Author's Note:

No reviews. To say the least, I'm disheartened... Anyways, next chapter. I'll put up the next chapter the day I get a review, alright?

And the picture of the character will go up then, too.

The title and excerpt is from Michael Buble's song, "Lost". It's foreshadowing and only slightly reflects what is going on now, okay?

"Lost" by Michael Buble

'Cause you are not alone
I'm always there with you
And we'll get lost together
Until the light comes pouring through
It's when you feel like you're done
And the darkness has won
Babe, you're not lost

Maybe it wasn't a smart move.

Maybe it was cowardly.

Maybe I was wrong to think I could handle this.

Then again, maybe I'm not smart, strong or brave.

I couldn't be sure how long I'd been running, but by the time I stopped, the sun had been down for a while. Although I'd been running for what could have possibly been hours, my heart rate wasn't that high at all; I hadn't even broken a sweat. Everything from the incident in the mall to now was a blur, and as I looked around, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach: I didn't even know where I was.

God would have it that I ended up at the end of a pier staring out at the ocean. I turned around and saw a bayside city with a cliff overlooking the ocean. Maybe it was Bayville, maybe it wasn't, but one thing was for sure: this wasn't home. To top it all off, there was that annoying ringing noise in my ears, and because the sun had set, the cold was rolling in, which left me lost, cold, and hungry.

I looked back to the sea again and a lump rose in my throat. It had been a crazy couple of days what with the party, mutant-discovery and complete 180 degree change of lifestyle, but it hadn't had time to set in until now. I was, in the truest sense of the word, alone, and had it not been for a muffled song playing from my pocket, I would have most likely started crying.

If I go crazy, then will you still call me Superman?

If I'm alive and well, will you be there holding my hand?

I'll keep you by my side with—

"Hello?" I answered the phone without looking at the caller ID, and as my mother's worried voice come out of the speaker, for a moment, I felt those tears threaten to spill. "Mami?"

"Andrea-Danielle Cruz! Where the hell are you?" she demanded. "Professor Xavier called me to tell me that you ran off—" She paused. "—Five hours ago! What the hell are you thinking?"

"Mami, I—"

"I've been worried sick! Nobody knows where you are, and your father says that you haven't contacted him since you arrived! Who the hell do you think you are, worrying us all like this?"

"Mami, I don't know what happened," I muttered, surprised that she didn't interrupt me this time. "I was talking to these guys and things got out of hand, so I just—"

"You ran off with some random guy?" she exclaimed incredulously.

"No, no Mami, it was a group of mutants, and I accidentally tapped into their powers," I said quickly, the words pouring out faster than I thought she could understand. "One of them, Lance, tried to attack my—" I stopped. What were the guys to me? Friends? Housemates? "—he tried to hurt the guys, and then I knew how to make the ground shake, and Pietro's really fast, and I guess that's how I ended up over—"

"Andrea, Andrea, slow down," she said firmly, the sharp edge on her tone finally softening. I took a deep breath: even I knew I wasn't making sense. "You can't make the... earth shake?" I groaned: why did I even bother trying to make her understand the technicalities of this whole psychic/mutant issue? "And so what if that boy is fast, what does that have to do with you? Chiquita, are you sure you aren't imagining these things? Just because you're a mutant doesn't mean you're some sort of super-power magnet--"

"Look, mom," I said, cutting her off, "I've gotta go now, I'm gonna call the Professor. I'll talk to you later, okay? I love you." I didn't wait for her to answer before I hung up and pulled the battery out of the phone. Heaving a sigh, I adjusted the bag on my shoulder and made my way into town.

Five Hours and Fifteen Minutes Earlier

Cerebro, Xavier Institute:

"Professor, wouldn't this qualify as spying?" Jean Grey stood behind her mentor as he placed the helmet upon his head, a serious look on his face. A holographic screen opened up in front of them with a map of Bayville. Immediately it zoomed onto downtown, and after another silent command, onto the mall.

"We've hardly had time to interact with the girl," the Professor reasoned, and holding his chin thoughtfully, observed the screen. "It's only fair that we make sure she's safe." Although technically Cerebro could locate any one person in the world (sans Magneto, of course), it was currently set to identify three types: X-Men (marked by small encircled red X's), general mutants (simple red dots), and Danielle (an encircled purple X). At that moment, the three dots that were Ray, Sam and Bobby were moving around a skate shop, and Danielle and Kurt were stationary in front of a CD store. There were a handful of mutants scattered around the mall, but they all seemed to be minding their own business.

"When you say 'safe', do you mean from everyone else, or for everyone else?" Jean asked, trying not to show too much of her anxiety. There was a short silence when the Professor didn't answer, but eventually he sighed and leaned back in his chair.

"Jean, we need to help this girl," he said firmly. "She has no understanding of her power, and it's our job to help her figure them out." That's not an answer was what she wanted to say, but she held her tongue and quietly observed the team.

A couple of minutes passed when neither said anything and the only sound in Cerebro was a soft, constant beeping that pulsed with Danielle's marker. All of the other markers were solid, but hers seemed to pulse and blink. Staring at the locators, a question formed in her head and came out of her mouth without her consent. "Professor, if you can locate anyone with Cerebro, why don't you use it to locate Rogue?"

This time there wasn't a thoughtful silence before he answered, "She left because she needed a break to think things through. We'd be invading her privacy if we tried to find out what she was doing."

Before she could say anything in response, Danielle's marker disappeared. "Professor—!"

"I saw it, Jean," he said, and furrowed his brows as she reappeared behind the mall, a red dot right next to hers. Both were blinking for a moment, but then the red one stopped. "Identification, Cerebro."

"Pietro Maximoff, Charles."

"Call the team, Jean," the Professor ordered immediately, his tone urgent. "We don't know what Quicksilver is up to."

Present

Being lost can be terrifying.

Back home, the few times that I'd wandered alone at night, I'd at least known which areas to stay away from. Here I had absolutely no idea, and on more than one occasion I felt as if I were being watched. Finally I reached a quaint suburban neighborhood on the edge of town. There was a small, open park with a couple of trees, benches and a playground, so feeling a sense of safety from it, I gravitated in that direction.

This place was nothing like the park where Robert had proposed to me in, but even so, I thought back on that day and smiled. I considered calling him and even took the phone and battery out of my pocket, but as I sat down on the bench and tried to command my hands to do the necessary actions, I found that I couldn't.

Would he really want to talk to a mutant, especially one that had hurt him?

I dropped my head into my hands and closed my eyes; that ringing in my ears seemed to increase, but no matter how I shook my head, it didn't ease up. It had started back at the mall and had gone away while I was running, but now it was back full force. If it didn't stop by the time I got home, I'd have to—

Where was home, anyways?

"Hey, y'alright?"

The voice caught me by surprise, especially when I looked up and found a teenager my age. Like me, she had very strong facial features, and despite the guarded concern in her eyes, she had a generally strange, dark aura. To be honest, I was surprised that someone who projected such warning energies would bother going out of their way to make sure a stranger was alright, so I figured that, on some level, it had to be a façade. She wouldn't dare pry, that much I could tell, and judging by the firm set in her jaw and the generally wary feel that I got from her, she would leave at the slightest indication that she wasn't welcome.

I considered my words, and after several seconds of not knowing what to say, simply shook my head. She stood awkwardly as she thought about how to react to this, and settled with taking a seat on the far side of the bench. We didn't touch, but the comfort reached across the empty space.

"So, what are ya doin' out here? It's pretty late," she said awkwardly. I shrugged.

"Ran away."

"From what?"

"Everything, nothing... myself, I guess," I muttered. Why I was opening up to this girl, I couldn't be sure, but as awkward as it felt, something was telling me to keep talking. "I just moved here, so I needed to get away."

She let out a short breath and shook her head. "Trust me, I hear ya."

Trust me?

"Yeah... it's just confusing," I continued. "I never would've hurt those guys before, and I stuck them in the ground without a second thought. I don't know where I'm going, and now I don't even know who I am anymore."

"Like there are too many people in your head tryin' to tell ya what to do."

"Exactly." I sensed the regret in her the moment she said that, but I let it slide. "The funniest thing is that this guy offered me a way out."

"Way out?"

"I'm a... freak, witch, psychic, whatever you want to call it," I admitted, not ready to use the M-Word yet. "Sometimes it gets hard to tell the difference between my feelings and somebody else's, so this man just came along and offered to help me figure it out. It should be a dream-come-true, but I don't think anyone can make this go away, not when I'm a danger to everyone around me."

Neither of us said anything for a couple of seconds until, to my surprise, she broke the silence. "Some people are just like that."

"Like what?"

"They don't care if you're dangerous or not. They just want to help even if there's nothin' in it for them." She sat with her arms braced against her knees and pulled off a pair of leather gloves to reveal pale, delicate hands. "My family's like that, y'know. Even with the whole public mutant exposure, we stuck together."

I stared at her; was she serious? "You're a mutant, too?"

She turned to me, a surprised look on her face that mirrored my own. "Well, yeah. Aren't you one?"

I couldn't help but laugh lightly and shake my head. "Just found out a couple of days ago. How long have you known?"

"Almost two years."

I laughed again and ran a hand through my hair. "Geez, never met a mutant before this week, and now I'm meeting them by the hour."

"Really?" Her tone became considerably more serious. "Who?"

"Well, besides a couple from the Institute, there was Pietro, Lance, and two others, but I can't really remember their names. You know them?"

She chuckled darkly. "Oh I know them alright," she muttered, and got to her feet. "Come on, let's get outta here." I stood up as well, and finally took a look at her appearance. She had short brown hair pulled into a ponytail under a baseball cap and a duffel bag thrown over her shoulder. She wore a pair of torn black pants and a black turtleneck with black boots; slightly gothic, I realized, and mentally slapped myself. Appearances came second in my mind by nature, and now wasn't the time to start stereotyping.

"Where?" I asked, genuinely curious. Where did she want to go, and why on earth would she want to take me with her?

"Y'ran away from Xavier's Institute, right?" Slightly taken aback, I mutely nodded. "Well, been there, done that, and lemme tell ya, that's the best place for ya right now. This mutant thing is no party, and the Professor really knows what he's doing." For a moment we just looked at each other, and silently we reached an understanding. This wasn't like every other bond I'd made before, this was something different, human: she understood, and wanted to help.

A green car drove up on the road next to us and pulled to a stop. The window rolled down and a man in uniform gave her a short wave. She waved back, and turned to me. "Well, that's my ride. You coming?"

Again, I was confused by her casualness. "Where to?"

She smiled softly, and held out a hand. "Home. The Institute. It's time I went back, and it'd be great if ya came, too."

I looked at her extended hand, a question I couldn't bring myself to voice begging to be answered. Why was this happening? Was it coincidence that, no matter what happened or where I went, everything pointed me back to the Institute? I let out the breath I'd been holding and took her hand for a moment.

"I'm Danny."

She pulled her hand away almost instantly, but a smile spread across her dark lips as she fit her gloves back on.

"Rogue."

REVIEW!!