He was never sure why they put her in his cell, but he thought it was probably a joke at first.
"Now we'll see if big boy's a faggot!" one of the guards had said as they slammed the door shut after hustling her in. She had been skinny and nervous and unsure whether she was supposed to laugh with the guards or not. He prayed she could read the clues in his impassive face.
This had been sometime after his 18th birthday, in California, in the base under the old youth prison. The guards called it "The Farm" because the old sign on the gate said "J. Arthur Andrews Boy's Work Farm." He'd seen it once, when they had taken him outside to show him the graves of the kids who had died there back when it was still in official operation. He wondered who they had been and could only picture the cast of West Side Story prancing around and pretending to have knife-fights.
He looked at the girl. She was hugging her blanket and pillow to her chest and favoring her right arm where they had branded her "X7". He was X5. He'd never seen an X6, or any of the other numbers besides X2, Sabertooth, who couldn't be branded anyway because his skin healed any mark. And he'd heard about X1, of course. The Wolverine. He was the boogyman they had threatened Cain with when he was first caught. "You think Saberthooth is bad, boy? Well if you give us any shit we'll put you in the cage with Wolveriene! It don't matter how big you are, he'll just cut your legs off to make you his size." He had believed it. He had no reason not to.
The girl had curly brown hair with a white streak in the front. He'd thought it was bleached at first. She had almost no tits, but she had huge brown eyes and high cheekbones. People probably thought she was pretty, out in the world where that kind of thing mattered. She was looking back at him with those eyes; her expression was like one his mom used to have when his old man opened up a case of beer: she was wondering how bad this was going to get.
He wanted to tell her to put her stuff down on the other bed, but he couldn't get the words out with her looking at him like that. Instead he just pointed, then settled back on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. The guards retreated down the hall to their station, talking about what they were going to do after their shift. He might have dozed off, or just zoned a little, but eventually she spoke.
"What do you do?" Her voice was soft, with a medium-thick southern accent. It took him by surprise.
He turned his head toward her. "Huh? What?"
"What's your thing? Your power-thing?"
"Oh. Uh, I'm pretty big, and once I'm moving it's really hard to stop me. I can go through walls and stuff." He looked back up at the ceiling and stretched his legs a little. Her silence seemed expectant somehow, and he wondered what she was waiting for.
Eventually she said "You shouldn't touch me."
He made his face go still, kept himself from frowning, kept his voice from growling. How would she know she was insulting him? "I wasn't planning on it."
"I mean, that's my thing. When people touch me it hurts them." Across the cell the blanket rustled and he pictured her sitting up and hugging her knees to her chest, but didn't look over at her to see if he was right. "I didn't think they would put me in a room with... someone else."
She was probably going to say "A boy," he thought.
"Best not to expect anything," he told her.
"Can't you tell me anything else?" Her voice was harsh now, with a little hint of breaking, but more than a hint of an edge. He was glad to hear that edge. If she broke she'd end up under the poppies and cheap headstones with all the dead boys from two generations ago.
He shook his head, still not looking at her, not sure if she could see the gesture. "Nothing else that would do either of us any good."
"Well who are you, at least?"
"I'm the Juggernaut."
"Okay. I'm Rogue."
Almost two years later, when he was alone in a different cell, he would wonder if things would have turned out better if he had told her to call him Cain.