Note: Genevieve is a reference to the story related in XM #33.

Reminder: This is post-"Villains," pre-"Blind Alley." Which sucks, because I totally had to change my ending in order to wedge it into continuity (it was a good ending, too :pouts:), but that just proves that you should never write the ending first. And that you shouldn't worry about continuity so much.

"I just can't help thinking that we're missing something," Jean said. The conversation was only partially drowned out by the noise from a nearby group of marching-band members, identified as the BHS Drumline by the logo on their t-shirts and by the fact that they all had drumsticks and were putting them to good use on whatever was in range.

"I don't want to believe it either, but she left," Scott said, leaning against the locker next to hers. "Facts are facts."

"I know, but the more I think about it..." She trailed off, waiting for a knot of students to pass, and then went on, "I picked up on something weird last night. At the time I wrote it off as Rogue's power - she's impossible to read, there's just too many voices. Like a haunted house."

"So... now you think it was something else?" he ventured. She hesitated before nodding, making him stand up straighter. "You think it was someone else. A shapeshifter?"

"Maybe. Or someone controlling her mind." Jean shut the locker door firmly, the better to block out the spectres of Mesmero and Mystique. "All I'm saying is, we shouldn't write her off so fast."

"I wasn't writing her off," he corrected. "I was accepting the situation with an eye to finding a way to convert her back."

The drum line launched into a particularly noisy segment on something made of metal, so Jean skipped the comment she was about to make and opted for a knowing smile instead.

Rogue was coming home. That was all there was to it, even if they had to storm Magneto's lair and take her back themselves.

But first they had to go to class.

"You know, I hate math," Rogue said, catching her breath as they waited for the coast to be clear, "but right now that Pre-Calc class is lookin' pretty good."

It turned out that Questa and Fifolet, who'd been coming to help Gris remove the prisoners, couldn't put up much of a fight - a couple of well-aimed cards from Gambit had ended things fairly quickly. Before they had gone down for the count, though, Rogue had picked up a few important bits of history from their bitter comments to each other.

All of them, it seemed - Gambit, Belle, and all of Belle's groupies - had grown up together, but Gambit had left for some reason, and now there was no love lost among them. She wondered how much it would hurt to have your old friends trying to kill you.

Of course, depending on what Candra had had Questa do to sever ties with the X-Men, she might get to find out firsthand.

Beside her, Gambit chuckled without turning his attention away from the hallway junction they were about to cross. "Can't believe you still go to school," he muttered. "Don't you ever get tired of people callin' you a freak?"

"Look at how I dress," she shot back. "I like being different, thank you."

He did look, giving her an openly flirtatious head-to-toe appraisal that would've made her blush if she hadn't been so busy scowling. "I can see. Least this getup looks better than that purple thing."

"Hey, that 'purple thing' cost me a lot of money," she said, offended.

He shrugged. "It's fine - if you got no taste."

The only thing that stopped her from smacking him was the little detail that she needed his help. Instead she changed the subject to something that hopefully wouldn't want to make her kill him. "Where are you gonna go after all this?"

He motioned for silence, then darted around the corner of the hallway. She followed, and as they started running again, he said, "Back to the Acolytes, I guess."

If she'd been Jean or even Kitty, she would've jumped all over the opening and given him the full X-Men sales pitch. But she wasn't Jean or Kitty, she sucked at recruiting on her best days, and anyway, the absolute last thing she wanted in the entire world was Gambit hanging around twenty-four-seven.

So Rogue didn't say anything even vaguely persuasive. "Yeah, I'm lookin' forward to havin' my team around again. Better odds when you've got psychotic blondes tryin' to kick your head in."

"Candra, or Belladonna?"

She gave him a dirty look. "Take a wild guess, 'cherie.' "

Gambit had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. "Belle's okay. She's just a little..." He trailed off.

Rogue suggested, "Jealous?"

"I was gonna say 'homicidal,' but 'jealous' works too."

A faint, barely audible noise - like a whoosh of air - caught Rogue's attention, and she instinctively stopped in her tracks. Gambit also stopped cold, although whether it was because he heard it too or just because she'd stopped, she didn't know.

Belladonna landed silently in front of them, purple armor gleaming in the dim light.

"Speak of the devil, and she shall appear," Rogue said under his breath.

"Hello again, Belle," Gambit said, without any emotion in his voice.

Belle spit something out in French that Rogue didn't understand, then said, "You brought dishonor to the families with your leavin'."

"I had to," was all he said, and that with an indifferent air.

Belle shook her head. "You shouldn'tve left New Orleans. You shouldn'tve left me!"

"I had to-"

"You didn't even say goodbye!" she shrieked, accusing, and sounding so much like a normal teenage girl that it was a little scary.

But it was, Rogue reflected, the first thing Gambit had done that she could not only comprehend but actually approve of. She could just see Belle's reaction to the announcement that she was being dumped; heavy damage and injury was sure to be involved. Better by far to just sneak off with no word.

Gambit said something in French, and Belle answered in the same, shooting an evil glare in Rogue's direction.

"Belle, this is what I'm talkin' about," he said, making a vague gesture that encompassed most of the hallway. "Every time I look at a girl, you try to kill her."

Belle fairly blazed with anger. "You shouldn't be lookin' at other girls in the first place! And don't tell me you were just lookin' at Genevieve."

The response was immediate and strong. "Don't bring Genevieve into this."

"Why, 'cause it was your fault?"

Gambit actually flinched at that, and lost some of the bravado he'd been projecting throughout the whole conversation. "I made mistakes. No point in rubbin' my face in them."

"Why not?" Belle challenged, a nasty expression on her face. "Did it hurt when she died? Did you cry while she was bleedin' to death in your arms?"

Now Rogue flinched. That was just... mean.

Gambit's face hardened into a mask of stone. "You still go for the throat, Belladonna."

"I am my father's daughter," Belle said, brushing one hand through her hair in false modesty.

"Not something I'd brag about, if I was you," he said.

Belle flung her hands out, fingers curling into fists. "You got some nerve!"

"Always," he said, and jumped at her.

"And no sense!" Belle moved faster than any normal human had a right to, and not only blocked the lunge, but stopped him cold. She kicked him in the torso with one foot and he hit the floor at Rogue's feet.

She looked down at him, eyebrows raised. "Well, I'm impressed."

Gambit groaned and covered his eyes with one hand, not getting up. "That makes two of us."

Belle, her fat head visibly swelling with more self-satisfied pride, said, "I've been practicin'-"

"I wasn't talkin' to you," Rogue said immediately, cutting her off and shifting the focus of her scorn from Gambit to the other girl. "The only way you could impress me is if you die some freakishly painful death."

"Then maybe you'll be impressin' yo'self, huh?" Belle shot back, shifting fluidly into a new stance.

"I sincerely doubt it." Rogue stepped out and took a stance of her own, not afraid at all. Well, maybe she was a little afraid; Belle was a trained killer and had no problem inflicting pain, and all Rogue had was experience dodging her teammates and assorted villains.

The bruises on her back and sides picked that moment to send sharp, twanging complaints.

Just in case she hadn't learned her lesson earlier.

Gambit, off the floor and evidently recovered from his unplanned collision, leaned over and whispered into Rogue's ear, "Careful. Assassins fight none too fair."

She jerked her shoulder, trying to shoo him away without taking her eyes off Belladonna. "I kinda figured that already."

For some reason - probably Gambit's proximity to her - Belle's expression went from calculating to furious.

Jealous, homicidal... both of them seemed to fit just fine.

She mentally shrugged off the thought and got ready. Rogue had seen how taking the offensive worked, so she opted for defense and let Belle make the first move.

Belle didn't disappoint. She was standing still one second, and the next, she was a blur of motion heading straight for Rogue.

Rogue could move fast too, when she wanted to, and right now she did. She dodged the first blow easily, but, distracted by the movement, she missed the second one, and Belle caught her in the side with one leg. Rogue went with it and had no trouble blocking the follow-up punch.

A flicker of surprise crossed Belle's face before vanishing into the twisted mask of hatred. Rogue said, "Yeah, it's not so easy now that I got my hands free, is it?"

Belle's face twisted further and something truly dangerous glittered in her violet eyes. "I ain't even tryin' yet."

"Yet" was the key word, because the words had barely left her mouth when she came back into the fight with a vengeance, stepping up the pace until it was all Rogue could do to stay on her feet. Belle's style was shifting, though; she lashed out with an open hand and Rogue narrowly avoided having her face raked. In another few minutes, she thought, this was gonna devolve from a fight between two skilled opponents into a fight between two teenage girls, complete with scratching and hair-pulling.

Belle took a wild swing, the first badly-aimed shot of the fight, and for a moment, Rogue had a chance to do something other than block. She took full advantage of the opening and jumped into a back handspring, and then another, trying to put some distance between them, then tucked into a roll and came up facing the way she'd come - just in time for Belle to plant a foot in her chest.

Rogue was knocked down, hitting the floor hard enough to momentarily knock the breath from her, and before she could get back up, Belle was grabbing her wrists and pinning her with a knee to her throat.

"Face it, girl - you X-Men are no match for us assassins!" she crowed.

Rogue had a really good retort for that one, but since Belle was crushing her trachea, she decided not to waste the effort or the oxygen. Instead, she twisted around, got her feet up flat against Belle's stomach - and pushed.

She wasn't the strongest mutant in the world, not by far, and she didn't have the best leverage from her position, but Belle went flying anyway.

Right into the wall.

It happened in slow motion - Belle hitting the wall, first with her body, and then with the back of her head, and then dropping gracelessly to the floor as though all her strings had been cut. She left a large, oval-shaped dent in the plaster, and a smaller bunch of cracks where her head had hit. And she wasn't moving.

Rogue scrambled to her feet, coughing, not at all pleased with her triumph. If anything, she felt a little sick - although that might have been from the almost-choking. She rasped out, "Oh, God, I didn't mean to..."

Gambit had already crouched beside Belladonna and was fingering her neck. "She's alive."

"I'm sorry, I didn't-" she started, but he cut her off with a shake of his head.

"Don't be. She would've killed you." He rose and gave the girl at his feet one long look, filled with more emotions than Rogue could quite decipher, and then he started walking again, in the direction they'd been going.

Rogue stared for a moment - he was just gonna walk away? - and then hustled to follow suit.

"Now I know Candra's getting overconfident," he said, pushing through a set of doors as if his ex-girlfriend hadn't just tried to kill them, and as if Rogue hadn't just left said ex unconscious in the middle of the hallway. "Usually she'd have most of the families with her. This is just the skeleton crew."

The families again, with just as much explanation as before. Rogue was sick and tired of hearing all this crap that didn't make any sense. She still didn't know what the ruby was, or why Gambit had stolen it, or why he'd had to leave New Orleans - although she had a good guess - or why 'the families' were so important. And she hurt all over, and her clothes were trashed, and she wanted some answers.

So she got in front of Gambit, grabbed his uniform's collar, and said, "No further 'til you tell me what the heck is goin' on!"

"Where are they?" Candra demanded.

Singer took a moment to respond. "East wing..."

"And Belladonna?"

"Out."

And Questa and Fifolet were already down, as was Gris-Gris. Candra seethed. This was all so very trying to her patience. She didn't know which cliche was more appropriate - the one about doing things yourself, or the one about good help being hard to find. Of course, good help had never been easy to find, and she ought to know. She pointed at Singer, saying, "Stay here and try to wake them up. I'm going to end this farce myself."

Singer bowed her head and said nothing.

"I wanna know what all this babble about 'the families' is," Rogue said, crossing her arms over her chest and blocking Gambit's path. "And I wanna know about the ruby, and I wanna know why you stole it."

He looked completely exasperated with her, but said, "Our families work for Candra. Have for nearly two hundred years."

She wasn't sure she'd heard that right. "You mean, you've worked for Candra's family."

"No, for Candra."

"You're tryin' to tell me she's two hundred years old?!"

"More like two thousand. But that's not important." He paused, evidently gathering his thoughts - as if he has any in that fool head, Rogue thought, irritated. "The story goes that about a hundred years ago, she put all of her power - the stuff that makes her immortal - into a gem."

"The ruby," Rogue said, beginning to understand a little of it now. "That's why she called it her heart."

"And that's why she's ready to kill me to get it back." It was said so matter-of-factly that Rogue had to blink. As weird as this whole situation was to her, it made perfect sense to him, and that was just a smidge on the disturbing side. What kind of a life did you have to have in order to accept that a two-thousand-year-old immortal mutant would kill you to retrieve a magical ruby?

Before she could get mad at herself for starting to feel sympathy for him, Gambit reached back and grabbed her around one wrist, pulling her forward with a simple, "Come on."

Once again it was all she could do to not jerk away at the contact even as she delighted in it. Admittedly, she hadn't had a lot of prolonged close encounters with other people's skin in the last few years, but she thought Gambit's was warmer than usual. A boy made of fire, for sure. "Where are we goin' now?" she snapped.

"Not sure. This part of the house I don't know so well." He kept a firm grip on her wrist. "Should be a stairway comin' up soon..."

She gave up on trying to figure out how he knew the house at all and resigned herself to just going with it. They rounded a corner and found themselves face-to-face with the stairway - along with a short, round, grandmotherly woman with her arms folded across her chest an unsurprised look on her face.

"Tante Mattie," Gambit said, eyes widening. He was surprised, obviously, even if the woman wasn't. "What are you doin' here?"

"Goin' where Candra tells me. And now judgin' from those explosions, about to patch up all the assassins you and this girl are hurtin'." The woman nodded in Rogue's direction.

"Rogue," Gambit told her, before Rogue could. " 'Sides, it's not our fault."

"It ain't, now?" Tante Mattie said, eyebrows rising and her attitude shifting. Rogue recognized her type; the grandma who seemed all warmth and love, only to reveal an iron core when her children crossed the line. "You had no business stealin' that ruby."

"Sorry, Tante."

"Your family is outraged," she went on, but there was a glint in her eyes that made it clear she wasn't at all serious. "I'm outraged."

"Sorry, Tante," he said again. This time he was grinning.

"Uh-huh," Tante Mattie said, also amused and not bothering to hide it now. "The garage is down there." She pointed one finger without lifting her hand. "Too bad my old eyes won't see which way you're heading."

Gambit's grin widened. "Thank you, Tante," he said, just like a little boy, and dropped a kiss on her cheek before heading down the stairs.

As Rogue moved to follow, Tante Mattie put a hand out and grabbed her by the arm; her grip was much stronger than Rogue would've expected. "Watch out for him. He's not as smart as he thinks."

"Yeah, okay," Rogue said, pulling away and clambering down the stairs. She had no intention of watching out for Gambit, not after this little adventure was over. In fact, she had every intention of leaving him with a few more bruises than he would've had otherwise.

The old lady's voice drifted down after her. "That boy gets in more trouble..."

That boy gets me in more trouble, Rogue thought crossly, jogging down another mammoth hallway to where Gambit was waiting in the shadows of an alcove.

He gave her a look reading, 'don't take so long,' which she responded to with a look saying, 'bite me.'

He narrowed his eyes, then turned away from her and went down a short flight of stairs that ended in a heavy wooden door. The scent of oil and gasoline was so strong that even she could smell it, and she figured that if the garage wasn't behind the door, it was missing a good opportunity.

Gambit tapped the doorknob, leaving an orange glow of fire behind, and a few seconds later it exploded outward with a metallic pop. He pushed the door experimentally and it swung away from them without so much as a creak of hinges.

The garage was cavernous, easily the same size as the room with the fireplace, and lit by well-placed ceiling lights. Several sleek black sports cars were parked throughout, and part of one wall was taken up by a row of black and red motorcycles.

And standing in the middle of it all, mad as a wet cat, was Candra.

"Hello, kiddies," Candra said, and grabbed them both with her telekinesis before either of them could do anything. "Trying to leave? I'm hurt."

From three feet in the air, Gambit shrugged and said, "The party was fun, Candra, but she's gotta get back to school."

"Oh, really. That's too bad."

The door swung shut and an expensive-looking mechanic's tool chest rolled in front of it, effectively sealing them all in. Rogue was not surprised when Candra released the TK grip on her - what was she gonna do, powerless?

And released, she was apparently forgotten, as Candra turned all of her attention to Gambit.

"You got away from me once," Candra said, tightening her fist and making him wince, "by running to Magneto like a scared rabbit. But not this time. That pompous windbag isn't here to protect you. He doesn't even know you're gone."

Gambit started to say, "We can talk about this-"

"The time for talking is OVER!" Candra shouted, and the telekinetic windstorm came roaring back, filling the garage with an unseen hurricane. "I want my HEART, thief, and I want it NOW!"

"I told you, I don't have it!"

"But you know where it is, and you're going to bring it to me. Or I might decide to kill your family after all!"

"You do, I'll destroy it. You know that."

"Of course I know it, you idiot!" Candra flung him into one of the pillars. "And I know that's why you stole it in the first place. Grandiose plans to blackmail me into better behavior. Surprise, surprise, Gambit - I'm going to get my way whether you want to help or not."

Rogue was jerked forward, into the middle of the garage. Candra turned her face away from Gambit, although he was still firmly caught, and geared up for something that Rogue knew was going to be bad.

"I took away your powers," Candra said to her, voice dropping dangerously soft. "I can bring them back... and I can take them away again. Forever."

The mere possibility nearly took her breath away. "Forever?"

A victorious smile slid across Candra's face. "Forever, Rogue. No more gloves, no more long sleeves, no more flinching away every time someone gets too close... You could touch anyone you wanted, without fear, for the rest of your life."

"What's the catch?" she asked, eyeing Candra suspiciously. There had to be a catch. There was always a catch. And she had a pretty good idea what it was, but there was no harm in playing dumb.

"You'd be working for me." Candra let go of her and she fell to the floor, smacking her knees on the cold concrete. It stung, but not enough to complain about. "Contrary to what you've seen here today, I'm not into the business of roughing people up just because. My empire - both criminal and legitimate - is vast. I make more money per year than the entire country of Liechtenstein."

"A crook is still a crook," she said, but she didn't put as much venom into it as she should've.

"True. But I'm a fabulously wealthy crook, and I'm immortal." Candra gestured at Gambit, who was still caught. "Even if bayou brats like this one get big ideas otherwise."

"Don't ever change, Candra," Gambit said, giving her a patently false smile.

"Mm. I won't." She flicked her wrist and he went slamming into the wall on the far side of the garage. "Now, Rogue, where was I? Oh yes. The catch. You'd work for me for the rest of your life - which I can promise you will be much longer than normal - and I'd reward you with splendor and riches and so on."

Rogue considered her situation carefully. On one hand, she had the X-Men, who valued her as a teammate and a friend. Problem was, she was stuck in a house God-knows-where with a powerful mutant who was obviously crazy, and had no guarantee of getting back to the X-Men, who might not want her back anyway, since Candra had made them think she'd defected. On the other hand, she was being given an offer she couldn't refuse: no absorption power to worry about, ever again, with a host of other incentives thrown in. The problem with that was she'd be selling her soul.

She stalled by demanding, "Why would you want me anyway?"

Candra laughed. "Why not? You've been trained by both Xavier and Mystique. You've got a bad attitude, which I find amusing. And you were more than a match for our dear Belladonna."

"So I just say 'yes' and that's it?"

"Almost." Candra raised one hand and brought Gambit back to close range. "To prove your loyalty, you'll have to get the location of the ruby from your little friend here."

"He ain't my friend," Rogue snapped.

Candra waited, poised, as though she was about to have her picture taken by a fashion magazine.

Rogue looked at Gambit; he wasn't pleading with her, or trying to get away, or much of anything of all except breathing. He met her gaze with a stone-eyed stare that told her exactly nothing.

God, she hated him.

"I'll do it," she said, holding his stare and hoping he could read everything she was trying to tell him.

Candra clapped her hands. "That's my girl! All right, then, let's get this over with."

Rogue climbed to her feet and took a step toward her, and then another. Candra waited for her, radiating victory. Gambit continued to do his impression of a statue.

"Okay," Rogue said, coming to a stop in front of her and taking a deep breath. "You promise?"

"I promise." Candra spread her fingers. "You have my word."

The pink glow surrounded her and Rogue got ready. The most difficult, gray-moraled dilemma of her life, and she'd made her decision... and she was gonna have to live with it forever.

Candra shut her eyes briefly, concentrating.

Rogue closed the distance between them in a single step and punched her square in the face.

Candra let out a thoroughly undignified screech of pain and abandoned all of her telekinesis in favor of grabbing at her nose.

"Your word? That and a dollar'll get me a long-distance phone call," Rogue told her, and just because she didn't want to listen to Candra whine, she took her down with a roundhouse kick that would've done Mystique proud.

Candra hit the concrete floor of the garage and stayed there.

Rogue exhaled, shaking her hand out. Punching always hurt a lot more than they made it seem in the movies. "I thought I'd never get to do that."

Gambit stood, brushing himself off and grinning. "You do good work, Rogue."

It was only the second time he'd called her by name - the first, really, since earlier he'd just been trying to charm her - and she realized that she had yet to call him Gambit to his face. So? she asked herself, dismissing it all. "Now what?"

"Now we'd better get out of here for real." He looked around the garage and then jogged over to the row of motorcycles. The one on the very end of the row was fire-engine red with wicked lines; he picked that one and jumped on. "It's not a Harley, but it'll do. Come on."

She climbed on behind him, but couldn't help saying, "I can ride a motorcycle, you know."

He started the engine and pulled a card out. "Trust me - not the way I can."

She made a hmph noise of disdain but didn't protest it further. He flung the card and the garage door blew out; before the explosion had even cleared, they were driving full-out toward the gaping hole. Rogue put her head down as they went through the smoke, and then the world was full of sunshine and fresh air and endless green lawn.

There was a tremendous, ground-shaking boom behind them a heartbeat later, and she looked
back at the garage to see it being engulfed in flames.

"Oh yeah, forgot to warn Candra about that little goodbye present," Gambit said, glancing over his shoulder with grim satisfaction written all over his face. He sent the speedometer edging over sixty and kept it there as they raced for what looked like the only gate on the property.

Of course, it was closing.

"We're not gonna make it," she shouted - the noise from the bike was loud enough that she doubted he heard, but he pushed the bike a little faster anyway.

The needle flickered around seventy-five, and then he shouted back, "Keep close!"

They made it through the gate with mere inches to spare, but Rogue felt something snag her shirt and tear it further.

"You owe me a new shirt!" she told him, angry with all the abuse she was putting up with, and he just laughed.

The gate opened onto a private drive which then connected with a highway lined with trees, and they roared down the road at full speed. Gambit didn't slow down even when they hit the outskirts of a town. Rogue braced herself as they went tearing down the main street of what a blurred road sign identified as Salem Center, and then they were back on the open road again.

No one pursued them. No cars, no bikes, no helicopters, nothing.

She was starting to think they'd made it.

No one at the Xavier Institute was paying attention to the news, or they would've seen a flash about a mysterious explosion in Westchester County, New York. The fire department, it seemed, had arrived to discover the mansion empty of occupants, although they did report some mysterious damage not caused by the fire, and none of the authorities were quite certain as to who actually owned the house anyway.

The X-Men missed this interesting bit of media coverage because the ones that weren't slogging through high school had returned to the construction effort. Deadlines were deadlines.

In Magneto's base, however, Colossus was watching the news, and he wondered briefly if that was where Gambit and Rogue had been all morning. Things did tend to explode around Gambit.

"Colossus," Magneto asked from the doorway behind him, making the Russian mutant startle, "where is the Rogue girl?"

"I do not know," he answered, trying to be honest. "Pyro mentioned earlier that she might have gone somewhere with Gambit."

Magneto nodded, clearly not pleased with the response but not angry enough to do anything about it... for the moment. "Find them."

Colossus got to his feet with aclarity, saying, "Yes, sir."

"I won't have betrayal in my ranks," Magneto added, fixing a iron glare on Colossus - as though he knew, Colossus thought, going a little cold despite himself - and stalked off down the hallway once again.

Gambit was either the worst driver she'd ever seen or the best, and the reason she wasn't sure was because they hadn't crashed and burned yet, but they should've. Several times. The white streak in her hair was getting whiter by the second.

Eventually, he pulled over to the side of the road and killed the engine, climbing off. She did the same, facing him with equal parts curiosity and confusion.

"Bayville's a few miles that way," he said, pointing.

She put two and two together and scowled. "The deal was you got me to-"

"The Xavier Institute's front door," he finished, cutting her off. "I know. But I'm not. It's gonna be bad enough explaining this to Magneto without havin' to add I dropped in to Xavier's for milk and cookies."

"You lying cheat! I almost got killed and you're goin' back on our deal?" she demanded, hands on hips and more than ready to argue him down.

Instead of answering, he tilted his head and gave her a calculating look. "When did Candra zap you?"

She checked her watch automatically. "About an hour and a half ago. Why?"

"Plenty of time, then," he said, and before she quite realized what was going on, he leaned down and kissed her.

Rogue was just starting to get over the shock of someone actually kissing her - on the lips and everything, and it was helluva kiss, too - when Gambit broke it off, leaving her standing there with a thoroughly dazed look on her face and absolutely nothing to say.

He flashed a wide, easy smile and sketched a mock salute. "Until we meet again, cherie."

"Yeah," she managed, watching without really seeing him climb on the motorcycle and drive away.

But when he reached the first bend in the road and vanished from view, she snapped out of it - the warm, gentle daze eliminated by a cold slap from reality.

"Hey! That son of a- How'm I supposed to get home now?"

Belladonna watched Singer's astral projection of the kiss in silence. The others in the room had retreated well out of range, because they all knew what was coming next, and the red light filling the room only served to make the murderous expression on Belladonna's face more fearsome.

"I'll KILL her!" she shouted, bringing one fist down on the closest surface, which turned out to be a rather expensive antique table. The repair bills would be astronomical.

"It takes two to tango, my dear Belladonna," Candra reminded her, examining her fingernails. The indispensable Mattie had already taken care of the injuries to her face, but the wounds to her pride would still be raw several years from now. "And it wasn't the girl leading that dance."

With the reminder, Belle's fury only grew. She fired a blast of yellow energy at the astral picture, disrupting it. "I'll kill BOTH of them!"

Candra decided that it was high time for a manicure. Three days was far too long to go without one. She also decided that she was tired of the thief, and the X-girl was just no fun at all. "By all means, go right ahead."

It turned out that only a handful of motorists would pick up a girl in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the day, especially if that girl looked like she'd been in a cage match with an axe murderer and then stood too close to a fireworks display.

Of those drivers that did stop, only of two of them failed to set off alarm bells in Rogue's mind. She didn't feel like stealing - she'd had enough of that - and she couldn't play vehicular leapfrog without Kitty.

She wound up walking most of the way - which, she was slightly miffed to discover, was a lot more than "a few miles." Another lie. Big surprise.

It was sunset when she reached the gates of the Xavier Institute, and she'd gotten that tingly feeling again a few dozen miles earlier, which she figured meant she had her powers back. She got through security with no problem - evidently they hadn't locked her out of the system yet, despite her apparent defection - and trudged across the lawn to the gazebo entrance.

Rogue rode the elevator down, leaning heavily against the wall as she did, and reentered the X-Men's temporary home right in the middle of dinner.

She walked past the table where they were eating with no more than a curt, "I'm back."

Several people choked on food. More than one sprayed their drinks all over the dishes in front of them. And all of them immediately abandoned the meal to chase after her.

She ignored the onslaught of questions, exclamations, and accusations until she got to the door of her room. At that point, she turned to face them and said, very loudly, "Okay, I'm only gonna say this once, so shut up and listen!"

Everyone, from the new kids to the teachers, fell silent.

She took a deep breath and launched into the explanation, trying to get it all out as quick as possible. "It wasn't me, it was a shapeshifter. I got taken hostage by some psycho, tied up, beaten up, escaped, and walked back here. I don't know why it happened, I don't wanna talk about it, I don't wanna hear about it, and if any of y'all ever even mention it again - even if you think I ain't around - I'm gonna make you regret it." She tugged at the shred of duct tape hanging from her sleeve and grimaced. "And the next person to say 'gambit' is gonna be eatin' through a straw!"

And on that, she went into her room and slammed the door shut behind her, locking it as an afterthought. Even through the door, she heard her teammates break out in discussion.

We're glad to have you home, Rogue, Professor Xavier's voice said in her mind. He sounded like he meant it.

I'm glad to be home, she said back. And boy, did she ever mean it.

He ended communication with a fatherly, We'll discuss this more in the morning. Good night.

She thought about changing out of her clothes and decided she was too tired, so she flopped down on her bed without even kicking off her shoes. She hadn't eaten in forever, but she was also too tired to be hungry. Lord, what a day - or two days, however long it had been - and there was the promise of a long, thorough discussion tomorrow. Plus she had to go back to school. Great. Being called a freak was so much more appealing than fighting for her life.

Rogue sighed and shifted position on the bed, trying to get comfortable. Something jabbed into her hip and she sat up with an annoyed exclamation. The annoyance faded when she pulled the offending object out of her pocket: a playing card with a distinctive purple and yellow backing.

She turned the card over to see the face of it. Two of hearts.

Until we meet again.

She fell back onto her pillow, a smile growing. Maybe it hadn't been a total disaster after all.

END