I kind of don't like how Jean is portrayed in a lot of fics (and I know I've probably been guilty of it before too.) so I wrote a small Ro/Jean interaction scene here. I'm building this up slowly, so bear with me. Ta. Thanks for the kind reviews. And, uh, I have no idea where this is heading in terms of pairings.

Ooh, disclaimer – I own none (and nothing) and am just using already invented characters for my own amusement. Mwahahaha. No, but really.

Chapter 2

The Danger room was just how he'd left it. Spotless, and looking like no one had spilt a drop of blood since time began, although he knew that wasn't true, having seen rogue zooming around with all the pent up aggression that the southern belle was wont to have. It hadn't made him feel any better that the so-called 'enemy' she was fighting had looked remarkably like him from a distance. He hadn't really wanted to venture too close to find out however, one run in with rogue was enough until tomorrow morning.

"Scenario?" The computerized voice had been input by Scott, and grated on his nerves. He'd tried to find some way of overriding the system and changing the voice, but hadn't been able to.

"Nine." He shrugged. Scott had computerized them by both number and enemy, but Logan, liking the challenge of the unknown hadn't bothered to memorize them. Hopefully whatever he picked had a situation with Scott in it, where he could slice him and dice him as fine as – damn. The room went totally pitch black for a few seconds and then lightened slightly. Fuck, he could remember this one.

Vaguely.

If he recalled it right, he'd tried to take on this scenario when slightly affected by the damage that cocktail of morphine, alcohol and a bad mission was guaranteed to produce – even in someone like him with pretty much quick-fix heal. And if he recalled it right he hadn't come out prancing around the winner's dais on this one either. Actually, if he really did want to remember it all with horrid clarity he could recall Ororo's appalled face as she came across his damaged body curled up in a corner. Ororo, looking really, really pissed off – whether at him for disobeying all of Charles, Jean's and her orders, or just at how the situation impinged on her life in general – having to get up in the middle of the night and save his half-baked ass.

Ororo with all the vengeance of thunder and rain. Ororo with lightening streaming like water down her arms as she crackled with incandescent energy. Two sentinels that in his hazy mind had been made to look like rag dolls as she had flung them across the room with a seemingly negligent flick of her fingers and a rush of tornado-like wind.

And then that one moment that had nudged idly at his memory while he had been away. It always seemed to crop up at the most inopportune of times.

Like now.

Narrowing his eyes, he concentrated on the dimness in from of him. He unsheathed his claws slowly, so as not to make a sound. And of course, because he was a sadist and enjoyed the pain that revealing his claws gradually seemed to bring. The only sound that punctuated the silence was a slow and steady dripping noise. From what, he didn't know. Didn't care, he convinced himself.

His eyes narrowed even further, so that his short spiky eyelashes intruded somewhat on his vision, and he tensed his body. Turning smoothly on the balls of his feet his claws ran through a body sheathed in a light metallic casing. A Sentinel. The feel of his claws going in had the comforting feeling of home for him. It was like watching a filleting knife slice through softened butter.

He was grabbed by behind, and he rammed his elbow back only to bite back a curse as it hit metal. Fuck. He felt wide fingers go round his neck and as he reached up to drag them away he nearly scooped his eyeball out with his own claws. Ha. Scott may have made it safe scenarios, but he couldn't do anything about people's own stupidity. He saw advancing on him in the near darkness another three Sentinels, and wondered what the hell he'd had for lunch that had made him so belligerently confident that he could take on a scenario so soon after coming back, with no training and no combat for five months. Maybe it was a huge serving of jack ass, he thought gloomily as one of them grabbed his foot, and another trapped his arm behind his back before he could slice them and dice them as fine as – Oh shit. He saw the fist coming but it was so fast he couldn't prepare himself. He felt like he had just inhaled his own lungs as all the wind was punched out of him.

Ororo and Jean watched from the observation room. "Do you think..." Jean began.

"No." Ororo said calmly, although she ran a nail along the wooden armrest, and hunched he shoulders up slightly more as she leaned forward. She deliberately scored the wood and then lifted her fingers and began playing with the small silver lightening bolt earrings she had taken off and were now sitting on the control panel.

"But 'Ro, look at him. He's so outnumbered – he could really get himself hurt." Jean bought a piece of red hair up to her mouth and nervously began chewing it. "Jean – do you want to look like Raggedy Anne?" Ororo slung a cursory glance at her friend, who narrowed her eyes slightly and stuck out her tongue. Ororo half smiled, but her concentration was still on the tableau unfolding beneath her. "I saw that." She pulled her hands back again and sat on them. Of course if anything did happen to Logan, she could have done something to stop it – she would be responsible – wouldn't she?

Jean shifted slightly and bought her chair closer too. "You were meant to. Do you think if anything happens he'll leave again?"

"Goddess, Jean. You're always moving to the worst case scenario these days."

"I think its PMS or something, 'Ro." Jean said it so seriously that Ororo snickered lightly. "It's true!" She hit her friend lightly on the arm. "I always get all morbid and depressed just before my-" She was interrupted by a loud curse and a crash from below. Logan had fought one of the Sentinels off and his claws were unsheathed again. He ran another one through and going into a crouch kicked one foot out in an impossible looking martial arts move, spinning around on his other foot to down two more. "Well, it looks like Wolverine has got his second wind back." Ororo observed shortly, standing, relieved she hadn't done anything to interfere.

"Speaking of wind 'Ro, the gossip around her is all about you and Remy."

Ororo turned back towards Jean who had an artfully innocent air permeating from every pore. Keeping her face expressionless she replied, "That had nothing to do with wind, Jean."

"Yeah it did. You know. Gossip on the wind – "

"Heard it on the grapevine?"

"Yeah, that kind of thing." Jean shrugged, and pushed her teammate back down. "So?"

"So, nothing, Jean. Remy and I knew each other from a way back. We have a few things in common. And that makes us destined to be a couple?"

"Well, no. But you have to admit 'Ro, he's gorgeous." She nudged her friend, and when Ororo turned and pinned Jean with a look that promised all hell would break loose if she didn't desist from this line of trajectory immediately, she groaned and stood, stretching.

"Jesus, 'Ro. I love you and all, but you need to loosen up. When was the last time you cut loose and let your hair out, princess?"

"I don't have time for that, Jean."

"Yeah you do. We haven't had anything happen that counts as even vaguely hostile in the last six months or so. You know, we should just make it a you and me thing. I feel I'm losing you in the X-Men 'Ro."

"You are an X-Man, Jean."

"Yeah, and you're not the X-Men, 'Ro. Now – as our training session has been usurped by the slicing, dicing canine down there," Ororo raised an eyebrow at this, "lets go to the gym. And work out." She began walking out of the room, the spandex of her X-Men uniform molding a slender body that did not have an ounce of misplaced flesh. "Or maybe cake and coffee sounds like a better option?" she craned her head around to look at Ororo who was still looking down at Logan, who was now breathing hard and settled down in a corner, his arm resting across one bent knee. " 'Ro.." she sing-songed. "Mmm. Cake I think. We'll work out tomorrow. After all, it wasn't our fault that Logan doesn't have a clue about the timetable." She raised her crystal blue eyes to Jean's sparkling green ones, and smiled rather guilelessly. She stepped away from the window.

Jean tipped her head to the side and pretended to study Ororo carefully.

"Why, I do believe there's a possibility there, Miss Perfect…"

"In your dreams."

"One can always hope." Linking arms with Ororo she dragged her out of the room, with the enticing promise of chocolate icing, and lots of it.

Making his way up to the control booth he looked accusingly at his own skin which bore none of the hardships of his fight. That was one thing that occasionally got to him. When someone sported a fantastic black eye, you knew he'd been in a fight. Bruises everywhere? What a man. A busted lip? Cuts encrusted with someone else's blood? (Of course it wasn't your own). Logan bore none of these battle scars. His skin was as unmarked as ever. Sometimes he wanted someone to notice and say, 'Shit, Logan, looks like you took a killer blow there.'

Pushing the door open, he saw the lights on, and two chairs pulled close to the window. He narrowed his eyes again and glanced around as if waiting for a Sentinel to jump out at him.

He puffed out his breath, felt his ribs give way a little more, and sank into one of the chairs. "End scenario nine."

"Confirm end scenario. Confirm end training?" He unsheathed his claws. If he could stab that computerized voice he would. "No you fuckwit, I want to go back down an' get myself pulverized all over again." He muttered. The aloud he said, "Confirm." As a retaliatory strike he swept his hand, claws unsheathed across the control panel. The clinking sound of metal hitting metal made him look down. He squinted slightly, grinned, and bent, and with a claw delicately lifted the small silver object and lifted it close to his face. Well, well, well. The Wind Rider was obviously here. He looked around at the two chairs. With someone else. He picked up the second earring and pocketed them both. Probably that Cajun bastard, smirking at how shoddy his fighting had been. And he'd probably seen him get felled by the four Sentinels who'd surrounded him. And he'd probably never hear the end of it. Swearing under his breath he made his way out and snapped off the lights, leaving the chair that he'd kicked spinning silently in the darkness.