A few minutes had passed since that kiss, but the storm wasn't going to let up and the stars had been covered. Logan and Danielle had to concede silently that it was time to go back inside and to leave their idyll moment behind. As Danielle started to chill, Logan pulled her up, balancing her in his arms before feeling her safe to stand by herself. Then, he jumped down from the rock with ease, holding out his arms to catch her.

"Do you still trust me?" Logan asked Danielle again, waiting for her to jump.

Danielle reached out, feeling her mind freely connect with Logan's as her eyes blinded with a headache. No, do you trust me?

Logan glanced at Danielle with puzzlement, seeing her pain and pleasure at the same time. He continued to hold his arms out, hoping that Danielle would make it easier on herself and not tax her strength by climbing down or having him carry her down. And yet, there she was asking him silly questions…

A whoosh of air blasted above Logan's head, shortly followed by a yell of excitement. He quickly moved his eyes towards the action, seeing Danielle fall fast. He caught her roughly and twirled to keep his balance as she laughed hysterically, like she was a little girl. Logan had not realized that she would have taken such a rash step and smiled. He had to.

It was also the first time in a long time that Logan heard Danielle laugh. Her ringing giggle still repeated in his mind for several seconds afterward.

Danielle almost sounded free, young at heart for the moment given to her. She laughed gaily after her shout, louder and louder, until she was out of breath and clenching her sides and begging herself to stop. Even though the pain remained inside of her, she felt the freedom of just believing in nothing but trust, to feel like nothing was going to stop her from riding into the wind and landing right into Logan's arms.

"Holy shit," Logan muttered, feeling Danielle's weight in his arms.

Trust goes both ways, Logan. Maybe it's time I started trusting you just as you did to me.

Logan talked to her in his mind, starting the journey back to the house as he did, but realizing that it might give Danielle a headache. Why now?

I'm seeing what a mistake this has been. I've kept yours from you and you found out in the end, when you were at your worst. I've kept mine from everyone to keep the present from becoming the past. It was easier for me not to say anything and to do what I had to do in order for myself and others to survive.

And what would have my past have done if I knew and told you?

It'd probably for a lot worse, especially for Stryker.

Logan froze and stopped in a patch of snow at the mention of the name. Even if Danielle had been joking in a sarcastic manner, the man still sent Logan into shivers, most of them in anger and resentment. It brought up so many images…humiliations…death…and it was impossible to keep them all at bay. As the snow and wind turned to a more vicious enemy, Danielle touched Logan in concern, trying to reach him through the pain, sensing that she said something wrong.

"Logan," Danielle said in a timid manner, rubbing Logan's leathered arm for assurance.

Logan quelled his sense of his own past and looked down to Danielle. "I'm fine," he only replied, continuing the walk to the house.

Danielle kept her hand on Logan's arm. Are you ok?

"I said I was fine," Logan answered out loud, as if it cut the link between them.

"You know I meant it –"

"I know."

The words meant something more to Danielle. Something was bothering Logan too.

"It's not just me, is it?" she asked Logan, unaware of what he saw and read earlier. "You found something in the house, didn't you?"

By then, Logan had reached the porch, wiping the snow from his and Danielle's arms and bodies. "It's nothing."

"It's something," Danielle insisted. "This house had held everything, secrets most of all."

Logan opened the door and pulled his boots off with his heels. He shucked Danielle's shoes off of her feet as well, finishing up in cleaning the snow off of them. Then, he took Danielle to the couch, putting her down with protests on her lips. He went to the rocking chair, still holding the box with the papers and metal parts, and pulled it out, taking it to Danielle and placing it in front of her on the floor. When Danielle saw what Logan had seen, she gulped down a lump in her throat. She took the box from Logan when the thump of it hit the carpet, picking out this and that paper and placing them in chronological order for him so that he could make better sense of them.

"You knew about this?"Logan asked Danielle, taking out the reports about the bombs planted at the school and pointing them out. "The Professor would not have approved."

"What choice did we have after his supposed death?" Danielle asked him in a peaceful tone, not betraying the desperation they all felt before that July day, but that she knew that Xavier was alive. "We were constantly under attack. The enrollment of students dwindled down to almost nothing when parents found out that we weren't a school for gifted students, but for mutants to positively control their powers. Stryker and Leon had made it publically clear before their deaths. Worse of all, we always had somebody in and out, causing trouble or discrediting us. It wasn't before long before we too had to be militant and train to fight back. We became like a resistance to the humans against us."

"But the Fuzzball –"

"Hank was many things, Logan, but diplomacy had long since been over for him, even as the politician inside of him grew to be more careful than ever before. He had the chance to be in charge of mutant affairs, but was oust from his positions of promotion afterward when the mudslinging campaign grew. This time, he had the chance to show the world that mutants were not dangerous, but at the same time, needed to protect his own. He felt the children of the school as his own, Logan. He did not get the chance, as many of us did, to enjoy having them except in the school setting, and his love life bit him in the ass many times."

"Rogue, Bobby, Devon…"

"All of them are gone, Logan. All of them. As far as I know, they are at the camps."

"And you?" Logan traced a finger around Danielle's face, repeating a question he long ago asked. "How did you escape?"

"Special favors, if you want to call it that, but let's not get into it. What matters now is your mission, whatever it is."

Logan stiffened. "How did you know?"

"Oh, I know many things, Logan. Don't you remember?"

Logan saw through the façade of sarcasm quickly. "Don't be coy with me," he warned jokingly.

"I'm not," Danielle replied innocently, turning serious in seconds. "What came across when you entered my door some time ago is what happened between the time you left the mansion to now. I saw what happened…what you saw, what you learned…and anything you held dear to your heart. While you recounted many things to Michael and Riley because they were anxious to hear of it, I knew what you hid from them. So, you don't be coy with me. Tell me the truth."

"The Professor is alive and needs the X-Men back together."

"That much I figured, Logan. But what's Magneto doing there? What are his schemes?"

"As far as I know, he's been with the Professor all the way. I don't know when and where they got together."

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

"What?" Logan looked at Danielle strangely.

"Magneto has been the Professor's friend for years. I think they've been enemies far longer, but friends first. That's as much as I found out. And since Magneto is the Professor's enemy of his enemy –"

"They're friends," Logan confirmed. "Yeah, I don't like it much either."

"We can work on that later." Danielle pulled some of the metal parts out of the box on he bottom, almost dropping them when she realized what they were. "Holy hell, I thought these went the way of the dinosaur."

"What do you mean?"

Danielle looked at Logan fiercely. "Logan, do you remember when we hacked into Peter's computer and saw pictures of these? And took them back to the Professor and he didn't say anything?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I researched what they were some time ago. It took me a while to hack into Trask's systems, but I found out that they are called Sentinels. They were created by Bolivar Trask and used after his assassination in 1973 by a mutant. If I remember correctly, he had been killed by Mystique in Paris, when he was attempting to get the North Vietnamese interested in his company and products. Mystique disguised herself, in her normal fashion, and shot him before being intercepted, tortured and studied. Her DNA proved to be the starting point for mutant study and the Sentinel program."

Logan crossed his arms. "And what does that mean for us?

"That perhaps the Sentinels are still out there and hunting us down," Danielle replied darkly, putting her hand to her neck like there was a necklace there, ready to pull. "It's utterly possible that Leon started to find the program further…as a backup plan, the last one, to kill us all."