2. ROGUE

From the moment he'd rejoined them, the drawn lines around his mouth strained so much now that it seemed his skin must snap, and said with a voice like choking, "Eight. There are eight missing," there had been no question it was a task that needed approaching with the utmost urgency. There had been no question in anyone's mind (or, at least, certainly none voiced) that Mr Summers would be the one to go. Maybe the professor's involvement in the decision wasn't entirely that of an innocent bystander, but perhaps this task would have fallen to Mr Summers in any world, even the ones where Jean was still alive. It fit him, in any case, the role of gathering their strays.

Somewhere in the chaos - the rubble, the bullet holes, Ms Munroe bewailing the task of finding any habitable rooms to accommodate the school's remaining complement in any kind of dignity - it had been pointed out that he would need a female presence at his side, and into the ensuing guilty silence Mr Summers had said, "I'll take Rogue."

Her head had jerked up of its own accord at the mention of her name. She was still wearing her uniform from the stopover at the White House, still thinking it merely a loan. Was this then graduation, stepping into a dead woman's clothes that dug into her flesh in uncomfortable places? No congratulation, achievement or fanfare, just a feeling of being too heavy and the ache of responsibility at the back of her skull? If so, she could have lived entirely without ever leaving John's 'kiddy table'.

"I - I-" She hesitated. She couldn't see his eyes, of course, she'd never seen them, but something in his posture, in the hollows of his cheeks, turned her denial into an accepting nod. She stood there under his walled-off gaze and absorbed the implication; the ghost's uniform on her shoulders was there to stay, endorsed by the words, "I'll take Rogue". Even if he wasn't in the best state of mind to make such a decision, he wouldn't go back on it. She didn't know him well, but well enough to know his word was law, once given.

Dr Grey's shoes were daunting, great whopping size nines that would have flopped around on her own feet. She searched for a clue what to think, how to react, but the conversation had moved on and the group weren't looking at her any more. The repair shift - Ms Munroe, Mr Summers, Bobby who'd finally stopped apologising for the water damage, Kurt who hadn't even ever been there when it didn't look like a battle zone, and the professor whose wheeled mobility was limited to the cleared areas of the floor - had too many other demands upon their attention. Their voices were raw with myriad pains and traumas, contrasting personalities a long way on the wrong side of exhaustion for committee decisions. She thought of everything that had happened to all of them that night, and so much still ahead to go before any chance of rest.

Rogue wondered, not for the first time, where Logan had taken himself off to, not that his presence would have been anything more than extra fuel on the fire. But she somehow doubted he was among the children bedded down in the dining hall with sleeping bags salvaged from the camping equipment in the X-jet.

Amid the clamour, the professor put his head down, resting it elegantly on his poised fingers, and sighed. "We need Jean." Strain contorted his face as he realised he'd murmured it aloud. "I'm sorry, Scott."

Mr Summers - Scott, they were teammates now, she had to get used to calling him Scott - answered with the emotion of a machine, "You'll have Hank within the next twelve hours. I'll take Rogue."

Professor Xavier looked back at him with eyes that must see beyond implacable red reflection as nobody else now could. "Get some sleep." He turned that same gaze to Rogue, and she tried not to fall back a step beneath it. "You as well. No-" His raised hand stalled a protest that hadn't yet reached Scott's lips. "The rest of us will be working through the night, yes. But I'll not have you driving, let alone flying, until you've allowed yourself to rest. You have important work to do tomorrow. Go. The benches in the upstairs study should be adequate for a few hours sleep. You shouldn't be disturbed there by the youngsters, or by the rest of us moving things around."

"Yes, sir," Scott said quietly. She was surprised he didn't salute.

He took Rogue's arm and steered her in front of him. It felt like a treachery, to walk away, to even think of sleep - oh, God, how could she sleep? How could he? Dr Grey was dead. The hand on her arm trembled shock, reaction and grief, and withdrew the moment following her realisation as though he sensed the touch betrayed the mask his visor aided so efficiently.

It was already nearing five in the morning, the sky growing lighter outside in glimpses caught through the windows they passed, many broken and letting the air creep through. Adrenaline still thudded in her head, making it ache. Her whole being ached, and she hadn't seen any real combat. Scott had seen his on the wrong side, according to Logan - something she did not dare ask about, but Kurt had told her what had been done to him. How could Professor Xavier think they would find sleep?

The upstairs study had padded, wide benches that would make for more than adequate bunks. It smelled charred, though the scent had carried on the air from where the soldiers blasted their way into a locked store room a few doors down and incinerated half of the school's supply of bedding. The study itself was undamaged, even the windows intact. Scott lay on his back on a bench one side of the room and she headed to the opposite side. An instant after she turned her back, she sensed his consciousness dissipate and knew herself effectively alone in the room.

She turned around again, a little alarmed. He lay very straight, face pointed up, visor hiding closed eyes. One arm sagged off the side of the bench, the other lay on his chest with its fingers curled into a claw. She slowly crossed the room, her footsteps sounding far too loud, until she was close enough to hear his breath, to see its gentle rise and fall, reassuring her he was okay. She supposed the professor had a hand in this sudden comatose state. She supposed it was for the best. Would she, too, sleep so easily once her head touched down?

She stooped to lift his dangling arm, and set it more comfortably upon his chest like its fellow, before returning to the bench she'd picked out for her own.

And she did sleep. Both of them slept until almost eleven o'clock, until the professor sent a psychic wake-up call that was the mental equivalent of a cold shower. It had Rogue bolt-upright on the bench, feeling all the aches of 5AM intensified in her bones. She groaned, sure the leather she'd slept in had left creases in her skin.

Unflappable Scott rolled in more practised fashion from his own bench and stood with a minimum of creaks. She resented him fiercely and decided he at least must be used to such wake-up calls.

"If you can find any clothes," the professor's voice said authoritatively inside her skull, "This outing would be rather better conducted in civilian attire. Please come down to the kitchen when you're both ready."

"Did you-?" She looked to Scott.

"Yeah, I heard it too. Come on. Be quick if you shower." A grimace twisted his lips as he looked towards the clock on the wall.

She did shower, because the grime felt like it had set into her bones, but she hoped she had not been too long and made up for the time by pulling on the first pair of jeans and T-shirt she found in the rubble of her old dorm. When she got down to the kitchen, Professor Xavier was there and Scott wasn't.

The professor indicated a place at the table, wheeled carefully around and, with the aid of a tray balanced across his knees, manoeuvred a cup of coffee and a plate piled with toast in front of her. He didn't look like he'd slept. She wondered where everyone else was, whether they were still trying to make the school secure before they finally allowed themselves to rest.

"Thanks," she saw awkwardly, feeling guilty - she'd slept, and slept well, the waking pains notwithstanding. And it wasn't every day the professor himself served her breakfast. The experience was jarring.

"I, too, wish to feel useful," he said companionably. She met his eyes, and her unsettlement disappeared, swallowed by the kindness and sincerity within. "But since my usefulness in this business of... home repair... is limited, I content myself with co-ordinating the operation from here, keeping a check on the safety of the minds within these walls, and providing nourishment for the workers."

"You have to rest sometime, too," she blurted, concerned for him. She knew he'd had a difficult few days. She remembered what it was like to be a prisoner.

"Thank you, Marie. And I will, soon."

"I'd keep you to that promise."

She turned at the new voice. Scott leaned inside the door frame. She tried to smile at him with a mouthful of toast; a dismal failure. But evidently his attention was elsewhere.

"Ah, Scott." The professor wheeled around and collected items onto another tray which he brought to the place set opposite Rogue. "Do sit down."

Mr Summers slid into the indicated seat like he was moving on autopilot. She noticed that the shirt and pants he was wearing didn't match very well. His hair was sticking up in tufts from the shower, and she was a little surprised to see that he'd taken one. It seemed a curious vanity from Mr Super-efficient considering his earlier hurry, until she connected that he'd had the stain of imprisonment to wash off. She hadn't been able to stay in the shower long enough when they brought her back from Liberty Island.

He ate the toast as though he hadn't eaten in days, teeth tearing pieces off rather than biting. It could have been mistaken for impatience. He absorbed the coffee in one gulp, and was finished long before Rogue.

"I-I'll bring it with me," she said quickly as he stood up.

"Don't. There are a few more preparations to make yet. I'll see you outside the garage. Just don't be too long. Oh, and bring something a little warmer to wear."

Ever-precise, ever-observant. She looked out of the window as he left the room - it had begun to rain.

She asked Professor Xavier, "Will he be all right?"

"I don't know," he replied, his voice little more than breath. "Yes, you might well think that I ought to know, but the mind is an unpredictable domain, and I can't read the future. But I hope - Rogue, you must... please take care of him for me."

"I - me?" The thought made her almost frantic.

He smiled and laughed, barely, and allowed, "You only need do what you would do anyway. I would ask for no more. I already know that you would give... all you could, whatever situation transpired. You are ready, in spite of your doubts. As ready as any of them ever were, when I sent them out to fight this fight." His face darkened; remembering, she supposed, the losses. Remembering Jean. Rogue couldn't help but remember some of Logan's more choice comments about seeing Xavier's people operate in the field, back at the beginning. She hoped he didn't pick them up from her thoughts.

He must have been tired, because he didn't. Or at least he didn't say anything if he did. It was a minute later that he frowned, and his forehead creased into fine lines. "Oh, and you'll find there is an... unexpected addition to your small crusade. Please tell Scott that it's quite all right with me if he feels it won't be a problem."

"What?"

The professor only tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially, and then seemed to phase out, as though events elsewhere in the mansion were occupying his attention, his face like an empty house. Rogue wolfed down the rest of her food, anxious to find out what he was talking about. She only just remembered to dash upstairs for a coat - her uniform jacket lay the closest, abandoned on top of her old bed - and the overnight bag she'd thrown together when she came out of the shower.

The grass in the grounds had been churned to mud in places and made for unsteady footing. The rain falling was too soft yet to smooth its jagged landscape.

In the garage, Scott leaned on the driver's side door of a car more practical and low-key than the ones Logan was making a habit of wrecking, bundled up in an ugly coat. At the passenger side, Logan lolled with his arms folded and a belligerent expression she could discern from his body-language long before she drew close enough to see it in his face.

"Hiya, kid," grunted the professor's surprise addition.

She felt the edges of her mouth climb upwards despite her attempts to tame them into the stolid line befitting of a serious X-woman. "Logan? You're coming with us?"

"That's by no means decided. The professor needs-"

Oh. "The professor said it's up to you, Mr Summers," she said, and relayed the message word for word.

Scott ducked his head, mouth visibly tightening, and dragged a contorted hand through his hair. "All right," he said finally, but turned on Wolverine with an angry addendum that startled her. "But no more repeats of last night, you get that? If you're going to do this, it had damn well better be sober. Or you're nothing but a liability to her or me or the kids we need to protect."

Logan had been...? Oh.

He didn't look hungover, but then she supposed his mutant system would wash out the poisons of alcohol within hours. She watched him absorb a tirade that he certainly would not normally have met with such a shifty, almost embarrassed silence, then he said, "Yeah," voice rough and abused, "y'right, Summers, much as it kills me to say it. I won't be doing that again."

Annoyance flooded through Rogue and she felt her fingernails stab into her palms through her gloves at the idea that while everyone else had been doing much needed repairs, he'd been getting drunk over the death of Scott's fiance. Annoyance with Scott, suddenly, in equal part, because shouldn't it have been him? Didn't Jean deserve to be mourned properly, to have her loss felt, not repressed with a clenched jaw and a composure that hadn't broken since-

But of course it had, and she wished she hadn't reminded herself.

With a sigh, she climbed past Logan into the passenger seat, claiming shotgun position.

Logan piled in last and sprawled across the two seats in the back.