DISCLAIMER: I do not own X-Men, X-Men Evolution, or anything else pertaining to the X-Men franchise. If I did, WildChild and X-23 would be resident Couple of the Year, Wanda and John would be promoted to Empress and Consort of the Universe, Remy would take off his shirt in every other scene/panel, and there would be a great deal more graphic, gratuitous sex. Because of these things, I am sure it wuld also be vastly more popular than it is now. And Evo would not have been cancelled. In your faces.

The Wheel Of Time keeps turning, and we age and wither and die indiscriminate of age, level of hotness, or wealth in Swiss accounts – Sorry, wrong fic. EHEM.

It's a new year! Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!! And we are back in business, cuddlebumps'! Full of champagne, expensive cheeses, and with all ten fingers and both eyes in working order! And so, the fiction continues! What, we ask, will our poor, tortured heroes and heroines be forced to endure next? What perilous love-related issues await them? Will they ever survive all the misunderstandings and have that damn orgy you've been waiting for since you started this fic?! Well, we'll see. Persnally, I'm a big fan or orgies but that may be a line of inquiry for some different, M-rated muses XD

Now, to the praise! Fostersb, happy New Year and I have to say, I worked hard on our request to have our lovely Southern Belle confess her love for Remy, unfortunately, she confessed it to everyone but him. You can't win 'em all ^^ Ashy, I'm sorry you had to wait for this, but the holiday season – and Alice – got in the way and I had to put it off in favour of gorging myself on seasonal dishes the volume of which could have fed small villages, and larking about in the snow until all them damn village-feeding calories fell off me arse. I know you'll forgive me though^^ Chica! I'm afraid Remy and Kyle are not so heavily featured in this update, but they shall have their day once the womenfolk get all their angst out there, I promise! Gidgeygirl, our newest reviewer, I'm glad you started reading and I'm glad you like it so far, let me know if this is up to the mark, eh? TitansRule – hoping you had a great holiday and ate as many platters of nosh as is humanly possible so as to be able to hibernate for the rest of the borng parts of the festive season (such as clearing the table and tidying all the giftwrappings XD) and I hope you let me know if this is good enough as a post-Chrimbo offering! Midnight Wolfy, who got me craving Frosties, thanks for letting me know I'm not as shit a writer as I sometimes think, and for reminding me of the joys of suger-frosted breakfast cereals! Khwhitelion – I really honestly wish that I could animate or something and turn all my fics into animated webisodes and thus continue X-Men Evolution, but sadly it is not to be as I just can't animate worth a sacrificial goat's arse and unfortunately I'd likely be sued to Kingdom Come – however, I'm hoping you'll continue to enjoy the fics and let me know! Larky! I hope you had a fabulous festive season and as always your approval makes it all worthwhile. I missed ya honeypie^^ Yersi Fanel – glad you like it, stay tuned and rock on! With tight spandex and leather boots,

Your loving Author,

Valkyrien! XD

Who Knew?

Part 10

He didn't know if he could trust the plan, but it was all they'd had, and now that his conspirations had been revealed by the suspicious Kitty, he felt doubly unsure that the plan would work. After all, he didn't for a second doubt that Kyle was just the sort of person who'd enjoy pretending to help a bloke only to sit back and laugh himself stupid when he landed Remy in it, as it were. And he also didn't doubt that the 'it' he'd be landing in would end in tears if Kyle didn't manage to get Laura out of Rogue's room long enough for Remy to get some groveling done. Therefore it was with a completely panicked staccato to his heart that he waited along the corridor from Rogue's room for the door to click open and Laura to leave. After about a year's wait – at least it felt like a year – it finally happened.

The door made the long-wished-for clicking noise, Laura poked her head out and sniffed the air before closing it behind her and walking down the corridor in the opposite direction, and Remy almost crossed his fingers for an abscence of more than an hour, although Kyle had made it clear that he might only be able to square them about ten minutes if Laura was still angry. He wondered vaguely whether the other mutant was enough of a masochist that he'd be willing to endure a solid beating from his on-again off-again, perfect-weapon, genetic-experiment maybe-girlfriend to further Remy's cause, and then decided it didn't matter as long as he bought enough time for Remy to get things done. The master thief made an undignified sprint towards Rogue's door, let himself in with very little mastery involved seeing as it wasn't locked, and closed it behind him with little to no stealth. Rogue, sitting in the window, looking throughly bemused and thankfully free of tears, looked up with a frown that turned to a hateful glare.

"Go away," she said, tone measured but no less angry for that.

"Chere, I gotta talk t' y'," he began, but she held up a forbidding hand that silenced him immediately.

"One, we are not talkin', an two, Ah'm kinda busy raght now, so why don't you get the hell outta mah room?" she grated, and he blanched.

"I just wan'ed t' – "

"Jus' get out, okay? Ah have ta see this," she turned back to whatever she was watching outside. For some reason, he felt anger welling up inside him where before there had been contrition and he found himself taking the steps into her room that brought him to stand right next to her, much to her disapproval, and she looked up at him with narrowed eyes.

"Rogue, we can' jus' pretend notin' happened!" he said, far more firmly than he really felt he could back up, and she opened her mouth no doubt to test that bravado, when out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw –

"Merde!" Her glare turned to a cruelly amused little smirk as she looked outside briefly and shrugged, saying airily,

"See that, Swamp Rat? That's what happens when ya piss off mah sister."

Rogue found the widening of his red-and-black eyes strangely comforting, knowing that he was at least a fraction as frightened by the knowledge that Laura would have no qualms doing to him what she was doing right now out on the lawn as Rogue had been earlier by all the strange, terrible emotions he had forced her to relive. Emotions she had buried as deeply as she could longer ago than she cared to think on.

On first sight, it could almost look as though Laura was dancing with her blonde adversary, the pale moonlight glowing on his hair and her unsheathed claws alike, but the dark flecks that spattered the snow beneath their feet whenever she touched him, and the way they were clashing rather than coming together in anything as elegant as a dance gave the truth away. He was evading her rather than fighting back, but she was more than clearly attacking him with intent, and the effect generated was frightening as well as morbidly beautiful. Her claws slashed through the air as he ducked beneath them and turned away from her, only to be caught by her vicious back-kick as she twisted to follow him. He never so much as flinched when she drew back and waited for his reaction, claw dark-stained and breathing heavily as she moved away to regard her handiwork.

She was smiling, the smile that came when she didn't have to hold back, when she didn't have to remember that the others were really only novices in the art of war, that they were family and not for slaughtering for the sake of it. She was smiling, talking to him, and Rogue was at once chilled and fascinated by it. The flashes she managed to see of his face weren't enough to paint a picture of his reaction to it all, but if she had to guess, she'd say the little she could see looked more like self-imposed penitence than any enjoyment she knew of.

The bright red flash that scored the snow between them as Laura spoke to her willing opponent indicated that the household was getting involved, but the way she interposed herself between him and the mansion told Rogue that their meddling was unwelcome in the extreme. She thought she could hear shouting, opened her window a crack to listen in, Remy leaning in over her shoulder. She ignored it, just as she fully intended to ignore the little ache just beneath her skin that wished him closer, wanted more things to ignore.

" – leave her alone," Jean was calling, clearly not wanting her Scott to get involved, and a sharp, flaring anger rose up in Rogue. Jean was not part of Laura's family. She had never been able to look past the girl's upbringing to the fact that she was just a child, alone and unwanted in a world that had so far used her in ways more horrific than Jean Grey was capable of understanding.

"... on our lawn, Jean," she heard him reply, sounding peeved, and Laura took advantage of their disagreement to grab Kyle's hand in a gesture too comfortable for someone she'd just stabbed in the lower back, and make good their escape, fleeing the scene like some kind of perverted version of Bonnie and Clyde – while Remy took advantage of Rogue's distraction to covertly rest his head on her shoulder, bringing her right back to their original spat.

"What the hell do ya think you're doin'?!" Her hair whipped across his face as she turned her head to face him, and he gave her an innocent, pleading look.

"Rogue, please don' be mad at me f' what happened – I didn' tink y'd be so angry..." He seemed unable to really apologise for it, although he sounded both sincere and upset. She felt unable to accept either.

"Ah don' wanna talk about it. An' Ah don' wan' you in mah room anymore, Cajun. Ah think you should go home." She didn't know why that slipped out with the rest, but it did, and when it hit him, she knew she might just as well have physically struck him again. His eyes dimmed to a muted scarlet and he looked at her with an odd, wrong sort of blankness on his face.

"Y' wan' me gone, chere? F' doin' what I did?" Her mouth was dry and she didn't know what to tell him for all that something beneath her treacherous skin was asking her to say no. She didn't want him standing so close to her, looking at her as though she'd done him some terrible wrong.

"Ah – Ah don' wan' – Ah – " He didn't seem to be listening, and she knew that he wasn't when he leant in and kissed her again, his arm curving up over her back, holding her to his chest as his other hand trailed through her hair, and she found herself responding to it again, liking it again, and she wanted to cry, but she already must have been because he pulled away, something shimmering on his thumb and he smiled at her weakly and said,

"I never mean' t' make y' cry, chere..." She blinked away the blurriness and pressed her lips together, her voice when it came sounding certain, and tired.

"You are goin' ta leave me again." He rested his forehead against hers, fingers gently stroking her cheek, coming to a still on her neck as though he were afraid to really touch her, and the thought seemed to hurt even more than the thought of him not being afraid to touch her, somehow.

"Again?"

"Jus' lahke before. Ah'm convenient, isn' that raght, Remy? Ah'm a constant. Ah never change. Ya know ya can always come back ta us an' we'll help you out because that's what we do... What Ah do..." He looked away, taking her hands in his as though he didn't know what else to do.

"That's not true, Rogue. I don' – "

"What were ya tryin' ta do, Remy? Huh? Touch the untouchable? No one gets ta do that – not even you. Remember how well it wen' last tahme ya did? Only reason Ah didn' let Logan gut you is because Ah fel' sorry f' you. Little orphan Remy with the Daddy who used ya all your lahfe... Ah fel' lahke you'd had it bad enough already... But you don' even have the heart ta show others the same mercy Ah showed you, do ya? You're jus' usin' me an' you're jus' usin' mah fam'ly... Again..." She hated the sound of her voice – soft, venomous, trying to wound him more than he had already wounded her. Succeeding. The colour of his eyes reminded her of blood. If she stared for long enough she could almost imagine they were bleeding.

"Is it lahke stealin' somethang they said couldn' be stolen? Ah'd kinda lahke to know... Is it just the rush or is it one more notch on your bedpost? One more thang noone else can take that you've had?" He let go of her hands slowly, his eyes disbelieving, hurt, but the rest of his face still strangely blank. It looked unnatural.

"You ain' ever gon' forgive me, are y' chere?" he asked quietly, eyes dull and veiled now, more like congealing blood than something fresh and still painful. Dead and gone. Hopeless. The colour of blood when the patient couldn't be saved. When the heart was never going to beat again. Rogue had seen that colour too many times.

"I won' ever be notin' but a thief an' a liar t' y'... I won' ever be good enough..." He stood up silently, only then did she realise he'd been kneeling beside her all along, and she found she couldn't move, found that like a killing blow, she couldn't take those words back. Was that what Laura was looking for? Something that didn't die? Something she could damage to her heart's content whose own heart would carry on beating regardless? Something where she knew she'd have to go so much further to deliver that final blow than with anyone else? Laura had once said something to her, soon after coming to live with them, something that had seemed innocent then, as though it were an epiphany for the younger girl... 'Sometimes you don't even have to kill'. Looking back, her 'sister's face had seemed almost wistful, as though that were something elusive, rare, unattainable but desirable all the same. It was just frightening now. Because it seemed true.

"Guess I was de fool f' tinkin' y' could ever see me diff'ren'ly," he mumbled, suddenly looking just as young and unsure as she felt, and she found herself again realising that he probably was.

"Ah don' wanna have ta see you at all," she said quietly, and found that this was true as well. She couldn't bear to have him there without being able to express what she wanted to, when all she seemed to be able to say was hurtful, true, and unfair. He closed his eyes completely, as though the light had gone from his irises quite suddenly in the dark room.

"I jus'... 'M so sorry, Rogue..."

"Yeah, well... Ah've been sorry longer than you have. At least it's on mah terms now."

"I never wan'ed t' leave y' back den, y' know dat... 'M not y' Prince Charmin', chere. Jus' t'ought maybe dis time 'round I could be better dan y' t'ought I was..." She wanted to get up, fold him into her arms and tell him that she wished so many things beginning with being able to change the past and ending with wanting to change their future, but she couldn't.

"If y' wan' me gone, Rogue, I'll leave. I don' wan' t' hurt y' anymore dan I already have," he said hollowly, and she nodded, automatically.

"It wasn' the kiss that hurt," she said simply.

"It was ev'rythang else."

She wasn't even crying anymore when Laura arrived in her doorway, flushed and angry, but looking somehow smug and exhilarated at the same time. For a split second, Rogue felt like throwing her out, felt like even the bloody stains on the younger girl's cuffs were taunting her. She felt sick at herself when she realised that the knowledge that Laura's interactions with other people were just as messed up as hers was comforting to her.

"Did ya kill him?" she asked bluntly, voice flat and lifeless, and Laura entered the room properly, kicking the door shut behind her. She sniffed the air before replying, her mouth twisting into a grimace.

"I smell Cajun. He was here. Diversion tactics. Clever," she grunted, plopping herself down on the windowseat opposite her sister, legs crossed.

"Guess love really is war," Rogue commented, and Laura tilted her head, looking at her suspiciously.

"I should not have left you, should I?" Rogue shrugged.

"You do what you think is best, sweetie. Ah ain' involved in all that business." Laura's eyes softened and she put her hand out as if to grasp Rogue's, drawing it back to rest in her lap when she noticed it was less than pristine.

"I should not have left you. He said something to you, did he not? You are not crying. You are hurt. Maybe I should kill him." The matter-of-fact way she said it, as though it would be a tactically sound decision to murder Remy in semi-cold blood made Rogue laugh. She laughed so hard her chest hurt, covering her eyes with her hands as the laughing turned hysterical and she fell forward into her sister's bloodied embrace, still laughing, unable to stop. Laura's arms curved around her protectively, muscles tensed in what Rogue assumed was an expression of her uncertainty regarding how best to snap her sister out of it. The hysterics subsided on their own, however, and Rogue clutched Laura's sleeves as she looked her square in the eye, her own eyes red-rimmed but otherwise looking as beautiful as ever. Laura had always admired that about the Southern Belle. She was as unfailingly lovely whatever happened to her.

"Laura, do you love that piece a shit you were beatin' 'round the garden out there?" Rogue asked, deadly serious, and Laura froze, searching for an answer.

"Don' think about it, just tell me," Rogue insisted, shaking her a little, and the girl shook her head.

"I don't know, why is it important?" Laura cried, sounding almost offended, and Rogue made an impatient noise.

"Because y'all have a real shot together an' Ah don' want you repeatin' mah mistakes! You can still have him if ya wan' him – it's too late f' me, Ah don' wan' you ta have ta be in mah position someday!" she yelled, and Laura stared at her.

"What position?"

"Tellin' the man ya love ta get the hell outta yo' lahfe before the shit really hits the fan," Rogue said softly, brushing back a section of Laura's hair gently, such love in her eyes that Laura felt for a moment unworthy of it.

"You told him to leave? Properly?" Rogue nodded, looking down at her hands.

"He's goin' home tomorrow," she expanded, and Laura shook her head, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

"That wasn't supposed to happen! Why did you do that? You were supposed to make up!" she cried, literally pulling at her hair in upset, and Rogue looked at her in shock.

"Laura Howlett! What on God's green earth are you talkin' about?!"

"You two! You and Remy! You were supposed to have a fairytale ending, like Kitty and Lance, you were supposed to make up and everything was supposed to be fine and you've ruined it all!" Laura rarely raised her voice, she rarely needed to, but she was shouting now, and all Rogue could do was stare at her, nonplussed.

"You're not serious!" she cried, and Laura leapt up and pointed at her like she'd committed some awful crime and should be lynched.

"You were supposed to be alright this time, it isn't fair!" she shouted, and Rogue stood up, hands on her hips.

"Now you jus' listen here, missy – "

"I won't! I won't listen – people who love each other are supposed to be together and you've ruined everything – I hate you for this!" She was crying openly, and when Rogue made a grab for her arm she turned tail and ran out the door, leaving it wide open after her.

She ran right into Logan, who'd been on his way up the stairs to find either one of his 'daughters' and begin the father-daughter talks. Helmet still in hand, he grabbed her shoulders and held her away from him, looking her over. Seeing tears, his first instinct was surprisingly to give her a hug, something born of long years of dealing with Rogue and Kitty, but with Laura he squeezed her shoulders and asked,

"What's wrong honey?" She looked at him with tears running down her face and wailed,

"Daddy I'm so confused!" He folded her into his arms and gave her that hug, kissing her hair.

"Tell me what's wrong, honey. I'll fix it," he promised her, and she sobbed into his shirt.

"Rogue told Remy to go home and he's leaving tomorrow but she loves him and he loves her and this is all wrong!" Logan suppressed a grunt of disapproval at having his suspicions confirmed and decided it was best not to overload her emotionally.

"Why is it wrong, sweetheart? If Rogue doesn't want him here then he shouldn't be here – even the Cajun has enough sense to see that," he reasoned, but she pulled away and shook her head violently.

"No, no he has to stay – for her, he has to stay or she'll always be sad and she'll never have her happy ending like Jean and Kitty and Wanda and I want her to be happy – and – and – " she put her hands over her face, overwhelmed, and he put his arm around her and steered her downwards to the kitchen, where he planted her in a chair and sat down with her, taking her hands and wiping her tears away with one of his own calloused appendages.

"There's more to this than Rogue, isn't there?" he asked sternly, and she nodded, looking at the floor. If nothing else, she was always honest when asked a straight question.

"Tell me what's really buggin' ya about this whole thing," he demanded, and she bit her lip.

"I don't want to. You can't help." He laughed, a short, sarcastic burst of mirth that made her look up sharply.

"Sweetheart, you just let your Daddy know exactly what's goin' on an' he'll move mountains for ya. You ask your sister, she'll tell you. Now what's this all about, eh? Really." His eyes were soft, but his tone was hard and insistent and she felt something shift inside her and blurted out,

"If Rogue can't live happily ever after like Kitty and Jean, neither can I!" and then promptly shut her mouth again as though unsure how the truth escaped her in the first place. Logan fixed her with a hard stare that she avoided almost guiltily.

"This wouldn' have anything ta do with you know who, would it?" he asked in true disappointed-daddy tones and she mumbled something in the affirmative. He sighed heavily.

"Honey... Laura, look at me." She did with some hesitation, and he gave her a tired smile.

"I've always tried to do right by you an' Rogue. You're my girls an' I love you both, no matter what crazy-ass ideas you get into your pretty heads," he said, and she smiled a little.

"I may not always like the things you two decide to do... Or the people you choose to hang around with... But in the end, as long as none of you are pallin' around with Sabretooth or joinin' some anti-mutant organisation, there's nothin' I can do to stop you makin' your own mistakes an' learnin' from 'em. And I want you to do that. I want you to have the same chances in life as anyone else. Part of that is crashin' and burning sometimes, but that's what life is. And I love you no matter what happens." Her eyes were alight with something entirely new in her.

"That doesn' mean there aren't still rules," he said quickly, but she just smiled happily.

"Thank you, Dad," she said quietly, leaning forward and hugging him, and he returned the gesture.

"Anytime, kid. Now, what are we gonna do about that damn Cajun and your sister?" She grinned at him.