Kitty stood outside of Rogue’s door, hearing the muffled music escaping under the door, confirming that the girl was in. She looked down and fiddled with the green iPod nano in her hands. She had no idea how this was going to play out, if Rogue would be receptive to this type of gift or not. The girl didn’t have complete control over her emotions yet, sometimes pingponging from tears to giddiness in seconds, so occasionally you would be blindsided by a complete opposite reaction than the one expected.
Kitty had made a pact with Logan and Jubes to not mention Rogue’s music issues but it wasn’t like not talking was the same as not noticing. Rogue did look uncomfortable with that huge CD player, shoved into whatever pocket it would fit, tugging her clothing this way and that. And the amount of AA’s the girl was burning through couldn’t be good for the budget, let alone the environment.
Screw it. She took a breath and knocked on the door, deciding that this was something that had to be brought up at some point anyway. Might as well come from a friend and start now.
Rogue opened the door, letting The Beatles flow freely out into the common room. Kitty took in the sweaty, red face and noticed a yoga mat over by the open window.
“Hey Roguey. What’s going on?”
The other girl stepped back a few paces, putting a good four feet between them, and used the bottom of her shirt to wipe her face off. “Doing some crunches and pushups. I just got back in from running.” She waved her hand in invite and went back over to drop on the mat, starting a stretching routine.
Kitty followed her into the room and crossed to the boombox, turning the volume down a little under Rogue’s watchful eye. She flashed a reassuring smile and sat on the bed, facing the mat.
“Why aren’t you in the gym for your workout today? Isn’t that what you’re normally up to right now?”
Rogue’s face scrunched up for a second. “Logan’s got his senior class in there right now. He said it was fine if I stayed, but I think I was too much of a distraction. No one was paying attention to him and it was my fault. I shoulda wore something more covering. Half my arms were bare. I think it was too scary for them.”
Scanning her attire, Kitty smirked. Yeah, she could bet that Rogue had been the distraction. The boys were probably all drooling and tripping over themselves instead of listening to Logan and the girls were probably too busy trying to regain the attention. Sure all of her skin, except for her face and four inches of lower arm, was covered, but the skintight, spandex bodysuit didn’t hide anything. She had runner’s shorts on over it but even those molded to her ass a little too lovingly.
“Where did you get that outfit? I think it might be a little… small.” She tried to be delicate but Rogue’s face picked up a rosier hue anyway.
She plucked at the area over her chest, pulling it away from her boobs. “Yeah, it is. I didn’t really expect to see anyone today. I found it in ‘the closet’ and thought it wouldn’t be too hot to work out in. It’s a little tighter than I hoped.”
Kitty frowned. That was the problem when you dug through the huge wardrobe that they kept around, just in case. It was really upsetting, how many people found their way to the mansion with nothing but the clothes on their back. Jubilee had been one of them. Kitty hadn’t been much better off.
“You’ve been here for a week and a half. You mean to tell me that Jubes hasn’t dragged you to the store for a shopping trip yet? There’s a credit card reserved for just these reasons.”
“I don’t really need anything though. I have clothes. That money should be for someone who really needs it. I have some clothes, so what if I have to do laundry a little more often. “ Her face went blank and a little hard. “Besides. I have my own money. It’s bad enough that I’m staying here for free. I’ll use my own if I really need something that I don’t have.”
Kitty rolled her eyes. “Whatever, miss independent. Remind me to introduce you to the song ‘Independent Woman’ by Destiny’s Child. They could learn something from you.” She softened her tone. “Everyone needs help from other people at some point in their lives. You aren’t an island. Life’s all about paying it forward. If you need help, you take it from someone who can give it. Then, later, you give when you can.”
Rogue smiled a little bitterly. “Yeah, it’s just hard to remember that people will actually help you without expecting anything in return. My parents weren’t exactly the greatest examples.”
She fell silent for a minute. “I’m trying to though. Anyway, enough with the sad shit. What did you want? I’m pretty sure you didn’t come in here to smell my awesome workout stench or talk about Karma.”
“Well, I know you have your music with you all the time and I thought I would… Rogue?” She stopped talking because the other girl was looking over her shoulder, towards the open door. A few seconds later, Logan appeared and leaned against the doorjamb.
“I told you, you didn’t have to leave. There’s plenty of equipment in that gym. They coulda shared.” He grumbled, nodding to Kitty and chewing on the end of an unlit cigar.
Rogue sighed. “It’s fine, Logan. They’re still scared of me and I had all this bare skin on display. I can finish working out in here and not bother anyone. Though, my room seems to have turned into a meeting room. Did someone send out the ‘rogue’ single? Is it shaped like a glove?”
“They’re not scared of you. You should have heard what they…” Logan turned to look over his shoulder. “What the hell are you doing here?” he griped as Jubes pushed past him into the room.
“I live here. Maybe not in this room, but in this suite. I have a right to be here. What’s your excuse? You’re here all the fucking time.” She dropped on her stomach onto the bed and grabbed a pillow to rest her folded arms on.
Rogue threw up her arms. “Join the party. Make yourself at home. Lord knows, I’m dressed for company.”
Kitty smirked and elbowed Jubes, drawing her attention to Logan, whose eyes had zoomed over to Rogue’s chest when she mentioned her state of dress. Jubes snickered and he cleared his throat, dragging his gaze over to her. “Someone has to keep an eye on you three. You’re liable to triple handedly tear down this school around our ears.”
Kitty clamped a hand over Jubilee’s mouth, stopping an argument that could last hours if she let it. You could tell they were practically family, with the way they all bickered all day.
She ignored the slimy tongue that was licking her hand, trying to gross her out enough that she would let go. “Anyway, since I was here first, I get to go first. Rogue, I wanted to give you this.” She held out the iPod and dropped it into the outstretched, gloved hand, finally letting go of the jellybean when she stopped fighting. She wiped her hand on the girl’s shirt and turned back to a stunned Rouge.
“I hacked everyone’s iTunes and stole everything that I didn’t already have. I stocked that” she nodded at the iPod, “with all of the music you have on your cd’s and the music I stole. Now, you don’t have to carry around the huge CD player everywhere. And the battery life is really good so you don’t have to worry about carting around extra AA’s all the time.”
Rogue was slowly stroking the iPod with careful hands, watery eyes focused on it. “How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. It’s so hard to believe that there is all that wonderful music in this tiny thing. Can one desire too much of a good thing?” She looked up, meeting Kitty’s eyes with a direct gaze.
“Thank you, so much. I…I don’t know how I can ever repay you for this. It’s wonderful. I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks. And oft good turns, are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay. But were my worth as is my conscience, firm. You should find better dealing.”
Kitty was having problems deciphering the quotes interspersed with other text, but she thought she had it all worked out when the tears started rolling down Rogue’s cheeks. She stood up. “I didn’t want you to cry. And you can repay me. I want a hug.” She held out her arms and watched Rogue hesitate, looking down at her bare forearms. Kitty snorted and grabbed the other girl, pulling her in close. What the hell was she worried about? She had a shirt on… Slowly she felt Rogue’s arms come around her and hold her tight.
They stood there for a few minutes until Jubilee grabbed the iPod out of Rogue’s hand and started going through the albums. “Oh good. You did steal all of Hank’s orchestra pieces. I’ve been after them for a long time but he wouldn’t let me burn them. Something about copyright laws. Psh, who actually gives a shit about that when it comes to music?”
Rogue snatched it back from Jubes, shaking it in her face to emphasize. “Mine.”
Jubilee blew her hair out of her face and studied a yellow nail. “What, are you a seagull now?”
“I have no idea what that means, but I’m sure it makes sense in your brain.” Rogue tucked the iPod into her shirt, drawing everyone’s attention back to that region.
“Oh, yeah! That’s why I came in here!” Jubilee sat up, suddenly looking very intense. “I was wandering passed the boys dorms a few minutes ago, completely on accident let me tell you, when I heard them talking about you. Dude, all of them think you’re super hot. They couldn’t stop talking about how tight your outfit was and about how nice your rack is.” She squinted at Rogue’s chest, somehow ignoring the slight growl coming from the doorway, and reached out to poke a boob. “They’re right. It’s really nice.”
Kitty watched the blush creep up Rogue’s face and smirked, knowing that Jubilee was unstoppable when she got on certain tangents.
“You should totally go out with one of them.” There was a spike in the growling that seemed to finally derail Jubilee’s train of thought. “Once you’re completely settled in and able to navigate the mansion waters, of course.”
She turned and stuck her tongue out at Logan, expression screaming, ‘happy now’?
Logan straightened up from the door and glared at Jubilee for a minute before turning back to look at Rogue. “Anyway, that leads to why I came here. Wanted to suggest you wear a t-shirt or something over that if you plan on working out in it again. It’s fucking skintight.”
“Thanks, Logan. I hadn’t noticed and I needed you to point that out. And it wasn’t in the plans to be gawked at. I just wanted to work out, in peace. Now, all the little boys are talking about me, sexually.” She squished up her nose. “Like they don’t talk about me enough, because I’m the new girl. I don’t need this!” She threw her arms up in disgust and started rolling up the yoga mat.
“Aren’t you just a little bit interested, Rogue?” Jubilee tried to gourd a reaction out of her.
“They’re like, what? 18? That’s light-years away from me.”
“Dudette, you’re not an old maid. You’re only 20. Don’t start collecting the cats yet.”
Rogue tucked the mat into the closet and turned back to the room, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I look 20 and I’ve, physically, been on this Earth for 20 years… but I’m actually over 168 years old, all told. I can’t be more exact cause Logan doesn’t know how old he is, so I don’t know how old my brain is. I have all these memories, all these experiences and they’re a part of me now. No way around it.”
Jubilee fidgeted on the bed next to Kitty, giving her the chance to think about this. “You don’t act that old, Rogue. You’re still full of sunshine and you’re not jaded like that. You still get joy out of life. Someone who was old and bitter wouldn’t be able to do those things.”
Rogue hung her head a little, letting her hair hide her face. “That’s just with you guys though. I like hanging out with you because you let me be young. I know we’re adults and we act like it, when we want to. Sometimes though, when it’s just the three or four of us, we don’t have to be the responsible people out to promote mutantkind. Logan doesn’t have to be the big, bad Wolverine that everyone else sees. He can goof off and have fun, without losing face or respect. I don’t have to be the girl with the killer skin. I can be the teenager that I wasn’t allowed to be. Normally, I feel older than anyone I’ve ever met, because I basically am…”
She ran a hand through her hair and Kitty had to struggle not to pull her into another hug. “Ya’ll just let me be me, without having to dwell on my situation. I can never thank you enough for that gift. And for brining me home with you. It’s more acceptance than I’ve ever gotten, even when I wasn’t a nutcase.”
Logan gave into the struggle they all seemed to be having and crossed to Rogue, pulling her into his chest and tucking her under his chin. For once, she didn’t flinch away, just grabbed on tightly. “Hey. You ain’t a nutcase. Get that shit outta your head. You’re just a little bit confused right now. We’ll start working on that when you’re ready. And we wouldn’ta done anything else but bring you along. You fit. You’re one of us, part of the team. Anyway, I never woulda heard the end of it if I’d left you. We all took to you right away.”
Kitty caught his head jerk and pounced into the hug, pulling Jubilee with her until Rogue was squished in the middle between all of them. “You can never leave us, Rogue. We’re complete now.”
Jubes piped in, “Yeah, like the Fantastic 4. Except no one is invisible girl. Cause that power just sucks balls. She never did anything important besides be kidnapped to drive the storyline...” Logan coughed a little to stop her. “Maybe that’s a bad example. Oh, I know, we’re the Ninja Turtles! They’re all awesome in their own way and they have a mentor. The Prof is totally Splinter with his constant advice and guidance. We should dress…mhp.”
Kitty slapped a hand over Jubilee’s mouth again, rolling her eyes. But the runaway train had helped bring a smile to Rogue’s face, which had been the point. They all slowly drifted away from each other, ignoring Rogue wiping at her face and the wet patch on Logan’s shirt.
Logan cleared his throat and looked around the room, finally looking at Rogue again. “Anyway, this turtle is willing to shell out some dough for new workout clothes if you want to head to Dick’s Sporting Goods.”
“Yeah, I think that would be ok. Though I’ll help pay for them. Let me just get changed.” She turned towards the closet as Kitty and Jubilee got up to follow Logan out the door.
Jubilee stopped short before exiting. “Wait… ‘shell’ out some ‘dough’? Logan, was that a pun?! Have you been watching the Ninja Turtles?!!”
Logan just chuckled and grabbed her arm, dragging her out the door. Kitty smiled and crossed to their room, wanting to change shoes before they went to the store. Life sure was interesting. You couldn’t even give someone a present without some sort of drama unfolding.
Donavon slammed his hand down on the desktop, the slap reverberating around the room. To his credit, Clint didn’t jump, though everyone else in the vicinity did.
“What the fuck do you mean you lost them in West Virginia? You have their license plate. We have friends at the DMV. Get the address that the car’s registered to!”
Clint scrubbed his hands through his hair and sighed, turning bloodshot eyes to stare in the vicinity of Donavon’s chin. “You think I didn’t think of that and try it already? The car isn’t registered to a real address. It’s tied to an empty piece of land in the lower part of New York. It’s never been involved in an accident or been pulled over. I’m betting they have serious money and have pushed some people to look the other way.”
Donavon tried to rein in his temper. Yelling at the techies got one nowhere. Unless you wanted a mysterious virus to take over your computer. Ok. The last glimpse of it had been in West Virginia at a small park, just over the boarder. Was it allowed back into the car after that or did they part ways there?
“Can you see into the car as it was leaving?”
“Negative. We aren’t even positive she…” He glared at Clint, getting him to backtrack. It wasn’t proper to refer to a mutant by a pronoun that was used on a human. Doing things like that lead to developing feelings for the mutant. “it was in the car with them still. Before then, it was caught on film at a gas station and, unless they stopped and threw it out quickly, they don’t appear to have stopped before entering the park.”
“Ok. Get Jackson to that park to look around and see if he can find out if it got back in the car or not. Have him take that tracking mutant, the one with the bloodhound nose, with him. He can head up to New York if he doesn’t find anything concrete. It’s a huge fucking place but it’s the only lead we have. I want to keep Mark in this area, in case any of the mutants we’ve got stashed at the warehouse cause problems. He’s got just enough mean in him to do what’s necessary. The rest of the guards are all soft.”
He watched his assistant’s fingers fly over the keyboard for a minute and listened to the other drones around the room doing the same, hunting down leads to different powers that had to be eradicated from the world.
“What do its parents say?”
“Jim talked to them yesterday. They’re adamant that it always wanted to go to Alaska. It wouldn’t shut up about it, and had a huge map of Alaska on the wall until the mutation occurred.”
He mulled it over for a minute; finally deciding the cost would be worth the chance that it might have gone a different place. “Send Phillip and Sally to Alaska. Have them hit all the towns that would attract a runaway. At least it’s a smaller place than New York… I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone that failure will not be tolerated. I need it in my possession as soon as possible. Get the word out.”
He checked that each man and woman was busy doing as bid, before stopping back at Clint’s side.
“And Clint. Get some sleep. You look like shit. But get the fucking work done first. I don’t pay you to not get shit done.” Donavon swept out of the room and grabbed his umbrella from his office on the way out of the building. You never knew when it was going to start raining in New Orleans. Fucking city might as well be underwater permanently, it flooded so often.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
Hello my beauties. Here's another chapter. Also, if anyone is interested, I started a blog that's linked in my profile. It's just in the beginning stages and I don't know exactly what it's going to be, but it's there if you want to go check it out! Thanks to everyone who gave me a review! They're like crack and I'm addicted!
Kiss Kiss!
Kiss Kiss!
Chapter End Notes:
Quotes:
How far that little candle throws its beams! So...~The Merchant of Venice
Can one desire too much of a good thing?~ As You Like It
I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks...~ Twelfth Night
Review? Pretty please?
Kiss Kiss!
How far that little candle throws its beams! So...~The Merchant of Venice
Can one desire too much of a good thing?~ As You Like It
I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks...~ Twelfth Night
Review? Pretty please?
Kiss Kiss!