AN: Okay, quick note here people. This is wierd. Especially for me. I'll admit it. There is almost no dialog, and the story isn't told like everything is happening now. Its more like things are being retold. Arg. Whatever. I just started writing this again and this is what came out. I kinda like it but I realize that other people probably won't so it is okay to say it sucks. But hey, I'm an author playing with differant styles of writing. Not all experioments are going to work. Alright, I'm procrastinating letting you read. I know. My bad. I'll go shut up now.

Part II

She could admit it later, when everything was said and done, that she had left the Institute with less then wonderful planning. She just knew she had to get away. Far away. It had actually been the Professor who had suggested a tour of Europe. By staying at Youth hostiles and the like, Rogue was able to actually save a lot of money. And after all, it wasn't like she wasn't already used to sharing living space with others.

And so she had headed out.

She spent the first couple months in Europe walking. It had been strange, never quite knowing where she was going or how far her feet would get her. But she had done it and somehow it ended up being one of the best times of her life. She had been completely alone and yet, for the first time in a long time, she hadn't felt lonely.

She had finally been totally free. She was able to indulge in any whim she wanted. If she wanted to stay up to watch the dawn or check out some little hole in the wall town, there was no one to tell her no or that she had other, more important things to do.

Eventually she had gotten a job at a small art supplies store in a small town in England called Dragonsville. Truthfully, it was the name of the town alone that had forced her to detour in her wandering. The town hadn't really been anything special but somehow she ended up stopping there and deciding this was where she wanted to settle down. At least for awhile. It had been something that was perfect for her. The pay at her store wasn't all that great but the hours were flexible and the clientele never looked twice at the young Goth.

The one thing that she hadn't expected when she left was Logan. Somehow, once every few weeks, he managed to track her down no matter where she was. Even when she hadn't known where she was, Logan had. He never asked her to come back like she had silently dreaded he would. She knew that if Logan asked, she would have come. But he never did. He just came to make sure she was alright.

Once she had asked him if the Professor was the one sending him but he had shook his head and grunted a negative.

And over the first year that she was gone, the two of them became friends. It kind of scared her sometimes how much a like they were. There was this sense that Logan would understand everything she said and felt and still be there for her. And yet, she never felt any sort of romantic interest in him. He was like the other half of herself, just as tormented and gruff, and there was no way she could ever feel anything for him except a deep friendship.

She actually read a book that talked about something similar. Two friends were explaining their relationship. The man claimed that they were soul mates, two sides of the same coin. But true soul mates were too alike to ever be interested in each other in any sort of sexual way.

So Logan was her soul mate. Her protector and friend. He was the only one that she let hug her when she felt like crying. He was the only one she allowed herself to get drunk with, knowing that he would look out for both of them.

He was the one that she trusted, that if she ever lost control again, would be the one to take her out.

He knew all her secrets, her hates and her loves. And in return, slowly, she began to learn all of his.

Truthfully, she had absorbed him once or twice in the past and gotten some of his memories. But somehow, hearing him tell her about his past himself was different, more personal and real to her.

And it was this that helped her the most in fighting her own cravings for touch. As Logan told her about his past, sharing stories about life, she found she liked the feeling of trust gained. When she touched someone and absorbed their memories, she always felt like a theif. But gaining the right to those memories the hard way filled some void inside her. And while the temptation remained, it wasn't as strong. She didn't feel trapped within her skin and desperate to flee.

Logan told her about his growing attraction to Jean one night while both of them were more than slightly blitzed and in return, she blabbed out her continued attraction to Scott. They had made a couple stupid, drunken plans to break the pair up.

Another time, Logan had found her after learning some more information about his past and they had talked together, trying to figure out how the new information fit into the larger puzzle of Wolverine.

No one else ever came to find her. Logan mentioned once that Kurt had wanted too but wasn't able due to school and the need of him by the X-Men. A few others too had wanted to come but couldn't for similar reasons. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on ones out look, they all had her e-mail address and IM. There were nights when Rogue would open her e-mail to find over a dozen messages from her friends and old teammates telling her all about their lives and the gossip. It was actually pretty interesting at times hearing the same story from a half dozen different points of view.

The one address that she had slowly begun to look for first though was Remy's. She couldn't remember when she had started to read his e-mails first but it had become a sort of tradition. His e-mail's were always full of shameless flirting, jokes and the occasional shrewd observation of the people he dealt with. She remembered, when she had still been wandering, sending out that first e-mail to the Acolyte, wondering why she was doing it. It hadn't been anything too special, just a couple lines saying hey, and that she was alive. She hadn't even allowed herself to expect a response so when she had one the very next day she had been floored.

And so they had started talking. Sending e-mails back and forth at a more constant rate than with anyone else. At first she had always been on her guard, making sure that she never told him exactly where she was or anything about the X-Men and always looking for hidden traps in his e-mails. Eventually though, she stopped censoring herself so much and became more comfortable telling him things about herself and her life.

He could always seem to make her blush, even from several thousand miles away. She managed to laugh off most of his flirting, knowing it was almost second nature to him. Every once in awhile though she would wish that some of the flirting was real. If nothing else, as an ego boost. Who wouldn't want to be called beautiful?

Eventually she began to think of Remy as a friend. After all, he was the X-Men's enemy and she was no longer an X-Man. That's what her whole leaving was about, the freedom to think for herself. And that meant that she could choose who her friends were.

Others had gotten a hold of her e-mail as well. Kitty had apparently given it to Lance which meant the rest of the Brotherhood had gotten it. Somehow she ended up talking to Wanda one night and ever since then the two of them had also become friends. She loved to hear about Wanda's dealings with Toad and how Lance and Tabbitha were fighting over Lance's Jeep.

Logan never sent e-mails. He just showed up in person, which was fine with her.

Xavier sent her the occasional note, asking if she was alright and if she needed anything but they were never frequent. More like a father, checking in with an adult child.

She was in Europe a year before she was asked out on a date. And by a completely normal human. She had opened her mouth to tell him no but somehow the word yes came out instead. Mike was a co-worker. A nice guy, fairly cute with sandy brown hair and brown eyes. Nothing special. Except that she told him about herself and he didn't run away screaming. Instead he asked her out for a second date. And then a third.

She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, to find out that he was some evil henchman of some mutant haters group or was actually a mutant working for some other ultra evil mutant or something equally horrible. But he wasn't. He was exactly what he appeared to be. A guy interested in her for her.

There was something about that simplicity that attracted her and held on to her. She never had to worry about if he had ulterior motive for asking her out and she could allow herself to relax around him because he knew she was a mutant.

He was the first one to kiss her through one of her thin silk scarves. She had been so surprised that she had just stood there. She could still remember his chuckle. He had made some stupid comment about having that kind of effect on all women which had snapped her out of her shock and made her playfully hit him.

And then there was the night they broke up. It had been a mutual decision. They had both realized that they were just friends. They didn't love each other and neither one saw the relationship going anywhere. Instead they had decided to just be friends.

But it had still hurt. A part of her had recognized the fact that it hurt not because she was losing a boyfriend but because she was losing something normal and sane. He had been like a touchstone for her, reminding her that not everyone in the world was involved in the wars between mutants and humans, that not everyone thought that girls walking through walls and government conspiracies were normal, everyday things that had to be dealt with. And if she had loved anything in their relationship, it had been that normalcy.

And that night she had gone home and opened her e-mail, and ended up pouring out her heart in an letter to Remy. She had told him about Mike before but only briefly. It was like even mentioning Mike to the others would somehow taint his normalcy, bring him into her little super hero world.

But now Mike wasn't hers anymore and she had to tell someone or she would burst. She couldn't keep it all in. She could never remember what she typed that night, tears blurring the screen and depression making her thoughts fuzzy. All she remembered was simply sitting down, all set to type out her usual cheerful banter with Remy and instead writing a piece of her soul.

She should have just deleted it after she wrote it. After all, she was Rogue. She didn't tell others her weaknesses. She was always the cold and aloof one. Only Logan was allowed to know that there were chinks in her armor. And Remy wasn't Logan. Remy was dangerous.

But she sent it.

She sent that piece of herself across the little electrical wires, to a person half a world away who had once been her enemy. She couldn't bring herself to regret it, as much as she wanted to. There was a small, satisfied part of her that actually was glad she sent it, glad she told another person that she wasn't some cold, unfeeling thing.

She spent the night hugging her pillow and staring numbly at the far wall wishing that there was someone there to hold her. But there wasn't. Only Logan ever held her and he wasn't there that night.

She would never know how he did it but he did.

The next day, at work a man came and handed her a cell phone. He didn't tell her who it was from and he wasn't from any sort of delivery service. It had been odd. And had sent her paranoia levels skyrocketing.

She had spent the day inspecting it, looking through the different options on the phone, looking for some clue as to who it was from. She asked everyone she worked with if they had sent it to her and even ended up calling up a few other people she knew on the art store's phone to see if they knew anything. She considered calling up the Institute but decided that she didn't want to worry anyone. After all, it was just a cell phone.

Nothing to panic about. Right?

That night, just as she walked out of work it rang. She stared at it, almost waiting for something to blow up on her. Eventually, on the third ring she cautiously answered it. The first words she heard were, "Does chere need Remy to kill de boy or just permanently injure him?"

She had laughed so hard it had brought tears to her eyes, partially in relief that the phone wasn't part of some grand evil scheme and partially because it was just nice to hear Remy's voice after over a year. She was actually amazed that she even recognized it. But then again, with an opening line like that, he would be hard to not recognize.

He never did tell her how he got her the phone. He was always mysterious about stuff like that. She had accused him once of just liking the feeling of knowing more than everyone else. He never denied it. That night though they talked and laughed on the phone for what seemed like forever and no time at all. He told her stories about his life and debated with her on stupid little things of no real importance and flirted with her, making her both oddly pleased and irritated.

After that night the e-mails from Remy came less frequently. They still sent them back and forth but instead she got phone calls a few times every week. Sometimes they were long conversations and other times they were just brief check ins to see if she was alive. He never gave her his number and Rogue never asked. She knew that it was safer for him to call her. Even if they weren't enemies anymore didn't mean that Remy didn't still work for Magneto. All it would take was one badly timed phone call to screw everything up.

Rogue also never got a cell phone bill. That was not something she was just willing to ignore. She knew that Remy had to be paying for it and knew that the bill had to be pretty high. They actually talked a lot and these were all international calls. Well, at least she was guessing they all were. She kept telling him that she wanted to at least pay for half and Remy, the dumb Cajun that he was, kept telling her that gentlemen always paid. And as much as Rogue tried to explain feminine liberation to him, he insisted on doing things his way. As with most things he did, it was both sweet and damnably irritating.

She told Logan about Remy's phone. He wasn't exactly pleased. In a lot of ways, Logan was like one half of the battle in Rogues head, arguing that Remy, even if he wasn't her enemy was just a charmer and a flirt. But Rogue had an entire ocean between her and the flirt and that gave her a measure of security that she wouldn't have had if she still lived in Bayville. And Logan accepted this. Maybe not gracefully but he did accept it. And he tried to listen to her when she talked about Remy without constantly growling or popping claws.

Secretly, in her heart of hearts, Rogue was glad to have these two men in her life. They were supports for her, propping her up and giving her a measure of stability that she didn't think that she would have had without them. They were her chosen family.

She wasn't sure when, exactly, she stopped thinking of Remy as a friend. Just one day she noticed that when he talked about other women, her gut clenched and she found herself wondering if they were prettier than she was, or smarter, or more worldly. She found herself wishing that the Swamp Rat could, or would, visit her like Logan did. She hadn't seen him in a few years and she was beginning to wonder if he was still as good looking as he had been when she was still in high school.

She didn't want to ask Logan about things like that. It was embarrassing enough as it was, but Logan was having a hard enough time dealing with her and Remy being friends. She shuddered to think what it would have been like if she mentioned being more than friends.

But that was just it. While Remy was living on a completely different continent from her she didn't have to worry about stupid little details like mutant powers or old differences. She could allow herself to pretend that Remy and her could actually stand a chance if they dated.

Rogue did date a few others. She had somehow found the mutant society circles in England and floated through them. It was surprising how much acceptance just Xavier's name could get her. He had been better known than she ever realized. She found herself often being hunted down by people looking to find out more about Xavier's dream and Institute.

After two and a half years in Europe, the European Union was beginning to feel more and more pressure to make some decisions on the mutant issue. Like in the States, groups protesting both for mutant registration and mutant rights were growing in numbers. Unfortunately, the registration ranks seemed to be swelling in numbers faster than the mutant rights ranks.

It was on her way to work one day that Rogue got caught in an anti-mutant march. Hundred of angry screaming people were marching down the street, screaming about the dangers of mutants to society. Personally, Rogue had just felt like screaming about the dangers of protestors to poor working girls like herself who were just trying to cross the damn street.

And that's when they met resistance. A small group of mutants had taken the march personally and decided to send their own message. They began attacking the demonstrators and the angry mob turned into a frightened, hysterical mass of humanity.

Rogue had had enough. She was already late for work because of all this stupidity. Somehow she managed to fight her way through the fleeing people to the attacking mutants. Going up the their leader, she smiled politely, introduced herself as a fellow mutant and shook his hand. Skin to skin.

Even before the leader, Calvyn, fell to the ground, Rogue could feel his connection to the air and used to push the other three mutants back, away from the people. As they fought the force of her wind, Rogue had walked forward and absorbed the man with the rocks for skin. It wasn't until she absorbed him that she began to have any sort of plan. All she knew was that she had been an X-Men too long to let mutants like these attack people.

Taking in the stone skin and strength, she made short work of the other two, who had still been trying to figure out what had happened to their plan. Using the wind, she created three small tornadoes, each one picking up a fallen body and hefted the last on herself, careful to prevent any further skin on skin contact. Already she could feel the headache that always seemed to come when she touched anyone. The more people she touched, the worse the headache.

She took them to their leader's apartment, twisting the doorknob and breaking the lock to let herself in and deposited the four mutants on the floor. It was the best she could do. She couldn't let the cops arrest them but she didn't want them out and causing trouble so she had brought them here.

She had left a note, tacked onto the inside of the door, telling them to be good children and play nice with the stupid humans. It was the best she could do. She had wanted to explain about how dangerous it was to attack humans. How it only encouraged their fear and hate. She wanted to warn them about the secret government labs that might exist that used mutants as test subjects. She wanted to say so much, explain all the things that she had seen and learned over the years to them but instead she wrote a small note and left, calling in to work and telling them about there had been a riot and she had gotten caught in it. The guy working had volunteered to pull her shift for her and she had gladly accepted, promising to return the favor.

And somehow she became an X-Man again. But not really. She wasn't under Xavier anymore and yet she had started fighting for his dream again, for peace between humans and mutants. She stopped the mutants from fighting the humans and stopped the humans from attacking the mutants. And she wasn't alone either. There were a few that she had met during her time in England that began to do the same. They always seemed to be looking to her for direction, asking how to deal with the things that were coming up. All of them were better in a fight than she was, their powers being more offensive and long range, and most of them were smarter. And yet they followed her direction and lead. It began to make her feel like some sort of mother duck with her little ducklings following her everywhere.

When she complained about it to Logan he had just laughed and pointed out he had the same problem at the Institute and that Rogue should be glad that all her followers were falling in line so well and no longer teenagers. He had to deal with hormonal driven kids who were sometimes convinced that they knew better than their leaders. And he had Scott. Who really was in line to lead this rag tag group but still grated on Logan's nerves occasionally.

Rogue had simply sighed. In a lot of ways she wished she did have a Scott. Scott was a straight laced, follow the rules kind of guy but he was dependable. She knew that he cared about his team more than anything and would lay down his life for anyone on it. His loyalty to Xavier was unquestionable and his confidence and leadership had always been something to depend on.

But now it was others looking to her, depending on her. That was just wrong somehow. She was the loner, the scary introvert that pushed everyone away. So how the hell had she ended up playing team leader when she could have sworn she quit the team?

But here she was, having daily martial arts practices and helping mutants to gain control over their powers. She had figured out that if she absorbed someone, then she had to learn how to control their powers, something that she had always seemed to do instinctually. But if she concentrated and paid attention, she could figure out what she was doing and tell the mutant that she had absorbed. It was a bit like trying to explain how to talk to someone. Most of the time you just opened your mouth and sound came out but if you really stopped and paid attention, you began to notice how you forced air over your vocal chords to creat that sound.

Her apartment now seemed to always have someone in it. It had become some sort of safe haven for any mutant looking to hide for a few days. The only things that remained off limits were her bed, her laptop and her cell. Everything else, including the food in her kitchen and the clothes in her closet seemed to be up for grabs. She now understood why the Professor had a mansion. There were days that she wished she did.

Over the course of the next year, Rogue felt like bashing her head against a wall daily. Problems and people and situations that she had never wanted to deal with or ever expected to deal with landed squarely in her lap. There were days when she would look around at her life and spend several minutes trying desperately to figure out how it had all happened so quickly. And then something would happen and she would have to put off thinking about it while she concentrated on the next series of catastrophes.

She began to pray.

It had been a long time since she had prayed. But she felt the need now. Before she had ignored God, relying on her own strength and intelligence. But she knew she didn't have what it took to help these people coming to her anymore. So she began to pray. To pray for the strength to protect them, the intelligence to lead and to not fail them. It began to be a silent mantra in the back of her head as she went through her days.

The only true comforts lay in Logan's visits and Remy's phone calls. Logan helped her keep things organized and scared the living daylights out of everyone so that after he left they were all so glad to only have to deal with Rogue again that they were good little children for awhile.

Remy was the only one who seemed able to make her laugh anymore and she guarded her time talking to him jealously. He would listen to her rants about the mutants trampling through her life and make jokes and tell her how things could be worse.

She began to think that she was actually falling in love with him.

But since it was impossible, she refused to consider it and continued to focus on the more immediate issues. Like the fact that someone had eaten all her ice cream and not replaced it!