The stars were as clear as possible from any point on the surface of the Earth. Here on a Mexico night, Rogue couldn't sleep, and she didn't know whether it was an emotional issue, or she just wasn't that tired.

Leaning against the mortar of their temporary shelter, a shack out in the middle of literally nowhere, she put a cigarette to her lips and tried to ignore the feelings seeing Charles Xavier stirred in her, feelings that were entirely too positive for the reality of their situation. Under normal circumstances, she'd care that all the mutants were gone. However, she never really fit in with them, to begin with. The Professor couldn't change that.

"Hey," a voice interrupted her rather melancholy thoughts. She could hear the shuffling of feet in the background. Then, echoing across the desert, a simple name, "Marie."

Rogue tossed her head back and laughed though not in a pleasant fashion. Logan hated how wrong it reverberated in his bones. When he found her the first time in the alternate timeline, homeless on a Canadian road, he had promised to watch out for her. But events had conspired against her and against the both. It didn't seem like they were destined for a happy ending.

"I didn't know you smoked now."

"Ah guess ah absorbed you one too many times."

Logan crossed his arms and looked out into the distance, fighting back the urge to get out his own smoke. "I don't know whether that is a good thing or not."

Rogue cast the cigarette down and stamped it out. "It's a good thing. Keeps me company."

Logan barked a short laugh. "Can't be my cranky ass."

She smiled, thinking about some of the ways his psyche had encouraged her in the past. And for the moment, because she knew once the truth gets out, he would never see her the same again, she chose to reveal a little more than what she was comfortable with. "You were the first one to ever see me, ah mean l'ahk truly look at me. Honest, you could berate me all day, and ah wouldn't care. It means more to me than all those false pleasantries people give me, fake facades, acting like they're not scared. Ah absorbed them. I know they're scared. And look at me," she said, motioning to how there was not a scratch on her, despite all the damaged she caused the previous day. "Ah was sitting at 50,000 feet before you saw me dive into those cars. It turns out they had a good reason to be scared. Ah'm not human. Ah'm not even a mutant anymore."

"Rogue," Logan breathed.

"1944," she cut him off, fully facing him now. Her eyes were searching his for something, Logan wasn't quite sure what.

"The Pacific," she recounted, as if she had been there. "It was a warmer morning than usual. When those planes attacked your ship. Bright lights. Explosions all around. Ah remember you weren't tired. Everyone else was. It's why you were able to swim to an island shore, hauling two other sailors with you."

Flashes. Her words seemed to trigger images in his mind. The ocean. The Japanese. That was after his ordeal on the European front. Flashes of sardonic grins, even as his fellow soldier bled out beside him. While he was mending, growing stronger, everyone around him was falling apart.

"I'm sorry, Rogue, that you have to see all that."

"No, don't be sorry," she replied, resuming her long stare into the horizon. "It makes me wiser. It's hard to feel sorry for m'self, it seems trivial in the scheme of things that ah can't touch people. The world goes on."

"You don't look any older than the day I saw you last."

"Kree blood. Healing factor. Who knows. Ah'll be here for a while yet, though. You taught me how to survive. Ah remember Scott thought we were heroes. We knew better, didn't we?"