Chapter 4: Then
Swallows sang in the open air. The beer bottle’s glass sweated as he held it between two hands. The sun warmed the ground under his boots, the heat forcing him to shed his jacket. It was a clear, bright day, and it should have been what he needed, but his whole body remained restless. He was near the very outside perimeter of the mansion’s veranda, and verandas didn’t suit him. The lawn felt too neat, the hedges too clean. But it was outside, closer to something he was more familiar with, and the house had felt suffocating this afternoon. There were more people here now—more children, more adults—many he didn’t know. And of the ones he did know… there was history. He took another steady draw of the lager, the amber liquid quickly disappearing from the bottle. It wasn’t near strong enough to chase away some of these thoughts. He wished, not for the first time, he had brought more Molson. He’d have to go out soon and buy more, along with a decent bottle of whiskey.
Suddenly: light notes of mint and nectar and earth hovering over the undertones of small boot heels on gravel and the sweet brush of silk swiping against cotton. Marie’s chorus. He couldn’t help but smile a bit behind his beer. Logan didn’t turn around and instead let her approach him, staying in his place on the veranda’s stairs, still facing the deep rich green of the evergreens that lined the edge of the clearing below.
“Hi Logan,” Marie said casually, coming around to sit beside him on the steps that led to the lawn and gravel path beyond. She respected his space as well as her own as she sat next to him, but he was pleased to see her place beside him didn’t suggest they were anything close to strangers, either. It always struck him a bit to be reminded that Marie was just as cognizant and aware of space and the fluidity of boundaries as any feral he had ever come across. She was always present, always aware of everything anyone did or said without their mouths. Jesus, he missed her more than he thought he had.
“Hey, kid,” he said, before another sip of beer. They had made their introductions after he had returned from Canada, but he hadn’t had a real conversation with her since. It was good, real good, to see her like this. She was alone, for one. “Skipping class?” he added teasingly, finally turning just slightly to look at her, arching a brow in her direction.
Rogue offered up a small smile, resting her elbows on her knees. Something inside of him felt warm at the small upturn of the corners of her lips. His eyes darted over her quickly, just once, to take better inventory. She was the same, mostly. Dark hair, pale, creamy skin, most of it covered, dressed in her usual, careful style. Long, dark hazelnut gloves worked their way up her arms. She held herself well, no evidence of any real emotional or physical hurt, not, at least, since the last time he had been here. For a moment, Logan’s eyes lingered on the platinum streak in her hair.
“Break between classes. Sorry, not so rebellious today,” she said, keeping her gaze on him, always able to hold her own in his presence.
“You might have to take that up with the girl I met after a cage fight, hitchin’ her way through Canada,” Logan offered playfully, a smirk invading his features before he could stop it.
Rogue flashed a small smile in his direction again, as Logan took another sip of his beer, polishing it off and setting it down at his feet.
“How’s it been, anyway? To be back from there?” Rogue asked, looking at him intently now. Logan realized quickly that, unlike the others, she hadn’t asked him if he had found whatever he had been looking for. Smart girl. Logan inwardly sighed a little, suddenly wishing he had something more for his hands to do now that he had polished off the Molson. She had let him keep his secrets, but she still left him with a hard, complicated question to answer.
“Ah. Not so bad. The place’s fine.” It was as close to honest as he could get. He appreciated many things about Westchester, but…others…he could have done without.
“Not always, though, right?” Rogue offered, biting her lower lip for a moment. Logan looked up once more at her at that. Rogue had been here for over a year, and he got the sense that she seemed content.
“What are you getting at, kid?” he asked, curious to find himself prodding a bit more than he typically cared to, but he couldn’t seem to help himself with Rogue. He wanted to know.
“I just, well, I don’t know,” Rogue stammered. “Sometimes I don’t think this place... it’s not meant for all of us,” she murmured.
Logan breathed through his nose, considering what she had said. “It’s all so bad?”
“No… well, no,” she blushed. “I just, I guess I’ve been a bit jealous of you, you know? Flyin’ off whenever you want, without worry. Out there is not as friendly, but I knew who I was. I mean, I knew I wasn’t them, you know? And that was it. I was what they weren’t. But here, um, we’re all the same, in a way. So here I just have to be, well, the rest of me.”
“Just Marie,” Logan said, before he could think. What she said made sense, in a way so honest he wasn’t willing to face up to it. Rogue blushed a bit at the name, unused to hearing the sounds of it on another’s lips. There was a bit of silence as the August heat lingered between them. Logan cleared his throat.
“You know you’re not married to the place, right kid? The door’s open, and it’s right there,” Logan said, guesting a hand to the field and the line of pine trees below. A flash of Marie out on the open highway, maybe on a bike, or on the back of his bike, thighs cradling the roaring body of the engine, flashed across his mind, and Logan had to shake his head to purge the thought.
“I know. I don’t want to leave,” Marie was saying, although he noticed the way she crossed her legs as she spoke, carefully folding her inner-self up a bit more. “I guess I’m just…venting a little. I’ll be ok,” she said with a strength that made him almost believe her.
“Good,” Logan murmured, turning to her. He had the strangest urge to brush a hand through her hair. He always did, and he had, once, after the torch. Instead though, he stood, offering her his hand to pull her up with him.
“That needs to be how it is,” he added, flashing her a genuine smile.
---
The desert heat danced and swayed around them, and Logan’s brow began to sweat. Storm was usually never that affected by the weather as the rest of human or mutant kind seemed to be, and Logan typically had an easier time withstanding harsh extremes, but he had a feeling this climate was finally getting to them both. Additionally, the news of Hank’s death, along with the impending arrival of both Charles and Rogue, had shifted the mood from restless to desperate. Storm’s frustration arrived in the form of becoming all the more careful, hypervigilant about the coordinates and the safety measures needed to ensure a secure and stealthy arrival of the Blackbird. Logan, on the other hand, just grew more uneasy, edging on irritable. Logan had also slept like shit, and this time it wasn’t because of any damn nightmare.
He paced between Storm and the communicator she held to a random patch of desert a few paces ahead, a clear view of the sky. They were standing outside of the warehouse that stored the Blackbird when it wasn’t in use. Cracked and missing window panes, the gray paint chipping off in places, the smell of mildew. It certainly wasn’t Westchester, but, for now, it worked. Logan looked once more to the sky. The time was almost twenty minutes past its scheduled arrival. “Storm, you sure the coordinates…?” he gruffly began, but before he could finish, he instinctively straightened. He could taste the shifting drafts of air, the dust picking up. They were close now.
Logan had learned that Charles, with the help of Erik, had been trying to locate all of his previous students. In the past two months Logan had discovered that finding out what had happened to the dozens of young adults that had passed through Xavier’s halls sometimes meant having to bitterly add to the growing death count Charles, Storm and Logan mentally kept, but sometimes, on rare occasions, this led to recruitment. The search for the students who had actually served as X-Men, for however briefly, had been especially paramount, but Logan had been told the search for Rogue had amounted only in failure over the last several years. Logan should have, like the rest of them, been left to assume the worst, but that was something Logan just couldn’t bring himself to do. For one thing, it didn’t feel like Rogue was gone, and for another, he hadn’t put much faith in their substandard search process, especially since the takeover of Cerebro, where easily locating mutants was practically impossible.
In the end, he had always been left with the feeling that, if Rogue didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t be. It was a bone-deep awareness about the girl, even if it defied the most recent information Charles had on her. Of course, the last Logan had seen her, she was full of questions and self-doubt. She had taken the cure, and was mostly estranged from the school and the people who had previously called her friend. Logan shifted his position in the dust slightly. Logan had maintained his friendship with her, but that was also after Jean. He had left for Canada shortly after, and he hadn’t come back. But, everyone knew the cure hadn’t worked, that it had eventually worn off. Rogue’s inability to touch must have also returned.
Erik had discovered a few months ago that she had been working with some of the mutant rights factions up north. It was a hard thing for Logan to picture, but the new information Storm had matched up with Magneto’s initial findings. Logan had been told Rogue willingly volunteered to come forward, that she had vital information for their cause, and that she had also been there, at least in some capacity, the night that Hank had been murdered on the lawn of his home. One, if not all of these pieces of information, sent a small quiver down Logan’s spine. None of it sounded like her. None of it sounded like Marie. Of course, it didn’t really matter how he felt though, because she was headed their way directly, Charles at the helm.
Logan had finally stopped pacing, and fixated on a sliver of sky where he could sense the Blackbird approaching from, despite the fact it was most likely in stealth mode. The ground was humming now, pebbles slightly shifting in their places, as the air in front of them suddenly morphed, painting itself in tones of black and grey as the powerful aircraft transitioned out of its surreptitious defense mode and prepared to land, kicking up the dust and dirt, shrouding the Mexican sky in a dirty orange.
As the Blackbird made contact with the ground, Logan heard his own heart thump in his chest. He could always hear it, but was usually able to tune it out with ease. But this time…. God damn it, Rogue. He hadn’t thought about the girl in a couple of years, because it didn’t suit him to think about her. To think about her was to linger, to remember, to wait.
C'mon, I’ll take care of you.
You promise?
Yeah. Yeah, I promise.
Logan swallowed hard.
Logan and Storm both stepped forward a little, waiting for the boarding ramp to gently descend. Charles emerged first, carefully operating the chair down the incline. Logan was a bit dampened to see that the younger man that looked so much older than him seemed worn down, a bit spent. Logan offered him a respectful nod regardless, though, but let Storm greet him.
“Hank…” Storm murmured, her voice emotional and wary. Charles’ exterior softened at her grief and he nodded gently. “My dear, I’m afraid it’s worse than we could have imagined,” was all Logan heard, before Charles stopped speaking and started communicating in a different way to her, impervious to Logan’s hearing. Logan, I trust you can see Rogue off the plane and take care of the jet’s safety checks arrived in his head, along with, It’s good to see you again, friend.
Logan sighed, turning back around, only to find her walking down the boarding ramp, a purpose to her step and a resolute look on her brow. She was covered in a dark grey monotone uniform, not so different than the old X-men models, complete with the same-color gloves. The suit clung to her frame, those suits always did, and they revealed that she was thinner, the curve of youth gone from her body. Her hair was up, taught and high, the telltale platinum streak pulled up carefully with rest of the dark brown. He could tell she was fit, strong, even, but the lack of softness also made her appear older and a bit wary, as if she was bracing for bad news. Nevertheless, she was remarkably, undoubtedly, without any sort of question or pause, a woman.
She looked up and made eye contact then, as the chocolate brown of her eyes gave away only the slightest sign of being taken aback at the sight of him. Logan was sure Charles had filled her in on his presence here, so he moved on to assuming her surprise was because of Logan’s appearance. That’s usually how people responded if more than a decade had passed since they’d seen him. She stopped a few paces short of him, another quick look once up and down, and spoke.
“Logan,” Rogue offered.
“Hey, Rogue” he said, with a small smile that betrayed him momentarily. She was in one piece, alive. That seemed reason enough to be thankful. Meanwhile, he tried to pick up something else in her scent, but couldn’t. It was…the inside of the Blackbird? The nylon of her suit? The leather of her boots? Nothing more.
“You’re…the same,” she finally said, confirming the initial hint of surprise. “Of course you’re the same,” she added, and Logan found the hairs on the back of his neck rise slightly.
“Yeah, well,” Logan grumbled. “Hasn’t been that long.” Little over a decade? Junk change, kid, he thought coyly, but he couldn’t help but notice his arms suddenly crossing themselves, a potent feeling of vulnerability rising within him. He wasn’t in the mood, especially recently with the influx of distant memories, to be reminded of his mutation. Meanwhile Rogue’s face smoothed into what seemed like defiant indifference, and what little warmth he realized he was desperate to receive was gone.
“Long enough,” she retorted, a slight edge to her voice. Then with a small nod, she walked past him to catch up with Charles and Storm. He whipped around silently to follow her with his eyes, realizing he was chained to his spot, given orders to carry out his job with the Blackbird, which had ensured that Logan would have no way of knowing the intimate details of the rest of the others’ conversation, for at least the initial part of it.
Logan suddenly found his movements sloppier and more disordered, as he quickly boarded the Blackbird and sent the digital readout to the debriefing room where Storm would eventually find it on her laptop in the Bunker underneath the warehouse. The Bunker had been created, or found, Logan wasn’t so sure which, before he had joined the team. It acted as a safe house of sorts, a place where they could freely talk. It had minimal provisions and a place to sleep if need be. He expected it was where they would likely stay tonight, particularly with Charles here. The Professor was rarely in Mexico for long, his unending search ever present in his mind.
Logan had increasingly started to feel that this mission, or this desperate attempt at one, had all sorts of flat and sharp notes in it, and Rogue’s sudden presence had spiked that feeling. Since meeting Charles and Erik in the airport, it had been like this. Half-truths. Half-lies. The beginnings of stories. He was certain if he asked Charles about any of it directly that Charles would respond with his usual candor. None of what Charles was asking him to do should have felt subservient or off-putting; ten years ago Logan had also been in charge of doing the Blackbird’s safety checks once it had been grounded, as he was often useless when the craft was airborne. But Logan was sure he was intentionally being left out of things, now.
Logan assumed initially it was about regaining confidence in him, and, that, if it came down to it in a fight, Charles would trust him to stand up, take the beating, and do the right thing. But there had been no fighting. So far, no combat of any sort. Of course, Logan knew he was most effective when solving problems that came at him within a ten-foot radius, but Logan had a sharp mind too, especially when it came to tactical strategy. And no one had been asking for his opinion, on anything much more than scouting out locations for Storm and Logan to hide out in. Meanwhile, Rogue, Marie, whoever she was, had been here mere moments and had seemed to elevate herself through the unstated rankings he still struggled to understand. This…woman…whoever the hell she was…and that was just it…who the hell was she? Where had she been all this time? Why had she not come forward? How old was she anyway? Logan did the math in his head…what, thirty? Thirty one?
Logan paused a minute at the control panel, considering this. A typical person did a whole hell lot of growing up between eighteen and thirty, and while the math told the truth, like all significant partings, until this moment Logan had subconsciously yet dutifully kept the Marie he had left behind in Westchester synonymous with the Marie he envisioned still existed out there in the world. To do so was partially juvenile, he realized, but ten years, before this moment at least, had seemed like no time at all. Now, it seemed like everything. Meanwhile, he found himself trying to look for the Marie he’d known, the Marie he discovered in the back of his trailer over a decade ago. She seemed to be missing entirely.
Long enough, she had said.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
After finally finishing up with the Blackbird, he stalked over to the freight elevator which led to the underground Bunker. The Bunker was made up of a small hallway with only handful of sterile, indiscriminate rooms and two smaller washrooms. The main room, the biggest, was a space predominantly used for planning operations. A small rectangular stainless steel table could be found in the middle, a sink and a small refrigerator placed on one side, stocked with what little provisions they had. The other two rooms were for sleeping, mattresses with steel frames on either side. It was nothing pretty, absolutely utilitarian in its approach. Storm’s laptop was always with her, and beyond their phones and an extra satellite phone, that was as sophisticated as it got. Logan and Storm sometimes stayed in the Bunker, but Logan hated being underground, and even though it was useful to have, he found himself disliking the place immensely. The freight elevator jostled under Logan’s weight as it descended to the bottom floor, and he felt his muscles tense, harden. His irritable mood, now flecked with disappointment in finding a changed Rogue walking off the Blackbird’s boarding ramp, was a recipe for him to feel intensely coiled, ready to spring.
As soon as the elevator made its way to the bottom, the voices traveled to Logan’s ears from the hall way. He removed the metal latch and unfastened the doors, the conversation between Charles, Storm and Rogue becoming impossible not to hear.
“After the uprising, we fled in different directions,” he heard Rogue saying. As Logan rounded the corner, within seconds he would be in view from the doorway. “We were underground for a long time, hiding. We would have been in communication, Charles, if we felt we could….”
“We?” Logan asked, standing in the door frame of the room. He was swift enough to see Rogue’s eyes shoot up to him quickly before shooting back down. “Who’s we?” Logan pressed.
“Hello Logan,” Charles said. “Please, take a seat.” The man had gestured to the seat next to Rogue on her side of the table. Logan stalked over and sat next to her. He turned to his right, staring directly at her. Meanwhile, Charles continued on.
“Rogue informs us that for the last several years she has been working closely with the Occupy Wall Street team, through when Angel lead the division.”
“OWS, I thought that was Blink’s gig,” Logan offered, without taking his eyes off Rogue. “Didn’t they break the people out of one of Trask’s camps a couple of years ago?”
“No,” Rogue finally responded. Logan’s eyebrows rose at this, waiting for her to turn to him, but she still wouldn’t. Instead, she kept her gaze on Charles. “We were Zucotti park in ’11. My team helped organized the march,” she murmured. More and more, Logan didn’t like the sound of this. Everyone knew about Zucotti. In Logan’s mind, it had been an idiotic approach, tactically speaking. It was intended to be a peaceful protest at Westchester after the school had been taken over, but it had ended in immense disaster, causing the deaths of several mutants. The reason it had ended horribly, Logan thought, was because of the naiveté of the people who had planned it.
“Your team?” Logan asked cautiously.
“My former team.” It was then Rogue finally looked at him, eyes wild and dark and unchecked. It set Logan on edge.
“Logan, I’m not sure you understand. Rogue comes to us as more than just a past ally. She holds essential information regarding the Mark X’s design. Her team was compromised retrieving it,” Charles added, a solemn tone to this voice. Logan looked from Rogue to Charles back at Rogue.
“Former team?” Logan asked, trying to soften his voice out of respect. Rogue offered the slightest nod. Logan let out a long, tired sigh. God damn. They were dropping like fucking flies.
“Hank was elemental in the mission. He knew about the plans, and our job was to extract them. We were, of course, too late to save him though,” Marie stopped, a strange note in her voice Logan couldn’t quite figure out the tune to.
“We hadn’t anticipated Human Majority’s… insistence. Their power. The mission was compromised by then, but the plans…” Marie stopped. Logan watched her thin, gloved hand snake upward to tap on the pale skin of her temple, right where it met her hairline. A ghostly shiver worked its way down Logan’s spine. The Rogue he had known hardly ever talked about the people she pulled in, the voices in her head. And it seemed like this Rogue, whoever she was, had a hard time with it too. For some reason, it made Logan’s tension ease just slightly, and he found himself empathizing with her for a moment. Rogue’s power, always the last defense: partially because she could be deadly, but also because of what it did to her. A strange, unwelcome thought suddenly trampled through his mind. Was he up there still too?
“It was our last resort, of course,” Rogue murmured to a silent room. “I did what I had to do.”
Something about this last statement sent alarm bells off in Logan’s head again. She was lying about something. The scent of deception was instantaneous and heavy, as if she had been suddenly doused in gasoline. It had something to do with Hank, something to do with Rogue. But Hank was dead. Logan quickly glanced at Charles, wondering if the man and his ability to read minds was eight steps ahead of Logan’s own senses. If Charles did detect duplicity, however, he didn’t look it. The man was calm, expressionless, even as he was—
“Logan?” Storm was asking him. He looked to Storm and back to see Charles staring at him. Pay attention, he heard Charles mentally reprimand him.
“Sorry, Storm,” Logan said. “Tell it to me again.”
“What’s the location set for tomorrow on the opposite of the perimeter?”
“The plan was one more day in Yécora, but I don’t have a good feeling about it anymore,” Logan said, eyes settling back on Rogue. “I’d recommend the Bunker tonight, and then head west tomorrow morning. Straight off.”
“Good. That settles it,” Charles said, moving his chair outward from the table. “Perhaps we should retire for the evening. I’m assuming you must be exhausted, Rogue. Storm, I am assuming you can show Rogue to the room you will be sharing? And Logan, I may require a bit of your assistance.”
---
It had been a couple of hours, and Logan had no intention of sleeping. After seeing Charles to bed, which he did more and more of, especially in the Bunker, Logan had stalked back to the main debriefing room again, uncaring of who he might find there, intent on Tequila. He and Storm weren’t monks, not even close, and as always, they kept a stash of something in the Bunker, an all-too-often and realistic way to deal with the awful news they had been receiving lately. Logan was happy to find the room empty, and after rustling around in the file cabinet he found what he was looking for. While being underground helped, the bunker was still warm and lacked air-conditioning, like most places in Mexico. He had already shed down to a wifebeater and jeans. His usual, anyway.
He padded back over to the table on the side he and Rogue had been sitting at before, bottle in hand. He could give a shit about using a glass, not only because they had few to spare, but because it would take half a bottle of direct delivery of Tequila for him to feel anything anyway. He slipped off the cap and knocked a bit back, letting the liquid burn and sizzle on the way down. With that first swallow, he finally let himself face up to the fact he had been avoiding all day: Rogue was back. Marie wasn’t.
It was a hard thing to admit, but there it was. And whatever relationship he shared with her in the past seemed lost in the Mexican dust. A cloying thought took up residence in his mind that he had a hard time thinking around: what had that past relationship even been? Had he been a friend? A teacher? A father-like figure? Logan shuddered at that last thought. No. At least, he sure as hell hoped not. And what about now? What had happened to her, and why the fuck was she keeping things from them all? Logan obviously knew she really didn’t owe him anything, but didn’t she owe something to Charles? What was her long game, keeping Charles in the dark? And who the fuck was she trying to protect?
Half the bottle appeared to be missing before he heard her, the Tequila delaying his senses enough to barely give him more than a second’s warning before he looked up and saw her lingering in the door frame, the same place she had found him a few short hours ago.
“Hey,” Rogue murmured. She had stripped down to just the pants of the suit and a thin, black tank top. Logan noted the lack of gloves, all that creamy skin gracing the air. Her hair was also down now, and Logan noticed for the first time it was shorter, the longest tendrils barely brushing the arch of her collarbone.
“You need something?” Logan managed gruffly, gripping the bottle tightly, unashamed for her to see what the night had led him to and just how much booze it took for Logan to feel practically anything.
“No,” she said. Rogue was silent as she walked across the room, sitting down opposite of him at the table. She hadn’t asked to join him, but Rouge already knew he wouldn’t protest. Marie, always aware of what we were saying when we weren’t talking. Logan quietly tipped the bottle in her direction, offering it to her, but she shook her head slightly. “It looks good. I would, but…not now,” she finished. Logan smirked a little at that.
"Suit yourself."
“Charles told me you were in Japan,” Rogue said, after a few seconds of silence.
“Home for a while first, then Japan. Tokyo for a bit, but Nagasaki, mostly,” Logan responded, his words running together just the slightest bit. The liquor had stopped burning on its way down and had started to feel smooth. At this point, finally, his healing factor wasn’t catching up so damn quick to him, and the room felt fluid, curving in around them both, as if the rules of physics had ceased to exist.
“Japan… that’s a bit different for you,” she said, her voice even.
“Yeah well, at first it wasn’t voluntary,” he murmured, looking at her. “Then, it was.” Images of that fucking hole in Nagasaki flooded his mind, followed by friendlier memories, the sight of the coastline, the water lapping at his feet, the curve of Mariko’s lips. Logan had always assumed Japan had been about learning patience, learning to let things go, but since the return of the memories, he wasn’t so sure. He seemed destined to run right back into the past, over and over again. He looked over to Rogue once more. He was in a fucking loop.
“Were you there, then, in Japan, when the school…?” Rogue began. It took Logan a second to catch up, realizing what she meant.
“No. Not yet. But I was by the time I found out about it a few years later,” he said carelessly. He felt her stiffen slightly at that. If she was upset with him for being absent, he could understand that. What he didn’t get was this newfound strange allegiance to the north, this rebel-like brand of loyalty. He, at times, had fought just as hard alongside the X-Men for their survival, but the Rogue he had known had never blindly followed anything so faithfully, particularly when it meant joining up with a team that might end up getting themselves, or others, killed. Especially up north, he knew some of the mutant rights factions were sloppy. Rogue wasn’t. Or shouldn’t be. The thought suddenly reminded him of the lingering smell of deceit in the air he sensed earlier, and with the Tequila finally disintegrating the remains of inhibition, he pressed her.
“Why aren’t you telling them everything, Rogue?” Logan asked. She looked up at him sharply then, and he could practically hear the olive branch that she had initially extended to him snapping between them.
“I’m telling the truth,” she recoiled, her voice quiet, threaded with caution. Also not a direct answer to the question. “And Charles would know if I wasn’t.”
“Half-truths,” Logan offered, tipping the bottle once more in her direction.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said carefully, putting her hands at her sides.
“Hey, I’m just calling them how I see them. Or smell them,” Logan said, setting the bottle down a little too forcefully and readjusting his position in his chair. It was harder to stay seated now, the liquor intent on setting a fire in his blood. “These are my people to protect.”
“Your people?” Rogue’s eyebrows shot up, her face flushing with a pale, pink anger. It would have been cute, had he not been so annoyed. Or drunk.
“Yeah,” Logan said stubbornly, trying to contain the wild parts of him that Rogue so easily, so quickly, tested. He was getting to her in equal measure, though. He knew he was.
“You don’t have the first clue about what’s been happening, about what they’ve been through,” she motioned around the room angrily. “You haven’t been around long enough to know,” she said.
“Haven’t seen you hanging around the X-Men either, Rogue,” he retorted. At this, she stood angrily. Her feet started carrying her to the door, but he followed, blocking her way out. He pressed. “And I’ve been around long enough. In fact, too fucking long. A long fucking damn time, and I know when someone gets sloppy. Hank is dead.”
It was like he had slapped her. A contorted look of pain appeared on her face, clouding her eyes for a moment.
“That’s it, isn’t it? Somebody fucked up. Somebody on your team fucked up, and Hank paid the cost.”
“You weren’t there,” she said, the threat rising in her words.
“Hank was our last contact up north. You could have been here, helping us, but somehow, you thought you couldn’t contact us, contact me, before this fucking moment? Before-”
“You weren’t there,” she practically snarled, stepping closer into his space. His skin felt hot next to hers. This Rogue was dangerous, stronger than he had suspected. And all that skin, so close to his. He wasn’t afraid of it, of her, at all, but he knew an exhibition of strength when he saw one. She could kill him if she ever felt inclined, one of the few who probably could.
They stood entangled like that for a moment. She was centimeters from his face. He could hear her heartbeat. Her breath. Feel her essence. And, then, there it was, closely guarded, but there. Nectar. Mint. Earth. Marie.
Logan’s look on his face must have softened, because Rogue leaned back just slightly, breathing hard. She suddenly looked younger, more tired. She sighed.
“Logan, things have changed. It’s…not like it was,” she murmured.
“You don’t think I know that?” he asked tiredly; the spite had flown away from his words.
“I’m not sure. Everything, everyone, is less safe,” her voice seemed to break a bit at this, and Logan started regretting his earlier frustration. He stepped toward her a bit more.
“The world’s never been safe, kid,” he murmured, instinctively reaching out his hand and running a finger quickly and reflexively down a platinum lock of her hair, meanwhile pushing away images of some of his most recent and horrific returning memories. He felt Rogue wince a bit at the old nickname, but she also did nothing to stop him. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them once more, staring at him intently.
He heard Storm in the hallway first before he saw her, but still let her approach.
“Logan, Rogue,” Storm murmured, and only then did Logan’s hand return to his side. “Yeah, Storm?” he said, turning to the other woman. He noticed Rogue backed up a few paces, filling space between them. “I just received word from Erik. There’s a lot of conflict happening near the border, so we’re leaving Mexico tomorrow morning, right away. They’ve granted us clearance for South Africa.”
“So we’re finally leaving this dump, eh?” Logan said, looking up at her. South Africa was one of the friendliest nations to mutants at the current moment. Most likely they would meet Erik there, and reassess.
“That’s the plan,” Storm said. Logan looked back between the two women, and around the expressionless, sterile room.
“Good,” he finally said. “I fucking hate Mexico.”
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