DISCLAIMER: ME NO OWN NO X-MEN! DONT HURT ME!

:D Next chapter away!

Gambit pressed the gas pedal to the floor and sent the car flying along a deserted country road. If they were any closer to the city, they could have easily found a place that was open at midnight. But no, Xavier's was located in a strategic close-enough-to-the-middle-of-nowhere position that no local store was open.

"Why'd y'feel the need t'go an' send me out here, Roguey?" He asked as his eyes were glues to the road.

"Well, I could ask you the same thang, Swamp Rat."

Rogue pouted in the front seat. She'd been so close to winning her battle for food, dammit. Then that stupid Cajun had to go and shoot off his fat mouth.

"Hey now, chere, y'put yaself in that situation. Y'didn't need be wolunteerin' Remy fo' dis gig. He coulda gone wit'out' de food." He pulled into the parking lot of a convenient store and went up to the doors. Only to find them locked.

Getting back in the care, he sighed. "Well, as least it be a nice night fo' a drive, non?"

Starting up the engine, Aura stirred in the back seat. "Whatcha thinkin' 'bout, Aura?"

The angel, who was known around her friends as the rather looney ne, hadn't said a peep the whole drive.

"Nothin'. I….I just have this feeling that…that somethin' bad's about to happen."

"Oh, nonsense, petite, s'nearly midnight an' we haven't been called int' de lin o' fire yet, have we?"

Gambit said as he took his eyes off the road to look back at her. "GAMBIT!" Rogue screamed. The jolting of the car as Remy turned the wheel violently to avoid the falling tree limbs woke Jake. The brakes squealed as they came to a rapid halt.

"What's going on? What the heel was that?!" he asked as they skidded to a stop where the road side met open field.

"Don't got no clue, homme." Gambit said as he checked his rear view mirror, and then his head for any bumps and bruises.

"Aura.." Jake's sentence was cut off as he noticed the splatters of blood on the window. "Oh God, Remy, c'mere and help me!" He said, hands fidgeting around her.

"She'll be fine! Right now, we got a bigger problem." Remy stepped out of the mustang and saw the one thing that had topped off his bad night.

Rogue was laying in the middle of the road, unconscious, and being crushed by a massive tree limb. "How did she get out of the car?!" Jake asked as they sprinted towards her.

They began straining to lift the large arm of the tree off of Rogue. Gambit could feel it moving. The satisfying release of pressure as they pushed hard against it. "ARGH!" They both grunted as they lifted the log just enough that , with the log braced on Jake's large shoulders, Gambit swooped down and pulled Rogue out from under the crushing force.

"Rogue, Rogue?! Can y'hear me, chere?" He shook her by the shoulders in an effort to try and wake her. "Rogue?!"

He didn't know what to do. It wasn't as though he could perform CPR on a girl whose skin could kill him. There would be no benefit for anyone.

"What do we do?!" Jake asked panicked.

"I don' know!"

"We can't touch her!"

"I KNOW!"

"Move over." Aura said weakly. "I'm the only one who can bloody touch her." Aura pushed Gambit over to make way for her wing span. She checked Rogue's heartbeat and started to pump her hands up and down on the girl's chest.

After fifteen stressful pushes, she bent her head and pressed her mouth on Rogue's.

She could feel herself being absorbed. It was such a strange sensation. She felt her energy being sucked from her and then replaced by her own healing factor. Aura had never before though of what it would feel like to be absorbed. But now that she had she realized the complete danger of it. Rogue would wake up, knowing everything that she had ever been through. And for a girl who prided herself on distance and a life shrouded in mystery, it was a big step to let someone know everything that Sinister had done.

As Rogue absorbed her Class A healing factor, fixing the breaks and tears of her organs and bones. Aura struggled to keep a conscious focus on her task.

Rogue regained her sense of the world around her as Aura bent her head to give her one last breath. Rogue's eyes went wide as she wiggled out from underneath Aura's hands. "Aura...were ya just kissin' me?" She said with a stuttered look around at her fellow X-Men.

"No," She said slowly. "I was performin' C.P.R." Aura was talking in a hushed tone, as though something was wrong.

Rogue took a moment to recall all of the events that had lead up to this point, where she sat on the muddy road, tasting blood and head pounding.

She remembered screaming out to Gambit as the trees began to fall. As he slammed onto the brakes, Rogue had jerked forward in her seat and was pinned against the door. The extreme turn was enough to give her the momentum to open the already faulty door with her body and then tumble onto the pavement. She remembered hearing a slight creaking…and then the world had gone black.

There was no doubt that it was Aura's healing factor and her own powers that had saved her from what would have surely been a deadly fate. The amount of internal damage that would have been caused by that one branch crushing her into the ground was enough to kill Scott, who was quite a bit larger than she was.

I was done for. The tree had dealt her a deadly blow, but the images that were racing through her head now were even more painful.

Syringes and blood, razors and needles. Everywhere she turned she could see the lab of a madman and the arms of a young girl reaching out to him in pain. Screaming for her daddy. Rogue shook her head to regain her attention on the task at hand.

"Is everyone else alright?" She asked, looking at Jake, then Gambit. "Oh my god. You're bleedin', Remy." She lifted a concerned gloved hand to the blood that rested on his arm, and soaked the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

"S'not'in, mon amour."

Rogue looked up at him with shocked eyes. He had just spoken the words "my love" while referring to her.

Aura and Jake glanced back and forth from Rogue to Gambit. The two were sharing mildly alarmed looks. Gambit's eyes read as though he had just spilled some massive sack of beans and Rogue's as though her ears were just being burnt off by acid.

"Uh…Remy? We might wanna get ya stitched up." Jake said, inner city accent adding to the flavor of the moment.

"Yeah, dat be best." Replied Gambit without taking his eyes off of Rogue.

The uncomfortable girl was the one to look away first. She knew that she'd found false meaning in the words, that she had simply heard wrong. But he was staring at her with such shocked intensity that she had almost begun to believe him. And had to look away.

"Alrighty, every body in the car. I saw an open late drug store. They're bound to have some first aid supplies." Aura said, pushing herself off of the pavement.

NEXT CHAPTER!!!! PLEASE!!!