There was a tavern just far enough from the interstate to be considered rustic and charming enough to be considered quaint. It served a few truckers and the occasional tourist that managed to get just somewhere between slightly lost and completely turned around; but for the most part, the tavern rather ironically called Harry's Hideaway served the locals. Mostly the blue collar crowd, just outside or on the outskirts of Westchester though every now and then a few of the wealthier members of the community would go "slumming". Regular patrons were well acquainted with each other, having grown up together and ran in the same circles; except for those that came down from the institute, of course. Harry, the proprietor, seemed to know these strange people that would come in from time to time, either alone or in a small group but always keeping to themselves. They would catch his eye as they entered, Harry would nod in greeting and they would seat themselves somewhere out of the way. They never got rowdy, did little to draw attention to themselves except for all the efforts they made in not drawing attention to themselves. They were teachers and staff members for that Institute, the one behind the high stone walls and wrought iron gates. It was a school; but a school for what? Gifted Youngsters could really mean anything. The children who lived at and attended this school were rarely seen though when they were, they seemed to behave like their teachers and took great pains to not be noticed. A few local children had attended the school over the years and had become just as guarded as the rest of them. It was another reason for the community to cast a suspicious eye whenever anyone from Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters strayed from behind those stone walls. As if the rumors of strange looking people, thunderstorms that spontaneously appeared and disappeared over the grounds and even a blue-skinned demon that vanished in clouds of sulfur before your very eyes weren't reason enough for the locals to give them all a wide berth. Like the gruff-looking man sitting at the bar nursing his second beer, clad in battered jeans and a flannel shirt over the white muscle tee despite the summer heat lingering through the evening.
Beneath the stale smell of beer, cigarettes and the old jar of pickled eggs that had been sitting atop the bar for as long as the place had been open, he picked up another scent. Bergamot, apple & chantilly cream; though he would never admit to knowing the correct names of the flaming things; he had been around long enough to be able to identify each note that made up her unique scent. His nostrils flared instinctively when he caught the traces of sweat that clung to her skin and hair due to the balmy eighty degree evening. Faint traces from the school drifted in with her; blades of freshly cut grass, pollen from the roses that lined the long gravel drive, a little chlorine from the pool, blacktop from the basketball courts and a hint of strawberry jam that had probably been on the hands of one of the younger students; for some reason they were always sticky. He didn't turn as she strode towards him on those long, denim clad legs and slid over the barstool beside him. From the corner of his eye, he saw her lift her hand to signal Harry before she pointed a slender finger at the bar in front of her and his gaze lingered on the delicate digits for a moment. She had control now but she had always kept covered up for as long as he had known her and seeing her bare hands still surprised him. Sometimes when she slipped off her gloves, it had the same effect on men as if she were doing a strip tease. He let out a grunt when the beer was placed in front of her. "Get tired of soda pop, Stripes?"
Rogue made a pft noise as she brought the stein to her lips and took a long sip before responding. "Like Ah don't know about the six-pack ya got strapped to the back of your toilet, Logan. Just needed a breather. We've had Avengers blasting all day from every TV, laptop, smartphone, tablet an' every other device on the grounds. Just needed ta get away from all the glad-handing and hero worship for a while."
They sat for a while, not speaking and nursing their beers for a few minutes before the game on the big screen above the bar was interrupted with footage of the Avengers.
"This is violently unfair!" Anna Marie hissed under her breath to Logan, her Mississippi drawl growing a bit thicker with her annoyance. "We do the same things, save the world, walk old ladies across the street but we can't do it on the six o'clock news! Did anyone ever stop ta wonder why casualties surrounding that tin can's floatin' pleasure island were so startlingly low? 'Cuz we were bustin' our asses catching all th' people falling out of the sky and then scurryin' into our hidey-holes before anyone could see us. Or cleaning up the outskirts of their fight with those aliens in Manhatten? Or all the shit we've had ta deal with on our own without bein' seen? That beach-head of invading aliens from that other dimension in Madripoor? Cleaned up that beach before anyone knew what had happened. Cost us buckets of blood, gallons of tears but we had ta go lick our wounds and bury our dead in the shadows. All cuz we were born with our powers instead of gettin' them from a lab."
"I hear that," he said before draining the remainder of his beer and ordering another. "Don't like hiding either, not that I want to make the late night talk show rounds but a little acknowledgment would be nice. Fact is, folks would be terrified of us if we ever came into the light. Look what's happened with those who actually do know about mutants. Things are what they are, darlin'. But it's like I told ya before that the shoulda, woulda, couldas don't really matter. Those words only matter in fairy tales an' this is real life. All the bellyachin' in the world isn't gonna change anything. What Xavier's doing, what we're doing… we might not be winning popularity contests but we're doing something. Just be careful with that train of thought you're following right now, sounds a little like Mommy Dearest and Magneto's ranting."
"Ah was raised ta be a terrorist by that woman, Logan" Anna Marie kept her eyes on her stein as Harry placed another beer in front of her companion. "Ah know the difference between what they're preachin' and Charles' dream. They're looking ta put mutants at the top of the food chain and we're fighting for peaceful co-existence. Though Ah don't see how we can co-exist when they don't even know we exist."
"They ain't ready."
"Somewhere along the line, Charles' dream became mine too and Ah ain't never giving up on it; Ah'm just startin' ta wonder if they'll be ready in our lifetime," the southerner shook her head, her signature platinum locks mingled with the auburn as she did so. Whatever words she would have uttered next died in her throat as someone else entered the bar.
He was tall and wiry, slightly unkempt, his clothes a little ragged. He had likely been living on the streets but there was something off about his features; slightly out of proportion. His features were almost rodent-like. He was a mutant. Whether he had powers or his mutation was just in his biostrings, Rogue wasn't sure but she knew that he was one of them. He moved over to the bar, his shoulders hunched as though he could hide himself from sight and spoke to Harry about a cheap meal as he pulled out a handful of change from his pockets. Harry's eyes flickered in the direction of the two X-Men with practiced subtlety; over the years, he had served so many mutants, he must have recognized that look in the man's eyes. Fear, the desperate attempts to make themselves invisible and not draw attention to themselves. Rogue raised a delicate brow at the proprietor; he had a prior arrangement with the school; Harry caught the signal and he gave the new comer one of the bagged lunches they sold; it would be placed on their tab. The man looked at the meager meal with surprise and an overwhelmed sense of joy; especially after Harry told him that it had already been paid for. The man took his bounty and scurried out of the bar before Harry could change his mind.
"Leave him."
Looking up at Logan with a startled expression, Rogue stilled, her hands on the bar to push off, ready to go after the rodent-like man. "What?"
"Xavier will find him. Can't be bringing home strays with all those kids around, ya know that. Not til we know the guy's right."
"Yeah, Ah know…" Chewing on her lower lip, she turned back to the bar and picked up her mug though she had lost her taste for it. Rogue knew what it was like to be alone with no one to turn to, at least until she found a home at the institute and a family with the X-Men. Logan cast a sidelong glance at her as she sat beside him quietly, staring at her half-finished beer.
"Ya wanna go see if Xavier's picked up on him yet?"
Her green eyes spoke volumes.
"Let's go then. Can't have you cryin' into yer beer, damn waste of a good brew though."
"You big softie," she teased. as they made their way out with a wave to Harry and she linked her arm through his.
"Don't go spreadin' that around now."
"Ah wouldn't dream of it, shugah."
They stopped short just before they got out the door as rodent man flew past them and headed for the door. With a glance at each other, the two X-Men turned and made their way back to the bar just in time to hear the man telling Harry that he needed to close the place, rather insistently.
"Alright, bub," Logan moved in quietly, aware that the other patrons were starting to stare. "What's got your shorts in such a twist?"
Rodent man looked over at the two X-Men, his nose twitching slightly, sniffing, indicating some enhanced senses before speaking: "They're coming. They heard about what was going down here, the free food and all. They think its like charity or some kind of trick. They're coming; they paid me to come in and see… I didn't know what they were up to, I swear. I wouldn't have agreed… I ran ahead but you need to leave, get these people out before they get here."
"Whoa, rein it in there, fella," Rogue frowned at the man, trying to follow what he was trying to say. "Who are you talkin' about? Why would anyone be angry over Harry giving people food."
"Can't answer the second," Logan turned towards the door, lighting a cigar despite Harry's new no smoking rule. "But I think he's talking about them."
XXX
It had been three hours since a handful of members from the Brotherhood crashed through the bar and attempted to burn the place down while harassing the patrons for giving charity to mutants when they should be bowing to them. Two and a half hours since Rogue and Wolverine engaged them, forcing them out of the bar to minimize injuries to the civilians. Just a half hour after that, the other X-Men arrived in their stealth jet to back up their own. Two members of the Brotherhood were in their brig and the others, along with Rodent man, had scattered. Back at the Institute, Rogue had been able to get in a shower before getting roped into tucking in some of the younger students; she was still a teacher after all and she suspected she was being punished for sneaking out to Harry's. Bruised, sore, feeling like she had been hit by a mack truck, Anna Marie changed into a pair of ratty jeans and an old vintage tee before dragging herself into the girl's dorms. Their youngest students ranged from 6 to 10 years old; they all had been born with outward signs of their mutations instead of developing their powers during puberty and a few of them had actually been abandoned at birth or abused. Rogue settled herself on one of the beds among the little girls who cuddled up to her, wriggling like puppies and listened to them tell her a hodge-podge of fairy tales with a few mutant-tinted characters thrown in. It was actually comfortable, except for the tiny foot poking at her spleen, but Rogue actually found herself drifting off; lulled by the childish voices and warm bodies. One by one, they drifted off, sprawled on top of her and each other. They smelled like baby shampoo and lavender; she was barely able to focus when the youngest among them, the only one left awake, started attempting to involve her into her story-telling.
"And what do you think she found in that room?" Her name was Victoria and she had eyes that reminded one of polished abalone.
"A soft, comfortable-lookin', middle-sized chair."
"And the third was a little, bitty chair," Victoria nodded and snuggled, sleepily into Anna's free side. "But she sat in the big chair but it was too hard…." Pause and a yawn. "I think I need to rest my eyes for a minute. I'll tell you the rest later."
"Mm-hmm," Rogue let her eyes close and started to drift off into a wonderful sleep.
"Anna."
She hoped she had imagined it.
"Anna!"
"Noooo!" Rogue protested against the urgent whisper.
"Come on, Anna."
Opening her bleary green eyes, Rogue saw Kitty standing over the pile of little girls. The expression on Kitty Pryde's face made Rogue snap to attention, a surge of adrenaline driving the sleepiness from her. "What happened?"
"Downstairs," Kitty whispered and held out a hand, helping Rogue extract herself from the puppy pile. Had she phased her teammate out, the little girls surely would have fallen and woken up. The two women crept out of the room but Kitty would not answer any of Rogue's questions until they were down in the subbasement full of advanced technology, and the full complement of X-Men. They all wore sullen, pensive expressions and Scott… well, the man always looked like that. It was a common thought that a colonic would do the man a world of good.
"Will someone tell me what th' hell is goin' on?" Rogue growled, as she took a seat between Wolverine and Nightcrawler, Kitty perched on the arm of her chair. "What happened?"
"The inevitable," Cyclops muttered, looking particularly constipated (but then, he usually had that look about him) as he pressed a button before him on the table and a prerecorded newscast popped on the big screen in the war room. A shaky, cellphone video had caught them fighting off the Brotherhood outside of Harry's and it was only a few minutes before the powers started flying. Kitty phasing through the Blob, Wolverine healing up, his flesh knitting back together after getting fried by Pyro and unleashing his adamantium claws. Cyclops' eyebeams, Colossus' armored form, Nightcrawler's teleporting, Storm throwing lightning bolts and Rogue borrowing a couple of their powers before using them. Then there was Iceman sweeping around on his ice boards. Beast, Angel, Psylocke, and a few of the others had stayed at the institute so the full glory of the X-Men was not on the evening news. The video had already gone viral. The news reporter went on to link them to the reports from some of the witnesses in Manhattan and Sokovia of blue furry men, men with angel wings, demons, people shooting lasers from their eyes and people that could fly under their own power that seemed to be helping the Avengers. The team's telepaths had done their best to hide them from SHIELD and the authorities had merely thought the people were so shell-shocked that they weren't quite sure what they had seen. Giant green man, big blue, furry man; who can think straight when you're being attacked by aliens or falling to your death from a floating island created by a scary robot?
"Shit!" Rogue stared at the screen with a stone in her stomach, on instinct she looked around for any student that had strayed within earshot of her explanative. Her eyes went back to the screen as the fuzzy, shakey video was replayed. That was some top-notch fighting, to be sure and they all looked pretty damn good but that was beside the point. "Have they tied us ta the institute?"
"Nope, not yet," Logan muttered, chomping on an unlit cigar. "But hey, look at it this way, stripes, ya got yer wish. We're on TV. Just like the flamin' Avengers."