Morning came too early by far, in Rogue's opinion. Of course, it came at the same time it did every morning, but on the heels of last night, the insistent buzz of her clock seemed all the more vicious. Kitty, earphones on even in sleep, was dead to the world. She lay and listened to the alarm, debating whether she should just pull the covers over her head and blow off the session with Logan. It was tempting – she doubted that his opinion of her could get any lower, especially after catching her with Remy last night.
They hadn't done anything wrong, she reminded herself. The rule at the Institute was that as long as you made it to class and training sessions on time, and you kept up with school and chores, you could pretty much keep the hours you wanted. And if she missed this session with Logan, she realized, he'd be quick to pull that privilege, too. With a groan, she flipped back the duvet and rolled out of bed.
Coffee, she thought grimly, pulling on her favorite training clothes – black pants, black tank top, black gloves. With only Logan running the sim, she wouldn't have to worry about accidentally touching anyone during the session. But the rest of the mansion was a different story, so she grabbed a battered gray sweatshirt, zipping it up as she stepped out into the still, quiet hallway. She checked her watch. 4:38. If she moved, there would be just enough time to grab a cup of coffee and still get to the Danger Room under the wire.
She swung into the kitchen, thinking she'd be alone, and stopped short at the sight of Logan already at the island, hunched over a steaming mug.
"Sorry," she said, ready to back out of the room.
"Sit down. You runnin' from me, now?"
"No. Ah just didn't think anyone'd be here," she mumbled, taking a seat at the opposite end of the island. She wasn't prepared for this. She had been counting on a few minutes to get her head together before she had to face Logan on what was undeniably his turf. Now, seeing him before she had composed herself left her unsettled and tentative.
He stood and poured another cup of coffee, then slid it down the smooth granite to her. Black. When she had arrived at the Institute, she had taken it with enough cream and sugar that Logan's head ached just remembering it. He had teased her mercilessly. What if you need coffee and there's none of that crap around? Then you're screwed. Always better to make do with the essentials. He had told her the same thing when he taught her to drive stick shift, as she ground through the transmission on the Jeep. Better to know how to do it, just in case you have to. He smiled to himself, remembering the look on Scott's face when he went to change the oil later that week.
They sat in the pre-dawn chill, silent and preoccupied. He didn't know how to do this, Logan thought. He didn't apologize, he didn't explain, and he definitely didn't have heart-to-hearts with teenage girls. Even Rogue. Especially Rogue. She might have been his hands-down favorite at the mansion, but there were limits. And these were just things the Wolverine did not do. Still, what choice did he have? Either they settled this, or she would take off again, permanently this time. He flexed his hands in frustration, then drained his coffee.
"Let's go." Without a backward glance, he strode out of the kitchen towards the elevators that would take them to the Danger Room.
Rogue followed, quickly topping off her mug and bringing it with. She doubted there was enough caffeine in the state to get her through this, but it never hurt to try.
They arrived at control room, and she tossed her sweatshirt on a nearby chair, then stripped off her watch and the small silver earrings she had worn to bed.
"Necklace too," he growled.
She touched it lightly. "Ah'll leave it on, thanks."
"You know the rules. No jewelry in the sims. It gets in the way."
She lifted her chin. "You think if we go up against the Brotherhood this afternoon, Blob's gonna wait until Ah take off my jewelry before he starts trying to flatten me like a pancake?" she asked, tucking the pendant into her shirt.
"Suit yourself. Just don't whine when it gets caught on something."
"Ah don't whine," she snapped.
He smiled to himself again. No, she didn't. And it was about time she got her back up over something, rather than acting like a mouse.
"Whatever. You're not running a regular sim today."
"What do you mean?"
"You're going up against me."
"You really are pissed, huh?" she muttered inaudibly.
He heard her anyway. "Didn't I tell you to watch your damn mouth?"
She bit back an angry retort. "Fine. Let's go." She turned to put her sweatshirt back on.
"Leave it."
"But…"
"Leave it."
"Ah don't want to hurt you."
He snorted. "You're not even gonna get close enough to try, kid," he said as they headed to the entrance of the danger room.
"Oh really?" If it hadn't been so early, she might have enjoyed the challenge, but now she was just annoyed.
He stopped outside the door. "Tell you what. You take me in there – hell – you even manage to get a bare hand on me, and we'll cancel this afternoon's session."
Her eyes sparked. "Ah could use a nap," she said.
"I'm sure you could. We'll be talking about that later," he added ominously. "Do we have a deal?"
She looked at him, wary. Another of his long-ago lessons was never to take a bet until you knew the stakes. "And if Ah lose?"
"Oh, you're gonna lose. It's not an if."
"If Ah lose?" she pressed.
He considered for a moment. "I don't want to see a repeat of last night. Ever."
"Then close your eyes," she countered. "That's not your place, Logan. Try again."
"Fine." As much as he loathed Gambit, it was nice to see her standing up for herself. "I don't want to hear you bitching about the extra sessions. I don't want to hear that anyone else has heard you bitching about the extra sessions. You suck it up and do it until I say you're done. I'll even give you a head start. Deal?"
She tossed her hair back. "Deal. Let's get this over with."
They stepped into the Danger Room, and she winced. The sim was a maze of alleys and rubble, a nightmare version of the scene the team had found outside the club. Rain slammed down in sheets, smoking debris littered the landscape, and shrieking sirens assaulted her ears. Momentarily disoriented, she turned, seeking out Logan. He was gone.
"What the hell is this?" she called out. "This is your way of teaching me a lesson? It sucks, Logan."
A clap of thunder had her jumping, and she took off running. Burning junkheaps loomed everywhere, and the shadows cast by pouring rain, random lightning, and weak streetlights left her confused and off-balance. Focus, she told herself. Get oriented. She whirled, looking for a suitable place to make a stand and figure out what to do next, and found herself crashing to the ground as Logan knocked her legs out from under her with a well-placed kick. "It's what you make of it, kid," he told her as she scrambled to her feet. "Have I ever taught you anything different?"
Her eyes darted from side to side, looking for something to use as a weapon. He didn't have the claws out yet, she saw, and took that as a good sign. She spied a piece of lumber lying nearby. As they circled, she gauged the distance to it, and slowly worked her way around. It wasn't much, but it would buy her some time.
Logan threw a punch and she stepped neatly out of the way, then ducked the follow-up kick and dove for the wood, grabbing it and rolling away from Logan as he tried to tackle her.
"You're joking, right?" he growled, as she brandished it. "It's a piece of wood, kid. Get real." So quickly she almost missed it, the claws were out and in again. The meaning was clear, and she knew the lumber would be reduced to kindling if she used it like a club. She glanced around again. There was a huge pile of debris behind her, easily three or more feet taller than Logan. She looked at the wood again. Useless as a club, but as a lever…
She waited an instant too long. He rushed her again, knocking her back against the pile. She kicked out both legs as hard as she could, earning her a few precious seconds, and she scrambled up the heap on all fours. He grabbed at her leg and she tossed a brick directly at his face, forcing him to let go. The mountain of rubble was shifting, becoming unstable, and she used it to her advantage, throwing herself over the top and crashing back down the other side, holding desperately to the lumber and wedging it under a large piece of concrete. She threw her weight against it, and levered the hunk of cement to the side.
With a low rumble, the pile came tumbling down, and she saw Logan lose his footing and tumble under the bricks and debris.
"Logan?" There were sirens approaching and the sound of the storm, but nothing from the mound of junk in front of her. The rain was still pouring. She had never figured out how they had managed to pull off lousy weather in a holographic room. Maybe Storm had something to do with it.
She shoved her dripping hair out of her face and, gripping a jagged hunk of concrete, worked carefully around the collapsed pile, picking her way past rocks and assorted debris. There was nothing. "Ah think you owe me a nap," she called, straightening.
"Wrong, kid," came his voice, as her feet were jerked out from under her again. She lost her grip on the makeshift weapon and went sprawling. "Don't be so cocky."
She rolled on her back as he pinned her, grinning. "Not bad," he said conversationally as she struggled to break free. "Just not enough."
"Not done," she gasped, and brought a knee up hard and fast. He grunted, and his grasp loosened enough to let her slip one hand out. She tried to pull the glove off with her teeth, but he caught her wrists again with one hand, extended his claws on the other, and sank them into the floor inches from her head.
"Like I said. Not enough. You give?"
"Give," she panted.
He retracted the claws and sprung to his feet, holding out a gloved hand for her.
She ignored it and pushed her way up to sitting, then standing, still breathing hard. "What the hell was that?"
"End simulation," he called. Instantly, the rain stopped, the landscape melted away, and they were left in a sterile steel room. Then he turned to her. "That was you getting your ass kicked."
She started to protest, and he cut her off. "No whining, remember?"
They were both soaked to the skin. He shucked off his blue sweatshirt and wrung out some of the extra water. She didn't look like a mouse now, he noted with some amusement. She looked like a drowned rat, and he took momentary pity on her. "We're done in here for now. Go dry off and meet me in the control room to debrief." He headed out, leaving Rogue aching, bewildered, and seething in the echoing room.
She rejoined him quickly, with hair still damp and wearing sweats with the Institute logo on them.
"Nice outfit." Logan was wearing the same. He handed her a bottle of water. "What did you do wrong?"
"Snuck out and went to New York, apparently." she snapped.
"Yeah. But what did you do wrong in the sim?"
If he didn't hate her, she thought, it would almost be like old times. Meticulous debriefing, where he led her, step by step, through the sim, pointing out where she had faltered, where she had executed something particularly well. If he didn't hate her, of course, which he did.
"Can't you just tell me?" She flopped into one of the rolling chairs.
He smirked and sat down as well, dwarfing the seat. "I could, but I'm not the one training."
"Ah thought Ah had you. Ah didn't." She wrenched the cap off the water bottle, took a swig.
"No, you didn't. But that wasn't where things went wrong."
"Care to enlighten me?" Tiredness and irritation made her tone waspish.
"Why didn't you take off your gloves before you went in?"
"Huh?"
"I told you the deal was to get a bare hand on me. But you went in with your gloves on, and you didn't even try to take 'em off until I had you pinned. And then it was too late."
"Ah could've hurt you," she protested.
"So? I'll heal. That's your mistake, Rogue. It's the same one you make in every single sim you run. You hesitate. It costs you, every time."
She shook her head. "That's not fair. Ah could hurt someone on the team."
"I'm not talking about when you're with the team."
She froze in the middle of taking a drink. "So this is all about New York, then."
"This is about making sure you can protect yourself." She folded her arms and huffed out a breath. "You need to work on hand-to-hand."
"Ah had you!"
Christ, she was stubborn. It made him strangely proud. "No, you didn't. You buried me under a bunch of bricks, kid, which was good thinking. But you didn't take me out."
"Would have, if you didn't have a healing factor. First rule of being a girl – if you want to take a guy out, knee him in the balls." She tilted her head and smiled sweetly, her best imitation of the southern belle she had never been.
"If you're trying to fight off an over-eager prom date, sure. Or if you go up against Gumbo, cause you'll cause instant brain death. But a knee to the balls isn't fatal, kid. Anyone who's serious isn't going to stop just cause you kick him there. And if that's your entire bag of tricks, we shoulda been doing this a long time ago." They should have been practicing this anyway, he mused. Her mutation might protect her most of the time, but it was the exceptions that worried him.
Outrage had her straightening, scowling even more. Vertical creases appeared between her lowered eyebrows. "Ah got my licks in!"
"It wasn't enough."
"And this was just to prove that? Ah'm fine on hand to hand," she said obstinately, stripping off a glove and fluttering her bare fingers at him. "Remember?"
"I remember. You need to work on hand-to-hand. And without the team."
"You're pulling me?" Disbelief was chased by resignation. "More consequences, huh?"
It was painful to watch her shrink back into herself, watch the indignant spark in her eyes fade away. It was painful to watch it happen so quickly and so completely that it was as if someone had cut the power to the room. And the pain infuriated him.
He growled with impatience. "Oh, come off it. Nobody's pulling you from the team."
"So then, why?" She gave a small, defeated shrug, and his temper cracked like crazed glass. He shot out of the chair, began to circle the room.
"Why? Because I said so. Because I took you down before you could think to get your gloves off, and I could have given you a haircut while I did it. Because those guys at the club knew how to get around your skin. Because you had to rely on Gambit to save you. Because you might have woken up someplace less friendly." He paused. "Because someone came after you, kid, and I couldn't stop it."
Astonishment had her wide-eyed. "Logan…" she began.
"No. You let me finish. I've kept quiet, and I've left you alone, because you wanted it that way. But I stood in that alley and I smelled your blood, Rogue, and now I am done with being quiet."
He looked straight at her, then. For the first time in months, he looked her straight in the eyes and held her gaze, and there was nothing neutral about it. Anger, frustration, challenge, and something darkly unrecognizable mixed together and drew a bead on her.
"You're done with me," she said uncertainly.
The sad echo of Xavier's words stopped him short. "No," he said. "Not by a long shot. And don't interrupt me." He crossed the room in two strides and took her by the arms, fighting the urge to shake her until her teeth rattled. "Don't you get it? Someone's coming after you, and we don't have a clue who or why. But they'll try again, kid. They weren't amateurs. It wasn't random. They did their research, and they watched you, and they failed because of dumb fucking luck. Because your new boyfriend happened to be around."
"He's not my boyfriend," she said, fastening on to the only part of his tirade she could quarrel with.
"Didn't I just say not to interrupt? They'll come after you again. I know that. I know that. I'll do everything I can to protect you, but it won't be enough if you can't protect yourself. If you won't. I need you to learn to fight without your skin, Rogue. Without the team. Because we will always back you up, but I need to know you can protect yourself. I need to know you want to." He did shake her now, but gently. "You have gotta get past this, kid. Apocalypse, Mystique…all of it. It happened, and it's shitty, and it's in the past. It's time to get your goddamn head back in the game."
"Ah can't."
"Can't, or won't? Because if it's can't, kid, I will help you. All of us will. But if it's won't…" He lost the words, started again. "Don't let it be won't, kid. I taught you better than that." He let go of her arms, waited.
She stared at the ground, silent.
"Hey." His voice was rough, and she looked up at him. "I am not done with you. I won't ever be done with you. I promise you that."
God, how she wanted to believe him. "That's not how you acted," she whispered.
"What did you expect? You wanted us to leave you alone. You demanded it."
"Ah needed some space." She couldn't meet his eyes, just kept staring at the floor, wishing she could pull a Kitty and phase through it.
"No," he said. "You wanted to punish yourself. And when we gave you that space, you figured we were punishing you, too."
She didn't respond for a moment. Then, so quietly he could barely hear her, "Ah can't fix it."
"Nobody's expecting you to, kid. At least, not by yourself. That's why we're a team."
She gave a strangled half-sob, half-laugh, finally looked up at him. "Ah swear to God, Logan, if you give me that crap about 'there's no I in team'…"
He chuckled. "I'll leave that to One-Eye. But what happened wasn't your fault. When are you gonna start getting that?"
"Mystique was. Ah killed her, Logan."
"Yeah," he said carefully. "You did. But you didn't mean to."
"She's still dead."
"She is." He was weary, suddenly. "I'm not saying it's small, Rogue, because it isn't. You'll carry it with you for the rest of your life. But there's a difference between carrying it and being crushed by it."
"You speakin' from experience?"
He met her eyes again. "Yeah," he said. "And I can tell you, from experience, that you have to keep going, or that's exactly what will happen."
"Does it ever get lighter?" It was like living in the Arctic, she thought, and hearing about the sun.
"It never sits comfortable, if that's what you're asking. But you get used to the weight of it. You compensate, I guess. You change to make it part of you."
"And that's why you're angry. Because Ah changed."
He rounded on her. "Hell, I expected that. But you quit on me, kid. It was like you were drowning, and you wouldn't let anyone else help you. You wouldn't let me help you." He shook his head. "I had to sit on the shore and watch you just go under. Do you know what that's like, to watch that?"
A smile ghosted her face. "You should see the view from the water."
"You wouldn't let me. So I got angry, instead." He shrugged. "I'm good at angry."
"No kidding." She bit her lip. "And now?"
"Now we keep going."
Something in her loosened at his words, at the easy way he said "we." She knew the old familiarity was gone, but in its place was honesty, bright and hard, and more importantly, Logan. Her friend. She savored the word briefly, then took a deep breath, steeling herself for another dose of truth. "You're still mad about last night, aren't you?"
"Yeah. That's a different mad, though. I don't want to talk about it right now."
"But…"
"Jesus, kid. Haven't we had enough touchy-feely for one day? Let it go."
Relief made her bold. "He helped me, you know. You should be nicer to him."
Logan scrubbed a hand over his face, more exhausted than if he had been running sims through the night. "He's alive, isn't he?"
"Logan."
"Rogue," he mimicked, then scowled. Believe me, I've got a hell of a lot to say on the subject of you and Gumbo. Just not right now, okay?"
"Why?"
"Because you need to meet the professor in fifteen minutes, and you haven't eaten breakfast yet. Go and eat something, will you?" She knew his tone and knew not to push her luck. She stood and gathered her things.
"Hey?" she asked, tentative again.
"Yeah?" He allowed a hint of exasperation he didn't really feel to color his voice.
She glanced at him through a curtain of hair, twisted her hands in their gloves. "Ah'm sorry. For worryin' you. For givin' up."
"Don't apologize, kid," he said gruffly. "Just don't do it again." He gave her a gentle shove towards the door. "Go eat, dammit. Something healthy. You meet me back here at four, got it?"
She groaned, turned towards the door. "Got it."
A/N
See? Logan's not quite as mean as you all thought. Of course, there's still that little matter of the couch confrontation to be dealt with…
Once again, I bail out on individual review responses. It's one-thirty a.m., and we're gearing up for a crazy busy week here. Still, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who are reviewing -- I really appreciate you taking the time, and I take them seriously. It's really tempting to e-mail y'all directly, because I usually have so many things I want to say, but I'm not sure if that's a breach of fanfic etiquette. Anyway, thanks.