Rogue made the most of it. Each morning she'd eat breakfast and then walk to either a park or coffee shop to go through that day's batch of photos.

Rogue finished earlier than usual on Thursday and decided to stop at the library to research the mountain ranges of Canada. She could most likely find the same information on the Internet, especially since Paul Morrow hooked her laptop into the building's Wi-Fi, but she wanted those few extra hours away from Stark Towers--it kept those claustrophobic princess in a tower feelings at bay.

Rogue recognized many of the pictures in the books from Paul Morrow's batches. She was leafing through pages of maps when a Wolverine Creek in the Willmore Wilderness area of Alberta caught her eye. Rogue huffed out a laugh and turned the page. Then she flipped back. Something about that map was niggling at the back of her mind. Again Wolverine Creek caught her eye, but that wasn't the detail drawing her to this map. There, 40. Highway 40.

Then came the flashes.

Tree-lined stretches of road with tall mountains in the distance. A road sign featuring the image of a big-horned sheep.

"Logan!" Rogue gasped.

I see it, darlin'

A deep lake. Telephone poles following the twists in the road. A gravel turn off leading up the side of a mountain--ending at a cabin.

Rogue stood so abruptly her chair fell backwards to clatter loudly against the hard library floor.

"Oh God, oh God!" she chanted under her breath.

Rogue righted her chair, ignoring the annoyed glares of her fellow library patrons, grabbed the book, and headed for the photocopier. She made copies of the map that triggered those flashes and another that showed more of Highway 40 then hightailed it back to Stark Towers.

Rogue raced into Paul Morrow's office flustered and out of breath. "Get Stark!" she panted while waving the photocopies in the air, "I know where to look! I know where the cabin is!"

To Be Continued...

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