The rain pounded at her back. The wet and the miserable cold were seeping past the leather of her ruined uniform, causing a chill to settle in her skin and deep in her bones. She could make out the line of neatly trimmed grass through her swollen eyes, but she hadn’t bothered to try and take in any more of her surroundings. The heavy rain made seeing further than a few feet in front of her all but impossible. She lay unmoving in the mud, face turned slightly to the side as she slowly breathed in the scent of earth and rain. She couldn’t will herself to get up. Everything hurt. She could feel the slow steady beating of her heart, which didn’t make any sense. She’d left it back in that other world.
Several minutes, if not hours, must have passed because she could no longer feel her fingers. She thought that if she waited long enough, the numbness would spread to the gaping hole in her chest and dull some of the pain.
So she continued to lay face down in the mud, waiting for the cold to seep deeper.
She didn’t know if she’d landed in the right world. She didn’t much care. Nothing felt right.
Her breath was shallow, and she felt her lips tingling on the edge of hyperventilation. She tried to calm her breathing, focus on removing herself from the panic and pain of her emotions, but she couldn’t. And so she continued to breathe, rain sputtering away from her lips with every short and painful breath that she took. She felt herself enter a sort of trance, a dull fog was seeping over the raw edges of loss. And then, the next thing she realized was that a low familiar growling was sounding in a distant corner of her mind.
Someone’s comin’.
Don’t, she bit back as she realized who the voice was. Just hearing the echo of his voice was unbearable, and the sudden realization that she would never be without a reminder of Logan tore through her. And instead of comforting her, she felt that cold emptiness spread deeper, taking its place beside the pain. She would never be without him. Would never be able to forget him. Would never be able to get over him.
She registered the sound of boots in mud, but still couldn’t force herself to get up. The cold was beginning to feel welcoming, and she didn’t want to face whoever had come looking for her.
“Rogue?”
An incredulous voice met her ears and she shivered in combination of the cold and recognition.
The sound of squelching grew closer and she squeezed her eyes shut trying to ignore the quickening of her heart and the warning of a growl in her ear.
“Chère?”
As the sounds of Remy’s voice passed over her, she swallowed convulsively trying to work up the will to cry out for help. But her throat was raw from screaming, and so she just lay there, shaking, willing herself to sink deeper into the mud, unnoticed.
It didn’t work.
She shuddered in revulsion as she felt the warmth of his hand shaking her shoulder, the alarm in his voice becoming more acute as he tried to elicit a response from her. She felt the rage and emptiness mix with the disgust of feeling Remy’s touch and they coalesced into a hysterical shriek that issued from her raw throat. “Don’t TOUCH me!”
Rogue smoothly and swiftly pushed herself up from the mud, and whipped around to grab Remy’s shoulder in her right hand. She stepped in, twisted back around, and bent over, threw him over her back into the mud. His shocked expression was splattered by the mud from the force of his impact, and Rogue readied herself in a fighter’s stance, prepared to strike if he touched her again.
“Chère. It’s me. Remy,” he repeated in a quieter voice, pointing one hand at his chest even as he held up the other to stop her from moving any closer.
“You bleedin’, chère,” he said calmly. “And -” he frowned as he took her in, “Your hair…”
Rogue didn’t respond. Her body was still processing the disgust fueled by his touch, adrenaline coursing through her blood. She didn’t know where she’d ended up. Didn’t know if this was a Remy she could trust. She flicked her eyes over the rain-drenched scene in front of her. The neatly edged flower beds were soaked, but well-maintained. The rows of flowers and hedges surrounded a stone building; a building which she sucked in a breath as she recognized it; it was the mansion. Whole and undamaged. She started to relax her hands, knowing that if nothing else, she’d ended up in a world where the X-Men had survived.
A movement out of the corner of her eye had her jerking her gaze back to where Remy lay in the muddy water. He’d slowly started to push himself up, one hand still raised in cautious defense of another attack.
“Petit, you let Remy up and he get someone to help.”
Rogue tried to quiet the constant growl of Wolverine echoing in her mind. Tried to force herself to reconcile the behavior of the Remy in front of her, with the actions of the one who’d tried to kill her just hours ago.
Can’t be the same person, she told herself. He’s bein’ too nice.
Don’t care, came the gruff reply. He ain’t got no business sniffin’ around you. Never trusted that swamp rat. Never will. How come he just happened to show up lookin’ for ya?
Rogue considered this point carefully as she allowed Remy to stand upright. “Why are you here?” She asked him, continuing to watch hands for any signs of charging projectiles.
“Remy, he - feel you. You in pain, chère. Somethin’ bad happen to you. And,” he swallowed then, looking faintly guilty. “You been gone a long time. Couldn’t believe it when I felt you again.”
Rogue finally relaxed her hands at those words. She still didn’t want Remy to touch her, but she believed she’d found the right world now. She stared at him through the rain for several seconds. To his credit, he didn’t make any more attempts to try and touch her or to convince her. He’d said his piece. He’d leave the rest to her.
He must have noticed the slight relaxing of her stance, and asked, “You let Remy get some help now, chère?”
She couldn’t help but close her eyes at the endearment, but nodded all the same. With a smooth turn on his heal, Remy strode away from her, back toward the mansion. She didn’t move, but she could feel a deep pit in her stomach that was growing more and more vast with every second she stood there.
Finally, she heard another pair of boots squelching in the mud alongside Remy’s and she fell to her knees at the sight of a bright yellow jacket.
“Chica?” Jubilee’s voice was full of astonishment at her abrupt appearance. “That really you?”
Rogue couldn’t speak. She felt an overwhelming sense of relief at seeing her friend alive. She nodded and buried her face in her hands, trying to hide the stream of tears.
“You, uh-” Jubilee stammered, “-decide to change up your hair while you were gone?”
Rogue looked up, confused, and fingered the long strands of hair forward in front of her. Jubilee was now the second person to have commented on her hair, and she was starting to wonder what the hell had happened. At the sight of silvery strands mixed in with the dark chestnut, she began to laugh. She saw Remy and Jubilee exchange worried glances and she laughed harder. She laughed until her belly and jaw hurt, and the tears streaming from her eyes were no longer from just her misery.
“Um, chica?” Jubilee asked worriedly as she moved slowly over to where Rogue sat on her heels in the mud. “You wanna tell me what the hell happened to you?”
And just like that, Rogue quit laughing. She couldn’t begin to tell her friend what she’d just gone through. She jerked her head in response and said in a shaky voice, “Take me to Charles.”
___
It had been an eerily similar situation. She’d found herself sitting in front of Charles in his office again. Found herself not quite able to believe she was really there.
His expression had been the same as his counterpart’s when he’d first skimmed her mind all those months ago.
His words washed back over her now, as she lay back on the exam table waiting for Hank to apply a salve to her burned arm.
A worried expression had crossed Charles’ face as he finished and lay his hands back down in his lap.
“Rogue,” Charles began. “I don’t quite have the words to tell you how sorry I am for what you have gone through.”
She wanted to tell him to stop. To stop talking. To stop him from sympathizing with her. Nothing he could say would make it better. Nothing he could say would take away the pain of what had happened.
She had no idea if she’d been projecting her thoughts, but he didn’t pry, and didn’t try to engage her in further conversation. He’d simply directed her to see Hank in the medbay and told her to get some rest, that they would talk more later.
Rogue had walked through the mansion’s warm and brightly lit corridors in a daze. The chattering of the students had felt soft and distant, the wood-paneled walls slightly out of focus. She didn’t care about the staring and pointing as she walked through the throng of students who were crowding the halls between classes. She must have been declared missing. Or maybe even dead. Given the change in seasons between worlds, she was at a loss for how much time had actually passed since she’d first disappeared into Rift’s void.
Charles must have told Hank she was coming, because the blue-furred doctor hadn’t blinked an eye as she’d walked slowly through the doors of the medbay. The clean white room made her squint slightly as she entered, her eyes still swollen from crying.
“Welcome home, Rogue,” Hank said in what she knew was meant to be a kind and caring tone. But the word “home” had her wincing. She didn’t feel like she was home. She felt like a stranger, like an impostor, someone pretending to be Rogue. How was she supposed to just fit back into her old life after what she’d experienced? But instead of saying any of this, she merely nodded back at Hank as he led her to an exam table, the paper crinkling beneath her as she laid back and allowed him to gently cleanse her arm. She winced as he picked out the remnants of shrapnel from the wound, but didn’t say a word until he finished bandaging her up. She could feel Wolverine watching Hank, assessing him, and growling in her own mind as the pain of the forceps ran through her.
“This should be fine in a few weeks. You didn’t need stitches, but come back tomorrow so I can change the dressing and reapply that salve.”
“Thanks,” she muttered as she prepared to jump down from the table. But Hank held her back by taking one of her hands in his.
“Rogue,” he started, his tone now cautious, like he might frighten her away. “I wanted to talk to you about this scar.”
She frowned at him, shaking her head. She shouldn’t have any scars. Not anymore. Logan’s healing had erased them. “I don’t know -” she began, but he cut her off.
“Your hair,” Hank interrupted swiftly as he eyed the line of her forehead. “The silver strands indicate some sort of damage. Did this happen recently? Or toward the beginning of your disappearance?”
Rogue moved her free hand to bring the platinum strands in front her eyes, trying to focus on the bizarre change. It had to have happened in the portal. She winced as she felt the echoes of pain rip through her. She’d been in agony. Fighting the pull, trying to reach back for Logan, her eyes fixed on the sudden coldness that had taken over his face as he roared and spun away from the portal.
A firm squeeze had her shaking herself out of the memory. “Rogue?”
She cleared her throat and removed her hand from Hank’s. “I-it just happened,” she stuttered. “When I came back.”
“I see,” he said calmly. “And are you in any pain now?”
She ground out a bitter sounding laugh, but shook her head. “No,” she replied calmly. “I’m fine.” Hank was a wonderful doctor, and a good friend. But she wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet. It was too raw.
“Hmm,” he said in a neutral tone. “Very well then. Come see me tomorrow so I can see how that wound is coming along. Try to avoid getting it wet if you can. Now,” he said as he squeezed her shoulder warmly, “Go get some rest. Your room is right where you left it.”
Rogue nodded, feeling numb again and she pushed off the table to head out of the medbay and up to the staff wing. The halls were quiet now, the children having resumed their classes, but she found herself hating the peace of the moment. It allowed too much room in her mind to relive the events of their failed mission, of the fucking way it had all ended. She picked up her pace as she got closer to her old room, trying to escape the emptiness she could feel looming inside her.
She reached her room and threw open the door, slamming it quickly behind her. She took several deep breaths as she leaned back against the barrier, eyes closed. When she opened her eyes, she looked around the space, taking in the changes. They were small differences, but big enough for her to notice. The bed had been made up differently; the top sheet folded back over the comforter, which she’d always hated. When you pulled the sheets back, they went over her head, made her feel like she was suffocating. She’d spent enough of her life in too many layers to like having the covers over her head.
The few personal belongings she had, appeared to be intact, if a bit dusty from disuse. Her books on psychology and counseling, as well as a handful of fiction titles were still lined up neatly on the bookshelf opposite her bed. The biggest difference was that all signs of Remy’s inhabitance were gone. Like he’d never been here. Rogue ran her finger along the surface of her dresser feeling the thick layer of dust, noting the undisturbed surface. How long had it taken him to move out after she’d disappeared?
Good riddance.
She closed her eyes and felt her jaw tense at the unexpected words from Wolverine in her mind, but couldn’t help but agree. Rogue knew she’d never be able to go back to him. Not after what the other Remy had done to her, and certainly not after what she’d experienced with Logan.
She was suddenly exhausted, and could barely keep her eyes open long enough to strip out of the torn and burned leather uniform, throwing on a pair of her old sweatpants and tank top, and falling asleep on top of the covers, the smell of smoke still lingering in her hair.
___
Rogue kept herself isolated over the next week. She found herself both unwilling and unable to talk about the events she’d experienced during her disappearance from this world. Jubilee and Kitty had stopped by two days after her return, both much more quiet from what she was used to. They didn’t pry, and just chatted blandly about what she’d missed. The new students at the school, the new relationships that had flamed and stuttered out while she’d been gone.When she’d worked up the nerve to ask how long she’d been missing, she had a hard time believing Jubilee when she said quietly, “More than seven months, chica. We missed you.”
It felt like years.
She saw Hank every day that week for him to change the dressing on her arm. He was polite and quiet and asked her if she had any lingering side-effects from the newly colored strands of hair at the peak of her forehead. But she didn’t feel anything unusual, so she shook her head and left.
It was toward the end of her first week back when she started to feel restless. Rogue began to notice the hushed whispers that followed her as she walked the hallways. Kitty and Jubilee were keeping a much too polite distance too, though she was more than relieved that Remy hadn’t sought her out. But with everyone treating her like she was going to shatter if they talked to her, an edginess was taking hold. She was without a path, without a purpose, felt like she was wandering through the halls like a ghost.
She’d wondered why the Professor or Scott hadn’t asked to stop by for a full debrief of her missing time. Did they really think she was so incapable of handling herself?
One week after her return, as she was leaving the medbay with a fresh layer of gauze wrapped around her forearm, Hank’s comments about how pleased he was with how the wound was healing echoing in her ears, she found herself taking a different route back to her room. Instead of passing through the classroom corridors up to the teacher and faculty wing, she headed down to the sublevel where the gym was. She could feel the edginess of Wolverine as she approached, as though he was anticipating the expelling of energy.
She saw Scott and Storm leading the Alpha team in a series of defensive moves, and she scoffed as she watched them through the open door. The moves were simple, basic compared to what Logan had been drilling them on back in the other world. She saw Remy paired with Jubilee, pretending to be unable to remove himself from her hold, grinning back at her. Kitty was paired up with Bobby and sighing as she showed him the proper form for the block they were practicing. St. John was paired with Piotr, but his eyes kept returning to watch Bobby and Kitty. Scott and Ororo were talking as they observed the pairs, but it was obvious they weren’t in the middle of anything strenuous or serious. The atmosphere was light, easy, as if there wasn’t anything for anyone to worry about.
Don’t know what’s out there, waitin’ for ‘em, came the low growl of warning.
It isn’t the same here, she bit back impatiently.
Not yet.
And she felt the animal inside her head retreating once more into the recesses of her mind where he sat and watched.
Rogue didn’t know if he was right, or being overly skeptical, and she didn’t really care to examine his thoughts any further. It meant having to dig into his memories, his past experiences. And she wasn’t ready for that. The incident with Magneto on the Statue of Liberty never happened in this world. Aside from minor skirmishes over the years, including like the one that happened when she and Remy had tried to pick up Rift, there was no real threat from the Brotherhood. The MRA had fizzled out in Congress more than nine years ago now, and the X-Men were a respected and well-organized association. Unless things had taken a dramatic turn while she was gone, and she didn’t see that as being very likely given the attitude she observed during this training session, they may not need to take their training more seriously.
Having come to a decision she wasn’t aware she’d been debating, Rogue took a deep breath and strolled forward into the gym. She was done with waiting quietly in her room.
“Rogue,” Ororo exclaimed, breaking off her conversation with Scott. The rest of the gym had gone silent and still as she continued forward toward where Scott and Ororo stood.
“I want to train with the Alpha team,” Rogue declared without preamble.
She imagined Scott blinking back at her in surprise at this pronouncement, but lucky for him, his visor shielded any emotions he might have displayed.
“Rogue, I don’t think you know -” Scott started, but she quickly interrupted.
“No, I don’t think you know,” Rogue responded quietly. She wouldn’t make a scene. She’d just state the facts in the barest possible terms, hoping the Professor had filled Scott in on enough of her experience for him to take her at her word.
“I trained while I was gone. With the others. Every day. I want to keep it up.”
There. That was simple enough, wasn’t it? Enough for him to take her seriously, not so much that she had to think about the specifics of who she’d trained with.
She could feel the eyes of the others on her, could practically hear the unasked questions exploding in their minds at this tiny bit of revealed information, but she kept her eyes on Scott. Several seconds ticked by, and finally Scott jerked his head in agreement.
“Fine,” he answered. “We’ll take it slow, hopefully we can get you up to speed in a few months.”
Rogue gave a small grin at his words. Based on what she’d seen the others practicing, she outstripped their knowledge by several levels. She heard a contented rumble in her mind and knew that Wolverine agreed with her.
“Everyone, get back to those drills. I’ll get Rogue started on some basics.”
The noise of the others resuming their blocks and holds resumed and Scott showed her to an unoccupied stretch of gym mat.
“Alright, Rogue. Are you ready for this?” Scott asked, concern lacing his voice.
Rogue just smiled. “Are you?”
______
She was still smiling in the shower, replaying the events at the gym over in her mind. Scott had started with a basic frontal assault after showing her the block everyone was practicing and she’d swiftly thrown him to the floor. He coughed, stood up, and tried another attack, this time trying to get her legs out from under her. She’d leapt sideways and rolled behind him before he could react, sweeping his legs and causing him to fall to the mat again, the memories of her training with the others, and the knowledge of Wolverine coming to her aid.
“Ok,” he muttered, the first signs of annoyance showing in his normally controlled tone. “Let’s try some more advanced moves.”
Rogue had nodded and smiled as he started to come at her with faster, harder hits, which she blocked easily. She relished the feeling of control and strength she was able to exhibit, and was feeling more assured of herself than she had in the previous week. But she could see he was still doubtful of her skills. Maybe he thought it was a fluke, or that she really didn’t know what she was doing. So she decided to show him she meant business and landed a series of punches to his abdomen that caused him to suck in a breath.
The others had stopped pretending to drill at that point and were blatantly watching the show in front of them.
“I think I’m all caught up,” she said calmly.
He nodded curtly, cleared his throat and dismissed the team, noting that training was scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays at nine in the morning.
He’s yer leader? Wolverine scowled at her. Trainin’ ya three days a week?
Rogue didn’t respond. Three days a week was better than nothing. Certainly better than the minimal training she used to participate in with the junior team. And it gave her something to focus on.
She twisted the shower handle off and grabbed her towel to quickly pat at the water that had leached into her bandage. She couldn’t wait to get that thing off, it was a pain to keep dry, and she’d had just about enough of trying to wash her hair one-handed.
And with that thought, her mind flashed over several memories without warning and she sucked in a breath at the stark images, her face blank as she stared unseeing at the tiled shower walls.
The dark thread of Jean’s hasty stitch job and the hasty bandage that had been applied to her arm that had come undone that first night in the other world…
Logan on the deck, cigar glowing in the darkness…
His offer to rewrap her arm…
Logan’s lips blowing gently on the antiseptic spray, and the first time she’d heard the sound of a low growl as he recognized her hiss of pain.
His thumb brushing over her knuckles and her sudden reluctance to get away from him...
Rogue shook her head trying to clear the images. She didn’t want to, couldn’t think about everything now. She wasn’t ready to face it.
With shaking hands, she finished drying off and dressed quickly. It was enough for now, knowing she had more training to look forward to. Hell, maybe she’d show Scott and the others a thing or two, get them to up their game.
____
The distance that Jubilee and Kitty were continuing to give Rogue started to worry her at the end of her second week back. Neither one of them had ever been so concerned with her personal space much before, and the fact that they were so quiet around her now was odd. The whispers from the students had begun to die down, and her presence at the Alpha team’s training sessions seemed to allay most of the apparent concerns from the other X-Men, including Scott once she’d shown him how much more advanced at fighting she was than him. But still, something was up with the two of them. And Rogue was going to find out what was bothering them.
Instead of waiting for them to spill whatever it was they were keeping from her, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She waited for them in the women’s locker room after Saturday’s training, freshly showered and calm. As the two of them appeared from the showers, dressed and with damp hair. They had been laughing, but they quieted their giggles as they took notice of Rogue.
Oh yeah, something was definitely up.
“Hey,” Rogue started smiling up at them from her position on the cedar bench. She didn’t want to intimidate them. “Can we talk?”
The pair glanced at each other exchanging some sort of look that Rogue couldn’t interpret.
“Uh,” Jubilee stammered, which was most decidedly un-Jubilee-esque. She looked at Kitty who shrugged, then blurted out unexpectedly, “Who told you?”
Rogue blinked. She had no idea what Jubilee was talking about. “Huh? Nobody told me anything. I just...missed you guys.”
“Remy and I hooked up!” Jubilee blurted out without warning and she slapped her hands over her mouth, a horrified expression on her face, and Kitty rolled her eyes.
“Oh,” Rogue said simply. She wasn’t upset. Far from it. It was actually a relief to know that he had moved on. It meant that he wouldn’t be occupied with coming after her. This Remy was a flirt. Hitting on everyone and everything that moved. In retrospect, she was surprised the two of them had lasted as long as they had. A year and a half with Remy being monogamous was quite an accomplishment for him. She tried to think about this Remy, rather than the one who had tortured her and shivered. It was still difficult to separate them. She wasn’t the only one not too fond of her current stream of consciousness. Wolverine was growling. He hated the bastard. Didn’t matter which world he was from.
“More than once,” Jubilee mumbled, hands still covering her mouth.
“Ok,” Rogue said slowly.
“A lot.” The hands had fallen away from Jubilee’s mouth now, and she was staring at Rogue, the beginnings of tears flooding her eyes. “We’re together.”
Rogue stood from the bench and moved to stand next to her friends. Jubile looked up at her, tears threatening to spill over, and Rogue smiled at her as she hugged Jubilee close. “It’s ok. Really.” Looking back now, she should have expected something like this, but she’d just been too distracted with her own misery to notice. Jubes was the one Remy’d gotten when she first appeared outside in the rain. The two of them training together. It made sense.
She could feel the tension leave Jubilee’s body as she hugged her back, tightly.
“Dammit, chica. Why are you so amazing?”
Rogue grinned back at Jubilee as she released her from her arms. “Just comes naturally to me, I guess.”
Jubilee sniffed and rubbed the moisture from her eyes. “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t know how to say it.”
“Blurting it out usually works pretty well,” Kitty said grinning at the two of them.
Jubilee gave a wet sounding laugh. “Damn. Ok then. I think the three of us have some serious catching up to do.”
“Absolutely,” Rogue agreed. “Let’s go out for lunch. I...I need to tell you guys some stuff. And I’m probably gonna need a drink,” she said quietly. “A big drink.” All of a sudden, she felt the words of her ordeal threatening to bubble up, and she knew she couldn’t keep her experience to herself any longer.
Kitty and Jubilee exchanged another glance. “Well, chica. Seeing as it’s October and we missed your birthday last month, how ‘bout we take you out and treat you to as many drinks as you want?”
Rogue blinked rapidly as she realized they were right. It was March when she’d first disappeared through Rift’s portal. If she’d been gone seven months in this world, she was now officially another year older. “Jesus,” she muttered, running a hand through her still damp hair. “In that case, hell yeah.”
“Great!” Kitty exclaimed. “Let’s all go get changed, gussied up a bit, then meet back downstairs and we’ll figure out where to head first.”
“First?” Rogue questioned.
“Damn straight,” Jubilee said as they exited the locker room. “If what you went through is anything close to the rumors that are flying around about it, then you’re gonna need a shitload of booze.”
_____
“Wait. Creed is a bad guy?” Kitty interrupted. “With the Brotherhood?”
Rogue had been talking for less than five minutes, recounting her time in the other world from the beginning, before the first question came up. After lunch at her favorite Thai place where Rogue had enjoyed two sweet and salty cocktails with thai chilies, they’d made three other stops at a row of bars in a popular area of Salem-Center’s small downtown area. It wasn’t until Rogue had come across a bar she’d never been to before, but had felt Wolverine’s growl of approval as they stepped inside the dark and cozy interior, that she felt both drunk enough to start talking and comfortable enough to stop bouncing from place to place. There was a booth in the back corner of the bar, it’s red vinyl seats cracked and faded. But the service was quick, and there was just enough noise for her to feel comfortable talking without being overheard, but without having to shout out her story.
Rogue swallowed another mouthful of the bourbon in the glass in front of her, enjoying its slow smooth burn down to her stomach.
“Yeah,” she replied simply to Kitty’s question. “But there’s more. A hell of a lot more. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep going if you guys ask more questions. Ask me at the end.”
Jubilee and Kitty both nodded, and the only other interruption was when Rogue filled them in on the destruction of the mansion, and the fate of her counterpart, as well as Jubilee’s.
“I’m dead?!”
Rogue nodded. “I’m dead too. Don’t take it too personally.”
“B-but,” Jubilee stammered. “I’m dead!”
Kitty patted Jubilee’s hand twice to comfort her, shushing her at the same time. “Keep going,” she nodded at Rogue.
The rest of the story came tumbling out, and if she hesitated, or stumbled over the words, Jubilee or Kitty made sure her glass was topped off and the glass tipped back so she could continue.
She was crying when she finished more than two hours later, tears flowing freely to splash into the remaining drops of bourbon in her glass. She felt weak, defeated all over again, the ache of losing Logan raw and unbearable. She didn’t notice Kitty and Jubilee moving to her side of the booth, and felt their arms around her as she sat there, shaking with grief.
“Well,” Jubilee started after several minutes. Her voice sounded thick too, and she sniffed and reached for the napkin dispenser on the edge of the table. She handed several brown paper napkins to each of them and they collectively wiped their eyes and blew their noses. “It’s no wonder you’re not upset about Remy. What an evil bastard.”
Rogue let out a snort of mild laughter. “Understatement, Jubes.”
Kitty spoke next, her voice quiet, subdued. “So, you don’t actually know if he made it out.”
The image of Logan roaring and spinning away from the portal rose up in her mind’s eye. The black lines emanating from the six holes in his chest. His stark confession that he could feel it. That he wasn’t healing.
She clenched her jaw but shook her head. “It-it was g-gonna kill him,” she stuttered. “He c-couldn’t heal.”
“Oh, chica,” Jubilee said softly as she brushed the hair out of Rogue’s eyes. “I’m so damn sorry.”
Rogue blew her nose again and swallowed hard. “Not your fault.”
“Okay, chica,” Jubilee said as she and Kitty returned to their side of the booth. “So why don’t we work on finding this other Logan like he asked? You said he went by Wolverine there? ”
Rogue nodded in confirmation of the question, but opened her mouth to object. She didn’t want to find the other Logan, but Jubilee kept talking.
“Wolverine is too wordy,” she said wrinkling her nose in mock disgust. “I’m gonna shorten it. Wolvie. Yeah. That sounds right,” Jubilee grinned back at Rogue. “He’s probably alive somewhere out there if he can heal. We don’t have that nasty virus or weapon or whatever the hell it was in that other world. He should be alive and kickin’ right? The Professor can use Cerebro. He can help, Rogue.”
“I can’t,” Rogue said firmly. “I don’t want to find him.” Her tone didn’t leave any room for argument, and she hissed at Wolverine to quit his discontented growling at her. He didn’t like that she wasn’t listening to what Logan had told her to do. Tough shit, buddy, she thought violently. I’m not ready.
The harsh words in her mind must have satisfied him a little, because the growling quieted to only a low rumbling.
“So what are you going to do now?” Kitty asked as she split the last drops of bourbon between their three glasses.
Rogue shook her head feeling it swirl pleasantly as she felt the effects of the alcohol in her blood. “I don’t know. I don’t want to go back to recruiting. I don’t know if I can be a counselor to the students right now. I just…” she trailed off, truly at a loss.
“Come on missions,” Jubilee said suddenly. “You’re obviously a bad-ass now. Scott won’t able to say no. You kicked his ass seven ways from Sunday the other day.”
Rogue thought it over. Maybe that’s what was next for her; Learning to become a real member of the X-Men. She heard a contended growl from Wolverine at the thought.
“Well. Why the hell not?” she asked raising her glass to the other two. They saluted and clinked their glasses against hers and gave a whoop and cheer of delight. And the feeling of love and belonging had the raw edges of grief lessening inside her. If only a tiny bit.
_____
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
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Chapter End Notes:
We're really coming up on the end of this story, hard to believe it when it's been a WIP for more than two years. Thanks as always to my beta @englishmajor226 for the encouragement and helping me to get Rogue out of the mud. Just two chapters left. And I'm feeling the muse right now. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and thanks for reading!