The Professor's office always reminded Rogue of a shrink's room: the chaise lounge chair, bookcases lining the walls with centuries' worth of information and history, and the framed diplomas of the Professor's education all made Rogue feel like she should have a pretty hefty invoice after each of her sessions with him.

Truth be told, the Professor should've been getting paid for dealing with the psychotic swirl of personalities she continually built up until her head imploded.

Her eyes lingered on some psychology books to her right, with titles that she could barely pronounce, much less understand. The Professor was at his desk across the room, speaking on the phone with what she guessed was routine business in running the mansion.

Her mind did enough prying without meaning to, so she opted to tune him out while she waited, enjoying just sitting on the plush chaise lounge and staring at books for no reason.

But what made it really enjoyable was the silence inside her head, thanks to the Professor's mental block on all the personalities she had absorbed.

The previous night, after Hank had taken care of her leg, back and neck, he had sent her to her room for some well deserved sleep. She managed to shift the covers enough to get under them but fell asleep before she could turn off the light.

She didn't wake up until three the next afternoon.

Rogue sighed a bit, leaning back in the chair and staring at the ornate ceiling above her, the crown molding so intricate it looked like wood foliage growing out of the corners of the walls.

The Professor had mentally called her not long after making it downstairs to eat something, reminding her that the mental block he had put up to obstruct Mystique's and the others' thoughts was only temporary.

So she begrudgingly made her way to his office, knowing he'd have to release all the personalities before completely ridding her mind of them.

Mystique herself was gone. Kurt had been by her side in the medbay for most of the evening, but had fallen asleep watching over her. Mystique must've woken up at some point in the middle of the night, shapeshifting into something small enough to exit through the vent in the room.

Rogue had only briefly seen Kurt on her way to grab something to eat—and he had avoided her completely.

He still thought she had been trying to kill Mystique, she guessed. That was something she was going to have to try and fix.

If it was fixable.

She sighed as her fingers drummed to an imaginary tune on her stomach. The gloves she wore were opera length, but were hidden beneath a heavy hooded sweater she essentially swam in. Sweat pants covered past her ankles, and the thick socks underneath them made her look like she was ready for hibernation in a cave somewhere in the northern tundra of Canada.

The thought of the continent made Rogue's mind drift to Logan, whom she hadn't seen hide nor hair of since departing the Blackbird.

He really must hate her now.

How stupid could she have been, letting it go that far? She was so damn worried about what the relationship would do to her that she didn't even consider how it affected him. She was such a moron, sometimes.

Now, after leading him along this far, she had to face the fact that he probably didn't want anything to do with her anymore.

"Rogue?"

Rogue jumped a bit at the Professor's voice right next to her. She glanced to her side and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, mah mind likes to forget who it belongs to sometimes."

The Professor smiled at the comment. "It's all right. I'm ready if you are."

"Ah'm never ready for this, but if it's gotta be done...." she let the rhetoric sentence trail, instead shifting herself so her head rested a bit higher on the thick arm of the chair.

The Professor, however, didn't move to his usual position behind her, where he could hover his hands at the sides of her head.

"Actually, Rogue, we're going to have you do the erasing this time."

Rogue balked. "What?"

"It's all right. Go ahead and sit up—I'll teach you."

Rogue did sit up, but not because he asked her to. "Professor, Ah can't erase mah own memories—Ah wouldn't even know where to start."

The Professor shook his head. "Not yours; Mystique's and Logan's."

"It's all the same up here!" Rogue tapped the side of her head with her index finger pointedly.

The Professor shook his head. "It's not, actually. Your memories are formed from different neuron synapses than the ones you absorb. You can manipulate the ones you absorb through your mutation, keeping what's needed and discarding all the rest that clutters your own thoughts." The Professor leaned forward a bit, grasping Rogue's clothed wrist gently and turning the palm of her hand upwards. "It's just like how I've been teaching you to try to absorb only what you need, selectively."

Rogue shook her head. "Ah've tried to, but Ah can't really separate their thoughts from their mutation."

"I think we were going about it wrong; you need their thoughts with their mutation to understand it, and to control it. What you need to learn to do is separate those thoughts from all the rest."

He released her wrist, leaving Rogue's gloved palm hovering in the air. "Close your eyes and picture your outstretched bare hand, your palm connecting with Mystique's own."

Rogue swallowed hard, familiar with this phase of the session. She did as she was told, picturing Mystique across from her, her hand gently resting on top of Rogue's.

The Professor said he made her think about it that way to erase the guilt of purposefully or accidentally touching someone; this way the victim was voluntarily touching her.

Despite its absurdity, it almost always worked.

"Now picture your mutation as a beacon, glowing brighter from beneath your skin as the mutation takes hold of her, her thoughts flowing into you slowly."

Inside her mind Rogue's palm began to glow a bright blue. Instead of the usual drained feeling she always felt, however, only Mystique's thoughts rushed forward, returning to her as they had the night she had touched her. Her breath hitched at the abrasive intrusion and she focused intently on the Professor's stress to streamline it.

She groaned a bit but kept her eyes tightly shut, forcing it to slow down. There was so much information—an entire woman's life flashing before her eyes.

"Charles, I can't," Rogue whimpered to him, voicing his real name by accident as memories of Mystique's conversations with the Professor began to swim through her head.

"Yes you can, Rogue," the Professor soothed. "You have the ultimate control, here. Your mind is an infinite storage space for information—picture it that way."

"There's so much," Rogue complained back. Her hand had dropped and she bent forward, grasping at her head.

"Then organize them, like a file cabinet. Keep what you need and discard the rest." The Professor's hand came to rest on top of Rogue's head through her hair, the touch almost instantly transporting the Professor's mental projection of himself into her mind.

"How?!" she cried out to him, seeing him inside her mind as a whispery blur among the thousands of memories she had stolen from her mother.

"Detach yourself from them—they are only memories, cataloged inside your head."

Rogue concentrated hard, distancing herself from Mystique's memories—the little Anna Marie she saw was no longer her, but a simple character on a piece of paper identifying a memory from long ago.

Just when she thought that the idea was stupid and not going to work, it did.

Like a huge weight lifted off her shoulders, the memories that seemed to be a part of her separated and she could look at them objectively, filing away ones she wanted to keep—mostly of her as a child—and the ones she didn't want to keep, which were a hell of a lot of killing and deceiving.

The ones she kept she filed away under long-term memory—she wasn't sure how, but somehow that seemed to work. It was no longer at the forefront of her mind, but merely a fact, like learning the multiplication table in elementary school.

The Professor inside her head smiled at her. "Now do the same with Logan's thoughts," he urged her.

The inner Rogue nodded at him, Logan's form appearing inside her head and voluntarily touching her as Mystique had. The feel of his thoughts began surging through her and she quickly forced them away, disengaging herself from them.

Seeing her through his eyes was painful, now that she knew it was no longer like that. But she kept the thoughts anyway, hoping that they'd be comforting memories during lonely nights she was sure she'd have.

The memories of his past were haunting, and while she felt for him she knew they were not hers to keep; so she discarded them. If Logan ever wanted her to know about his past, he'd tell her.

She wasn't about to invade his privacy.

The Professor didn't tell her to, but with the newfound control she had she used the same technique to banish the people she'd touched in New Orleans, as well as Gambit's memories.

She had not realized that the card thrower had the power of empathy, too—and had used it to convince her to go along with his cockamamie scheme to rescue his father. He at least had seen Rogue as a good person, however, and those thoughts had made her want to help him, anyway.

Sometimes being a good person really sucked.

She essentially wiped all of their memories away, as she had no past with any of them. Gambit had some information regarding Magneto and some place called Genosha, so she filed that away to tell the Professor later.

When she was done, it felt like she had truly and finally cleared the clutter out of her mind.

She exited from her mild state of meditation, opening her eyes to the real world, both of them still in the Professor's office.

"I understand," she finally said to him, looking up to his real form sitting in front of her. His hand left her head and he smiled at her.

"You continue to gain better control of your powers," he observed.

Rogue sat up, feeling a bit prideful of knowing she was the one to silence all the personalities inside her head, especially Mystique's: it had been one of the harder forms for even the Professor to rid her mind of.

The Professor's statement made her shake his head at him, however. "It's not control; it's dealing with them."

"Rogue, control is more than just turning your skin off. Being able to control the thoughts you absorb is an equal part of understanding your power."

Rogue sighed, standing up and pushing her hair out of her face. "It's not the same an' you know it."

"I know you fear hurting someone as innocent and young as you once were."

Rogue had been walking toward the Professor's window, but stopped short of her destination. She turned to face him. "What?"

Professor Xavier's stare was intense, but Rogue did not look away. "Memories of your childhood through Mystique kept surfacing your own memories of touching Leech. Why is that?"

Rogue looked away, silent.

"It's all right, Rogue. What you feel is completely normal; you never absorbed a child's memories before."

"When Ah was little, Ah used to have the same thoughts ... Ah used the think Ah'd be better off dead." Rogue cringed a bit at the little boy's memories. "It was a bit unsettlin' seeing it from another child." She turned back to the Professor, swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat. "He was so innocent, like Ah was. And Ah used him, just like she used meh."

"You didn't use him, Rogue."

"Ah did," she whispered back, her voice a bit raspy from the buildup of emotion inside her.

"What is it your feeling right now, Rogue?"

The question threw her, causing her brow to furrow in both disbelief and confusion. "What do you mean, how do Ah feel?"

"Is it anger for not having control? Shame for hurting him? Or sadness for seeing your childhood feelings in someone else?"

"Ah don't know! Why're you asking meh this?!" Rogue's temper flared a bit at being judged for her thoughts; she would've thought the Professor of all people would understand where she was coming from.

"Which is it, Rogue?" he prodded again, sounding almost determined.

Rogue threw her hands up in the air. "Pick one! Leech didn't deserve the pain Ah caused him, just like Ah didn't deserve being made sick! Ah of all people should've been protecting him, and instead Ah used him for his powers like some freakin' hypocrite! Ah played right into his feelings of being helpless, not being able to control your own powers—Ah'm ashamed of myself for using him, afraid that Ah made him think he's only good for his powers...." Rogue's voice lowered, adding, "But most of all Ah'm angry that Ah was used to use him—Ah became exactly what Ah hate most." She rested her arms on the Professor's desk, her head hanging forward in defeat.

"Rogue."

She sighed, looking up as he wheeled himself next to her. "What?"

"Focus on those feelings—not how they make you feel, but what they are and why they are there."

She stared at him for a moment. "What?" she asked again, more incredulously this time.

"Those feelings may very well be the trigger to turning off your mutation." When Rogue began to voice her rebuttal, the Professor interrupted, "They are how you felt when touching Leech, are they not?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Take off your glove."

Rogue involuntarily flinched away from him. "What?! No."

"There's only one way to find out whether those feelings are indeed a trigger."

Rogue backed away further, retreating to the door leading out to the hall. "Ah'm not going to hurt you just to test some theory, Prof. Thanks but no thanks."

Professor Xavier only smiled at her, almost knowingly. "Very well, Rogue. But at least consider it."

She reached the door, opening it and giving the Professor an incredulous shake of her head. "Yeah, sure, will do." She paused long enough to place some sincerity in her voice before adding, "Thanks for teaching meh how to erase those memories, and all." As she hurriedly placed herself on the other side of the door and began to close it, she only saw a glimpse of the Professor's widening grin....

... Right before turning and ramming straight into Logan's chest.

"What the hell?!" Rogue said before she could stop herself, her hand coming up to her throbbing nose. She looked up at him, seeing a smile etching his features. "Logan! Sorry, Ah didn't mean to—"

"Don't worry about it. What's the rush?"

Rogue looked back at the closed door, then back to Logan. "Uhm, it's nothing...." Her voice faltered at the small smile still gracing Logan's lips. "What's so funny?"

Logan's smile disappeared then, and he shrugged slightly. "Nothing."

Rogue nodded, not really believing him but too anxious to prod. She bit her lower lip and glanced away, nervously tugging a strand of her white locks behind her ear. "Look, Ah'm sorry about earlier ... in the jet."

She looked up at him when his gloved hand nudged under her chin, forcing her to. "It's all right; believe it or not, I understand." His hand went back to his side, and he shrugged both of them into his jeans' pockets. "There was a time that I hated myself for what I was. Still do, sometimes. But I worked through it, with the Prof's help."

Rogue watched his demeanor intently, realizing that a bit of Logan's senses were still flowing through her. She could almost feel his heartbeat quicken as he told her his private thoughts.

She startled a bit when a hand went to her shoulder, protected by her oversized hooded sweater. "If and when you work through it, let me know."

His hand dropped and he sidestepped her, making his way down the hallway.

She turned to watch him, at a loss for words. He really did understand what it was like to hate yourself.

She knew that through touching him, more than anything else.

He couldn't possibly want anything to do with her, not as an untouchable woman. That wasn't a relationship at all, and he should know that.

She watched his retreating form, taking a step forward almost involuntarily. Maybe she should just explain herself to him?

"Logan!"

He stopped and looked back at her. This was the part where she was supposed to run after him and throw herself into his arms—right?

Instead, she walked toward him, her gloved hand rubbing the back of her neck anxiously. He didn't move, instead waiting for her to close the distance between them.

When she finally was about a foot away from him she said, "It's not that Ah hate myself—at least, Ah don't think it is."

He quirked one of his eyebrows at her but remained silent.

Her hand came down from her neck and she shoved both of them into her sweater, trying to avoid the nervous fidgeting she always did when she was speaking her mind.

"In mah head it's always been gaining control first—not just dealing with it. So when it came back the way it did, Ah just felt like Ah'd lost everything."

"You didn't."

She looked up at him, hesitation surely expressed on her features. She opened her mouth to protest, but he interrupted her.

"You need to be sure it's what you want, darlin'."

The statement made Rogue's breath hitch. Before really thinking she replied, "It is what Ah want! Ah'm just not sure it's what you want ... and whether it's sunk in that Ah'm not touchable anymore."

That same damn knowing smile imprinted on Logan's face, and she briefly wondered if memories of her using a scarf were what he was thinking about.

The thought almost brought a smile to her face, anyway. She felt his hand against the side of her hip, inching her closer. She glanced at it and back at him.

"I'm aware," he replied to her previous statement. The hand at her hip had closed the distance between them, and Rogue realized absentmindedly that her hands were still hiding within her sweater. She removed them, letting them instead rest lightly against both sides of Logan's waist.

His free hand came up, brushing the stray white locks that always seemed to find their way back to hiding Rogue's face. She savored the light touch of his gloved hand as it brushed her cheek and tucked the hair behind her ear.

"You want this," he said to her, "even with your skin."

Logan's closeness was all she could really think about, but his statement was more of a question and he was watching her, waiting for a reply.

She was beyond fully clothed, but his hand at her hip and the other grasping her arm, slowly cascading down and tracing its contours through the thick fabric were making her weak in the knees.

She supposed with Logan there would always be ways around her skin.

Her mind started to drift to endeavors with a scarf and she shook her head slightly, fully aware that Logan could probably already sense her arousal and what he did to her.

In a way, however, knowing he knew without her having to voice it was comforting. She realized he was still waiting for an answer and smiled, a blush inadvertently forming on her cheeks.

"Yes," she finally answered. "Even with mah skin."

"Good," he said. Then he kissed her.

It took Rogue far too long to realize there were no barriers between her skin and his, and that the taste of Logan without his very essence was all she was feeling.

It took her far longer still to shove him away, staring up at him incredulously.

"Logan!"

That knowing smile was once again on his face, and she finally realized why it was there.

"Mah skin is off again?!"

He nodded at her and glanced behind her. She followed his gaze and saw the Professor exiting his office.

"The feelings you described to me regarding Leech are indeed your trigger, Rogue."

Rogue looked at him, then back to Logan. "But Ah don't feel any different. How did you know?"

"Turning on and off your mutation requires a mental switch that I sensed occurring during our session. Logan, of course, could sense it through your smell." The Professor's smile grew a bit upon Rogue's dubious gaze at him, so she looked back to Logan.

A thought occurred to her, however, and her eyes went to her gloved hands. "It was in meh this whole time?"

"Touching Leech brought certain feelings to the forefront of your mind—give it some time and practice and you'll be able to control it with dexterity."

As when she first realized she could touch, a smile tugged at the corners of Rogue's lips even as her eyes expressed shock at the situation. She began thinking about the feelings she had touching Leech, trying to focus on what it was that made her turn her skin off.

A flicker of tingling flew through her skin and she gasped at it when she realized she had caused it.

"It's touching innocence," she mumbled. "The fear and shame of destroying it, like mahne was...." she looked at the Professor, shaking her head in disbelief. "How can Ah ever thank you?"

"I can't take the credit—it was Logan who came to me with the idea."

She turned to him, realizing what he had done before kissing her. He had coaxed her to be okay with their relationship—poisonous skin and all—before letting her know her skin had been off since she'd left the Professor's office.

"Why didn't you tell meh?" she finally asked.

"The Professor's a bit more subtle with his suggestions, and you're pretty damn stubborn."

"Ah should slap you," she replied, closing the distance between them again.

"Before or after thanking me?" he rebutted back at her.

She didn't slap him. The distance between them gone, she obediently—but meaningfully—whispered, "Thank you."

His knowing smile gentled, and he nodded his welcome to her. Forgetting about their audience, Rogue reached up and resumed what she and Logan had been doing prior to shoving him away.

As their kiss deepened and she felt Logan's arms snake around her waist, Rogue realized she was no longer her namesake.

After a decade of loneliness, Anna Marie could have a chance at life again.