A/N: Okay so please forgive me for being such lame ass and taking forever to update but I've been adjusting to college life which royally sucks at giving you any free time. Anyways here's the next chapter hope ya'll like it, it gets a little emotional as I tend to do so be forewarned.

Oh and shout outs to our new reviewers loftyambitions and Yoruichi89 as well as to you steady reviewers. Thanks for your kind words and I owe you guys like loads of hugs and cookies and like a bunch more for keeping me on track with this shiz. So anyways, next installment, ho!

Present Day- The Xavier Institute

Anna was sitting across from Logan with a gigantic wooden desk separating the two. Her arms were folded and Logan's face was set in a tight grimace. His cigar was sitting in a small wide glass ashtray burning listlessly as he narrowed his eyes at her and sniffed rather obnoxiously.

"So?" Rogue asked getting more and more upset with this whole sit here and wait to crack under the pressure of his gaze routine. Logan didn't scare her like the other students. She could care less if he was mad at her if she did something wrong at this point. There was a half naked Cajun lying in her bed right now.

The thought made her shiver slightly, thinking about the night before, holding him in her arms for what would be the last time. She took a deep breath to steady herself and the way her heart was clenching, threatening to burst into nothingness at the simple flicker of his image.

"Motion sensors picked up someone right out side the east wing. But after a couple of minutes the sensors around that area as well as those around the windows went out," Logan stated as he picked up his cigar and took a great long drag.

Rogue rolled her eyes and sat back in her chair. She gave him a look that said 'and this has to do with me how?'

Logan responded to her tacit exclamation, "I wanted to know if you might've let someone in without checking them through the front desk."

Rogue sighed and shook her head at him, "Really Logan, you think there's someone hiding in my room. Someone with enough skill to get passed you motion detectors?"

Logan let out a gruff snort. "No, 'course not."

Rogue smiled inwardly. She knew that if she played on Logan's pride she'd more than likely get somewhere. He was never one to admit he had been beaten or out smarted. She knew this first hand from when she beat him in pool. He had gone with the whole 'I let you win routine' but then the next game rolled around and Rogue still won. They hadn't played pool together since.

"Well then Logan, Ah honestly don't know why Ah'm in here. Unless there's another reason for ya to question me or to investigate further, Ah'll be leavin'. Ah have classwork that Ah need ta make up," Rogue said standing up and turning towards the door.

Her hand was caressing the cold sweet metal of the doorknob when Logan spoke once more.

"Ya know Stripes, I wouldn't tell anyone if there was someone up in your room. Someone from your past... Especially if he was a drunk smoker who could leave a trail of his scent from the east wing to your window."

Rogue knew this was the point where he was attempting to get her to turn around with a shocked expression as to how he found out that Remy was here. She just stood there holding on to the doorknob hoping she wasn't showing any weakness; any sign that he had in fact hit the nail straight on the head and secured her in her coffin.

"I'm not that kinda person, ya know that right darlin'. Everyone has a past. And sometimes when it rears its ugly Cajun head even we can't stop ourselves from letting it back in."

Rogue couldn't breathe. Its as if all the air in her lungs had constricted and was spinning vigorously, so much so that it was causing them to collapse on themselves like some kind of self started lung tornado that she had no control over.

Rogue didn't know what to say. Logan was being so sweet. So understanding. It was the opposite of who and what he was and was supposed to do. He was supposed to be a hard ass. That was the basis of their relationship. He dished it out just as harshly as she did and neither were effected.

But this. This tenderness was just so uncommon, caught her so off guard she didn't know what to say. Part of her wanted to believe that it was all a ploy in order to get her caught. But then deep down she wanted to, ached to believe the words that were coming out of his mouth.

He was one of her only friends at the Institute. One of the only people who she willingly showed emotion in front of. No bullshit, no crying, just anger and hate. Something the burly Canadian could help her deal with and then some.

"Just know what you're gettin' yourself into alright Stripes. I don't want you getting anymore hurt than ya already are," he said quietly.

At that Rogue looked back. Logan was sitting with his head down, his cigar hanging out of his mouth, acting as if he was shuffling between papers. Rogue let a small sad smile cross her lips just for a moment. Just long enough for him to know it was there.

"Yeah...thanks Logan," she murmured as she quickly exited the room.

She knew her mind and her heart would regret last night more than her body ever could. But then again, the touch, his touch would drive her mad and she knew it. If it had taken her five years to break through how long would it take now that she had relapsed. Now that she was once again addicted to him.

Five Years Ago

Rogue and Gambit were giggling as they approached the back entrance of the house, where the kitchen was visible from the back porch. She was running away from him, her denim shorts and simple tank top sticking to her from the dampness of their earlier swim.

The stars were shining ever brightly and the dim light coming from the porch did nothing to take away from the sight. Gambit chased her around finally capturing her in his arms as they slowly fell to the ground.

Rogue stared up at him and the carefree expression on his face. She wished she could keep him just like this. So perfect and young and without any worries. But there were always worries. Always regrets veiled behind simple acts. Maybe one day he would come to regret this night. Maybe one day she would too.

She looked up at his scarlet irises and how they blazed for her and her alone. The full lopsided grin that graced his lips and how his arms encircled her in the most comfortable way possible. It was all so surreal but when she was here, with him, in his arms, under the stars. It just felt so right.

He pushed her white strands from her face.

"Tell moi what y' thinkin'?" he asked as he stared into her emeralds glittering with hope.

Rogue looked down at the way their bodies were pressed together and how immensely natural such a connection felt. How was it possible to feel like you needed someone close to you in order to breathe? It just didn't make sense.

Rogue looked up at the stars avoiding his gaze for as long as she could stand, which wasn't very long at all. She bit her lip in a playful fashion as she thought about what to say she was thinking about. It was such a simple question. But it would always be a difficult one to answer.

She shrugged as he leaned on his elbows above her waiting expectantly for her to speak. "Ah guess Ah'm jus' thinkin' bout how perfect everything is in this moment...and how it might not last."

Gambit regarded her with inquisitive red eyes, his brow furrowing in that distinctive way of his, his smile fading slightly. What was it going to take to convince her that no one could take her from him? No matter how hard they tried he would always be there, he had promised himself that much and if anything he would promise it to her. If he had to.

"Nothing lasts chere. But I'll be here. Always. I promise," he said brushing her white strands away from her face, running his thumbs along her cheek.

Rogue moved into the velvety coarse touch of his calloused fingertips to her face and closed her eyes. It was too good to be true. The electricity that sparked and rushed and swam through her veins.

Across her eyelids flew the visions of what could be, of what she felt deep in her heart of hearts would be. A small home with just them two. A family. Just them. With Henri and Mercy and Tante visiting. With Etienne and Theo and even Emil coming for holidays. With small auburn haired children running from place to place and a chuckling husband with breathtaking red on black eyes watching and participating in childish mischief.

But it couldn't be. They were robbers, takers. They had stolen this life. This wasn't that kind of thing. It wasn't made and baked and served so naturally. It was coerced; a hand that was forced by the actions of others. By the lack of love in order to create such a love.

It seemed so impossible to have such a thing blossom from such horrible circumstances and that in spite of those circumstances something so beautiful could flourish. Rogue just wasn't strong enough to believe it. She wasn't strong enough to not prepare herself for the inevitable separation that she knew was looming on the horizon.

She opened her eyes slowly, a slat of white and green as she peered passed the fleshy cases. Gambit was still stroking her face, a worried expression marring his usually carefree face.

"You can't promise me love, Remy. It's impossible," Rogue muttered as she rolled to her side, facing the now dark and twisted oak swaying in the night breeze.

Gambit pulled her body towards his, resting his head and weight on one elbow as his hand found its permanent resting place on her hip. He dipped his forehead down to hers as she continued to gaze out at the oak tree, its branches floating this way and that in the cool night air as it caressed the smooth bark with its whispery fingertips.

"You're wrong chere. I can promise y' love. I can't promise y' de future, but I can promise y' right now, dis moment right here and now. I know I'll love y' forever, even if we aren't together. Y' have changed me, made me see things 'bout monself and mon famille that I never would have known without y'. And no matter what distance may be put between us, I will always love y' ma Anna Marie."

The words ghosted past his lips down her neck to her spine traveling up the shivers from her limbs to her own open lips as if she had said the words herself. She knew what he said was true. Could feel that gut jerking response that she had every time she was around him. That uncanny tethering that held them close together even when they weren't in the same room.

"Ah love ya too Remy," Rogue whispered as she pulled his palm to her lips, kissing it gently.

There was silence for a long while. Rogue could feel the tension building in his muscles; the rigidity that he was so capable of holding within him. He was still, no small movements or ticks that he usually had. She could feel his fear of losing her encompass his body in a thick cemented case. She could feel the chill of the threat of distance, or parting all around them.

"I don't want y' to be scared," he murmured his words lifting and rising with the wind.

"Ah don't wanna be scared. But we need ta prepare ourselves for what might, more than likely, happen," Rogue said in a defeated tone her chest heaving out at the end of her sentence.

"Non, it won't ever happen," Gambit replied stubbornly as he gripped her tighter to his body.

Rogue turned over at this and furrowed her brow at him. Was he serious? Was he really so hard headed that he couldn't see reality. She had grown up being a realist. But when she was with him she was able to delude herself into giving into the fairytale. And now for some reason, having felt all she could feel it seemed. Having been brought over the falls of love in every way mentally and physically possible, Rogue was second guessing everything she held to be true while with him.

"You're wrong. People like us can't stay in love forever Remy. Eventually someone will catch us. Eventually we'll be pulled a part and as much as Ah hope to the dear lord that that won't happen, it's inevitable."

Rogue watched as the tears of anger flooded Gambit's eyes which were swaying with a blazing scarlet ferocity that she had never witnessed before. He looked down at her his hand shackling her to the ground as a growl ripped through his chest.

"I won't let y' go back. I'd rather die than to see y' go back there and be hurt again," He thrust her wrist forward between them for her inspection.

"I won't let y' go back ta dis," he said as he pushed her hand to her eyes, watching as her emeralds picked up the small glowing mark, raised and tinted an almost opalescent pink against her porcelain skin.

A thin line, one of many he had found, one of many he had kissed and wished to heal with just the touch of his rough fingertips and supple lips. Did she really believe that he would never notice them? Or had she deluded herself into believing they never existed just like she was feeding into the illusion of their parting?

Rogue jerked her head and wrist away from him, shame clouding her eyes and spilling on to her cheeks. Gambit felt immediate remorse for his actions. He hadn't meant to hurt her, hadn't meant to make her feel anymore like shit. He knew things were bad with her family, but not this bad, not like this.

He let out a deep breath and pulled her close, pressing his cheek against hers, kissing away her tears, taking the small salty droplets to his lips. She shivered against his skin, it seemed so cold and rigid now, so different from the fire she had experienced before.

"I'm sorry cherie, I didn't mean to-" he began.

"Don't, please don't," Rogue sobbed. She tired to catch her breath, tried to pull in air in that steady pace but it seemed impossible. "Ah-Ah...Ah do...Ah cu-..."

"Shhhh, ma amour, shhhh," Remy consoled as his fingers brushed her cheek, she felt that trail of warmth once more. He was no longer a corpse. He was hers once more. "Y' don't have ta say a word. Nothin' y' don't wanna. I take y' as y' are."

Rogue turned over, his arms encasing her in that security blanket of perfection as she stared at his face, consumed with worry and pain and love. His eyes burning bright like torches in the night, his brow furrowed as he attempted to keep his composure.

He took her as she was. Had she heard anything so beautiful before? She could only think that this was as good as him confessing his love for her, for the first time. Sure she knew he had a past, she knew he was a born thief, that he was no virgin, that he drank and smoked and got into trouble. But when he was with her he was different. He was caring, he was stupid to the point of humor, he was hers. Sure she took him as he was, but she never expected the same from him for some reason.

She pressed her lips tentatively to his as they trembled like a leaf in the breeze. She closed her eyes and felt that simple spark, that little brightening of flesh, that small ignition burning into an all out firestorm within her soul that made everything worth it.

She tilted her head away from his, leaning her chin on his shoulder and breathed, just breathed. Her chest pressed flush against his, their hips meeting in that chastely unchaste way, it made the air flow so much more easily from her lips to her lungs.

"Ah don't know how it started," her voice came out all hoarse and stringy. "It was somewhere between New York and Argentina, Ah was jus-just tired of it all. There was this boy, in New York. He was sorta sweet. Kinda had a thing for him."

Gambit's body contracted a minute bit. She could feel his jealousy. He knew she was innocent to the ways of men, he had felt that much just from touching her, from feeling the way she responded to his every caress. Like she was being stroked by heaven itself. But there was something about that confession that hit his pride no matter how much he wanted to admit otherwise.

Rogue could feel it too. He knew she could feel it. Not that any of that mattered. She loved him, not that stupid insignificant little boy. How she wished she could forget all about him. That New York boy. But she couldn't. Because he had shown her things she would never forget. He had shown her the underbelly of herself.

He felt her lips press to his temple, their moisture and silkiness a warm welcome to his pride. She was breathing more easily now but he could sense her quick in take against his skin. He pushed his body against hers, heating her, warming her.

"He could neva compare to ya Rem, he was nothing," Rogue reassured and Gambit could see from the shy way she said it, from the way she hid her eyes from his that she meant it. She was ashamed of this boy. Because he was so small to her.

"But when Ah was in New York he was my everythin'. He showed me the parts of me that Ah had kept hidden from the world. The horrible secrets that Ah didn't wanna face." Rogue paused and took a breath and began to sit up, Gambit moving his body perfectly with hers as they began to ascend upward. He read her mind.

Gambit swept her up and they sat for a moment. Rogue's knees pressed firmly against her chest and she leaned her head on them looking sideways at Gambit as he leaned back on his hands watching her with his burning eyes. He nodded for her to go on and she proceeded.

"He made me realize what Ah had known all along. Ah was different from the girl my parents wanted me to be. Ah wasn't obedient, Ah didn't think the way they wanted me to. Ah questioned them and everythin' they stood for and so they would ship me off under the pretense of giving me a good education.

"Cody was my first friend in New York. He was a scholarship kid. Got inta the boarding school as a way ta get away from his shitty home. And so he saw in me what was so apparent in himself. We were both fucked up," Rogue said with a sigh as she craned her neck upward and stared up at the stars for a moment.

"He made me think we were gonna last and then that summer he left me all alone and didn't even give a damn that he had left me more broken that they ever could. He had shone a light on the whole thing for some sick sadistic pleasure and thought it okay. When Ah got back from New York Raven told me they were gonna ship me out that summer to Argentina, Ah would be in school for that term and the following fall and spring terms. Ah lost it. Ah don't know if John eva told ya this but Ah ran away, was missing for three days before me and ya left, before Ah was supposed ta go ta Argentina," Rogue said matter of factly as she rubbed her nose the tears falling from her eyes like rain from a leaf.

Gambit looked at her, appraised her with apprehensive eyes. He hadn't heard that. It would explain why it was relatively easy for her to leave her home with him, when she knew hardly anything about him, about who he really was.

"Non, he didn't tell me dat," Gambit said as he scooted closer to her, placing a warm sturdy hand at her waist.

Rogue nodded and smiled half-heartedly, chuckling sardonically and raising her eyebrows. "Not somethin' the perfect family would wanna talk 'bout, right? Yeah Ah ran away, stayed in this empty housin' development a couple of blocks down. Ah slept for two days and then figured Ah was done with bein' ignored. Ah got really drunk one night and smashed a mirror in the back alley of the complex. Something about that shard just drew me in. Ah don't know what it was. Maybe the devil in disguise. But there it was and Ah took it in my hand...and well...," she looked out at the beginning of the meadow in front of them and sighed.

She unconsciously stroked the scars on her left arm, the small raised lines, bumpy under her fingertips, soft but rougher than the rest of her skin. Gambit took her hand slowly bringing it closer to him as she caught his eyes and the tears that had welled up in the crescents of the corners of his rubies.

He kissed her wrist, not with ferocity, not with underlying need, but with the simplicity of touch she had never felt from him before tonight. The same naturalness that came from standing in the pond with him, hearing bayou frogs sing and cicadas chirp. It was the kind of magnetism, gravity that only biology, only science could explain. And even then something so great between two human beings felt like too much. That's how she felt. Every time his lips met her skin, her lips, her soul.

"As long as I'm alive I will never let y' go back ta this. Promise me no matta what happens y' won't do this again," he said holding her palm to his face.

Rogue nodded silently as she tasted the salt of her tears at the corners of her lips.

"Say it, Anna Marie. Promise me," he urged his hands heavy on her shoulders, like the weight of the words she would say next.

"But-"

"No buts. I don't give a damn if y' think we'll get separated, or if we do. Because if dat does happens I need ta know y're still out dere. I won't be able to live-not knowing," he admitted his eyes falling as he pulled his hands through his hair roughly tugging, the sensation sharp and needed to quell his frustration, to keep him from getting too out of hand.

Rogue saw how torn up he was. How his whole body was once again rigid. He loved her to the point of causing himself physical illness. She could see his body eating itself away at the thoughts of harm coming to her. She could see it written plainly in the urgent intensity of the tense muscles in his arms, and the rigid set of his jaw.

"Ah promise, Ah won't hurt mahself again. So long as ya live Remy Lebeau, Ah'll keep on livin'," she sang out, her voice ringing like a sweet bell in his ears, like a song bird's last note sung in the night.

He pulled her to his chest, breathing in her damp hair, the mixed smell of magnolias and pond water and sweat and grass. That smell burning a hole in his brain, burning through all the memories of anyone who wasn't her. She was all that mattered now. He wouldn't lose her. He couldn't lose her.