He's been watching her for weeks.
Nothing better to do, really. With Magneto gone, he's back to living to get by, and he can get by just as well here in Bayville as anywhere else, right?
He starts out loitering around the school, getting the lay of the land. Soon he's progressed to sitting on out-of-the-way walls or in the leafy branches of trees. Nobody ever sees him, but he sees everybody. They're—different. The whole group of them, different. They seem to enjoy each other's company.
Not that he hadn't enjoyed working for Magneto. The job certainly had its perks, not least of which was obeying orders by choice instead of out of some kind of twisted sense of familial loyalty. No, he'd enjoyed the work, most times, but he'd never exactly enjoyed the group. A Russian, an Aussie, a megalomaniac, and an ADHD boss' kid. None of them his style.
When he first met the X-Men, he thought it might be worth it to come back around someday. Or was it only after he'd heard her talk that he'd thought that? Her voice sounded like home. Something in her eyes, too, looked familiar, the eyes of somebody who'd been running too long and forgot how to stop.
He's been watching her for weeks now, dreaming up plans to get them running together, running to New Orleans to save his father and then just keeping on down the road, wherever it led to. No place special in mind, he's just been part of a group most of his life and he feels the need for some company.
She comes out a lot at night, more and more often as the weeks go by. Sometimes she's breathing hard and he can tell from the look on her face that she's fresh from chewing somebody's head off. Sometimes she's rubbing her temples and keeping her eyes on the ground. Sometimes she's brushing away tears.
One night she comes and throws herself down under the tree he's sitting in, and he watches her shoulders shake and hears her frustrated growls and mutterings and he almost reaches down right then to pull her up next to him and take her away. But instead he waits until she's calmed down and gone back inside, and he watches the window he knows is hers and doesn't leave until the light goes off.
He figures out her schedule. She usually rides to school in the morning with Scott or Jean, but sometimes she pulls a favor and gets to borrow a car for herself. When that happens, she leaves early, before anybody else, and drives so fast he has trouble keeping up with her. She parks far away and walks slowly towards the school. On these days, she walks through a small alley between outbuildings. He makes particular note of this.
He watches around outside the school a few days before giving it up because he can only see her when she leaves the school building, and that's only for lunch and for track. She doesn't seem to like the latter, but it's obviously not because she's no good—the girl has moves. At lunch she's not so good. Her discomfort around all her friends must be real obvious if he can see it from across the parking lot.
She's rarely by herself when she leaves school in the afternoon. Even on the days when she drives herself, someone or other usually rides home with her. So afternoon won't work, and evening is out because he's not in the mood to wrangle with the likes of Wolverine, thanks very much, and so it has to be the morning.
He hides between the buildings in the alley for days before his chance comes, but he never gets impatient. He knows she'll come around sooner or later.
After all, he's been watching her.