She lies face down on the hard mattress, her face half-buried in the pillow, and her hair, full of dust and ashes, scattered all around. Her back, her torso and her arms burn and bleed from hundreds of different wounds ─ all gifts from a Sentinel she had foolishly believed dead ─ the blanket she's covered with is rough and old, like pastboard, and it rubs against her naked body, but Rogue doesn't complain. Pain and discomfort she can bear them all too well, it's only against apathy that she has no weapons.

And it's the apathy that now threatens to overwhelm her, while she lies in this shabby shelter that - apart from the spiders and mice hidden in the cracks of the walls - becomes a little more empty every day. The rage for the last of a long series of defeats fades away quickly, leaving room for a gloomy despair that now, with the passing of the hours, rolls faster and faster in a resigned indifference, a void of emotion that prevents her from moving, thinking, perhaps even from healing. To what end, anyway? They will all die in a few weeks. Months, if they feel optimistic.

A sudden itch forces her to stretch out a hand and scrape off a crust of blood and dirt from her neck. A trickle of dark blood starts to flow again against her skin, but Rogue doesn't mind that much. With her fingertips she smoothes away a strand of white hair from her eyes, then she rests her hand again on the pillow as she absently listens to the distant dripping of some hidden pipeline. Her gaze, meanwhile, wanders around the room, until it stops on a half-broken vase placed in the right corner of the floor and filled with white roses. They are beautiful flowers, fresh and fragrant ─ created by the power of a mutant child whose name Rogue can't really remember ─ and they just look so out of place here.

If they still had their school those roses would've been placed on the graves of those for whom they were created, and Beast, Angel and all the others would've rested in a beautiful garden, under the shadows of oak trees, next to Scott and Jean and the useless monument that belonged to Professor Xavier. But in the end, if they still had their school, many of those roses wouldn't have been created at all. Now, however, the roses are here, in the corner of a sagging shack that could also very well turn into a grave any moment from now, and Rogue thinks that if they really are a symbol, like most of the others seem to believe, then they are a symbol of death. As everything else, for that matter.

She'd cry if she had the strength, but if she wanted to shed even a single tear for each mutant killed, then she'd sob for hours. So Rogue closes her eyes and just try to stop thinking about it, then she tries to convince her body to fall asleep. And if in the end she succeeds it's really more out of habit than else.

.

When she wakes up she's no longer alone in the room, and she can feel it even before opening her eyes. The air heavily smells of tobacco, and although it's not the dry smell of the cigars that she's seen him smoking for so many years, just for one moment the hope prevails over her common sense.

"Logan?", she asks with a small voice.

"Non, ma chérie. There is still no trace of our sunny friend", Gambit answers.

Rogue opens her eyes and finds him sitting on the floor in front of her, with his back against her bed, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall and a battered cigarette between his fingers. The side of his face that she can see is soaked with blood, and his right shoulder is a little more than a bloody pulp. Rogue's heart loses a beat.

"Who did they take?"

"No one. But a few of ours didn't make it"

"Bobby─"

"Iceman is fine. So are Kitty and Storm. The others... I don't know."

Rogue starts breathing again. Gambit turns off the cigarette on the already filthy floor and remains silent for a few minutes, thinking about how to say what he wants to say.

"They want you", he finally mutters, without looking at her. "They didn't said it clearly ─ they don't talk much, n'est-ce pas? ─ but it was obvious that they were looking for someone. And since we were almost all there, I believe─"

"I know", she interrupts. She had known since that Sentinel had taken her from behind, completely off guard, and instead of killing her it had purposefully just wounded her. The Sentinels never act like this.

Gambit turns around to look at her and his face is a battlefield of scars, his eyes black buttons without expression. Rogue holds back the urge to stroke his cheek and instead she lays a hand on the back of his neck, well protected from her touch by the long hair.

"Your power would be very useful for them", Gambit continues, his voice a bit lower, as she massages his shoulders. "And it'd be very harmful to us if the Sentinels could absorb our powers."

They both remain very still for a long moment, just looking into each other eyes, while all the possible implications of that truth took shape in the silence between them.

"You mean that you think I should run away", she says, finally giving substance to his omissions. "I should run away because the other mutants may want to kill me before the Sentinels take me."

"Not all of them. Just Magneto and his people", Gambit says with a slight shrug.

Rogue laughs, even if laughing hurts. It's the way he said it, as if it was nothing. One more or one less that wants to kill you, what's the big deal?, he seems to be saying. After all there is the whole world out there trying to destroy us.

Gambit smiles back, then he leans his elbow on the bed and turns around to kneel in front of her. With a bloody hand he pulls back a locks of hair from her face, careful to touch it just with the tip of his fingers.

"I can kill him."

"No, you can't."

No, he can't. They both know it.

"Let's run away, then. Before the others come back. You know I am the best fugitive here, non, ma chérie? We will find Logan. I am good at that too."

There is no trace of smile on Rogue's face. Suddenly she feels empty again. She'd really love to see Logan again and throw her arms around him, to snuggle against his chest and be enveloped by his arms and his self-confident arrogance. She'd also really love Gambit to kiss her like he clearly wants to do. She'd love to be able to allow him to.

"Marie…", he calls her.

But she simply turn on her side to make more room in the bed.

"Hold me, Remy", she sighs, finally. "Just for a while. And mind the burns, please."

He doesn't hesitate to please her. As just Bobby and Logan before him, Remy has never been afraid to touch her, despite everything. When Logan had brought Gambit with him at the school for the first time and hence made the proper introductions, Gambit had smiled when he had learned about her power. "A woman not to upset", he commented, while kissing her gloved hand. "Not that I would ever think of doing such a thing", he quickly added. Luckily a sharp slap from Logan had distracted him from seeing her blush.

Now he lies down next to her, on his still intact shoulder, and he cautiously moves his injured arm to wrap it around her waist. Then, from above the blanket, he caress her gently, drawing abstract doodles with his fingertips from her shoulders to her hips. Rogue closes her eyes again and deeply inhales the smell of tobacco that surrounds him, imagining Logan just there, next to them. Imagining him warm and alive and safe.

Meanwhile Gambit's fingers slide down over the curve of her hips, toward the hidden hollow drawn between the gentle roundness of her thighs. If she had gloves on, Rogue would put her hand on his to force him to hasten those slow caresses. But Gambit doesn't want to rush, so he rubs his fingers on the blanket, pushing it more and more against her, reluctantly leaving to the texture's roughness the pleasure of rubbing against the wet and warm fold between her legs.

Not being able to touch him, Rogue rests her cheek against his shoulder, hiding her face in the warm hollow between his neck and his chest, then she clings to the lapels of his jacket, holding them firmly in her hands, the same hands that ─ for years now ─ so desperately crave to feel other skin under their touch. She feels her cheeks blush when he starts to push harder his fingers against her, rubbing the fabric now more slowly and now more quickly, torturing her with brief moments of pause, and waiting for her pleading sigh before continuing to caress her.

She can only guess the shape of those fingers now, but even if hidden by the shield of the blanket, their concreteness on her body are an undeniable truth, as well as the reactions that they cause. And they are beautiful, those caresses, they are rough and abrupt and violent, and then still rough but now sweet and slow and there is no doubt that he is there, next to her, and maybe this is not sex as he has done or would do with other women, but he doesn't seem to care, so why should it matter to her?

She thinks about how it would be to have him inside her for real ─ to have him like she had Bobby, in the short period when the cure has done its job, before succumbing again to her mutant gene ─ and that thought does nothing else but excite her even more. So she keeps thinking about how it would be to kiss him, to feel his tongue on her skin, his hands around her nipples, and meanwhile he continues to pleasure her in the only way he can, whispering through her hair words she doesn't understand, or that maybe she doesn't want to understand, since her French it's really not so bad.

The orgasm immobilizes her in his arms, stiffening up all her muscles. The pain comes back almost immediately, briefly eclipsing even the pleasure, and then it starts to fade away again after the last spasms release all the tension, allowing her to relax again.

At her side Gambit grunts softly, and Rogue realizes that her whim has cost him too more pain than pleasure. But once again she doesn't complain, and neither does he, because they both have gotten used to the pain long time ago, while the love they share it's still a nice strangeness for both of them, a secret to preserve and renew in silence, only when things seem so much more unpleasant than the usual.

It's a way as any other to go on.

"We should really leave, chérie. Now, before it's too late. "

"Soon", Rogue replies, but they both know that they won't go anywhere. They need to trust the other mutants, because otherwise this war would be even worse than it already is. And Rogue believes in Xavier, she believes in Storm and in all the others, and she hates Magneto, she hates him from the depths of her heart, but she knows that it's wrong. Last but not least, Logan would never run away, so she won't run away either. She'll be here, waiting for him when he'll come back, and then things will get better. Definitely.

Gambit moves away from her to sprawl on his back, and Rogue favors his movement, only to lay her head on his chest, right over his heart. While they both slide into sleep, Rogue listens to his heartbeat, and that constant rhythm gives her a little courage. Her gaze falls back on the vase in the corner.

We're still alive, she thinks. No roses for us.

"Gambit?", she asks suddenly, on the trail of that thought.

"Oui?", he mumbles, already half asleep.

"What happened to the roses' boy?"

"The roses' boy?"

"The kid mutant that Bishop brought here last time. The one with the power to make flowers bloom everywhere. "

"Oh", he murmurs. "Chérie, the Sentinels have killed him a couple of weeks ago."

"Ah", Rogue replies. And once again apathy threatens to return to tarnish her mind. For a few minutes she can't think of anything else to say, then she raises her face to stare into Gambit's eyes. "Then when I die it's up to you to bring me a rose, Remy."

"Marie─"

"Make sure it's red, though. Remember that. A red rose. I'm tired of white roses", she says. Then she rest her head on his chest again, without adding anything else.

Gambit hesitates a moment, then he nods, and in that limbo between full wakefulness and sleep, surrounded by her smell and still sore from the physical effort and the reopened wounds, for a moment, just one, he thinks he really understand her.

.

.

.

A/N: This story is based on a couple of assumptions: first, that beside Mystique's, the XMDOFP Sentinels have been created thanks Rogue's DNA too, in order to absorb the power and then replicate it. The second is, therefore, that in the original timeline Rogue still has her powers, despite the fact that in the last movie she took the cure (the idea that it could be only temporary, however, is already suggested by the end of The Last Stand, when Erik in the placid-grampa-at-the-park version finds out that he can still move the chessman). In short, if there are any errors or inaccuracies, know that I have done my best.

- In the movieverse I ship Logan/Rogue like burning, but Gambit and Rogue came straight from my childhood, mostly spent in front of the TV, watching the animated series of the X-Men. So yes, I know that in the movies Gambit and Rogue have never met each other, but it really takes a lot more than that to discourage me.

- English is not my first language, if you see any mistake please let me know, I'd appreciate it.