Disclaimer: the disclaimer saying I don't own the X-Men has the flu, and can not be here at the moment.

"Rogue?" a voice asked. Rogue nodded and looked at who was addressing her. The girl looked barely older than her. She had long black hair and cinnamin colored skin.

"Hi, I'm Tierany, sorry if you didn't get a great welcome. We've been kinda busy with stuff. What you're going to start on is just filing these files. We want you to get comfortable with the place before we send you to deal with the hordes of people." Rogue almost smiled. This girl made things not seem too bad, and filing was easy. Rogue regretted thinking filing was easy a few hours later when her fingers and head ached from dealing with several huge stacks of papers. Rogue was about to head back to school for her afternoon of school work, thankful to be getting away from the hospital when she heard a farmiliar voice. Looking up she saw Scott holding an unconsious Jean. Since Jean's birthday was still a few days away she was only seventeen, still young enough to be put on the children's wing.

"What's going on?" she asked walking over to Scott knowing Mr. McCoy usually took care of injured students.

"No one knows. She was fine one minute and the next she just collapsed," Scott said his voice filled with concern. Rogue watched as Jean was wheeled off on a gurney, and for some reason she wanted to skip school and make sure Jean was okay. She didn't care that until now she had hated Jean, now she felt like she was the only one Jean needed by her side. Scott finally managed to get Rogue to go to school by telling her there was nothing she could do here and he'd call her the minute they knew something.

Rogue couldn't focus on any of her afternoon classes, she kept seeing Jean's limp body in Scott's arms and wondered idly what would happen if Jean didn't pull through what ever was wrong with her. Suddenly Rogue felt her chest tighten and tears started building up in her eyes. What the heck's wrong with me, it's not like I really care about Jean, I just can't handle death, yeah, that's got to be it, she thought even though her head and heart were trying very hard to tell her otherwise. She practically ran home the minute school ended, she was supposed to stop by Wanda's locker so they could compare horror stories about their assignments, but every thought except Jean had phased through her mind right now.

The mansion was silent when she arrived home.

"Hello?" she called wondering where everyone was, were they at the hospital with Jean, was she better, or were they all silent because they were mourning her death?