Okay, well, hello there, fellow FanFiction-ers :) This is my first X-Men: Evolution fanfic, so please be kind. I hope it's okay. It's kinda based on a dream...obviously, it was an amazing dream, 'cause Remy LeBeau was in it. It's a Romy, with some drama and a teeeennny bit of action when it comes to it. I like action, but it isn't one of those fics. Well, that's a lie, there will be a whole chapter of action, but that's it, really...

Anyway, onwards! I hope you enjoy!

The storm is what woke her up.

Rogue Unknownlastname rolled onto her back in her bed, glaring with envy as Kitty Pryde slept like a log. She hadn't slept properly in weeks – not since what happened with Apocalypse – and found that it was her own personal fears getting in the way of her sleep. Memories of that day plagued her mind, and she found that her imagination only accelerated the fear of her past.

Dumbass imagination.

Rogue let out a puff of air as she stared up at the ceiling, blowing the white fringes of her hair out of her face. She had been this close – this close – to falling asleep. The first real sleep she would have had in weeks; and then that stupid storm had to roll around and startle her awake.

She didn't really want to reflect on why the past still worried her, but she found that her mind wandered there anyway. She was scared. Scared that it would happen again, and that when it did, she would kill all her friends. It wasn't hard for Mesmero to hypnotize her, and even less difficult to actually absorb everyones powers then. So what would happen the next time some smartass decided to stroll on over and take advantage of her abilities?

It won't happen, it won't happen...

Yeah. Just you keep telling yourself that.

Kitty made a weird contained noise in the back of her throat, which turned into an outright snore. For someone so small and sweet, she made an awful lot of noise.

Rogue resisted the urge to groan, flinging an arm over her eyes as she squeezed them shut. It didn't work. Flashes of lightning shone behind her arm, thunder crackled overhead, and Kitty snorted.

Just as she suspected, sleep wasn't going to envelope her too soon.

Rogue swung her long legs over the side of the bed, resting her heads in her hands. What was wrong with her? It had been at least two months since the fight with Apocalypse, so why couldn't she just accept that the fight was over and done with? Two months since the X-Men, the Brotherhood, and the Acolytes had saved the world. Of course, one specific Acolyte hadn't been there for the fight...

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

There was one more reason to why Rogue seemed to be evading sleep lately, though. And that reason came in the form of a certain well-defined Cajun thief...

Shut up, she told herself, scraping her hair back from her face. You are not going to start thinking about him...

Obviously, telling herself to do something was a lot easier than actually doing it.

Upon Kitty letting out another snore, Rogue decided that she wasn't going to be getting any sleep any time soon. Sp she got to her feet, feeling the soft fabric of the carpet on her bare feet, and closed the short space to the teens' en suite bathroom. Grabbing a bobble from the side of the sink, and shoved her short hair into a tight ponytail before splashing cool water onto her poisoned skin.

She fumbled about blindly in the darkness, eyes squeezed shut, finally finding the hand towel and patting her face dry. She hoped it was a towel, anyway...living in this house, she was probably drying her face with someone's used underwear.

She didn't really want to think about that, so once her eyes were open – averting her gaze away from the towel-underwear-thing – she found the tumbler that Kitty and her always kept in the bathroom in case they needed a drink.

She took a gulp of the refreshing water, remembering something she had been told as a kid: "Water always chases away the nightmares."

Yeah, she wished.

She walked back through to the bedroom, noticing how Kitty was now sprawled on the side of the bed, arm hanging off the edge, snoring her pretty little head off.

Was that drool on her pillow?

Rogue stifled a laugh, picking up her favourite hoodie (a souvenir from a Bullet For My Valentine concert, obviously) and shrugging it on before taking a glance out of the balcony window. The storm was fading, but the damn wind that had woken her up was still going strong. Stupid New York.

She missed Mississippi.

It wasn't so much the fact that she was away from everyone and everything she knew...well, it was, but there were other reasons behind it as well. She missed the Southern parts of the country, and found it annoying that the rest of the X-Men sometimes had trouble understanding what she had said; she missed the weather, and the secluded town she had lived in; she didn't like having to make a new life for herself, even if she did have help.

And she didn't like having to accept what she was, and what she could be.

Most people argued that she was the most powerful of the X-Men. And, yeah, they were probably right. If pushed, she could absorb pretty much anyone – and she had done just that. But that was the problem – who would stop it from happening again? She had almost caused the destruction of the freaking Earth.

On top of that, everyone treated her like she could explode any moment. She understood that they had to take care around her, because she was highly strung, and on top of that, deadly. But she wasn't some bomb, and she wished that everyone could at least pretend to not be whispering behind her back. There was only one person who hadn't acted like that, and he had been too forward for his own damn good.

Rogue reluctantly felt her gaze fall on her bedside table. A Victorian lamp sat there, casting a large shadow on the rest of the room; then it was her alarm clock; just a little ways down from that, there was a framed picture of her, Kurt and Kitty, Kurt in his natural blue fuzzy form while they all laughed over something unseen. On a day out, the five of them – Bobby and Scott had come along as well – had visited a park in the twilight, hoping for a makeshift game of softball (there were only five players, after all). Bobby had been fooling about, and had "accidentally" thrown an ice cube down Scott's back, making the oldest of the group jump and snap a picture while the rest of the group laughed. It had been before Apocalypse, and Rogue yearned for those days to come back. It wasn't the same now.

Her gaze fell on the last item on the table, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The Queen of Hearts card that Gambit had kissed and then discreetly handed to her the night he oh-so-charmingly kidnapped her just lay there, haunting and compelling. Haunting because it was a trademark of something that she couldn't understand, and probably never would, and it always seemed to stare accusingly at her, and compelling because whenever she looked at it, it made her want to find out more about it's previous owner.

She hadn't seen him since that night, and if she was completely honest with herself, she wanted to know what he was doing.

Rogue shook her head, as if that would make the thoughts go away. It wouldn't, but whatever, it was worth a try.

She pulled on a pair of bed socks. Taking one last glance at Kitty, now halfway from falling off the bed, she exited the bedroom to go for a midnight snack.

She crept along the hallway, careful not to wake anyone up. Just because she couldn't sleep didn't mean that everyone else shouldn't, as well.

The only sounds in the mansion came from the grandfather clock in the hall, tick-tocking loudly into the darkness. The lightning flashed threateningly over the massive space through the huge windows, and Rogue made a beeline for the kitchen. The more she thought about it, the hungrier she got.

Eventually she reached the kitchen. She reached up into a cupboard to find her bowl – a smiley face with fangs and blood dripping from them – and then proceeded to rake about in the fridge for the chopped strawberries she knew were there. Well, unless Logan had eaten them. He wasn't big on the healthy food, just food in general.

Making a satisfied sound when she found the plastic tub containing the red fruit, she opened it up and dumped the food into her bowl. Then was the banana; she grabbed one out of the fruit bowl and chopped it up on a chopping board before dumping that in as well. She finally picked a couple of grapes, and then, just because she figured her bowl was looking a bit too healthy, she went searching for the Nutella jar that Kitty had hidden in the back of the cupboard.

Sure enough, when she looked hard enough, she found the jar of chocolate. A label with Kitty's most violent threat was stuck onto the front of it:

"Kitty's jar. Get your own. I mean it. I WILL phase you into the floor."

Smirking, Rogue untwisted the cap and dumped a generous amount of chocolate on top of the fruit.

Sorry, Kitty.

Not really.

Rogue sat down with her snack at the table, munching on it as she gazed around the room. It was dark, so she couldn't see much, but she could make out Bobby's battered red Converse shoes and her own Doc Martens by the back door. Some undone homework sat on the counter by the small television, and someone had left an iPod playing next to it. She got up to switch it off, licking her spoon clean, before she noticed a dark profile standing by the door.

She froze, instantly sensing danger, her grip on the spoon tightening before Logan stepped out of the darkness and into the faint light coming from the window.

"Logan," she sighed, sliding into the chair again and crossing her legs. "I thought you were someone else – Ah was ready to scoop your eyes out."

Logan ran a hand through his bedhead hair, only giving a grunt as a reply while he flicked the kettle on. He was dressed in only a pair of sweatpants, and the only thing that kept Rogue from checking out his toned chest was the fact that he was like a father to her. He slid into the chair opposite her.

"What you eating?" He asked, voice groggy.

"Junk, really," she replied, proving her point by shoving a spoonful of Nutella into her mouth.

"That'll do your insides in, kid," He mumbled, getting up to get his cup ready before pouring some coffee grains into it.

Rogue shrugged. "So? It's got fruit in it. Anyway," she mumbled around the chocolate, "Sgood."

Logan grunted again before pouring the now boiled water into his cup. He glanced over at Rogue, taking in her hoodie, tartan shorts, bed socks and bed rumpled hair. Even though she knew it wasn't the best idea to be wearing shorts with poisoned skin, it was still summer – even if the weather wanted to prove otherwise. It was hot at night.

"Couldn't sleep?" He asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

Rogue shook her head. "Couldn't if Ah tried. Kitty's snorin' so loud, she'll probably swallow the entire room."

He nodded, turning to head out the door. "I'll be awake if you need me. Got crap to fill out," and with that parting shot, he headed for bed.

Rogue had a funny feeling that Professor Xavier wouldn't be too thrilled to hear Logan call his work crap, but she would have said the same thing, had she been in his position.

The rain was letting up, apparently – the hammering against the window was lighter now. Pattering, even. That gave her an idea.

She finished off the rest of her food before filling it with water and dumping it in the sink. As far as Rogue was concerned, it was someone else's job to clean it now. She walked back upstairs, careful to not make too much noise again, before tiptoeing into her bedroom.

Kitty had now inched her way closer to the edge of the bed even further. Rogue decided that it was drool that was lying on her pillow, cringing as she saw the hair of Kitty's ponytail lying in the liquid. Another snore.

If she makes noise like that, she deserves ta wake up with saliva hair.

Rogue crossed the room to the wardrobe – pointedly not looking at the card on her bedside table – and pulled out a pair of jeans. She pulled them over her shorts, deciding to keep the bed socks on while she ransacked the bottom of her wardrobe for her favourite pair of boots.

Finally finding them, she crossed over to her bed and fell down onto it, tying her boots up and sorting the jean legs over them. Next she searched through her top drawer to find a suitable pair of gloves, settling for a pair of wrist-length black fingerless ones. Nobody would be about to touch, she figured, but it was good to take the precaution anyway.

She walked over to the bedside table to pull out some cash – just in case – and an umbrella, in case the rain started up again. She pulled her ponytail tighter, closing the drawer with her hip before she caught sight of the Queen of Hearts. Fighting an inner battle, she finally decided to take it and place it into the back pocket of her jeans. She didn't know what made her suddenly want to take it with her, but she had a...feeling...that she might be needing it.

As Rogue turned to the balcony – she figured that a stealthy exit would be better than waking everyone up by using the heavy front doors – Kitty made a noise and rolled right off the bed. She let out a surprised gasp, eyes flying open as half her body phased through the floor. "Crap," she muttered. "Like, not again."

Rogue froze, half wanting to burst out laughing at Kitty, half hoping that her roommate hadn't spotted her, because then she wouldn't be able to leave.

Kitty rubbed the sleep from her eyes, taking in her surroundings and coming out of the floor. She stood up, yawned, grabbed the blankets and flopped back down into her bed, sighing contentedly.

Rogue breathed a sigh of relief, starting towards the balcony doors again -

Until Kitty stopped her by saying, "Rogue? Where you going?"

Rogue scrunched her eyes shut. Busted.

"For a walk," she replied, glancing over her shoulder at Kitty, whose eyes were closed.

"How come?" Kitty yawned.

What's up with the twenty questions? Rogue thought. It's not like I'm some isolated weirdo that needs to be watched 24/7.

But what she said was, "Just to clear my head." Which was true.

"Hmm." Kitty mumbled, turning onto her other side. "Have fun."

Rogue watched her for a second, waiting for her breathing to slow down before whispering "Night, Kitty," and turning towards the balcony.

The rain had let up, which was good. The wind wasn't as bad, either, but the war between the thunder and lightning was still going on. Rogue pulled the sleeves of her hoodie further over her hands and began closing the doors behind her after she stepped out.

"Rogue?" Kitty's muffled voice sounded from inside the room. Rogue poked her head around the door.

"Yeah?"

Kitty didn't lift her head. "You can totally, like, eat your own Nutella next time."

Rogue smiled as she closed the balcony doors, trapping herself out in the cold. Quickly casting a glance over the grounds of the Institute, Rogue grabbed a hold of the balcony railings and hoisted her legs over them. The drop to the ground wasn't that far; the biggest injury she was likely to get was swollen ankles.

She dropped to the damp ground, landing in a crouch before standing up.

And then she turned around to walk into the consuming darkness.

What do you think?

I hope it's okay so far :S

I've got the next chapter written, so hopefully if I get good reviews, that'll be up soon. Please review, I really want to know what you think :)

~L&KFan97~