He was good, yeah, but come on—she hadn't trained with the X-Men for years without learning a few things. How to tell when she was being watched, for example. Especially when someone was fool enough to riffle playing cards inside an empty, echoing alleyway.
After she'd heard that, she'd become more watchful herself. She'd catch glimpses of a trench coat slipping around buildings, hanging over branches, moving silently in the darkness of a secluded corner. Once, sitting out on a balcony watching the stars, she turned her eyes to the trees and caught a glimmer of red that she pretended not to see.
So she knew he was keeping an eye on her. So what? No harm in looking, right? She didn't tell any of the others. She knew they'd freak out, and he wasn't hurting anybody. Besides, she could take care of herself.
She doesn't expect anybody to come after her when it turns out he had more in mind than just looking. She'd good as told them she was leaving, anyway. And then when he tells her where the train is heading, she isn't sure she wants them coming. Not just yet.
She watches him play stupid card games and rejects his offer to teach her one. She tells him she knows more about cards than he'd guess and he says he doesn't doubt that she could say that for a lot of things. Despite his expressed preference for the queen of hearts, she notices it's the ace of spades he flips over and over between his fingers when he's not playing.
He has a constant smirk on his face. She wonders if it has anything to do with knowing she's watching him and decides it probably does. He's the kind to be flattered by any attention at all. She sure doesn't intend to flatter him, but she watches him anyway. With nothing else to do in the empty boxcar, she figures it's her turn.
Every move he makes is casual, unhurried. She remembers the look in his eyes when she had him hanging off the train. Even then he'd looked like he was just relaxing, like he was enjoying every second. Like he was laughing at her. She remembers him telling her she was too tense, and doesn't think kidnapping somebody and hauling her clear across the country is a good way to get her to relax. She points this out to him, and the smirk gets broader.
When they reach New Orleans, he jumps off the train like he's done it a million times before. She's off before he can turn to help her, and close behind him as he darts between the cars, over the tracks, and through a break in the gate surrounding the rail yard. He runs like the wind but still manages to look like he's doing it for fun instead of to avoid rail yard security. He winks at her as they clear the gate and switches over to an ambling walk as they head into town. She makes a point of rolling her eyes heavily.
He weaves through back ways and crowded streets like he owns the place. She guesses it has to be his home turf—this is how she used to move back home in Mississippi. And he knows the really great hole-in-the-wall places, the ones tourists avoid and so the ones that serve up the best atmosphere. Sure, getting ambushed before dessert isn't the kind of atmosphere she was looking for, but it's…fun, sort of. Even though they've never worked together before, they move like a team. So when he tries to head off on his own, she follows him.
They're not a team, not really. She knows it the moment her ear brushes his hand. She gets flashes of his father, flashes of a plan, and she is so mad she almost walks off and leaves him lying there alone in the dark.
But she sits and watches him instead, simmering, waiting for him to wake up so she can let him have it. Once she stretches a hand towards his face and stops it, hovering so close she can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, knowing how easy it would be to learn the rest of the story, and then she pulls back, because she already can't get him out of her head and she doesn't need any more up there.
He has the gall to look hurt when she laces into him, to protest that he didn't mean things to turn out this way, but all she hears are more lies from one more person who used her, and that's when she leaves.
On her way back to the boat, she sees herself. She sees herself sprinting on the track behind the school—sitting at a picnic table with her arms folded—yelling at a teammate—crying on the institute grounds—sleeping a drugged sleep in the boxcar of a train. She's already shaking her head to clear the images before she gets that they aren't hers, that they were all stuck in his head first. She stops to sort through them, like the Professor's been trying to teach her, and she realizes there are a lot more thoughts just about her than thoughts about how she can help him get his father. And that's when she goes back.
He looks surprised to see her again, and grateful, and that gets him a few points. His father comments on her powers and he shuts him down, and that gets him a few more. By the time he starts to apologize, she doesn't need to hear it. Not that she isn't still mad. She is. Just not mad enough to let Wolverine take his head off, that's all.
He leaves her with his lady luck. She remembers he said it's gotten him out of a lot of jams, and that should make her even madder, like he's trying to play a Get Out of Jail Free card. But then she remembers how he held her hand, how when he pulled away his fingers brushed dangerously close to her exposed skin, and how when this thing all started he'd offered her the chance to know everything up front.
She holds on to the queen of hearts and doesn't watch him walk away.
