XMMF Fic: "Full Circle", for Artemis2050
Title: Full Circle
Author: Sionnain
’Verse: Movieverse, Post X-3 (contains spoilers)
Pairings: Rogue/Wolverine implied. Mentions Bobby/Rogue, Bobby/Polaris, Kitty/Colossus.
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3400
Summary: Rogue figures out that before you can go home again, first you have to leave.
AN: Thanks to Kethlenda for the beta! I wrote this for Artemis2050's birthday-so it’s only a little late! I hope you like this, m'dear, and I apologize for there being no naughtiness! It turned out a bit more plotty (is that a word?) than I’d planned. I shall be anxious to know what you think!
Full Circle
They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. --Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
When the news reports begin about the cure failing, she’s in college in Rhode Island.
Marie attends Salve Regina College, even though she’s not Catholic, because it’s small and private and because she can have her own room. Some part of her must have known it wasn’t going to last, that she insisted upon that. She’s got a stipend from Xavier’s, a scholarship that pays for her books and lodging, and took out a loan for everything else. The girls are kind of snobby and she keeps to herself, but it’s not bad, not really.
She and Bobby had broken up, amicably, several weeks after they’d left Xavier’s to go to their respective colleges. Mentally, they’d broken up much earlier than that; they were more friends than anything. Sex was nice and touching was still a thrill, but being able to touch didn’t make all the problems in their relationship vanish overnight.
Marie hadn’t thought it would, though. She’d not taken the cure for him, no matter what anyone thought. She’d done it for herself. I’ll never be a weapon, not again. Nothing happens to me that isn’t my choice.
She knew the cure would fail a month before the news reports made it official. She’d woken up with a voice in her mind, hissing the word traitor like a serpent hidden in darkness. She’d watched the moonlight spill in through the windows in her room and shine almost malevolently on her fair skin.
That’s when she knows she has to leave the school, has to go away again. It’s almost a relief, really, because deep down she’s been waiting for this shoe to drop since the moment that needle pricked her skin.
She thinks maybe there’s something wrong with her, the way she loves leaving things behind. She leaves in the middle of the afternoon without a word to anyone, with the strap of her bag clenched between the gloves she never threw away.
Three miles outside of Newport, she catches a ride with a trucker bound for Canada.
Better late than never.
* * *
She should have known he’d find her.
Logan looks much the same as she remembers; hair wild and sticking out in symmetrical points, eyes a little rougher and meaner, voice still low like broken glass soaked in whiskey. He slides next to her at the bar and she watches the way his eyes go right to her fingers, red satin curled around cheap green class.
“Hey, Marie.”
She stiffens slightly at the name, though it’s been hers again for months now. “Hey, Logan. What are you doing here?”
“Thought maybe you might want some company.”
“How’d you find me?” She rubs her fingers over the glass and remembers when there was nothing between it and her fingers but air.
“Emma. She used Cerebro.”
Marie never really liked Emma Frost, but she knew why Storm had asked her to move into the mansion. There were so many kids who needed a place to go; some were runaways, afraid of being forced into taking the cure. Some were kids whose parents had thrown them out for refusing it.
It seemed as if the only lasting effect from the cure was more divisiveness in a community already mired in uncertainty and fear.
She wonders how many more mutants will show up now. “Why?”
“You know why,” Logan says gruffly, looking down at her gloves.
Marie had been pragmatic about putting them back on, but now suddenly she hates the feeling of silk wrapped around her fingers. It feels stifling, hot. Will I ever be anything more than my mutation?
Not when you resist being who you really are, a voice whispers, and she narrows her eyes and stares into her Coke and tries to shut Magneto out. She’d gotten used to her mind being quiet more than anything; this is the hardest adjustment to being Rogue again, really.
She wonders if Magneto liked being a martyr. It’s the fate he would have forced upon her if he’d been successful at Liberty Island. She wonders if he appreciated the irony before he got his powers back. She thinks for a moment about what it felt like for him, the moment he felt metal bend and respond to his command.
She hates him for that, a little. That he should benefit from her misfortune is unthinkable.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve dealt with it before.” She’s still not looking at Logan, because to see pity on his face will kill something inside of her.
“Yeah? By runnin’?”
“You’re one to talk,” she snaps, and anger pulls her gaze to his. There’s a shadow of sadness in his eyes, the lingering traces of that terrible grief she’d seen after Alcatraz.
“I stopped running, Marie.” His voice is sad. She wonders if that is because he wants her to stop running, or because he’s had to.
She can feel him, too, in her mind. He prowls like a beast, caged and angry, scratching ineffectually at the doors to his cage. “Because Storm asked you to.”
“It’s as good a place as any to stay,” he says, as if it doesn’t matter. It does matter, though, and surely he realizes it.
Her eyes search his for some answer she knows he can’t give her. “You tryin’ to get me to come back?”
“I want to know you’re okay. So does everyone else.”
“Of course I’m not okay,” she snaps, pushing her drink away. “What do you think? That I wanted it back?”
Part of you did.
She narrows her eyes at the unwanted mental intrusion. Shut up.
Logan shakes his head, drawing her attention back to him. “No. But you know there’s a place for you, if you want it. Back at Xavier’s.”
Marie stares at him for a long time before she shoves her glass away and stands up. “Leave me alone, Logan.”
“No.” He stands up, too, and follows her out of the bar. The air is cold and crisp and smells like winter. It reminds her of Bobby. She didn’t mind when they broke up, but suddenly she misses him, misses kissing him with her powers and tasting ice when she breathes.
See? I told you.
Maybe it isn’t Magneto thinking that, after all. If she were honest she’d admit there were times it felt good to use her powers, but it always came with a price. Someone else’s pain, or her own. Too high a price. How could she have done anything else but take the cure?
“Damn it, Marie, do you think you’re the only one who’s going through this? Got a bunch of kids in your shoes back home. You don’t have to go through it alone, you know.”
“Logan, I’ve always been alone,” she says, walking straight forward, her eyes on the road. She has no idea where she’s going. “Thought maybe you’d understand, if anyone did.”
He finally stops her with a hand on her arm, fingers tight. “You can’t run forever. Take it from me.”
“Yeah? I can try.” She pulls away, and this time he lets her go. She doesn’t hear him leave, but somehow, she knows he’s not following her. Part of her is disappointed, and that makes her angry.
Maybe she has to stop running, but that doesn’t mean she has to run back to Xavier’s. Maybe it’s time to be Marie and Rogue, and figure out who she really is.
* * *
A year later, she’s waiting in line to catch a plane from Ottawa to the States, to New York. Kitty is marrying Peter Rasputin in a ceremony on the front lawn of the Institute, and Rogue’s going back to be in the wedding. She’s been living in Canada for a year, waiting tables at night and taking classes in website design during the day.
It’s strange to be back at Xavier’s as a guest. Storm embraces her warmly, only tensing a little as she wraps thin, wiry arms around her former student. Ororo looks older; her hair is longer, her eyes tired. She doesn’t seem to mind that Rogue threw away the stipend she’d been awarded from the Institute to attend Salve Regina’s.
Bobby’s there too, and seeing him is nice but a little weird. They hadn’t really kept in touch after she’d moved to Canada. He’s dating a woman named Lorna, with green hair and green eyes. Polaris, she introduces herself, and for some reason it makes Rogue happy that Bobby’s dating a mutant who so obviously looks like one. It sort of makes her feel bad that she thinks that.
Emma’s smile is the same as always, diamond sharp with that curve to her mouth like she knows something you’d rather she didn’t. She’s a telepath without the Professor’s morals, so she probably does. Rogue doesn’t mind, she’s got nothing to hide.
Kitty’s the same as ever, with that face that perpetually makes her look young-“They still ID me at movies!”-but obviously pleased to see Rogue. She takes her up to a room on the “staff floor,” and there’s a pretty purple dress hanging from the bathroom door.
There’s a pair of gloves and a chiffon scarf on the bed in the same shade. “The other bridesmaids are wearing them too,” Kitty says firmly. Rogue’s touched by that, more than she lets on, but she thinks Kitty probably knows.
Rogue wonders where Logan is, but she doesn’t ask.
* * *
The wedding is simple but touching; a very brief ceremony followed by dancing and dinner in the ballroom. They never used it when Rogue was there, but Kitty tells her that now they use it for the cafeteria. There are more students in the school than Rogue can keep straight, and all of them are there at the wedding, dancing or sneaking pieces of wedding cake up to their rooms for later.
It makes her smile to see the school so full, though Jubilee, with her chiffon scarf tied in her raven-black hair, tells Rogue that they’re having to turn kids down now.
“Not enough room?” Rogue asks, relaxed after a swig of vodka from Illyana Rasputin’s flask, passed from bridesmaid-to-bridesmaid while Kitty and Peter have their first dance.
“Not enough staff,” Jubilee says, and laughs. She’s studying architecture at Columbia. Rogue wonders if she’s going to come back and be a teacher, or if maybe she’ll just oversee building an addition or something.
She sees Jimmy in the corner, sitting by himself. Rogue makes her way over to him, wondering if the kid likes it here or if he just doesn’t have anyplace else to go. Magneto’s still out there, fanatical as ever, so maybe it’s just that this place is the safest.
“Hi,” she says carefully, feeling a bit strange talking to him. She wonders what he thinks about the cure; if he feels guilty, or if he’s glad it didn’t work.
“Hi,” Jimmy says, his eyes downcast. “You’re back.”
“Yeah, for the wedding.” Rogue twists her fingers together. She no longer notices the slide of satin-on-satin.
“That’s not what I meant,” Jimmy says softly, and sighs. “I’m sorry it didn’t work.”
She’s heard that a few times while she’s been here, usually half-mumbled apologies followed by uncomfortable silences, but this is the first time she really believes it. “It’s okay,” Rogue says sincerely. “It’s who I am. I am glad I had the chance to see what it was like, though.”
“Is there someone you want to touch? I could, you know. Follow you around if you want. Except nothing bad, ‘cause I’m only fifteen.” Jimmy smiles, and some of the shadows in his eyes fade. “Sometimes I go with Warren to the movies. That way his wings don’t get in the way and he doesn’t have to sit way in the back.”
“That’s a neat use of your powers,” she says, impressed. She thinks that the Professor would be proud of that; Jimmy using his powers for something good, something practical.
“Yeah, well. Just gotta be creative, I guess.” Jimmy looks up at her shyly. “Though you know, that may be easier for me than you.” He suddenly blushes, his fair skin stained red. “Sorry. I kind of say stuff that I think all the time.”
Rogue’s charmed despite herself. “It’s okay,” she says again, and holds her gloved hand out. “Wanna dance? You’re the only one here I won’t put in a coma.”
Jimmy swallows, and he blushes again, but he follows her onto the floor. For the first time since she came back, Rogue feels like she belongs again. She wants to tell him that she knows what it feels like, being used for someone’s else’s dream and having it fail. She doesn’t, though. Instead, she dances with him, and takes her gloves off just because she can.
* * *
She goes out later that night, after the kids have gone to bed and the adults have found the booze, still wearing her gown but barefoot. The grass is cold beneath her feet but she likes it; it reminds her of those few glorious months where her world was full of touch unencumbered by the barrier of cloth.
Rogue stops by the Professor’s grave and watches the eternal flame as it leaps and dances merrily in the wind. Maybe he’s celebrating. She touches the hard granite stone and wonders if she should say something.
“Didn’t know if you’d come back or not.”
She jumps at the sound of the voice from the darkness, then smells the sticky-sweet tobacco and smiles. “Yeah. Me neither. Glad I did, though.” She turns and walks across the lawn to where she can see the cigar winking in the darkness. “Where’ve you been?”
“Around. Don’t much like parties.”
They stare at each other, and Rogue feels her heart speed up like it always has when she’s around him. He’s still so handsome, Logan, still so rough around the edges in a way that’s almost irresistible.
“Logan, I’m sorry,” she says sincerely, before she can think it through. “That night that you found me…I shouldn’t have been like that. I should have tried to explain myself. I just needed…I just needed to be on my own for a while, you know?”
“Yeah. I know. I shouldn’t have tried to stop you.” He grinds out the cigar with the heel of his boot, and tucks the end in his shirt pocket. “How are you?”
“Good. I’m working, taking some classes.” She shivers a little in the cool breeze. “How about you?”
“Still here. Sometimes I think I should have followed you to Canada instead of coming back. Damn kids drive me crazy.” He smiles a little, and she doesn’t think he means that. “Saving the world gets kind of old.”
Rogue laughs. “I design webpages, or at least, I want to. A far cry from being an X-Man.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah. I wait tables, too, but that gets kinda boring. I ruin a lot of gloves with the food.” She wiggles her fingers at him.
He steps closer, examines her in the bright light of the full moon. “You look different. Older, somehow. Still got the hair.”
“I’m sort of attached to it.” She fingers it slowly, and watches as his eyes warm. Something curls in her stomach, which shouldn’t surprise her. She’s always wanted him. Time hasn’t changed that, it seems.
“Yeah.” Logan moves closer, and she wonders what’s happening. She’s never been the one he wanted, even when he couldn’t have Jean. “Saw you dancing with Leech.”
“That’s a horrible name,” Rogue protests, her voice breathless. It’s almost like a cliché; formal dress, moonlit night, bare feet and dew-wet grass. “He’s a nice kid. And I don’t kill him when I dance with him.”
“You’ve grown up.” His words are quick and hurried, as if he’s saying them before he has a chance to think that maybe he shouldn’t.
“You noticed?”
“Yeah. You look nice, in that dress.”
There’s another pregnant moment between them; long and saturated with history and regret and loss. In her daydreams this would be the moment where he kisses her, but that won’t happen. Not yet. She doesn’t think it’s as impossible as maybe it was, though. “Thanks, Logan.”
“You gonna stick around now? We could use the staff. Maybe you could make us a webpage. Bobby made one, but it sucks. Crashes all the time.” There’s something in his eyes, maybe a promise or the slightest hint of one, that she’s never seen before.
“Maybe I will. Y’all could use some more staff, seems like.” They start walking, in tandem, back towards the house. “I’ll be done in a few more months with the class. Bet they have some more around here somewhere. I’ll ask Storm about it in the morning.” It feels like the right thing to do.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They’re silent as they walk back into the mansion. He tells her goodnight and his eyes linger a bit longer than they should on her cleavage.
She’s excited about that, about what it means, but a little nervous, too. If she’s going to come back, it has to be for the right reasons.
* * *
Storm gives her a nice room on the third floor, overlooking the gardens, with a private bath. She’s unpacking her things, hanging up her inexhaustible supply of long-sleeved shirts, when Logan knocks on her door.
“So you really did it, huh?” He leans against the doorway, his expression warm and familiar. It’s been three months since she last saw him, since Kitty’s wedding, but they’ve been talking. There’s something there, maybe. She’s not sure what it is yet, though.
“I really did.” Rogue finishes hanging up her shirt and walks over to him. “You glad to see me?” Her voice is careful teasing; the banter of adulthood between them is a little rough on her tongue.
He gives a soft laugh at that; it’s that unique sound that has always reminded her of an animal braying. There’s still the slightest glimpse of shadow in his eyes when the light hits them just right, but she doesn’t mind that, not really. “Yeah. I’m glad.”
“Feel like I’ve moved in and out of this place about six hundred times,” Rogue jokes, raking a hand through her hair. She cut it so that it just brushes her shoulders. She still has the white streaks, but she can barely hear him anymore in her mind, only at night when the shadows sometimes wake her.
It’s probably why she doesn’t mind that they still wake Logan, too. They both have their own nightmares to suffer, and always will.
“Think this time maybe you’ll stick around?”
“Yeah.” Rogue looks around at her room. “I do.”
“Why?”
She walks closer to him, noticing how he reacts. He doesn’t flinch, but she hears him suck in a breath, and it makes her happy. It’s not because of her powers. It’s because of her. “Because this time, it’s right,” she says simply.
He nods slowly and moves out of her room, allowing her to precede him into the hallway. “I know how that goes. There’s a time when you have to stop running ‘cause there ain’t nowhere else to go.”
Rogue looks down at her hands, covered today in a simple pair of white cotton gloves. She barely even remembers they’re there anymore. She wonders if she has time to set up her laptop before dinner, before she meets the students. The school is full to capacity. She wonders if they still have her uniform downstairs in the basement.
“Yeah,” she says, and gently, carefully, reaches out for Logan’s hand with her own. “There is.”
He takes her hand and squeezes, and they walk that way for a moment, hands entwined. He releases her hand as they reach the stairwell, but it doesn’t bother her. She thinks that maybe soon, there will come a time when he won’t let go, and neither will she.
Author: Sionnain
’Verse: Movieverse, Post X-3 (contains spoilers)
Pairings: Rogue/Wolverine implied. Mentions Bobby/Rogue, Bobby/Polaris, Kitty/Colossus.
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3400
Summary: Rogue figures out that before you can go home again, first you have to leave.
AN: Thanks to Kethlenda for the beta! I wrote this for Artemis2050's birthday-so it’s only a little late! I hope you like this, m'dear, and I apologize for there being no naughtiness! It turned out a bit more plotty (is that a word?) than I’d planned. I shall be anxious to know what you think!
Full Circle
They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. --Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
When the news reports begin about the cure failing, she’s in college in Rhode Island.
Marie attends Salve Regina College, even though she’s not Catholic, because it’s small and private and because she can have her own room. Some part of her must have known it wasn’t going to last, that she insisted upon that. She’s got a stipend from Xavier’s, a scholarship that pays for her books and lodging, and took out a loan for everything else. The girls are kind of snobby and she keeps to herself, but it’s not bad, not really.
She and Bobby had broken up, amicably, several weeks after they’d left Xavier’s to go to their respective colleges. Mentally, they’d broken up much earlier than that; they were more friends than anything. Sex was nice and touching was still a thrill, but being able to touch didn’t make all the problems in their relationship vanish overnight.
Marie hadn’t thought it would, though. She’d not taken the cure for him, no matter what anyone thought. She’d done it for herself. I’ll never be a weapon, not again. Nothing happens to me that isn’t my choice.
She knew the cure would fail a month before the news reports made it official. She’d woken up with a voice in her mind, hissing the word traitor like a serpent hidden in darkness. She’d watched the moonlight spill in through the windows in her room and shine almost malevolently on her fair skin.
That’s when she knows she has to leave the school, has to go away again. It’s almost a relief, really, because deep down she’s been waiting for this shoe to drop since the moment that needle pricked her skin.
She thinks maybe there’s something wrong with her, the way she loves leaving things behind. She leaves in the middle of the afternoon without a word to anyone, with the strap of her bag clenched between the gloves she never threw away.
Three miles outside of Newport, she catches a ride with a trucker bound for Canada.
Better late than never.
* * *
She should have known he’d find her.
Logan looks much the same as she remembers; hair wild and sticking out in symmetrical points, eyes a little rougher and meaner, voice still low like broken glass soaked in whiskey. He slides next to her at the bar and she watches the way his eyes go right to her fingers, red satin curled around cheap green class.
“Hey, Marie.”
She stiffens slightly at the name, though it’s been hers again for months now. “Hey, Logan. What are you doing here?”
“Thought maybe you might want some company.”
“How’d you find me?” She rubs her fingers over the glass and remembers when there was nothing between it and her fingers but air.
“Emma. She used Cerebro.”
Marie never really liked Emma Frost, but she knew why Storm had asked her to move into the mansion. There were so many kids who needed a place to go; some were runaways, afraid of being forced into taking the cure. Some were kids whose parents had thrown them out for refusing it.
It seemed as if the only lasting effect from the cure was more divisiveness in a community already mired in uncertainty and fear.
She wonders how many more mutants will show up now. “Why?”
“You know why,” Logan says gruffly, looking down at her gloves.
Marie had been pragmatic about putting them back on, but now suddenly she hates the feeling of silk wrapped around her fingers. It feels stifling, hot. Will I ever be anything more than my mutation?
Not when you resist being who you really are, a voice whispers, and she narrows her eyes and stares into her Coke and tries to shut Magneto out. She’d gotten used to her mind being quiet more than anything; this is the hardest adjustment to being Rogue again, really.
She wonders if Magneto liked being a martyr. It’s the fate he would have forced upon her if he’d been successful at Liberty Island. She wonders if he appreciated the irony before he got his powers back. She thinks for a moment about what it felt like for him, the moment he felt metal bend and respond to his command.
She hates him for that, a little. That he should benefit from her misfortune is unthinkable.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve dealt with it before.” She’s still not looking at Logan, because to see pity on his face will kill something inside of her.
“Yeah? By runnin’?”
“You’re one to talk,” she snaps, and anger pulls her gaze to his. There’s a shadow of sadness in his eyes, the lingering traces of that terrible grief she’d seen after Alcatraz.
“I stopped running, Marie.” His voice is sad. She wonders if that is because he wants her to stop running, or because he’s had to.
She can feel him, too, in her mind. He prowls like a beast, caged and angry, scratching ineffectually at the doors to his cage. “Because Storm asked you to.”
“It’s as good a place as any to stay,” he says, as if it doesn’t matter. It does matter, though, and surely he realizes it.
Her eyes search his for some answer she knows he can’t give her. “You tryin’ to get me to come back?”
“I want to know you’re okay. So does everyone else.”
“Of course I’m not okay,” she snaps, pushing her drink away. “What do you think? That I wanted it back?”
Part of you did.
She narrows her eyes at the unwanted mental intrusion. Shut up.
Logan shakes his head, drawing her attention back to him. “No. But you know there’s a place for you, if you want it. Back at Xavier’s.”
Marie stares at him for a long time before she shoves her glass away and stands up. “Leave me alone, Logan.”
“No.” He stands up, too, and follows her out of the bar. The air is cold and crisp and smells like winter. It reminds her of Bobby. She didn’t mind when they broke up, but suddenly she misses him, misses kissing him with her powers and tasting ice when she breathes.
See? I told you.
Maybe it isn’t Magneto thinking that, after all. If she were honest she’d admit there were times it felt good to use her powers, but it always came with a price. Someone else’s pain, or her own. Too high a price. How could she have done anything else but take the cure?
“Damn it, Marie, do you think you’re the only one who’s going through this? Got a bunch of kids in your shoes back home. You don’t have to go through it alone, you know.”
“Logan, I’ve always been alone,” she says, walking straight forward, her eyes on the road. She has no idea where she’s going. “Thought maybe you’d understand, if anyone did.”
He finally stops her with a hand on her arm, fingers tight. “You can’t run forever. Take it from me.”
“Yeah? I can try.” She pulls away, and this time he lets her go. She doesn’t hear him leave, but somehow, she knows he’s not following her. Part of her is disappointed, and that makes her angry.
Maybe she has to stop running, but that doesn’t mean she has to run back to Xavier’s. Maybe it’s time to be Marie and Rogue, and figure out who she really is.
* * *
A year later, she’s waiting in line to catch a plane from Ottawa to the States, to New York. Kitty is marrying Peter Rasputin in a ceremony on the front lawn of the Institute, and Rogue’s going back to be in the wedding. She’s been living in Canada for a year, waiting tables at night and taking classes in website design during the day.
It’s strange to be back at Xavier’s as a guest. Storm embraces her warmly, only tensing a little as she wraps thin, wiry arms around her former student. Ororo looks older; her hair is longer, her eyes tired. She doesn’t seem to mind that Rogue threw away the stipend she’d been awarded from the Institute to attend Salve Regina’s.
Bobby’s there too, and seeing him is nice but a little weird. They hadn’t really kept in touch after she’d moved to Canada. He’s dating a woman named Lorna, with green hair and green eyes. Polaris, she introduces herself, and for some reason it makes Rogue happy that Bobby’s dating a mutant who so obviously looks like one. It sort of makes her feel bad that she thinks that.
Emma’s smile is the same as always, diamond sharp with that curve to her mouth like she knows something you’d rather she didn’t. She’s a telepath without the Professor’s morals, so she probably does. Rogue doesn’t mind, she’s got nothing to hide.
Kitty’s the same as ever, with that face that perpetually makes her look young-“They still ID me at movies!”-but obviously pleased to see Rogue. She takes her up to a room on the “staff floor,” and there’s a pretty purple dress hanging from the bathroom door.
There’s a pair of gloves and a chiffon scarf on the bed in the same shade. “The other bridesmaids are wearing them too,” Kitty says firmly. Rogue’s touched by that, more than she lets on, but she thinks Kitty probably knows.
Rogue wonders where Logan is, but she doesn’t ask.
* * *
The wedding is simple but touching; a very brief ceremony followed by dancing and dinner in the ballroom. They never used it when Rogue was there, but Kitty tells her that now they use it for the cafeteria. There are more students in the school than Rogue can keep straight, and all of them are there at the wedding, dancing or sneaking pieces of wedding cake up to their rooms for later.
It makes her smile to see the school so full, though Jubilee, with her chiffon scarf tied in her raven-black hair, tells Rogue that they’re having to turn kids down now.
“Not enough room?” Rogue asks, relaxed after a swig of vodka from Illyana Rasputin’s flask, passed from bridesmaid-to-bridesmaid while Kitty and Peter have their first dance.
“Not enough staff,” Jubilee says, and laughs. She’s studying architecture at Columbia. Rogue wonders if she’s going to come back and be a teacher, or if maybe she’ll just oversee building an addition or something.
She sees Jimmy in the corner, sitting by himself. Rogue makes her way over to him, wondering if the kid likes it here or if he just doesn’t have anyplace else to go. Magneto’s still out there, fanatical as ever, so maybe it’s just that this place is the safest.
“Hi,” she says carefully, feeling a bit strange talking to him. She wonders what he thinks about the cure; if he feels guilty, or if he’s glad it didn’t work.
“Hi,” Jimmy says, his eyes downcast. “You’re back.”
“Yeah, for the wedding.” Rogue twists her fingers together. She no longer notices the slide of satin-on-satin.
“That’s not what I meant,” Jimmy says softly, and sighs. “I’m sorry it didn’t work.”
She’s heard that a few times while she’s been here, usually half-mumbled apologies followed by uncomfortable silences, but this is the first time she really believes it. “It’s okay,” Rogue says sincerely. “It’s who I am. I am glad I had the chance to see what it was like, though.”
“Is there someone you want to touch? I could, you know. Follow you around if you want. Except nothing bad, ‘cause I’m only fifteen.” Jimmy smiles, and some of the shadows in his eyes fade. “Sometimes I go with Warren to the movies. That way his wings don’t get in the way and he doesn’t have to sit way in the back.”
“That’s a neat use of your powers,” she says, impressed. She thinks that the Professor would be proud of that; Jimmy using his powers for something good, something practical.
“Yeah, well. Just gotta be creative, I guess.” Jimmy looks up at her shyly. “Though you know, that may be easier for me than you.” He suddenly blushes, his fair skin stained red. “Sorry. I kind of say stuff that I think all the time.”
Rogue’s charmed despite herself. “It’s okay,” she says again, and holds her gloved hand out. “Wanna dance? You’re the only one here I won’t put in a coma.”
Jimmy swallows, and he blushes again, but he follows her onto the floor. For the first time since she came back, Rogue feels like she belongs again. She wants to tell him that she knows what it feels like, being used for someone’s else’s dream and having it fail. She doesn’t, though. Instead, she dances with him, and takes her gloves off just because she can.
* * *
She goes out later that night, after the kids have gone to bed and the adults have found the booze, still wearing her gown but barefoot. The grass is cold beneath her feet but she likes it; it reminds her of those few glorious months where her world was full of touch unencumbered by the barrier of cloth.
Rogue stops by the Professor’s grave and watches the eternal flame as it leaps and dances merrily in the wind. Maybe he’s celebrating. She touches the hard granite stone and wonders if she should say something.
“Didn’t know if you’d come back or not.”
She jumps at the sound of the voice from the darkness, then smells the sticky-sweet tobacco and smiles. “Yeah. Me neither. Glad I did, though.” She turns and walks across the lawn to where she can see the cigar winking in the darkness. “Where’ve you been?”
“Around. Don’t much like parties.”
They stare at each other, and Rogue feels her heart speed up like it always has when she’s around him. He’s still so handsome, Logan, still so rough around the edges in a way that’s almost irresistible.
“Logan, I’m sorry,” she says sincerely, before she can think it through. “That night that you found me…I shouldn’t have been like that. I should have tried to explain myself. I just needed…I just needed to be on my own for a while, you know?”
“Yeah. I know. I shouldn’t have tried to stop you.” He grinds out the cigar with the heel of his boot, and tucks the end in his shirt pocket. “How are you?”
“Good. I’m working, taking some classes.” She shivers a little in the cool breeze. “How about you?”
“Still here. Sometimes I think I should have followed you to Canada instead of coming back. Damn kids drive me crazy.” He smiles a little, and she doesn’t think he means that. “Saving the world gets kind of old.”
Rogue laughs. “I design webpages, or at least, I want to. A far cry from being an X-Man.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah. I wait tables, too, but that gets kinda boring. I ruin a lot of gloves with the food.” She wiggles her fingers at him.
He steps closer, examines her in the bright light of the full moon. “You look different. Older, somehow. Still got the hair.”
“I’m sort of attached to it.” She fingers it slowly, and watches as his eyes warm. Something curls in her stomach, which shouldn’t surprise her. She’s always wanted him. Time hasn’t changed that, it seems.
“Yeah.” Logan moves closer, and she wonders what’s happening. She’s never been the one he wanted, even when he couldn’t have Jean. “Saw you dancing with Leech.”
“That’s a horrible name,” Rogue protests, her voice breathless. It’s almost like a cliché; formal dress, moonlit night, bare feet and dew-wet grass. “He’s a nice kid. And I don’t kill him when I dance with him.”
“You’ve grown up.” His words are quick and hurried, as if he’s saying them before he has a chance to think that maybe he shouldn’t.
“You noticed?”
“Yeah. You look nice, in that dress.”
There’s another pregnant moment between them; long and saturated with history and regret and loss. In her daydreams this would be the moment where he kisses her, but that won’t happen. Not yet. She doesn’t think it’s as impossible as maybe it was, though. “Thanks, Logan.”
“You gonna stick around now? We could use the staff. Maybe you could make us a webpage. Bobby made one, but it sucks. Crashes all the time.” There’s something in his eyes, maybe a promise or the slightest hint of one, that she’s never seen before.
“Maybe I will. Y’all could use some more staff, seems like.” They start walking, in tandem, back towards the house. “I’ll be done in a few more months with the class. Bet they have some more around here somewhere. I’ll ask Storm about it in the morning.” It feels like the right thing to do.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They’re silent as they walk back into the mansion. He tells her goodnight and his eyes linger a bit longer than they should on her cleavage.
She’s excited about that, about what it means, but a little nervous, too. If she’s going to come back, it has to be for the right reasons.
* * *
Storm gives her a nice room on the third floor, overlooking the gardens, with a private bath. She’s unpacking her things, hanging up her inexhaustible supply of long-sleeved shirts, when Logan knocks on her door.
“So you really did it, huh?” He leans against the doorway, his expression warm and familiar. It’s been three months since she last saw him, since Kitty’s wedding, but they’ve been talking. There’s something there, maybe. She’s not sure what it is yet, though.
“I really did.” Rogue finishes hanging up her shirt and walks over to him. “You glad to see me?” Her voice is careful teasing; the banter of adulthood between them is a little rough on her tongue.
He gives a soft laugh at that; it’s that unique sound that has always reminded her of an animal braying. There’s still the slightest glimpse of shadow in his eyes when the light hits them just right, but she doesn’t mind that, not really. “Yeah. I’m glad.”
“Feel like I’ve moved in and out of this place about six hundred times,” Rogue jokes, raking a hand through her hair. She cut it so that it just brushes her shoulders. She still has the white streaks, but she can barely hear him anymore in her mind, only at night when the shadows sometimes wake her.
It’s probably why she doesn’t mind that they still wake Logan, too. They both have their own nightmares to suffer, and always will.
“Think this time maybe you’ll stick around?”
“Yeah.” Rogue looks around at her room. “I do.”
“Why?”
She walks closer to him, noticing how he reacts. He doesn’t flinch, but she hears him suck in a breath, and it makes her happy. It’s not because of her powers. It’s because of her. “Because this time, it’s right,” she says simply.
He nods slowly and moves out of her room, allowing her to precede him into the hallway. “I know how that goes. There’s a time when you have to stop running ‘cause there ain’t nowhere else to go.”
Rogue looks down at her hands, covered today in a simple pair of white cotton gloves. She barely even remembers they’re there anymore. She wonders if she has time to set up her laptop before dinner, before she meets the students. The school is full to capacity. She wonders if they still have her uniform downstairs in the basement.
“Yeah,” she says, and gently, carefully, reaches out for Logan’s hand with her own. “There is.”
He takes her hand and squeezes, and they walk that way for a moment, hands entwined. He releases her hand as they reach the stairwell, but it doesn’t bother her. She thinks that maybe soon, there will come a time when he won’t let go, and neither will she.