Cliff hangers, dont'cha just hate'em? Hah, not when your the one writing it! No Logan in this chapter. Sorry it took forever to for this finished and uploaded but a combination of things has been keeping me away. I hope your all still interested! Happy reading love muffins!

Chapter Eight

I awakened to the knowledge that I was cold, extremely cold. Shivering down into the covers more I had yet to open my eyes; silently hoping that maybe it was still to early to get out of bed. With the snow and the omnipresent glow that it exuded it was difficult to gauge what time it might be. Filled with indignation, I pried my eyelids open and peaked at the clock, ten.

"Damn."

It was incredibly childish but I clamped my eyes shut tight willing myself to forget what time it was and go back to sleep for at least another hour or so. It didn't work.

Pushing the covers back, I shivered more violently than before as I turned the heat up and plugged the electric heater into the electrical socket in the wall and sat down in front of it to get warmed up.

"Bet you Ah'll be staying at the mansion tonight." I chattered.

I'd taken up the peculiar habit of talking to myself when no one else was around, probably the cause of talking to my inner Logan so much. Pulling some clothes closer to me I waved them around in front of the heater to get them warmed up. Momma used to do this when I was a little kid, early in the winter mornings in Merridian. She would either throw the clothes I was going to wear to school that day into the dryer or lay them over a vent to warm up. Mornings were always exceptionally hard for me as a kid, but then I got older and somehow my brain developed a sort of schedule that wouldn't allow me to roll back over and go back to sleep once I woke up even on the weekends.

Crawling off the floor, I pulled my jeans on over my leggings and put another long sleeve shirt on under the sweater Ororo made for me.

Looking in the tiny compact mirror, there was sleep crust in my eyes but I didn't really care as I let my hair down, hoping that it might act as a shield to keep my ears warm and grabbed my overnight bag setting the thermostat to kick on and off while I was gone. Jubilee read somewhere that it was bad to sleep with the heat on to high so since then we had been turning the heat down every night before going to bed.

Once outside, the wind, as I knew it would, whipped my chestnut tresses up into a swirling vortex of chaos around my face causing me to spit little pieces of the ends out of my mouth as I hurried to my car in the parking lot. Unlocking the door I hurried into it, shivering even more considering that the temperature in the car was at least ten degrees colder than it was outside. Starting the engine I sat there rocking and shaking until the tormenting hard ache in my nipples slowly started to dissipate. At this rate my nipples wouldn't be normal again until spring.

Turning the heat up to three I pushed my hair back from my face, sniffling. It was already apparent that I was developing somewhat of a winter cold and I had high hopes that maybe Jean could just give me something to zap it out of me. Of all the advances in modern medicine you still had to just wait a cold out the old fashioned way. That seemed like a load of bull, but it was still true no matter how much I hated it. Watching the snow and ice melt away from the windshield and back window, I put the car into reverse and eased out of my parking space.

At the time, it didn't seem so weird that there were hardly no students out on campus or that I had no trouble getting through traffic. Maybe it was just to cold for everyone, and me, the idiot was out barreling through it in my little beat up car with the one doughnut on the left rear tire.

By the time I got to the mansion, old faithful was warm and toasty purring like a kitten. It almost seemed like a shame to shut the car off once I was sitting in front of the drive way. Slick as can be, I clambered out of the car ready to shout my own opinions on the weather and whatever other round Jubilee had going with Bobby and John, however all those happy thoughts seemed to skip right out of my mind as I noticed that the twin doors to the entrance were wide open, hours of snow having already been swept up by the wind into the door way.

"No, no, no!"

Before I was inside the door I already knew I wouldn't find any survivors, but I'd never even been tempted to imagine I wouldn't find any bodies either. Sweeping through each room, the evidence of an attack was as plain as the little red raw nose on my face. In the Professor's office the plait glass window behind his desk was shattered into a million pieces, only his wheel chair had been left behind.

Running into the commons there was destruction and chaos everywhere I looked. The big screen had what looked like part of a lamp sticking out of the screen, the couch was turned upside down, cushions scattered here and there. Oddly I noticed the strange splat-splat-splat of shoes hitting water. There was a huge puddle right where I was standing and I had a good idea who it came from. "Oh Bobby." I couldn't help the heartbroken emotion that ceased my body just seeing that big pool of water around my feet. Immediately I thought of Jubilee and turned running up the stairs until I reached her bedroom, the door was halfway open, and I already knew that I wouldn't find her there but I still had to look. I had to see that she was gone. Tentatively I reached out and pushed the door open, my bare finger tips somehow in that moment memorizing the way the wood grains felt under them as I peaked into the room that two of my friends shared. Kitty wasn't in her bed, and as I turned my gaze slowly to Jubilee's side of the room a sickening pang hit my stomach at the sight that was there.

There was blood everywhere, on the sheets on the covers, there was a dried up mass of it on the floor. She'd been shot in her bed. In her home where she was supposed to be safe, where we were all supposed to be safe.

Standing there my lip began to tremble as I made my way over to my friends bed and slid down into the floor, the dried blood now becoming nothing but a blurred haze as the tears formed in my eyes and feel down my cheeks in mass quantity.

All I could think of was how this could happen?

Hours passed by before I realized that I'd crawled into Jubilee's bloody bed and somehow cried myself into an exhausted stupor which only pure uninterrupted sleep could cure.

It was nearly dark out, twilight time like that old song said, and I knew immediately that I needed to get as far away from this place as I could. I needed to distance myself. It was sheer stupidity that had trapped me here in my crying fit, however in comparison I hadn't known anything else to do. Now I needed to take action, maybe there was a chance and at the time I felt it was likely that there had to be some survivors they had the fight or flight instinct just as well as any other animal and they had chosen to run, to save themselves, all I needed to do now was to find them.

Getting up I moved through the cold halls until I reached the front doors again, my car door was open and for a second a spasm of fear shot up my spine, but then I remembered that in my haste to get inside I'd left it open. Sighing I shook my head at how addled my brain was.

I needed to pack my things and head north, Canada was my best shot.

"Good thinkin', kid."

The inner Logan seemed to be coming back in full force, perhaps I'd always have a little part of him inside me from now on, and for whatever reason every now and again in my life I would need that part of him to keep me going. Even if I never set eyes on him again, Logan and the Wolverine would always play a major part in my life.

Driving back to campus the usual New York traffic was out once again and it occurred to me that this thing couldn't just be local. Flipping the radio on as I sat in traffic I tried not to draw attention to myself as I leaned over the steering wheel listening.

"Yeah, finally gonna get rid of those mutie freaks for good." two disc jockeys were talking over a local rock station, "cleared out a whole nest of'em up at some school late last night. Authorities are keeping certain unnamed individuals for questioning on the where abouts of more dangerous mutants." The two men seemed to be getting a big chuckle out of some private joke before AC/DC came on playing 'If You Want Blood'.

So, some of my friends were still alive, if the news could be trusted which I didn't think was possible, but in situations like these you have to at least hang onto any little shred of hope that you can claw at, so I tucked the information deep down inside my heart and decided I would keep it warm and toasty there.

Pulling up in front of my building, the normal flurry of life had resumed. Loud parties were blasting from all over the campus grounds and it seemed even the campus security had become a little lax in their victory against the mutants. Luckily, the Professor had done a good job and forging all of our college information, I wasn't known on the campus as Rogue or even my real name but a name that the Professor had made up for me. I was now Anne Marie, involved in a tragic fire when I was younger which I was terribly embarrassed about, the excuse for my excessive clothing and the use of gloves in every day ordinary tasks. The excuse had served me well since I'd been attending classes and no one seemed to be suspicious, but I couldn't count on them buying that story forever. Everything inside of my was telling me to get away from this place.

"Hey Anne."

I'd left the door of my room open while I packed my things, carefully laying Logan's jacket out on my bed, turning slowly, and a little more jumpy than was needed, one of my class mates was standing outside the door. Jeremy Southern was a tall, lanky boy with a head full of strawberry blonde hair that reached down to his elbows, however he normally kept it tied back in a pony tail. He'd tried to get friendly with me a couple of times before I told him the lie about my skin, he'd backed off since then. No guy wanted to date a girl with third degree burn scars covering forty percent of her body, ironically neither did anyone want to date a girl who could suck the life out of them in minus ten seconds either.

"Hey Jerry."

"Can you believe it? A whole school full of this freaks living just a couple miles from here." his expression showed nothing but pure disgust which made my stomach turn. I'd never actually heard him take any strong stance on anything aside from maybe the choice of having a beer bong at the average frat party.

"Yeah, unbelievable, huh?" Since Logan, I could now fake a pretty could Canadian accent, which I used all the time now at college. "My parent's are pretty freaked out about it, they want me to come home for a little while until all this dies down." I said shoving a hand full of socks into my duffel bag.

"Makes sense, hey where's that roommate of yours?" Jeremy seemed to be overly talkative, and he almost never paid Jubilee any attention, although she got a big kick out of playing whatever practical joke she could on the lame sophomore.

"Dunno, I haven't seen her since yesterday." Turning I put on a mock look of horror and let my large almond shaped eyes become wider than usual. "You don't think maybe she was one of them do you? Eww that's so gross and I was sharing a room with her."

Glancing up from my packing I saw Jeremy shiver visibly like the last thing he would ever want was to be a roommate with a mutant.