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Author's Chapter Notes:
It boggles the mind that a chapter as short as this could have taken this long, right? I am sorry; I hit a bit of a motivational block that coincided with a bit of a rough time in my personal life (not half so important as writing, I know, but it did throw me off a bit). That being said, I must thank the reviewers, who have kept my hand reaching for my pen even when doing so was painful.

This chapter was meant to contain much more, but there was something about that last line that stilled my hand. The next runs along a different vein, and progresses the personal relationship between Logan and Rogue, and I felt it deserved to be separate. Infinite apologies if any of the above (or below) is nonsensical, my mind seems about as logical as Alice In Wonderland today.

Anyhooters, onward, dear readers. Again I hope the following is deemed worthy of the click of your mouse.






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To Run In Circles:

Chapter Four


"Sit down, Wolverine," Scott told him irritably, a parent at the end of his rope with a misbehaving child. "Sit down. We're about to--"

He was down the Blackbird steps in a few pumps of his legs and his heart. The grass was almost blue in the tint of night, scratching against and under his boot like the bristles of an antique brush--it would be hours yet before the dew of morning softened them. Over the modest field, relatively quiet in the hush that claims even the voices of insects in the aftermath of battle. The earth stunned into silence, shocked by a brutality you'd think it would be used to by now. To her, soaked in both sweat and distress. To her, the soldier whose brain continues to send the signals to walk but forget to inform its host that it has been shot. To her, and to Jean, following as dedicated and useless as a shadow.

Her face, first white and oddly blurry even after Logan blinked, was a palette on which jars and tubes of paint had broken, and smeared indiscriminately--its artist renouncing his craft in a furious tantrum. There was lethargy, befitting the very drugged or already sleeping more than this miraculously upright creature. There was pain, though he could not spot the source, and Logan told himself that the flurry of bitter sparks in his chest was simple frustration at this. There was a sudden wash of anger and fear--of a tint very different from the sort that usually colored her features. For a moment, for that moment when Rogue raised bleary eyes to his, he thought she....it seemed like she was someone else entirely. Even her scent rippled differently in the air, his airways, but no. No. A trick of his senses, perhaps, though they had never been one for pranks before.
When the next hue to distinguish itself on the palette was that despairing plea, that hybrid between the gasping hope and anguish of the drowning, the previous impression was forgotten.

"Logan, what do you think you're doing?"

"What happened? What happened to her?"

"Noth--it's okay. It's under control."

"What's under control?"

"Go back to the jet, Logan."

He snarled at Jean, his arms already moving, reaching to catch the younger woman though she was still yards out of range. Her ankles bent outward with every step, left slender dents in the parched dirt and threatened to snap from the pressure of their underpaid job. A softening around her eyes, now focused, now not--did they turn blue for a instant? Logan expected her to fall against him, into him, with the ease and the sharp relief of a puzzle piece finally submitting to its designated niche, its soft cardboard offering no resistance.
Nothing sexual about the gesture, and if there was that meaning was assigned later. At once he was responding with the instinct of a well-trained soldier spotting something that must but hasn't been done. He would have asked her, Kid, what's wrong? You're alright, Kid, its going to be okay. Over and over, like the chorus of a particularly repetitious song, carrying her to the jet and whatever medical care she required. Whether this action, these words, would have been implemented with more fervor than they might have been with another injured member of the team can never be known. The moment she could have stood in the breath of his half-cupped hands, the static of his leather uniform, Rogue twisted away. Spun, lurched, out of his grasp with the grace of the drunk, the feverish, the insane.

"Don't touch me," her chapped lips spat. "Don't you fucking touch me." Hate twisting her features, swirling them like poisonous ice-cream. Hate all the more scorching for being undeserved but, as ever with that emotion, cradling a well of fear like an infant--a liability that must be held secure at all costs.

He had no time to speak, no time to overrule her protests. Jean was snapping at him, though later he wouldn't be able to recall any of the fanged words specifically. She--shrouded in apprehension herself--urged him to go, shoved at his back ineffectually and unwisely. She put herself between Logan and the girl, the motion and its accompanying gestures appearing to say, "Here, see? I am helping you. I amprotecting you." Still, none of her kindly ushering hands made contact with her charge's teetering spine.
Rogue made an indistinguishable noise of disgust at Jean and her efforts and turned from them both. Her broken march continued to the Blackbird. She never fell, and Logan's assistance was not offered again--both perhaps aided by Jean's telepathy.


:::::::

They must have been given a command from Scott. A subtle one, a reminder of some previously issued order or one given while its subjects were still outside. In any case, the junior team sat silently and almost expressionlessly as Rogue boarded the jet. There was none of the fuss over an injured member of the group, no voiced concern, no questions of what had happened or how it had happened, no offers to assist Jean in whatever emergency treatment might be called for. No off-color and unamusing joke from Allerdyce, "I though we squashed them all. Was one moving without its head?"

Rogue tripped past them, past the rows of free chairs to one at the back. Her lower self turned, and with this the last of her energy sank down some unseen drain. She fell into the seat's embrace as if she had no bones, as clumsy and heart-sickening as watching the elderly shift from wheelchair to bed. Has she misjudged her position in the slightest Rogue would have found herself on the unforgiving steel floor--though this might have made little difference to her. The redheaded doctor glowered when he folded his body into the seat across the aisle from Rogue's, but pinched her lips in restraint.


Ashen, like the dead and embalmed too late into decomposition. Bloodshot eyes and teeth that snagged upon colorless lips every time she shivered. Jean fluttered over her with almost joyous concern. "What should I do? What do you need?" Logan had never heard her employ these words, that tone, and had never imagined that he might.

"No," Rogue said, a mumble with the edge of impatience. For a second it seemed as if she would say something else, but her lips pressed together and did not part again.
Maybe she's fine, he told himself. Kid probably saw a little more blood than she was used to, got queasy. Too much for her delicate stomach.

The thought passed through his awareness with calm rationality--and a moment later he shoved Jean's presence from his mind.

He did not notice when the Blackbird lifted its wings to meet the sky, nor when Jean left for her place beside her husband, or the sidelong glances of those who had not fully left childhood but had been transformed into weapons through necessity. He was watching Rogue's eyes drift shut, and was aware of nothing else.


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He expected she would go straight to her room, understanding--if not fully--by now that there would be no overnight stay in the MedLab for Rogue. Logan shadowed her faltering steps through the hangar, through the mansions imitation hospital, through the hall that had once been immaculate but was now cluttered with all the matter they could not risk leaving where government eyes could too easily stray.
She was a bit steadier now on those trim legs; perhaps the flight had helped her to recharge--or perhaps that was his imagination. In the elevator--which Logan slid into just as its sideways mouth was closing--Rogue squeezed herself into the corner, the perpendicular walls holding her like wings. She pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezed her eyes shut as if attempting to fuse her upper and lower lids together, kneaded her temples with her fingertips and periodically sent him little glares of irritation.

"Are you okay?"

"Peachy keen."

"Tell me what happened back there, Kid."

"You know, maybe you should take a shower. You've got a little blood...everywhere."

"Unless you're inviting yourself, shut the fuck up and answer the question."

"How can I answer if I'm shutting up? Those are not requests one can fulfill simultaneously." He was surprised she managed to get the words out, slurring and speaking at top speed simultaneously, thrumming with false and sickening cheer. Her's was the amusement of a grimace, of giddy insanity, of the breathy inhale before a sob.

"What's wrong with you?", Logan asked, alarmed and faintly repulsed.

Rogue's sneer--pained and unconvincing in the fist place--slipped off, its adhesive quality as weak as a child's glue-stick. He watched her fiddle with the edges of her gloves--strange, he hadn't notice that she'd been wearing them tonight--pulling them up with almost violent insistence.

"There is nothing wrong with me," she told him, and the elevator doors opened.










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Chapter End Notes:
Thank you for making it to the end of this page, and for clicking on this fic in general. I am unfathomably grateful and hope that your generosity will extend to that beautiful review box you see below.

Until we meet again, Happy Reading!
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