"Shit! Rogue, pay some fucking attention! Jesus!"

Her hopeless doe eyes adjusted to the boulder falling apart like glass where her feet had once so firmly stood but were now tucked beneath the weight of one of her team mates. A tiny gasp rolled from her tongue and her gloved hands shoved the other off her, a frown easing into her expression. "Ah am payin' attention! Ah can't see nothin' from your fat behind-"

In the midst of trying to kick John and his big, stupid, fire-making machine whatever the heck it was thingie off of her, something hard – and sharp – smacked her in the face and halted her verbal attack. Her jaw stiffened and another moan, one of desperate affairs, sounded from her chest to her throat; her eyebrows pushed together and her tongue brushed against the object which had pierced through her cheek and left her for, what seemed to be the first time since she put her first boy in a coma, breathless. John rolled himself and his big, stupid, fire-making machine off her and was about to comment about her behind being bigger than anyone's in the whole entire world when he noticed, first, how the color of her skin had changed in the last few seconds to match the white streak framing her face; then, second, a stream of blood gushing around but mostly underneath a silver piece.

"Aw, shit, mate, you idiot!" His Australian accent stained his words with the aid of an unexpected burst of adrenaline. "What is that? A piece of Sentinal? Faaaawwwk, c'mon, then!"

John pushed through the mess with two identical tubes in either hand; when an enemy approached, he ruthlessly released flammable gas into the air and controlled the flames from there, creating a unique piece of art before breaking down the opponent and moving forward. Rogue followed behind, stubbed by a daze that had originated by a drunken roommate at three o'clock in the morning, which then initiated a morning without sleep, which led to early morning practice, which had, obviously, led to a piece of something stuck in her mouth. It was more uncomfortable than it was painful; the object, which tasted further of rust than her blood did, propped her jaw open and pushed her tongue aside to an angle. John stopped behind the corpse of a Sentinel.

"'ah't!"

"What?" He cocked a brow. "Come again?"

"'ah't!" she tried again, but as John was trying to decode the new tongue acquired from the metal object, something seized him and threw him against a foot of one of the colossal sentinels. She winced a bit upon hearing a confident crack sounding from his nose, but she hadn't much time to think about how much it would hurt to have her face smashed because all of a sudden a very wild man was trying at her, too, and dammit, she didn't want to know. The man tried to seize her sides, but she slid between the space of his shoulders, held onto his biceps, lifted herself into the air, and delivered a swift kick to the groin that sent him to his knees.

"DAMMIT, KID!"

"Herher, ai' 'uh'in 'er'ol, 'o'ah!" Rogue beamed through her glistening locks of white.

X-Men, I apologize to end your session early, but this is an emergency. Please report to the main hall.

And Cerebro must have heard Professor Xavier's mental message, because as everyone in the room became still, so did the false reality and the machines before everything shut down and she, along with her team mates, were standing various distances from one another in an innocent blue-tiled room.

"Oh man, I wonder what's, like, going on?" Rogue heard Kitty's voice amongst the mumbling of curious X-Men.

"I don't know, but he sounded worried," Scott replied not too far away; he was extending a hand to Jean who, like the good girlfriend she was, accepted – but not without a nervous glance at everyone surrounding her; she was a professor in training and, Rogue presumed, she was unsure if a woman in her position ought to display affection for another in a situation as such.

"No shit," Logan growled as he picked himself off the floor. "That was a good kick, ki – what the Hell happened to your face? Pyro, you're supposed to look after your damn partner! Maybe a couple weeks of not goin' out will get your head out of your damn ass!"

John, like Logan, was picking himself up, too – only his hands were trying to hold blood with the hope that it wouldn't stain his suit. He was failing miserably, though, and it was drizzling between his fingers and down his chin, dripping on the cuffs of his long sleeves. Rogue thought he might have shed a few tears because there were empty steaks leading from the corners of his eyes and down his dusted cheeks. "Tha's not fucking fair! She would'a been crushed if it wasn' for me! She was the one who wasn' payin' any goddamned attention! I'm fuckin' hurt, too – are you going to punish 'er? Or just me? No, don't fuckin' answer tha'- it's just me, because yah're a fuckin' prick!"

"John! Logan! Stop it, please! We can discuss this later, right now we need to go. Besides, your bickering isn't going to help Rogue," Jean's maternal instincts ruled the tension and everyone, once again, fell silent; Logan, who had taken the opportunity to show off his claws, withdrew them and John flashed his tallest finger. The redheaded beauty rolled her eyes, unlaced her fingers from Scott's, and approached Rogue, her lips twitching with uncertainty. "Everyone, please continue. The Professor said it was urgent."

The X-Men stalked towards the unwelcoming open door and out of sight. Early morning practices never went very well compared to those scheduled in the afternoon, but this one was exceptionally terrible. A gentle pink had risen to Rogue's otherwise pale cheeks; John was right, it was her fault, and he didn't deserve Logan's punishment. But she was quite taken aback with how he reacted to seeing her harmed; he was usually more accepting of injuries, and usually blamed the person who was suffering for his or her own stupidity. Besides, she wondered as Jean tried to pry the shard from her face, why hadn't Logan thrown her to the side like a ragdoll? He did it with everyone else, but he was holding back. He let her harm him. It was an effective move, but not one which could have harmed someone like himself…

Evidence of his favoritism. Kitty's voice was booming in her head: LIKE, DUH!

"She gonna need some stitches, Red?"

Rogue forgot he was still standing there.

"It's hard to say. If she was healing at a normal rate, I would say yes, but your healing factor hasn't worn off her yet. I'll give it an hour or two. If the wou- ah!"

Jean, say no, say no! She was whispering inside of her head, careful, because of her powers, to not think too loud. There were two rocks pushing down against her: one inside of her chest formed by mangled organs from the guilt received by the other rock, which was pressed against her hips. The first was heavy and sunk into the empty pit of her stomach while the other was nearly weightless and lifted to meet the other; together, the two rocks were building excitement and she mentally noted that this feeling might have been described in erotica fiction to be a building orgasm. You can't say no. You can never say no, to anything. Just – I can't think!

Her voice jumbled further when the coarse digits of her paramour yanked her jeans off her hips and then lifted her into the air, and then against a wall, and it was all hips and teeth. She kept trying to think rationally with her thoughts being driven to what she disliked about the taste of his mouth (cigarettes are disgusting!) or the way he handled her (I'm a goddess, not some kind of an animal!), but as soon as he pushed inside of her, her steam of thoughts fixated on how snug he fit inside of her, and how every single thrust pushed her higher to a white bliss. She thought about all of the fantasies she held as a child and how they were coming true now, and how they felt so natural as she scraped her nails along his spine. Oh, Scott had never made her feel this way. Oh, no, it was never like this…

"Jean!"

"I'm alright," Jean mumbled, suddenly sounding less like a nurse and more like a damsel who came close to danger. "I removed the piece. How are you feeling, Rogue?"

"Ah,… Ah feel sick," she answered honestly, eyes not quite drawing to meet the concerned gazes of her elders. Her leather brushed against her swollen cheek which was, as Jean had promised it would, was beginning to heal. But she hardly cared about it anymore; she wouldn't have noticed if a rod protruded through both of her cheeks and through her mouth. All she cared about was getting away from the duo, and quickly. Whatever Professor Xavier was concerned with wasn't what Rogue was concerned with: all she knew was that she needed to get out of the institute as quickly as possible. "Ah'm gonna lay down. Ya'll can tell me what happened later, alright?"

From the corner of her eye she saw Jean giving her a look of confusion and concern and Logan's face had hardened. The boots around her feet clanked hard against the steel floor as she hurried into an adjacent hallway filled with lamps, and into another filled with paintings and, alas, down another filled with hardly anything in particular but a series of doors leading to shared rooms.

Rogue found the room she shared with Kitty and without a single breath left in her lungs, removed a large bag from under her mattress and began to shove the few things she owned inside of it.

She knew now that Logan wasn't her father, and that she wasn't his daughter. The pain she felt now was pain coursed from deceit. She knew his scent too well, and knew the texture of his skin, though she had never felt it, enough to know that it was he who gave Jean Grey feeling in the memory she unknowingly shared with the younger mutant. Jean knew Logan felt something he felt for no one else for her, and Jean felt it for him, too, though she denied it. There was no room for a silly almost-nineteen-year-old girl. What she wanted would not come to her because things like that did not come to girls like her and it was not until she arrived at the Xavier Institute that she began to believe otherwise.

So she threw her bag over her shoulder and left through the back door.

A/N : I was very hesitant about writing this chapter; I know it's hardly my best, and that it might even be a disappointment. I have a plot in mind, and while I was going to take my time truly building up to it, my impatient nature got the best of me. More Rogan will come in the next chapter and their chemistry will genuinely begin to build from there and forward - right now the feelings Rogue possesses will only be explained as ones a silly teenaged girl like herself will have.

Thank you to everyone who took their time to read the first chapter, and to everyone who took their time to leave kind words. I do appreciate everyone who added this story to his or her alerts, but I do ask that you leave a review - no matter how brief. Why? Because, for one, I would really like to know where my strengths and weaknesses lie so that I will be able to improve. But, on a more shallow level, the number of reviews I recieve, the better the story looks, and the more likely people will stop and read. No one can view how often this story has been favorited or subscribed to. I spend a lot of time and energy into my writing and it is very discouraging for any writer to believe that no one cares or has read the piece of work.

Thank you for reading! Now, review (;

- Isolde Necrophilia