Rogue slumbered in the passenger seat of the beat-up truck that Logan called home. Well. He had called it various other names when it broke down in the middle of the night, but there weren't any that Rogue wished to repeat. The suspension of the truck threatened to snap with every turn of the wheel, the bronzed, rough metal on the underside strained beneath the weight of the old vehicle and if it weren't for the seat belt, then Wolverine would have spent the entire journey being tossed around like clothes in a dryer. Yet for the past few hours, the young woman had managed to sleep without interruption. The faint murmurs of eventful dreams turned Logan's head a few times, but the words were too quiet and fragmented to make sense of.
The motorhome slowed to a crawl, and Rogue's eyes fluttered open, groaning softly as she rolled her shoulders to stretch away the ache. The backdrop of white icing sprinkled over the Alberta landscape was gone, replaced by the browns and greens of endless shrubbery. The sun poked above the roof of the forest, the start of a new day—both for the world and Rogue. She had found someone like her. Someone who knew what it was like to be alone.
They hadn't exchanged much of a conversation since the incident at the bar. Before conceding to the call of sleep, Rogue had watched the world pass them by through the passenger's window, the white scenery rolling on an infinite loop. They hadn't even decided on where they were going—though for now, Logan's stomach was doing the driving.
"Where are we?" She yawned, furiously wiping the sleep from her eyes. She didn't know what time it was and the truck's clock looked like it had stopped moving a long time ago.
"Somewhere to eat." Logan hopped out of the vehicle and slammed the door behind him, the glass of the window shuddering with the impact. Considering the state of the rest of the motorhome, Rogue braced herself for it to smash.
The small collection of buildings formed as close as they were going to get to a city in these parts of Alberta. The main street lay almost abandoned and empty, with rows of shops and restaurants bordering the wide road, decorated with boarded windows and rotted signs. A few cars and trucks were dotted about the side of the street, belonging to those who fought the temptation to emigrate to less forgotten lands.
A large sign swayed gently in the breeze, displaying the name of the diner, was a beacon for hungry travellers. The half-lit neon letters next to the door had once spelled out 'Come In, We're Open' before the effects of old-age had taken effect. "I hope it still is." Rogue quipped, looking at the depressing sight around them. "I'm so hungry, I'd even eat some of the road kill we drove past."
"I wouldn't recommend it."
She tilted her head. "Why not?"
Wolverine folded his arms and answered her with the raise of an eyebrow.
"Eww..." Rogue groaned in disgust, shuddering at the thought.
The interior of the diner was warm and rustic. The soft sounds of the jukebox whispered the old hits of decades gone, playing in tune to the chorus of chewing sung by the handful of customers. A row of booths ran the full length of the narrow room, next to the windows overlooking the desolate main street. The whole place didn't look a world away from every other rural diner in the continent.
The young girl behind the counter gave them a forced grin that was twisted by the bubblegum behind it. "Be with you in a minute!" She said, before her fingers resumed their rapid dance upon the buttons of her phone.
They shuffled over to one of the booths and Rogue sat down, quickly picking up the menu. Pancakes, grilled sandwiches, full breakfast, soup, cherry pie... her eyes darted about the words like a kid in a toy shop.
"Order me some pancakes and a coffee, would ya?" Wolverine headed to the bathroom, walking past the cast of characters that were already here. A well-dressed man, hair slicked, spoke to his tape recorder about his damn good cup of coffee. A guy in a trench coat, his face (and ego) bruised, a single hand shuffling a deck of cards, had the look of a man nursing the worst hangover in history.
And now a girl who can kill by touching and a guy who could survive a nuclear blast just walked in the door. This place has turned in to the capital city of crazy.
Logan pushed open the bathroom door and released a sigh. He gripped the side of the sink and looked down as the water whistled out of the tap, swirling around the once-white basin crusted with a thin skin of grime. He slowly lifted his head to look at the man in the mirror—a man who had not aged a day since he first remembered staring at his reflection. But his eyes—his eyes were heavy. He was tired of searching, tired of wandering, tired of asking questions to those who did not know answers. But his tour of searching was no longer a one-man show. He couldn't go around with this chip on his shoulder any more. His previous paths would have been dangerous for the girl—and danger was an old friend he kept bumping in to. Wolverine had finally found something—or rather someone—to keep him going.
As he squeezed back in to the booth and sank in the seat, a burning question caused Rogue to lick her lips. "So we never did talk about where we were going to go."
"You're right." Logan drank the coffee that had been poured during his visit to the bathroom.
"Well... do you have a plan?"
"Darlin'... does it look like I have a plan?"
Rogue shrugged. "I dunno... where were you going before we met?"
"The only place I was going was the bottom of a bottle."
"Yeah, but... we can't just keep driving around and around with nowhere to go." She lifted a finger, wagging and circling it as she talked.
"So where do you suggest we go? Alaska? New York? Florida?"
"As long as it's nowhere near Mississippi..."
The waitress skipped over with a plate in both hands. "Eggs, beans, two portions of sausage, three portions of bacon, hash brown, two slices of toast..." The dish hovered over Wolverine's side of the table, before Rogue raised her hand.
"Ah... actually that's mine." She said, her cheeks sprinkling with a shade of red as both the waitress and Wolverine looked bemused at her order. Within moments of the waitress placing their breakfast on the table, the gloves were off. Rogue took no notice of the cutlery, and wolfed the various items down her throat without giving her teeth a chance to chew on them. Before her mouth was empty, her greasy fingers had already picked up something else.
Wolverine went at a slower pace, stabbing his pancakes with his fork and placing them in to his mouth in a more civilised manner. "So who were you running from?" He guzzled down the coffee, his throat seemingly immune to the scolding liquid. "Family? Friends?"
"Everyone." Rogue replied, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. "I was running from everyone." She pushed away the oily plate, with little more than a few dozen crumbs left on it.
"What happened?"
"I... uh..."
"Did you have a boyfriend?"
"Uh... yeah." The breakfast had turned in to an interrogation, the glare of the morning sun blinding her like the bright bulb dangling above as she pleaded her innocence.
"Is that why you went on the run?"
"Sort of."
"Sort of?"
"Bad things happen when I touch people."
"Yeah, I noticed." A highlight reel of the brawl played over in Logan's mind—the scream of the man that had given a piggy-back to Rogue. The way his skin bleached, the way his veins throbbed and the way his frail, sapped body crumbled to the floor when she let him go...
"But I can't control it. I can't decide when to hurt people, and when not to. It doesn't matter if it's a shake of the hand or a hug or—"
"A kiss?" Logan's interruption brought a look of shock to Rogue's face. "That's why you're here, ain't it? You and your boyfriend...?
"I didn't mean to do it, OK!" She collapsed in to her folded arms. "We only kissed... we barely kissed..." Her head rose and Rogue shrivelled her face behind a wave of hair. "...for a few seconds... and now he's in a coma because of me."
They shared more in common than they thought. Rogue had put her boyfriend in a coma, Logan had did the same thing to many more. He reached out for her hand on the table but she pulled back through instinct, their eyes locking in to a staring contest that Rogue never had a chance of winning. Her head dipped, and a few droplets splashed on to the top of the table.
"Look... it's all right. You're not alone any more."
She lifted her head, heavy as it was.
"You've got me." He saw the twitch of a smirk. "We'll get through this."
"Thanks... Wolverine."
"My name's Logan."
The young woman wiped at her eyes, finally allowing a smile to take over.
"Marie."
