Callous

Chapter 02 – Clammy

Wolverine finished the last of his can of beer and tossed it in the trash. He was tired and sweaty and actually a little worn out.

Rebuildin' the Institute is more exertin' than fightin' a dozen drones in the danger room. He caught site of a student coming up the drive and he huffed. Especially when a certain kid whose new super strength would be mighty helpful in the rebuildin' keeps avoidin' this place as though Sabretooth were bunkin' here.

By the time he reached for a second beer out of the refrigerator, that certain kid entered the kitchen and stopped short.

Wolverine closed the refrigerator and sniffed the air as he faced her. Her scent was a bit disconcerting. He smelled fear on her, though it was at least an hour old. Anxiety, that was fresher. The Brotherhood, they were fainter—Not like any o' 'em could touch her, though, so that's not surprising—and their scent was an hour old at least, too. And someone else too. Wolverine couldn't place the last person's scent, though it was familiar to him too. That scent worried him. It was a male scent and it was stronger than the brotherhood's, about as old as theirs were too, so that meant whoever this other guy was, he'd gotten a lot closer to her.

She don't seemed too upset about it, whoever he was, whatever had happened—he popped open the beer—Not like she'd talk 'bout it anyway. The girl's shut tighter than a frightened clam—he took a few gulps, drinking down half the can—Even more so since we got rescued.

The rescue… That, he remembered… sort of. The stuff in between his being captured and the rescue was all but gone. What was there was fuzzy. And there wasn't much of it. The rescue, though, that was a bit clearer.

The memory of the rescue began with a voice that had spoken in his head. The voice had said, ~"—ake up… Logan, wake up…Logan…"~

The voice had indeed woken him up. It had woken him, and was quickly replaced by the sounds of a battle taking place somewhere outside where he was. He was on an examining table in what felt like an examining room. It was cold and sterile feeling, with just a hint of maniacal thrown in. The maniacal came from the sounds inside the room itself. The interior of the room was quiet, not as quiet as a tomb, but quiet nonetheless. There was the faint static buzz of electronic and computerized equipment, the beeping of heart and other such monitors, and the sound of people breathing. There was his breathing yes, but there was the very quiet feathering sound of someone other than him breathing, but just barely. He also got the sense of someone else holding their breath, trying to keep from being heard as they made some sort of struggle. His grogginess was great enough that he couldn't distinguish where the breathing noises came from. Part of him even wondered if they were even real. They were so quiet. The battle noises from outside broke the quiet here and there. It just all seemed so eerie.

He could feel his body, stiff and groggy from sleep, as he lay on the cold metal table. There was a pinch in both his arms he soon recognized. Surgical tubing, attached to needles were stuck in both his arms, were draining him of blood. Not a whole lot. But enough to make him woozy despite his healing factor. That's when he noticed the heavy, cold weight around his neck.

Collar! They put a damn collar on me!

He growled as he ripped the needles out of his arms and tried to lift his head up. The room spun a bit, so he laid his head back down and held his hands to his head trying to steady himself.

Must've taken more blood than I thought.

He looked to his arms, to where the needles had been, and saw that blood was trailing from the small holes the needles had left.

Huh?!

He hadn't healed the tiny wounds?

He felt the collar around his neck and noticed that a light was blinking on it. He yanked on it, but he didn't have any effect on it. He popped his claws. Well… he thought he popped his claws. He looked accusingly at his hands and tried again. Nothing happened. That's when he made the connection. Collar… no healing… Collar… no claws…

Suppression collars…

His vision finally cleared… as did his wooziness. The groggy, fuzzy feel to his thoughts remained, though. He looked to his left. There was a row of metal surgical tables in line with his. Three were on his left side, to be exact. The one on the end was empty, but the other two were not. The one directly beside him held a blond woman whom he felt a faint familiarity towards, but couldn't place. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, about 5' 7", and in decent shape. She was very pale, unnaturally bluish pale. Her blue eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, and empty looking. She had tubes coming out of both her arms just like he had, but there wasn't much motion of the blood through them. He didn't need any more evidence to know she was dead. That realization hurt a little. He had known her, he didn't know how well he'd known her, but he had known her and now she was dead. He tried really hard to remember anything about her, but his head was too foggy.

Like before… Up in Canada… with the spooks… when ya woke up in the liquid filled chamber.

~"They drugged ya…"~ said the voice in his head. The voice was familiar, much more familiar than the dead blonde woman on the table directly to his left. Still, his head was too foggy to make the connection to the voice. And there was something wrong with the voice, too. Something different about they way it should've sounded to him.

He shook his head again. He'd worry about it later, when he could think straight.

The table after the one that held the dead blonde woman held a second dead blonde woman. She had all the same telltale signs of the first dead blonde: blood tubes, but only in one arm, unnaturally bluish pale skin, open lifeless blue eyes. The second one was a little younger than the first one. The second one was probably in her late teens or early twenties. Her hair was shorter and was more of a platinum blonde. Her features were sharper and a bit more feminine, too. Also, she had a better body, he noticed with a faint silent chuckle. It wasn't hard to notice that since she was wearing a white halter-top, which left very little to the imagination. He immediately felt guilty for his appreciation of her body, though. He felt he was being rude for having the instinctive, hormonal recognition of her. She was dead, after all.

~"We will be too, if ya don't get us outta these things,"~ the voice said inside his head.

~"Jean?"~ He asked inside his head as the name popped into it. She was a telepath, he remembered. But he couldn't put a face to the name or the ability, or why the idea of his knowing a telepath or even communicating with one right then didn't unsettle him. His head was still too foggy.

~"It's the drugs and ah'm not Jean."~

~"Who are ya, then?"~ He asked as he tried to turn his head to the right. Something told him the voice came from that side. However, his head clanged against a metal brace of some sort, so he couldn't look over there.

~"Logan, please,"~ The voice pleaded. ~"Someone will be back any minute. You're not strapped down. Help us… Help me."~

He wasn't restrained, he realized as he looked back to the woman on his left and saw that metal straps were clamped around her head, wrists and ankles. He lifted his hands up just to make sure. Didn't matter that he'd already known that since he'd pulled out the tubing. It wasn't until he looked at his hands specifically that he really realized they weren't clamped in. Neither were his ankles. He looked to the metal object that kept him from turning his head to the right. Sure enough, it was a clamp that was supposed to fit over his head. It was only half closed, like whoever had put him there was compelled to leave before they finished strapping him in. Or maybe they were about to remove him from the room? He did have the tubes in him when he woke up. Why would someone put the tubes in BEFORE restraining him? He had been drugged so it wasn't a totally insane idea for them to have released the restraints before taking out the tubes. And the drugs were wearing off without the help of his healing factor after all, right?

How could he remember his powers and remember the logic surrounding restraining a prisoner, yet not much else?

He heard the sounds of the battle outside get louder. There was a small explosion that rattled the walls. The fighting was getting closer.

~"That's why they left, but they'll be back, so hurry,"~ the voice pleaded again. Logan pushed the head clamp out of his way and wondered why the sound of that voice in his head like that, through telepathy, seemed wrong, like it shouldn't be possible.

He got up and immediately saw why. He knew the person on the table to his immediate right and that wasn't her power. He couldn't remember her name, but he knew that she wasn't telepathic, at least she wasn't supposed to be. She looked to be about sixteen, was fairly thin and wiry—in a lithe sort of way—had short, tousled red-brown hair with a shock of white framing her face; and she had piercing emerald green eyes [1]. For some reason, her lack of makeup seemed odd to him, though he couldn't remember why. Just like the others, her head, wrists and ankles were clamped, and there were tubes coming out of her arms. However, unlike the others, she was very much alive. She was struggling against the clamps and she seemed to be the slightest bit hovering above the table, just as much as the clamps allowed for. That's when he looked to her neck and saw that she didn't have a collar on.

"C'mon, already, Logan!" She snapped at him, this time out loud.

He moved to her and released the clamps. As soon as she was free, she ripped the tubing out of her arms with hardly a wince. She floated up from the table and then down beside him. She didn't stand, however; she just hovered a few inches from the ground.

"What the?!" he exclaimed.

She shushed him by placing a finger against her lips. "Later, Logan," she whispered. "We gotta get outta here now."

Her eyes moved to the collar around his neck and she reached for it. He flinched. He couldn't remember why he flinched, though.

"Ah'm wearin' gloves, see," she said and waved her gloved hands in front of him for emphasis.

He realized, then, that she was dressed differently than everyone else, him included. While he and the others were wearing what seemed to be their own, albeit dirty and rank, clothing, she was wearing a solid black body suit that covered her poisonous skin from neck, to wrists, to ankles. There were yellow and red patterns and numbers on her arms and legs. Plus, there were open flaps on the arms of the body suit, giving their captors access for the tubing. There were also flaps on the backs of the legs of the body suit, too. He could just see a hint of those, from where the slits reached around to the sides of her legs. There were some red patterns around those slits too.

He managed not to flinch the second time she reached for his collar.

CRACK! She'd snapped it like a dry twig. Wolverine raised an eyebrow at that one. He couldn't bend it and she broke it like it was nothing.

"Late—" She began to brush off the explanation he so obviously wanted, but he didn't let her finish.

He grabbed her arm, careful of the open flaps, and held her there, and said, "No, now Ro…" He couldn't remember her name exactly. But his powers were slowly returning—feeling like pins and needles—and his head was clearing up more. He knew her name started with an R and an O, but that was all. He tried to ignore that part and said, "Spill it."

"They made me absorb some people," she spat out like it should be explanation enough. He didn't know why, but he took it like it really was all that needed to be said.

She then turned away from him and rushed for the last table in the room. It was on the other side of the table she'd been strapped to.

"Why couldn't ya get out o—," he started to ask as he followed her movement to the last table with his eyes. What he saw on that table accounted for his sudden loss of speech. What he saw startled him enough that he no longer even cared to find out why she couldn't break free of the clamps when she could so easily break his collar.

Evan. The name was like a stab in his gut. He was remembering even more with the slow return of his healing factor now that the suppression collar was back, but he almost wished he hadn't. The recognition of the name Evan was quickly followed by the name Rogue. He now remembered that Rogue was the name of the girl that shouldn't be able to talk telepathically, defy gravity like she was doing, nor be strong enough to break the collar like it was just a dry twig.

Evan. It was Evan on that final table. He was strapped down on it. His eyes were closed. He was very still. Tubes came out of only one of his arms, the way it had been with the second dead blonde.

"He's still alive… barely. He was the last one they brought in here." Rogue said—still hovering, not standing, Wolverine noted—as she released Evan's restraints.

Wolverine was reminded of the two dead women and, as he moved to check on Evan, he asked Rogue, "They didn't drug ya… they made ya watch?" The idea of it obviously disgusted him.

Rogue didn't look at him when she answered. Instead she stayed focused on removing the tubing. She was a lot more careful removing Evan's than she had been when she'd removed her own. "Ah kinda pissed some of 'em off," she said quietly, though not quite sheepishly, as if she were remembering something that brought up mixed emotions of pride and regret and pain.

Wolverine released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding when he found Evan's pulse. He also saw Evan's chest rising and falling with his slow, shallow breaths. His breathing like that wasn't a good sign, but as least he was still breathing.

As soon as Rogue snapped off Evan's collar, Wolverine started to pick him up. Rogue beat him to it, though, and lifted Evan like it took no more effort than it would have taken to lift a pencil. As she did it, she said, "I'll take him. He'll slow ya down."

Wolverine gave her another questioning look with an incredulously raised eyebrow.

"We talk as we walk?" Rogue said, her voice and expression announcing her annoyance.

Wolverine nodded and they headed to one of two sets of swinging doors. He noticed that she didn't walk, but instead hovered… still hovered. That was really bothering him for some reason.

Maybe she can't stop it… can't control it.

He didn't know it then, but she WAS controlling that newly gained ability of flight. She had absolute control over that. She was flying on purpose… and not because she thought it was fun.

Rogue paused when they reached the doors. A faraway look entered her eyes, like she was seeing not with her eyes but with something else. "It's clear for a bit," she told him and then pushed through the doors

Once they got into the halls, Logan used his still returning heightened senses to confirm her estimation that there wasn't anybody close by. That's when Rogue finally gave him some answers to his prodding. She whispered, "The restraints are made of some stuff they called Adamantium. Ah couldn't break 'em. It's too strong. The collars aren't made of it. So ah could break those."

"Ya got a couple extra powers there, girl," Logan said, his anger growing, "Didn't know you could absorb more than one at a time [2]." He knew that it was a pain/pleasure thing for her to absorb other people. She got their gifts, their talents, their skills, and if they were mutants, she got their powers too. Along with those things, though, she also got their memories, feelings, and thoughts, and that was always an assault on her own psyche. The idea of their captors forcing her to go through it more than once angered him. He was supposed to take care of her, take care of lots of other kids like her. That was another little bit more of his memory that came to him. His healing factor was kicking in pretty good by that point, yet still not up to full power. Must have been some powerful drugs they'd loaded him with. "How many people did they—"

He was cut off when Rogue stopped dead in her tracks. "Someone's comin'," she said as she motioned to the intersecting corridor ahead of them with a bow of her head. "Four," she said with that faraway look in her eyes, "And they've got guns, big guns, and collars… they're carrying extra collars." The last part was spat out, laced with venom.

"Take him," she whispered, and before he could object, Rogue dumped Evan into his arms and flew ahead. She continued issuing orders via telepathy, telling him, ~"They know the way out."~ There was a pause as she took the information out of lab security personnel's heads. ~"It's back two corridors, make a right, then past three more, and through the maintenance room. Exit's on the southeast wall."~

He huffed and followed right on her heals to the corner that she had said the guards were coming from. When they reached the corner she spun back on him, crossed her arms over her chest, and glared at him with a shocked expression that brusquely asked him, clear as day, 'why aren't ya doing like ah said?'

He huffed again, "I ain't leavin' ya to fight 'em alone, kid. You take Evan outta here—" He silently wished he wasn't carrying Evan so he could've popped his claws for emphasis right there. "—I'll take care of 'em my way."

~"Shh,"~ she hissed in his head and then surprised Logan again, by lifting him, still holding Evan, and flew them back to the corridor she said would lead the way out. As she flew, she said, ~"Look, Logan. Ya ain't back to full health, yet. Ah can handle them, really."~ She deposited them back on the floor and then popped a couple of bones out of her forearm (Evan's power) for emphasis. He had to admit that he was amused with her gall, and her style.

Guess she picked a few things up from training with me, He thought proudly. He knew she'd heard his thoughts because she smiled at him. The smile only made him not want to leave her to fight the guards by herself even more. She was still just a kid.

~"Then, yer comin' with. We can just leave. We don't need ta fight 'em."~ He projected at her.

~"Listen, Logan. They know where we are, they're trackin' us—don't ask, just listen—they'll catch up if ah don't stall 'em."~

He held her pleading, yet confident, gaze for a moment while he decided. Finally he nodded.

~"Ah'll be fine. Ah promise, Logan… Now get him outta here."~ And with that she took off.

He watched her for a moment as she flew down the hall. He was about to leave, when he noticed something odd about her. She flew away from him in a position that put her at a diagonal, a sort of half-horizontal to the ground. It was the first view he'd had of her from that angle. Until then, he'd seen her lying on her back or hovering in front of him, facing him, or beside him in a mock standing position. When she'd moved ahead of him after she'd dumped Evan in his arms, she'd still been in that mock standing pose, so her legs had been blocked from his sight by Evan's body in his arms.

The new view he had of her revealed something disturbing about the flaps in the body suit on the backs of her legs. He could now see gashes—nearly healed—beneath the open flaps—no, not flaps, tears—at the backs of her calves and thighs. He could also smell the dried blood that had been the result of those gashes. Dried blood. That's what those red patches really were. The yellows were numbers and letters. The reds were just blotchy shapes. They were really dried blood. He hadn't noticed the blood smell of those nearly completely healed wounds earlier because the dried blood smell had blended in with the fresh blood smell from the surgical tubing. He had been wrong about that, though. He'd been very wrong. A realization hit him and he cursed himself for letting her go off on her own. Rogue's flying because she CAN'T walk.

They all found out later that both her legs had been broken—in two places on each of her legs, thigh and calf—so bad that the bones had shoved through the skin. After they had arrived at the Institute, she would confess that the injuries had occurred soon after they had been captured and arrived at the installation. She would tell them that it had been her punishment for not being cooperative, for snapping at her captors. She would say that, eventually, her captors had made her absorb Wolverine to heal them so they wouldn't have to waste valuable medical research supplies by treating her wounds. She would also tell them that once she was healed her captors then punished her by not doping her up like they did the others when they performed their tests on her.

Everyone had believed her story without question. Everyone but Wolverine, that was. There were inconsistencies between what she'd told them and what his field experience and his heightened senses had told him. The blood from those wounds—and others—may have been dry when he'd awoken, and she may have been healed, but those breaks hadn't occurred right after they got there. For one thing, they weren't quite completely healed. Secondly, she obviously hadn't thought they were healed enough for her to trust walking on them. And thirdly, he had smelled how fresh they really were.

At the time of her confession, though, Wolverine had brushed it off as her being self conscious about having been forced to absorb his powers. Later, though, after other inconsistencies arose, after her unwillingness to offer up anything other than what the others had told or what she couldn't possibly hide from everyone, he started to doubt the truth to her confession.

When he first discovered the leg injuries, though, he'd been stuck with an unconscious, barely breathing Evan in his arms, and she was nearing the corner that lead to the guards she was about to encounter. It ticked him off, what she'd done, lying to him to get him to leave with Evan while she delayed the guards, but he left anyway. What else could he do? He couldn't take Evan with him to fight alongside her. He could already hear that the confrontation was nearing them. It was echoing down the halls. And he really wasn't about to leave Evan right there on the floor in the middle of a maze of hallways just so Evan could be discovered and recaptured. So, he did the only thing he could do considering the circumstances. He escaped the building with Evan, swearing to come back for her the moment he got Evan to a safe place.

About fifty feet past the exit of the building—which he'd realized once he was outside was actually an enormous modified warehouse—he ran into a few of the guards and he was forced to set Evan down after all. But, before long, Scott and Kurt had come across them. Wolverine had Kurt teleport Evan to safety and then he and Scott both turned to go back into the warehouse. That's when Wolverine discovered the real reason Rogue had convinced him to get Evan out of there.

Boom! Boom-boom-boom!

A series of explosions rocked the warehouse. The concussive forces of the blasts sent the warehouse toppling. A few dozen people managed to scramble out of the warehouse before it entirely collapsed upon itself.

Logan roared, "Rogue's still in there!" He took off at full speed for the collapsed building with Scott trailing right behind him. While some people were still fighting, Logan dug through the debris.

Scott caught up to Logan and put a hand on his shoulder to calm Logan's furious digging. Scott said, "She's okay, Logan. Jean says she's okay."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than they saw Rogue erupt out from underneath six floors of debris. She burst out, zipping straight up, higher and higher in the sky, almost out of sight. Then she stopped, caught her breath, and looked around to see her fellow X-Men and, surprisingly, the Brotherhood scattered around the site. Both teams were either fighting or sifting through the debris and tending to the injured. Finally, she flew back down, to hover, never letting her feet touch the ground, and continued to aid in the fight, the sifting through the debris, and tending to the injured until it was over.

Wolverine had never been angrier, or more relieved, or more proud of her than right then.

Now, it was two and a half months after they'd been captured, almost six weeks since they'd been rescued—or, rather, since they'd escaped. Wolverine could smell that Evan's scent had left Rogue when his powers had, but Wolverine could still smell the scents of the two dead blondes on Rogue. One of the blondes, he'd remembered once the drugs had completely worn off, had been a woman named Carol Danvers. She had been, in fact, an old buddy of his. The other blonde had been a woman named Emma Frost. Hank and Xavier had figured out that Rogue had permanently absorbed Carol's powers. They also figured that Rogue's permanent absorption of Carol was what had ultimately been responsible for Carol's death. Hank and Xavier had surmised, sadly, that if Carol was alive while their captors were taking her blood, she surely didn't have the strength left over after being absorbed so fully by Rogue to survive the blood taking.

Hank and Xavier still hadn't confronted Wolverine and the others about the purpose of the blood taking. They had all assumed it was for genetic and other such testing, and trusted that Hank and Xavier would tell them if they discovered that there was anything more seedier to it.

Hank and Xavier didn't think that what had happened between Carol and Rogue had also happened with Emma, though. They admitted that they couldn't find any trace of Emma's telepathic ability in Rogue, and that Rogue herself confirmed that it had faded away a few days after she returned to the Institute. Of course, neither Xavier nor Jean could scan her to get the most accurate result of that inquiry.

But Rogue still has Emma's scent. Wolverine thought, careful to keeps those thoughts private… Just in case. Rogue wasn't talking about what had gone on while they were captured. She confirmed what the others had reported, and those things that were beyond obvious to the others, but she didn't offer up anything more concerning what she personally went through or saw. Nobody really believed that she'd only seen or experienced the same things that Wolverine, Hank, Evan, or Fred Dukes had seen or experienced. When they considered the number of powers she had when they'd escaped, the number and extent of her healed, yet still apparent injuries, it just didn't make sense. Regardless, Wolverine noticed that they'd chalked it up to her clamming up because she wasn't ready to discuss her trauma. Actually, she had outright refused the Professor's counseling sessions. Hank and Evan participated in the sessions. Heck, even Fred Dukes came over and spoke with the Professor a few times. And even Wolverine, himself, had discussed the few things he did remember with the Professor, though Wolverine hadn't participated in what he had deemed 'Professor X's pansy ass sessions.'

There was more to it. Rogue was hiding something. Wolverine was sure of it. And he had his suspicions about what some of it was. Yeah, he had his suspicions all right. And those suspicions made him distrust Rogue, and that distrust unsettled him immensely. He had a soft spot for her. He thought of her like a kid sister, or maybe even like a daughter. He respected her, liked her, and felt a little bit more protective of her than the other kids. But now his suspicions were tainting his father-daughter relationship with her.

Wolverine blinked and stepped out of Rogue's way as she opened the refrigerator to take out a can of soda. She also had a bag of chips in one hand. After she closed the refrigerator, she looked at Wolverine and asked, sarcastically, "Back from memory lane, huh?"

Logan narrowed his eyes at her. Did she really know that? Or was she just guessin'? Maybe just being a smart ass? Logan thought, being careful to keep it to himself. Out loud, he returned her sarcasm, and said, with diluted mock horror, "She speaks."

Rogue rolled her eyes and headed out of the kitchen.

He called after her, "Where ya think yer goin'?"

"Mah room… oh, ah'm sorry, ah meant 'mah porch,'" she called back over her shoulder.

"No yer not," he said.

She stopped, turned and frowned at him. "Why not?"

"Yer gonna help with the rebuildin' like everyone else."

"Ah will, aftah ah'm done with mah homework."

"Now, Rogue. You can do yer homework after dinner like the others are. After it gets dark."

"Fahne," she said, turning back to the kitchen to put her snacks away. "Gawd, ah don't know what the big deal is anyway."

"The big deal, Rogue," Wolverine said, his eyes flashing angrily at her, "Is that yer powers will speed this up. All the other kids are helping while yer either hiding out or complaining and you've got the least to complain about when it comes to this kind of work. With those new powers of yers, ya probably wouldn't even break a sweat."

Rogue threw her snacks to the ground, and due to the force of the new strength she was still getting used to, the soda exploded on both of them. She ignored it as she yelled, "Ya evah think that maybe ah don't wanna use 'em?! Ah did kill someone ta get 'em, remembah!"

And with that, she flew out of the room.

"Damn," Logan muttered.

Footnotes:

[1] I don't care if she doesn't actually have the emerald green eyes on the animated series (nor that she doesn't seem to always have them in the comics, either). I say she has emerald green eyes, so there!

[2] Has she ever absorbed more than one person at a time in the animated series? If so, then just ignore that comment. If not, then I like the idea of it being somewhat as a surprise the Wolverine and the others.

TIME LINE

0 days: DAY OF RECKONING. 1st news broadcast of mutants. Rogue, Logan, Fred, and Hank are captured.

3 days: RAID ON THE INSTITUTE. Described briefly in prologue.

42 days (6 weeks): RESCUE. Mentioned in prologue. X-Men discover that Rogue has new permanent powers that allowed her to survive the warehouse collapsing on her and prevents Jean and Xavier from reading her mind (Ch. 1).

56 days (8 weeks): PROLOGUE. It is revealed that Xavier changed the memories of Bayville inhabitants to make them forget that the X-Men and Brotherhood were the mutants involved in the news broadcast of the giant Sentinel attack.

70 days (10 weeks): CHAPTER ONE. Rogue's 1st week back to school. Pietro tries to rescue Rogue from the dastardly Remy, who has so evilly trailed the Queen of Hearts card on her cheek. How horrible of him!

72 days (10 weeks and 2 days): CHAPTER TWO. Logan flashes back on his memories of the rescue, prompting him to confront Rogue about helping more with the reconstruction of the institute. Surprise, she's been avoiding using many of her new powers because she'd killed those whom she'd stolen them from.

Author's Notes: Hmmm, did Rogue permanently gain Emma's telepathy? Why did the warehouse explode? Did Rogue know that it would and was that really why she sent Wolverine off with Evan? What did happen to her legs? Why did she lie about what happened to her legs? Ahh, so many questions left unanswered. You'll just have to read more chapters to find out won't you.

Thank you for reading.