Story title: Choices we make 3/?

Author name: Aria

Email:

Rating: NC-17 (this part is PG-13 though)

Disclaimer : I own nothing, except the plot.

Summary: Rogue and Bobby escaped the tortures of the lab and try to
get back to Westchester. On the way, Rogue has to make choices that
will change the lives of many.

As usual, first: many thanks for reading and reviewing to shelaweena (hope you like this new chapter!), Rouge07 (thanks for the remark about Logan helping them for that reason: I wasn't planning to address it at all, but you made me change my plans), elz (thanks for keeping reviewing), tattoo (I love publishing it little by little to try and learn from criticism and improve on the following chaps, so I'm sorry, but you'll have to bear with me, lol! But I'm glad you liked it nonetheless….) and Kat, nicca and foamgnome for there support.

And ok, there must be a lot of mistakes of all kind, but I haven't stopped working on one thing or another since 8 A.M.. It's past 10 P.M., and I just don't have the courage to read all this again. I'll come back and do some corrections when I'll feel better. Like, after a couple of days sleep.

Now on with the fic!

And they called this place Laughlin City.

Rogue looked around her after stepping out of the truck. She had wanted to stay inside with Bobby, but their driver had been right: she needed to go with him, if only to get food and some medical stuff of sort for Bobby. But now that she'd had a good look around, she was pretty sure that finding decent food would be accomplishment enough. Three poor buildings, only one lit, most probably the bar. Scratch the medical stuff.

He was about to join her outside, just taking time to throw another blanket on the cot and check quickly the condition of his other "guest". Their driver, she thought bitterly. Great, she was considering a deal including sex with a guy whose name she didn't even know. But somehow, she restrained herself from asking him: it felt better if she kept this as impersonal, as detached as possible.

This had been a defence mechanism she'd had time to perfect in the lab, when it became too difficult to keep the horror at bay: retreat into herself, let the survival skills take over and not think beyond that. She had been so far gone that, once out, it had taken a while to turn back to her normal, caring self, and she was still both ashamed and angry at herself that, even for a split-second, she had considered letting Bobby in the snow, the burden of his unconscious body only a hindrance in her escape.

Besides, he would surely want her name in return, and that was not something she felt comfortable to give.

She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't see him stop about three meters ahead of her and turn around. It is only when he yelled "It's this way, unless you've planed to freeze your ass out there?" that she snapped out of it enough to follow numbly.

If only Bobby could be conscious long enough. They could contact the mansion directly, and get out of this mess.

He'd hoped that there would be some fighting today. Not because he needed the money. Even if he headed straight tonight to his cabin, he had enough of it to last him for the next 6 months. Maybe for the next year.

He didn't know exactly, it's not as if he'd ever cared for it as long as he had enough to cover the most basic necessities –food, shelter, clothes. But he needed to let lose after the events of the last hours: there was a nasty amount of tension lodged right between his shoulders, and sex, unless he somehow lost his new "charge", wouldn't be an option this time.

But there wasn't any until tomorrow and he couldn't exactly start pounding on the first guy he met just for the sake of it. They were in the civilized world, after all, or at least at the edge of it. It's not as if anybody would really care, but keeping low profile outside the cage was a necessity to avoid questions that may, one day, end up in him locked in one of those labs again. So, unless someone drunk enough would get some ideas and provoke him, there would be no fight for him tonight.

Today was not his lucky day. Or maybe he'd been so lucky that she'd chosen his truck of all those parked outside the last bar, that he'd just run out for the rest of his life. He wasn't sure which was true.

A quick look above his shoulder told him that she was pretty much the definition of lost, standing before the door, assessing her surroundings with those doe-like eyes of hers. After a few moments, she zeroed in onto the restroom sign, and walked straight there, passing him by without even looking.

He chuckled. Maybe she wasn't as lost as he thought, after all. She was plenty scared alright, but there was also fire in this one, of that he was sure: that she had looked at him square in the eye as she was all but freezing to death when they stood by his truck was proof enough.

Then he sobered almost immediately: and what if she tried to escape? He was almost sure he remembered a small window over there, and he pictured her petite enough to pass through it. Yet she certainly wouldn't leave without her boyfriend –name was Bob or somethin'- and she didn't have the keys to his truck. His head started spinning with images of her trying to carry him deep into the snow covered woods and….

He took his head between his hands, elbows resting on each side of his beer. Christ! She certainly did a number on him! When did he start to care anyway?

It's not that he never cared. He cared for a few guys he'd met along the way, not enough to call them friends, but enough to help them out and eventually ask for theirs in exchange. He cared enough for the women he's been with to be careful never to hurt them, or not any more than they wanted him to.

But she didn't belong to any of those two categories, he knew that much. Even if she probably thought that, in his mind, she would fit well in the second. But she didn't. It wasn't even that he hadn't thought of it once he held her. He wasn't a cradle robber, and she was young, but not too young, the too small clothes and lack of coat revealing a body that was certainly all woman, even if a little too thin, something to be expected if she really had been held for any length of time in one of these places.

He hadn't lied to her, back in his truck. He had been considering the sex too. After all, he was a man with a sex drive to match. But this time, it had only been a passing thought among all the others she had evoked in him. All this had been so surprising, so overwhelming and so new, that he hadn't discerned much among the mist. But for the first time he could remembered, he had genuinely wondered about someone's well-being, with the intention to do something about it if he could. He had never given anybody else's much consideration, not even to his own.

He couldn't tell if it had been her scared scent, her defiant eyes or something else that eluded him completely. It certainly wasn't her words, the term of "lab" ringing bells immediately, and the need to put as much distance between him and anything that had some connection to those nightmarish places, had overpowered all other considerations. But it hadn't lasted long against what had assailed him.

Her presence had made something warm inside him, and he'd liked that. He couldn't define it any better, but for now it would suffice.

Hopefully, she would give him enough time to explore those new sensations, but that wasn't a given. There were a few truckers here, some of them looking almost nice. Or at least, nicer than him at any rate. Even with Bob hurting over there, he was quite sure that she could find a ride far enough from here to get to a phone in working order.

He didn't know what to make of her, but he certainly knew he didn't want to let her go. But that had to be her choice, no question about it. He had been honest with her from the word go, telling her things as they came to his mind, and he remembered that, at some point, he had heard or read something about honesty being fundamental to a relationship.

But now that he started wondering about what she could think of him, he was realizing that this honesty would most certainly cost him any shot he could ever had with her.

Wouldn't that be ironic? Well, that's the story of my life.

He barely had the time to finish that thought when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He didn't need to take more than a sniff to know who it was, the pungent smell easy enough to recognize. He had beaten that excuse for a man the week before in the ring, and obviously, he needed an encore. Maybe after all, he would have his fight, even if against that, it would be very satisfactory to win.

"What do you want?"

"You own me some money." A whisper "I know what you are."

"You lost your money. You keep this up, you lose something else."

The big bald pathetic guy may had been drunk, but not enough so not to be scared, and the low, chilling voice combined with the memory of the beating he had taken were enough to make the guy take a couple of steps back, bumping into someone who had just emerged from the restroom.

All was still for an instant, until the hideous laugh of big baldy could be heard before he said loudly "Well, look at that. It was about time I got lucky too."

He turned enough to see baldy trying to catch the girl's arm. She eluded him the first time, but he soon had her trapped against the door, his massive bulk masking her from his view completely; he didn't need it to taste her fright heavy in the air.

Something in him snapped, and before any of his moves had the time to register, he had whirled the guy around, pushed him against the wall in front of the bar, and unsheathed his claw, the middle one puncturing lightly the fat neck the other two were holding in place, a little river of gore now flowing down below the line of the shirt.

There was no sound but heavy breathes.

He unlocked his eyes from those terrified in front of his to his claws. He hadn't even realized he had taken them out. Now it was too late. She had seen them.

Not even daring to take a look at her, he let the stud's neck go, and without a word, exited the joint.

He was almost relieved for the blizzard that welcomed him, cooling him down.

He hadn't even had the time to ask her name. He hadn't even known if she was a mutant or not. It was rumoured that sometimes, humans who had tried to protect mutants were captured too; but those usually met a quick, albeit painful death, so there was a definitive chance she would be a mutant, and her little boyfriend too.

But all that didn't matter anymore. What she had just seen, even the horrors of the lab couldn't prepare her for who he was. For what he was.

He let out a bark out laughter that echoed in the night. This ironic life of his.

So when he heard it, he thought at first that his super-heightened senses had let him down. She had just run behind him, and that, combined with the fear and everything that had just transpired, had her pretty much out of breath, but her words had been the same nonetheless:

"What's your name?"

Ok, what did you think? As always, please, read and review!