Author's note: I am taking the films as canon, with bits of the comic for flavouring; only I am changing the order of some events, the "cure" for the mutant condition is already out there, but Logan's still off searching for his past… My laptop is my Tardis! (The way I figure it, in real life all the action happens at once, then dies down to leave you twiddling your thumbs…)

As always, the disclaimer – I don't own 'em, I'm just giving them a light-hearted, teenybopper outing with a topping of fluff… All credit must go to Marvel, and those people who bought the film rights off them!

Part 2 of the re-write. Enjoy!

Xxx

PaintR

Chapter 2)

Logan paused, and turned around; looking at the trail of footprints he had left in the snow, deep tracks caused by the extra weight of a metal skeleton. They led back to the partially hidden facility nestled in the icy wastes. The professor had been right, Logan admitted, it was interesting, and undeniably linked with his forgotten life. The increasingly vivid nightmares that had visited him every night for the past week proved it. That destroyed lab proved it. Remembering the nightmares, he reached up to his neck, just as he had on waking up each night. The gesture turned into a scratch, just as it had every other time, as, smiling softly to himself, he remembered where his dog tags were. As reassuring as the tags had been as a way to restore his cobbled-together sense of identity, it was even better to know that they were hanging around her dainty neck now, reassuring her that he, her protector, would come home.

Home. Logan shook his head wryly at the thought. He smiled, as the icy wind ruffled his hair, somehow happy despite the cold, the failing light and the loneliness. He had a home; and there was a girl waiting for him to come back, or by God he prayed she was. What was he waiting for? A sudden feeling like a kick to his gut made him turn his back on the Alkali Lake facility, and make his way to the top of the ridge, to the old bumpy road and Cyclops' waiting bike. He zipped up his leather jacket with gloved fingers before straddling the bike.

I'll see you soon, kid, he thought.

Rogue's eyes flew open suddenly. She huddled in her duvet, her nose filled with the smell of her own skin, which was slick with sweat, as her hand sought out the reassurance of the tags. She forced herself to slow her breathing. It was just a dream, just a dream she repeated to herself like a mantra. Ah'm safe, ah'm safe in mah room, ah'm safe in the Mansion; It was just a dream, ah'm safe in mah room; Nothin's gonna get ya, she told herself sternly, looking over at her alarm clock and continued chanting to herself, its 3.25 am on Tuesday mornin'. Ah'm safe in mah room, ah'm safe…

The shadows in her room were dark and ominous, and the loneliness and despair of her dream clung to her. She knew she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. She recognised that this was an important memory, one which needed to be purged. There had been a few of these before. She had spoken to the Professor about them, and had asked Jean, Hank and Ororo for their advice. She needed to talk to one of them now.

Throwing the covers back Rogue got up and pulled on a long fleecy dressing gown, which dragged on the floor. She slid on her slippers and went outside. She thought about her dream. It was like a hospital but somehow not. There were people in masks drinking champagne, and there had been a cold metal smell. She decided to go down to the med-lab. There would be someone there, or someone would arrive soon after she did, there was always someone on medical alert. She strode along the corridors and down the stairs. The dark wood panelling gave way to smooth, clean, white walls. The light made her feel better, but she still clutched the tags as the echoes of her footprints reverberated around her.

Finally she entered the med-lab, pushing the swing doors gently. The lights were on. She looked round, expecting to see Jean dealing with one of the little ones who had fallen out of bed, or something. There seemed to be no one there. Still caught up in the aftermath of her nightmare, she lay down on the examination table in the middle of the large room and stared up at the ceiling. She realised that the wires must have been drips, but what would the thicker tubes have been? She clutched the dog tags and realised that the table in the dream was more like a tank…she giggled, slightly hysterically as she thought that it was like the glass coffin which the seven dwarfs put Sleeping Beauty in. But no, she closed her eyes, trying to remember; in the nightmare it was filled with a gel, or water, and she, or whichever person was the source of the nightmare-memory, was submerged with an oxygen mask on, but the room was foggy.

A discreet false cough made her open her eyes and sit up. She blinked, and jumped up off the table. She ran over to Hank, and buried herself in his blue furry chest through his open lab coat. Hank hugged her tightly, he had never been afraid to touch Rogue, the thick fur covering him from oversized feet to pointed ears protected him from her touch, and as such it had been he who had comforted her, arriving soon after Logan had first left the mansion. He released her, and looked down, quizzically, waiting for her to speak. "Ah had a nightmare, from one of mah "imported" memories. Are you gonna' be down here for a while yet? Ah don't wanna be alone right now." He nodded, and she continued "Ah think ah'll need to purge this one from mah mind now, or ah'll be afraid to sleep forever." Rogue walked across to one of the printers in the walled off office section of the lab, and took out some plain paper. "Could ah have a pencil please? Ah really need to get this out of mah mind."

"You stay as long as you need, if it takes you 'till morning, and you aren't up to lessons I'll tell Professor Xavier." His surprisingly soft voice was filled with worry as it emerged from his incongruously large self. Hank McCoy, or the Beast, was another of the X-men like Jean Grey, with a proper job, and a public identity, although he tended not to appear in public since the later developments of his mutation, the fur and more animalistic features had become pronounced. He was a scientist, and had been around a lot through Rogue's initial counselling, since she had spent so long in the lab, having her brain scanned for any signs of the alien personalities in her mind. He was also on some integration committee or other, one that had been quite involved with the flawed "cure".

Hank pointed Rogue towards his desk, as he went to replace the sterile cover on the bed. Rogue started drawing. Letting her mind drift, unfocused she started to draw the view from the lab at Xavier's as a starting point. Her hand flew over the paper. Rogue worked in a harsh style, focusing on sharp edges and precise lines, rather than her usual, slightly impressionist style. It seemed to fit the subject matter. She made all of the shading precise, neat cross-hatching, and, on a second sheet, she jotted down words and doodles that seemed linked to the main image. She let her mind wander as she drew, closing her eyes now and again, trying to visualise the scene.

She woke up slowly, surprised to find Hank removing the sheets of paper from under her cheek; careful not to let his bare palms graze her skin. She blinked at the sunlight streaming in through the long, thin windows as Hank peered at her work. He held a steaming mug of hot chocolate out, which Rogue accepted gratefully. Hank pulled up a large wheeled chair, and sat down opposite her, rubbing his forehead with one large finger. The composition was disturbing, especially to a man of science like himself. "I find this very troubling," he rumbled, looking at one of the doodles, a half-full champagne glass set down on the edge of a table, probably an operating table, judging by the tiny rivulets of thick dark liquid. He was glad that there had been no coloured pencils for Rogue to use.

Rogue looked at her drawings of the nightmare, amazed, as he set them down on the table between them. "Ah didn't know that ah could draw that amount of detail," she murmured, as she looked at the valves on some of the pipes, as well as the charts on the wall in the background. "Ah can't remember being aware of a load of this stuff…" her voice faded into silence as she thought, sighing heavily, "Ah mean, how in hell would ah be aware of the serial number on that… whatever it is." Her voice wavered, and she hated herself for seeming weak as she pointed to the machine she had drawn.

She looked up at Hank. "That's all ah got. It seems ah fell asleep exactly when the memory ran outta juice. Ah got nothin' new to add to this." Hank was still looking at the sketch, puzzled.

"Whose memory is this Rogue? Is it Logan's?" Rogue nodded, wide eyed.

"Look here," he said, pointing at a diagram in the background "It's an X-ray, of an arm…" his voice trailed off, and as she peered at it, Rogue realised that she had drawn the claws that made Logan so dangerous in battle.

"Is this them putting the adamantium on his bones?" she mused. "No," she whispered, pointing at the champagne flute doodle, "this is them celebrating the success of the…" she gulped, "experiment. Oh poor Logan, I hope he doesn't have to dream this every night… how horrible…" she rested her face in her bare hands, exhaustion and emotion making it impossible to prevent the tears from rolling down her cheeks.

"I think you should go to bed, young lady. I'll go and speak to the professor about this; he's very interested in Logan's past." Hank stood up and stretched.

Rogue copied him rotating her shoulders and massaging her neck with one hand as she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown with the other. She looked up at the clock, suddenly very aware of her chronic fatigue, despite the stimulating breakfast smells now emanating around the mansion. "Yeah. Ah'll go back to bed for a few hours. Ah don't have any classes 'till this afternoon anyway. Thank you, Hank. Ah'll be back to collect those sketches at some point. Good night!"

"Good morning you mean!" Hank half-joked as Rogue stood up, clumsily opening the swing doors and stumbling out into the corridor and back up the stairs.

On her way back to her room Rogue had to deal with the embarrassment of heading in the opposite direction to the hungry hoard of fully clad students as they rushed to breakfast. Jubilee was waiting at the top of the stairs. "Kitty just went through your room trying to find you," she said. "You ok, Chica?" she asked softly.

Rogues shook her head. "Ah'm going back to bed. Ah'll see y'all in tha Professor's class this afternoon, can we talk then?"

"Sure thing! Said Kitty, popping out of the wall behind her, "And we can talk after when we go to look round the mall for costumes for this weekend!" Rogue groaned, and rubbed her eyes. "Oh don't worry, we don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, we can talk about far more serious things!"

Rogue smiled. It was probably what she needed, an afternoon chatting about boys and clothes. "Ah'll come, ah guess, if ah can catch up on mah sleep now. How's that for a deal? And ah think y'all owe me a new body stocking, dontcha?"

Kitty nodded, and blew her a kiss. "'Kay then, Rogie," she said.

As Kitty and Jubilee left her, it took Rogue a minute to remember that she was on her way back to bed. When she finally got to her room she crossed it to her sink, after shutting the door firmly behind her, and washed her face, still smudged with pencil and sleep tears. She re-plaited her hair as she went to open the window, letting in the cool autumn breeze to blow away the stale air and smell of sweat.

She climbed into bed, leaving her slippers and dressing gown in a messy pile on the carpet. As she unhooked the tags from the strap of her night-dress she thought of Logan. It would have been nice to hug him again instead of Hank; he would have understood that there was more to the fear than the situation in the nightmare. She curled into a foetal ball under the covers, and then forced herself to stretch out and relax. It was the fear of having your very self stripped away, of having no memory and no hope; it wasn't just the fear of pain and loneliness and powerlessness. As she drifted into sleep she rested her hand on the tags at the base of her neck and wondered whether Logan found them as comforting as she had after the nightmare. Ah hope he comes home soon, so he won't wake up in the night and feel lost.