I still own nothing. This chapter's more talk, I'm relatively sure the story'll start picking up sometime soon, now that I've figured out where I'm going with it...yeah, that Sam/Laura I mentioned in the original summary? It's not in this chapter either. But it's coming. Oh, is it coming.

The van pulled out of the Mansion grounds much to the relief of the remaining residents, who promptly stopped waving and went back to whatever they'd been doing before the crazed teenage girls and their prom had taken over their lives. Laura went down to the Danger Room to watch Rogue, who'd been studiously avoiding dresses and the people in them and figured the Danger Room was the best place to do it. Who, aside from Laura and Logan and in some cases Scott, liked being in there?

Laura idled down the cold silvery halls of the basement levels of the mansion in as decent a mood as she was capable of, humming a dirty song Bobby had taught her before she'd maimed him, and pausing now and then to explore a hall she hadn't been down in…a few hours max. But still.

When she entered the observation room, she mentally winced at the room's other occupant, who was watching Rogue down below with a critical eye and almost obsessive attention to detail. Logan. She couldn't slip back out, not now that she'd entered the room.

What had Jean meant when she'd said he left?

"Kid, I know you're there." Logan said without turning around. She sighed and dragged herself up to stand beside him. Rogue launched a sidekick that knocked a military-esque opponent clear across the room. Laura didn't really see it.

"Alright, what's buggin' you now? You're sulking." He paused. "I didn't know you could sulk. Generally you just beat someone up and move on."

Laura hesitated, then turned to glare at Logan dead on. A firm resolve was needed when dealing with Logan, or so she thought.

"Why are you still here?"

That didn't come out right. Logan looked slightly confused under his usual permanent scowl.

"What are you talkin' about, kid?"

Rogue let loose a battle cry that would have made Magneto decide to quit his traitorous ways and take up flower arranging, and dismantled half the Danger Room in one go. Logan watched Laura silently think, and absently pushed the button ending Rogue's session.

Sighing, Laura fiddled with the braids Jean had put in her hair earlier and looked down at the dormant review monitors. "I heard that you used to…go places. You used to leave for awhile and no one would know exactly when you left or when you were coming back. Why'd you stop?"

Logan was silent for a few minutes. "You hear this from Jean?"

Laura blinked. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

He grinned wryly. "That girl's got an agenda. It's best to just ignore her and let her latest craze pass on its own. I got a bike that needs fixin', you wanna help?"

That was as far as Logan's affection went. By helping him fix a bike, he meant sit a minimum of five feet away and talk to him and occasionally get him a drink or a towel. Laura was better at destroying than fixing, but she followed him around silently as he shut down the Danger Room for the night.

"By the way, nice hair," he said with a hint of amusement from the doorway as Laura turned the last of the monitors off and backed up the recording of Rogue's session. She touched her hair. "Jean did it."

"No doubt at the same time she was feedin' you that stuff about me."

"That wasn't feedin', that was tellin' the truth," Rogue commented in her southern drawl as she sauntered up to them in her sweaty uniform and a hoodie with an X on it. "Ah need to work on mah bike some too."

Ten minutes later, the garage door was open and both Logan and Rogue were deep in concentration on their bikes. Laura was bored. She started looking around, and noticed in the far corner of the garage a car that was totaled to the point that Laura couldn't even name the model it originally was. It was surrounded by toolboxes, spare parts, and large metal-bending machines, like it was in surgery.

"What happened to that?" She nodded at the car. Logan slid himself out from under his bike and looked over at the car.

"I found Sabertooth a few days ago. It didn't go well. I'm trying to find parts to salvage and the rest is going to the junkyard."

Sabertooth? Laura had never actually come across the mutant, but she'd heard stories. Bad stories. Stories involving deaths and betrayals…stories much like the ones that circulated around in the black market about an X23…. Laura tried to encourage them so people would leave her alone. But was Logan going to leave?

Her silence must have said something to him, because Rogue put down her wrench and watched quietly as Logan began getting irritated with his clone's unspoken questions.

"Look, I ain't goin' off anywhere anytime soon. I don't trust you to keep your temper that much."

"Or did you just lose Sabertooth and decide to wait until he found you?"

Logan sat up the rest of the way. "Look kid, you're stuck with me. You made that decision when you came to us for help. So deal with it."

"Sometimes it seems like the other way around. I'm stuck with you." Laura got up and stormed off before they could get into a read argument. She paused on the other side of the door from the hall and unclenched her fists. She hadn't realized she'd actually gotten that mad. In the middle of a series of deep breaths with her eyes closed, Laura heard Rogue speaking softly to Logan.

"You're so hard on her."

"She can't go about doing whatever she wants."

"When was she ever allowed to do that? Let the kid live some. She's never going to learn unless she makes some mistakes. Besides, I don't think she's actually lost her temper in at least six hours. She's getting better."

"She's not good enough." Logan said after a few seconds.

Rogue sighed. Well, someone did. Laura was still breathing to herself on the other side of the door, so she wasn't one hundred percent sure who it was.

"Nothing's good enough for you. Go get Sabertooth. X-Men watch out for each other. Or that's what the Professor says."

"You sure?"

Heavy shoes clunked towards the door. Laura looked around desperately, and hid behind a randomly discarded van door just as Rogue entered the hall. She paused and looked around, then turned back to Logan.

"Yeah, he says it all the time," she said absently, studying the van door. She walked over to it as Logan grumbled for a minute.

"Hi, Laura," Rogue said casually, leaning on the windowsill of the door. "Comfy?"

"Not really." She grumbled at the same time Logan yelled "Fine!"

"Looks like you get to see Logan leave after all." She smiled down at Laura, who was cramped between the door and the wall.

"Hooray." She grumbled. "Now let me out."