Chapter 2

Remy staggered into the kitchen his eyes half closed as he searched the countertops for something. Nearly all the students, the exception being Rogue, were eating in the room and the only adult present was Wolvie. They all watched in silence as Remy moved around and finally stopping when he found the pot of coffee. Some of the girls tried to warn him but the boys interrupted them and instead told the Cajun to pour everything into the cup.

Again there was silence as he settled down into one of the stools pulling out a section of the paper beforehand so he could read it. The whole atmosphere of the room didn't appear to bother him and he took a sip from his mug.

It was then that Rogue entered to room. Now, not even bothering to hide their interest, they openly stared at the scene that was about to unfold. In slow motion they saw her reach the countertop and pick up the empty pot. Confusion flashed across her face and she turned glaring at the group.

Seeing the glare they all glanced at Remy making her look at him. She noticed the black liquid and quickly came up behind him.

Some were smiling anticipating what was going to happen. Even Logan was smiling expecting the major tantrum hopefully resulting in smoldering hot coffee being spilt on a certain someone.

But sadly that didn't happen. Remy lifted the cup up and Rogue carefully took it sipping it while she sat down. Resting her chin on his shoulder she read the paper he was holding and they switched off the cup after they were done drinking.

Nobody could believe what he or she were seeing. Rogue, a.k.a. miss nobody touches my coffee unless you want to die Rogue, was sharing her life saving liquid with the guy she tried to kill just yesterday.

"Logan, tomorrow could ya make a bigger batch of coffee?" Rogue kept her eyes on the paper in front of her.

"Sure kid." Logan was still puzzled by the situation, but he was able to get the words out sounding fairly normal.

They continued drinking from the same cup until there was only a couple gulps left. Remy offered the cup to her but she refused saying that he could finish it.

"Yo're de one dat's goin' to school today, 'member?" A collective groan came from the group as that was said. The school board had decided that they would let the mutants attend the school for one week and then decide if they could stay or not. And today was the first day of that week. "It's not dat bad."

"Well that's because you're not going." Spike poured himself a glass of milk, chugged it down, and poured another.

"Why not?" Jubilee held her glass of soda out and Bobby made some ice cubes and dropped them in.

"Dat's because I'm 21." This time he noticed the silence and looked around the room. "What, yo' didn't know?"

"Well now that you said it, you do look 21." Amara tilted her head as all the other girls nodded in agreement.

"You could pass for even older than that." Tabitha pointed out, and the girls started talking about older guys and how they were more mature and things like that. And the boys just sat there glaring at Remy who was the reason this whole conversation was started.

Remy smirked and was about to ask Rogue again if she wanted the cup only to be stopped by the look on her face. He was going to ask what the problem was when the door open distracting him.

"Attention everyone." They all turned to the speaker, the professor, and waited for them to continue. "Today all of you will be returning back to school. I know this will be a difficult time for you. You will be met with discrimination, rude remarks, and maybe some violence. But I must insist that you don't retaliate, esp. with your powers. We need to show them that they can trust us and we are not something to be feared."

Everyone either nodded or said yes after the speech and went back to what they were doing.

"Remy I wish to speak with you in my office." The professor wheeled himself out of the room and after a moment's hesitation Remy followed.

~~~~~~~~

"I want you to accompany the students to school."

"Drop them off?" The professor shook his head and even though Remy couldn't tell anything by his face his emotions had him worried.

"No I want you to go to school with them."

"Like a bodyguard?"

"Like a student."

"I don't want to go through surgery." The professor chuckled at this and from inside one of the drawers he pulled out a watch similar to the one Kurt wears.

"This will make you look younger as well as hide your natural eye color." Remy carefully took it from his hands and put it on. With a quick tutorial form the professor he pushed the button that would turn it on. He didn't feel anything.

"I think dis is defective." Getting ready to pound it with his fist he was motioned towards a mirror set up in the room. His eyes widened at what he saw. The red orbs were replaced with a dark brown color and a white surrounded it instead of the usual black. Then he noticed the rest of his face. "Professor dis ain't how I looked when I was 17."

"I know. You will not be going to the school as a mutant, but as a regular person. You will be in classes with no mutants in them and I want you to find out what the teachers tell their students. Also I want you to become friends with the rest of the student body. Try to convince them that mutants are just like them, but they just have some special skills."

"Dat's a lot yo're askin' of me Professor. I don't normally hang around with mutant haters."

"I know this will be hard for you but it's only for the rest of the year, but there is one more thing." At this point the professor took a dramatic pause. "You can not tell anyone that you're doing this, if the students knew they might act differently towards you at school."

"Right." Remy didn't like the situation. Hanging around with narrow-minded teenagers wasn't his idea of fun. Shaking his head he thought it over and figured it could be worse. /I won't need to try hard in school./

"So you will attend school, get good grades, and do the other things that I just mentioned. I don't think there will be a problem with this arrangement."

"I already graduated, so I don't really need to worry about my grades."

"I wouldn't call stealing a diploma and writing your name on it, as graduating." The professor gave him a disapproving look.

"Yo' found out 'bout dat?" Remy laughed awkwardly started to stare at the bookshelf. Again the professor chuckled.

"Are there anymore questions?" There was just one more thing Remy needed to know.

"When do I start?"

~~~~~~~~

It was the period before lunch and nobody was happy. All the friends each person made had ignored them or worse, insulted them. It was really bad for people like Rogue and Scott whose mutation was noticeable to others.

Even straight-laced Scott was about to beat the crap out of some guys after they tried to take his shades. And if Scott was being easily riled then Rogue didn't have much of a chance. Already she'd been in 8 cuss fests 4 resulted in pushing, and 1 nearly into an all out brawl against 4 guys. That fight ended up being stopped by Kurt.

/And the day isn't even over yet./ She followed behind Kitty as she led her to class. They, meaning Scott and Jean, thought it was best if she was constantly chaperoned for a couple of days. But they understood why she acted that way. It got around school what her power really was, so not only was she being mocked for it, people were staying away from her. In her science class, which she was the only mutant in it, nobody sat near her. There was a whole circle of desks around her that were empty.

At least they sat next to the others, even if it was only to tease them. Walking out of class to lunch she heard another snide remark come her way. Getting ready for another confrontation she turned only to find the person now in a fight with someone else. Both guys ran into each other and instead of apologizing they started hitting each other.

She knew one of the guys was Rick, a bully, but the other person seemed new. Standing so close to the fight she was able to get a good profile of the new guy. His hair was pitch black and hung over his eyes. His skin was white like hers and when his hair moved slightly she could make out dark brown eyes.

The fight ended quickly with the stranger knocking the person into the lockers with ease. He wasn't even breathing hard. All the people around him started whispering and some of the boys came up to talk to him.

Not that many people liked Rick and to them anyone who stood up to a bully was a hero. Before being guided away from the scene by the hordes of people the guy turned his head and smiled at her.

/That smile seems so familiar./

~~~~~~~~

At a table isolated from the rest, all the mutants sat together for the first time. Usually they would sit with their own groups at lunch, but now their non-mutant friends didn't want to sit with them. It was also safer for them to stick together.

"This isn't fair!" Little sparks of electricity came of Ray as his anger grew. All the others were angry too and depressed so they just let him go on and rant not bothering to tell him to calm down. In a way they wanted the norms to be scared of them as pay back for how they were treating them. But as always someone's conscious kicked in, only it wasn't whom they expected.

"Ah don't like them anymore then ya do, Ray, but the professor said we gotta play nice and we owe him at least that." The southerners voice got everyone's attention and they looked up to see Rogue glaring at them.

"Sorry..." Ray pulled the charge back into his body and stared at the table. The other boys, except Kurt, were now staring at her but it wasn't for the speech that she just gave.

"And when are ya boys gonna grow up and start lookin mah in the face again." The boys said their own apology and blushed at the fact they were caught admiring her body. Ever since she came back they kept on looking at it, and it was really starting to tick her off.

"Yeah it's like you guys have never seen a girl with big..." Tabitha shut her mouth before finishing her sentence but everyone at the table got what she was implying. Some of the guys even nodded their heads until they were smacked by the girls for thinking like that.

"It's not like you girls don't check out guys." Bobby mumbled rubbing his head from the hit it received from Jubilee.

"Yeah but we don't openly stare, right girls?" None of the girls replied to that because they were staring at something a little distance away.

"Did you see that guy?"

"You mean that stud standing in line; he's hard to miss."

"Yeah and that ass!"

"Just like the Cajun's."

"You checked him out?" Jean asked Amara who was stopped herself from turning pink and did what Tabitha taught her to do. So she just shrugged acted normal and replied.

"Yeah didn't you?" This earned a smile from the older girl and they both started to talk about this new guy at school as well as the one back home.

"I think they just answered my question." Bobby knew that they couldn't just hit the girls and get them to stop. If they even tried to tease them they would rip their hearts out and mock them for being boys that just don't understand. Women, the cruelest beings on earth.

~~~~~~~~

Rogue sat down stunned seeing the guy from the hallway standing there in line and talking to a bunch of girls. /Probably flirting./ She heard the others conversation and was about to laugh at their comments but stopped when someone mentioned Remy's butt. /Well it is great...Hey! Who checked out his butt?/ Rogue glared at Jean as she admitted that she too checked him out. Thinking about Remy brought back the memory of this morning and him saying that he was 21.

What shocked her wasn't the fact that he was 21, but the fact that he kissed a guy 4 years older than she was, and if things had gone differently she might have slept with him. Luckily Scott started talking stopping her from thinking too much into it.

"What do you think of the new guy?" The girls looked at each other and from what Rogue could tell they were having a mental conversation. It didn't bother her so much that they didn't include her. Because of her mutation they thought it would be better if they didn't mention guys to her. In this case though they probably thought that she would insult him for the stunt he pulled in the med lab.

"He's funny."

"Romantic."

"Sexy." All the girls had a far away look in their eyes. And the boys now jealous started to list all of his bad points.

"He is a player."

"I've heard he drinks and smokes."

"And he might be gay." This got everyone's attention. They were all silent and then all the girls started laughing at that remark.

Rogue even joined in and the noise they made turned a lot of heads including the new guys. There was just something about him that seemed familiar. She shook of the feeling and began talking with the others. /Maybe today won't be as bad as they thought./

~~~~~~~~

Remy came back to the mansion from his trip a couple hours before lunch. All the students were piled into the rec. room talking about school. Some of the girls pulled him into their conversation telling him about all the bad things that happened. He only half listened, smiling and putting in a comment or question every now and then so they thought he was listening.

After sitting there for thirty minutes he was now assured that he got all the girls in the room to like him. Now all he needed was the guys' respect and then he was set. Carefully he made his way over to the group and leaned against the wall just listening to what they were saying. Waiting for the right moment he found his opening with sports and dove in. At first the others were surprised that he was even standing there but after showing that he had something in common with them they loosened up and starting talking to him.

Eventually the conversation went to cars and girls, two topics that he was very knowledgeable in. Even Scott and Kurt were impressed and they slowly started to loosen up. It was clear that they still didn't trust him, but he didn't need their trust.

Leaving this group as well he headed up the stairs, feeling certain that he was in good standing with everyone in the mansion. He didn't really care what they thought of him, but it was best that he knew all about the people he was staying with. Also all of them will learn not to mess with him.

/It's been three years and I still remember what you told me./ Letting his feet guide him he found himself in front of his room. Pausing by the door he could hear the sound of someone moving somewhere near the windows on the other side of the room. Not even bothering to knock he flung the door open only to have it fly back and hit him in the face.

"Merde!" He grabbed his nose and vaguely remembered it being hit just some time ago. The door in front of him was swung open again and a concerned Rogue was standing in front of him.

"Ah'm so sorry." She pulled his hands down and used her own to check if she hurt him. Her hands were surprisingly gentle as she moved her hand over it, pushing at certain points to see if something was broken. It was when she was done with her examination that he began to talk.

"I thought yo' were at de other end of de room." She bit her lip and yanked him into the room closing the door when he was fully inside. Slowly she turned around and began to explain.

"Ya scared mah with the door openin like that and I ended up tappin into Jean's powers and closin it."

"Why did yo' bring me in here to tell me that?"

"Because no one in the mansion is suppose ta know that ah can tap into the powers that ah absorbed. The Professor thought it would be better that way and ah think so too."

"None of de other teacher's know either?"

"Only Mr. McCoy and that's because he needed ta know about it when he ran the tests." /How many secrets are in this house?/ Sometimes he just wondered what goes on in the head of the strongest mind in the world. "So ya can't tell anybody."

"Fine." Taking in to account that she was in his room, which had a bed, he used her disorganized state of mind to lead her to it.

~~~~~~~~

After hitting the Cajun multiple times for his advances he finally left her alone and they were able to have a decent conversation.

"Why are yo' here anyways?" Rogue didn't look at him when she explained that the professor wanted her to ask him to help her with her powers. After he answered yes she quickly changed the subject to school and what happened.

"It was the worst. All the fights ah nearly got into and then Bobby froze the pipes to every water fountain he passed..." Her voice trailed off as she noticed that fact that he stopped listening to her and was just nodding his head. "Then there was this totally hot guy in school today."

His body stiffened and he carefully said the next words a smirk on his face. "A new guy?"

"No, ah heard about him before but never saw him until today." She wondered why she just lied and she was even more confused as to why Remy suddenly became quiet. The lack of noise in the room made her want to talk. "If only ah met him before the attack, maybe we could have gotten together."

"And then what?" /And then what?/ The words rang in her head and she was reminded about her skin, her cursed skin. She couldn't help the depression that settled into her. After all this time she still wasn't used to it.

"I'm sorry." Remy's arms tightened around her and she leaned into him. French words spilled from his lips as he tried to comfort her. The words calmed her down to the point that she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. Slowly she shut them falling into a deep sleep.

~~~~~~~~

He hadn't meant for it to come out that way. All the sadness that hit him made him want to kick himself. Out of everyone here she was the last person who deserved this. It wasn't until she fell asleep that he began to relax. Taking her into his arms he slowly lifted her out of bed and carried her down the hall.

Luckily no on was there and he was able to make it to her room undetected. Shifting her weight he opened the door to her room. Placing her down on the bed he got up to leave only to have her hands clinging to his shirt. Her hands were formed into fists and he couldn't even pry her fingers off.

Not wanting to wake her he slid in next to her deciding on waiting until her fist unclenched. What he didn't count on happening was having the door open as he fell asleep on her bed.

Author's Note: I'm not very good with names, so could you guys give me some suggestions that you wouldn't mind me using for the new guy. I would appreciate it. So tell me what you think so far, and what you like. Action, drama, romance. you name it. Okay onto the reviews!!!!

PomegranateQueen: Thanks! You know she has to protect her Cajun!

Rogue4787: I agree no woman could resist. And I might just have Rogue take a peek too. You know, just to be fair...

willa. j: Thanks for reviewin!

JexyBaby: Thanks. I am trying to get my chapters out faster. And what happened that caused the change of perspective I'll explain later. There was a gap between her returning and Remy showing up that I need to fit in, but I just can't find out where. I'll try to put it somewhere soon so the confusion will go away.

Aro: Thank you!

me: Thanks!

DemonRogue13: I hope it will.

just me: Thanks!

ishandahalf: Thanke for reviewing!

Caliente: Actually it was the room that was stopping her from using her powers and the serum was a whole different thing, that I might explain some day or I might not.