The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action. –John Dewey

Logan was gone all spring.

Two months after he left, people started wondering when—or if—he was going to come back. If anyone had bothered to ask me, though, I'd have told them point blank not to look for him anytime soon. But no one did. In fact, whenever I was around Logan was very carefully not mentioned.

That was fine with me; I didn't particularly want to talk about him.

Of course, the conversations that suddenly cut off when I came in the room, the sympathetic looks, even the supportive, "You're doing ok, right Rogue? Fitting in? Not lonely?" got annoying fast.

Lucky for all the other residents of Xavier's I'd been born and bred with Southern manners. Instead of giving into temptation and whacking people over the head with my physics book, I pasted on a sweet smile, gritted my teeth, and smoothly changed to subject. My Mama would have been so proud.

Dr. Grey was the worst, probably because I spent so much time those first few weeks sitting my bare ass on her cold lab table, getting poked and prodded and probed. I guess she figured that it was her job to examine my mind as well as my body. She meant well, but there was something about her gentle questions that never failed to raise my hackles.

Possibly because every time she broached the subject she was wearing a Hazmat suit and I was naked. But that's just, you know, a thought.

One thing I hadn't taken into account when I peeked into Magneto's memories was the fact that he had no idea how hard learning to control her mutation must have been on Mystique. The testing was—well, I don't think the English language has actually come up with a word to describe how invasive and humiliating it was. The kind of intense work I did with the Professor every day left me in so much pain, sometimes I thought my head was going to explode. Sometimes, I wished it would.

And I knew it was going to get worse when—if—Logan agreed to help me.

Besides working on my control, I also had school to worry about. I'd spent over half of my junior year on the road, so the fact that I was behind didn't come as a surprise. Xavier's school had some pretty non-traditional classes, but it was still a school, and therefore all of its students were required to meet the minimum educational standards for the State of New York.

I'd been on the college prep track back in Meridian, but I still had to work my tail off to catch up on eight months of missed lessons. And what do you know, that meant summer school

When Ms. Munroe sat me down and broke the news—I think they make her do messenger duty in the hope that whatever terrible tidings she's imparting won't seem quite so bad if they're delivered in her cool accent—my first thought was something like, "Summer school? Hasn't God punished me enough with the deadly skin thing? It's just not fair."

Yeah, turns out there's still a little bit of vapid teenager left in me, after all.

Even though I wanted to rail at the Heavens for this last little bit of injustice, I settled for giving Ms. Munroe a resigned nod. And when a couple of the girls caught up with me in the hall outside her office and asked if I wanted to play doubles pool, I pasted a smile on my face and answered with a, "Sounds good," that was downright breezy.

I flirted with Bobby at dinner. Flopped on the couches in the rec. room afterwards, I snitched John's lighter and promised Sooraya she could borrow my black satin gloves.

Later that night, though, when the rest of the student wing was asleep, I found myself getting out of bed and padding to Logan's old room. It wasn't really his—just one of the guest rooms—but it was the best I could do on short notice. I crawled onto the bed, buried my face in the pillow, and cried.

Most of the time, I don't do tears. I kind of like to think of myself as a Steel Magnolia, only, you know, with less poufy hair. Even hysterical, I realized I was acting like an idiot. One, it wasn't like I had anywhere else to go for the summer, anyway. And two, I'd wanted to stay at school, to keep working on my control and wait for Logan. I guess the summer school thing was just the proverbial breast augmentation that broke Dolly Parton's back because no matter how stupid I knew I was acting, I couldn't stop with the tears.

I wanted my Mama and Daddy. I wanted my bedroom with its ridiculously large map and all the junk that once upon a time I'd thought I couldn't live without. I wanted my old school—where I'd been kind of a big shit in a little toilet before David. I wanted my friends and my volleyball uniform and my Hollister bikini and my stupid unicorn paperweight. I even wanted the exhilarated, independent feeling I'd had on some of the good days on the road.

And yeah, I wanted Logan, too. Which I also knew was stupid. Technically, I barely even knew him. But I'm pretty sure bringing a person back from the dead supersedes a lot of technicalities.

I guess my fairy godmother had the night off, because none of the things I wanted Bobbity-Booed into existence. I finally stopped crying, though, which was saying something. For a while I'd been worried the Professor might need to start building an ark. Tears spent, I flopped on to my back and stared at the ceiling.

There were no cracks.

And damnit, I wanted cracks.

The blinds in the room were shut, so I sensed more that saw the sun rising. I figured I'd better get my ass back to my own place before I got caught invading Logan's room again. Rolling off the mattress, I turned to fix the mussed bedclothes and kicked something small and flat.

Suppressing a startled, "Eeep," I pressed a hand to my chest in a gesture so southern, I shouldn't have been allowed to do it without saying something like, "Well bless my soul." Old habits die hard. After I quit with the sobbing, I'd been laying in the quiet for such a long time, the sound of something skittering across the floor took a good six months off of my life.

I almost didn't bother with bending down to pick it up—whatever it was.

Ok, yeah, that's a big fat lie. Hello, I was in Logan's sort of room, ergo, odds were decent that whatever I'd kicked belonged to Logan. There wasn't a chance in Hell I was leaving it on the floor.

I got down on my stomach and wiggled my way halfway under the bed. It took a significant amount of groping, but I hit pay dirt. And pay dust bunnies. My fingers closed around the edge of what felt like—

"A book?" My voice was scratchy from crying and disuse. It was green with gold lettering in some language I couldn't understand and looked like it had seen better days, much better days. That meant it couldn't have come from the library here. Since I knew the only thing Logan made it to the mansion with were the clothes on his back, I would have ruled it being his out if it weren't for the three evenly spaced puncture wounds going through the center of the thing. Those, and the accompanying bloodstains, were a pretty clear signature.

He must have had it with him, maybe in an inside jacket pocket, when Cyclops and Storm pulled him off of the truck and carried him to the jet. If it were important enough for him to carry like that, though, you'd think he would have taken it with him when he left.

Either way, I figured he'd definitely want it back. I tucked the book under my arm and headed back to my room. I was half way there before I realized that I actually felt a little better. Go figure.

* * *

Summer passed.

I hate admitting that I'm ever not right—we won't use that nasty "wrong" word—but it actually wasn't as bad as I'd expected it to be. When I pictured May, June, and July, I'd been thinking it would be a half-embalmed substitute teacher and me in an empty mansion, the monotony broken only by twice daily torture sessions with Dr. Grey and the Professor.

Maybe that's how summer session at a regular private school—where the kids had homes and the teachers took research trips—would be, but I forgot to take into consideration the fact that nothing at Xavier's is entirely normal. Or even close to normal.

The students here can be divided into roughly three categories. First, there are the kids who made their own way here—maybe their parents sent them, maybe they were looking for a sanctuary on their own—for one reason or another, which is by far the minority. Then there are the runaways, fugitives, and recruits the Professor tracked down and physically had brought here—the majority.

And last there's me. I'm an anomaly.

I don't actually think anyone's figured this out yet, but the Professor isn't just picking mutants willy-nilly to bring to the Institute. Whether he goes to their families or finds them on the streets with Cerebro, the kids he brings in almost universally have powers that would be useful to him should they decide to become X-Men.

And I'm not saying I disagree with him. Yes, he might have more money than God, but even he's limited by pesky little things like space constraints and cash flow. And there are a lot of mutants out there. He can't take in every Tom, Dick, and Oh-Look-At-My-Purple-Hairy Mutation. I'm a prime example of that.

I mean, I was on the road for eight months, and I got into some pretty sticky situations. But it wasn't until I hooked up with Logan—a mutant the Professor had a keen interest in—that he actually noticed me. Now that I'm on his radar, I'm pretty sure he's glad he has me around, but no matter how much I could have used the help, X-Men wouldn't have fallen from the sky in a fancy jet to save me from starving to death in an alley.

And that's ok. It's not the Professor's job to save the world.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful to him and all of the X-Men for what they've done to help me. But in the end, I saved me. And Logan saved me. And I'm not likely to forget that anytime ever, which is what makes me an anomaly. The Professor did save everyone else here. He saved John from the foster care system. He saved Bobby from having to tell his parents he was a mutant. He saved Caliban from the Morlocks. He saved Scott, he saved Jean, he saved Pitor, he saved—you get the picture.

I'd like to think I figured all that out on my own, but I'm honest enough with myself to admit that I didn't put it together until after Magneto.

I always sort of figured the Professor knew that I knew he wasn't 100 percent the living saint everyone else thought he was. I mean, he's the most powerful telepath in the world, right? You could have knocked me over with a feather when, one day in his office, I realized that my mind wasn't the open book everyone else's was to him.

Looking back, I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised. He'd been getting increasingly frustrated as our sessions went on, but I hadn't pushed him for an explanation, mostly because I didn't want to do anything to rock the boat. Anytime I asked, he always said the same thing.

"Keep your mind open, Rogue. If you close your mind, my exploring it will be more painful."

Let me tell you, knowing that meant my mind was open as wide as I could get it.

Some days I didn't think I could take another iota of hurt. I wouldn't have been able to stand what was happening at all if I hadn't had—literally—decades of pain tolerance built up courtesy of Logan. It didn't make it hurt less, but it let me stay conscious.

Things changed on August first.

It was the day of The Accident—Part Deux.

You know something's wrong in your life when your capital letter days start having sequels.

That day, I woke up excited, and it stayed with me through my morning classes. I was still fidgety with enthusiasm when noon rolled around and I sank into the Professor's brown leather chair. I was in it so often these days it had started to feel like mine. His smile was kind as he came around the desk.

"You seem distracted, Rogue. Do you need a moment before we start?"

I huffed out my breath in a whoosh and forced myself to sit still. "Nope. I'm good."

"Alright then." The Professor rolled forward until our knees were touching. We clasped hands through two pair of gloves, and he met my eyes. "Are you ready?"

He didn't say, "Are you ready for the pain?" But that's what he was really asking. I clenched my teeth and tightened my stomach muscles, a couple of tricks I'd picked up along the way. Usually I had to give myself a mental pep talk before I gave him the all clear to start, but not today. I nodded. "Ready."

It started with a dull headache at the first touch of his mind. From experience, I knew it would grow the longer he stayed in contact. I did what he'd told me to and pictured a wide open door. I don't know if that was helping any because, as usual, I didn't feel anything but hurt, but I was willing to try.

Open door. Open door. Open door. Open door. Open door. Open door.

I kept the chant in the foreground while the back of my mind wandered, trying to distract itself from the pressure building inside my skull.

Logan was coming back. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not this week or next week or the week after. But instinct told me that with summer ending, he'd be back. Like an animal going to a burrow for the winter.He wasn't an animal, no matter what he thought, but he did operate on instinct. Spring and summer were for hunting, traveling, doing. Fall and winter were for finding a place and staying close to it. This year at least, his place was going to be here.

With me.

The thought jumped out of the dark recesses of my mind where I'd pushed it to ignore and into the front of my conscious. I didn't stop to consider. I slammed my mind closed like a rattrap to cut off that line of thought. No one but me was seeing that childish—

Half a heart beat later, I heard screaming. The Professor flailed backwards. He might have toppled his chair, but I was too unconscious to notice.

* * *

I woke up, gasping and disoriented, in the infirmary.

It's never a good thing to wake up in the infirmary.

Before I could panic—how had I gotten here? Why were wires attached to my head? Where was my shirt? Who decided it would be a good idea to save money by keeping it like a meat locker in here? Firm hands landed on my shoulders.

"Calm down, Rogue. You're all right. Jean, she's awake."

Scott. I relaxed—slightly. When he saw that I wasn't going to struggle, he relaxed his grip and slowly moved his hands off of me.

"Rogue, I'm so sorry." I swiveled my head to the side and met the Professor's worried gaze.

"I—what—" I couldn't seem to make my mouth work. I had about 12 million questions, but none of them were formulating the right way. Dr. Grey stepping up to the other side of the lab table distracted me, and I turned my head that way. She was filling a hypodermic needle with something clear. "Wh-what are you giving me?"

She gave me a small smile. "Just something for the pain, Sweetie."

"P-pain?"

A trio of glances passed above my head before Dr. Grey spoke again.

"Your head isn't hurting?"

I thought about that for a second. "Not really, no. I'm a little muzzy, but nothing actually hurts. Well, except my wrist." I glanced down and noticed I was wearing a brace. Confused and all at once unnerved, I used my other hand to push up on the lab table. This time Scott let me. "What happened?"

The shared look again. I was getting more than a little tired of being left out of whatever secret was floating around the room, and I was about to tell them that, when the Professor cleared his throat. Guess he'd drawn the short straw during the mental discussion and had to be the one to talk. "It's rather complicated, but strictly speaking, you should be dead."

My mouth dropped open. "D-dead?"

He nodded, grim.

"It was the only way, Rogue," Scott interjected. "You had him trapped in your mind. He had to blast his way out, or your gift would have killed—"

"My gift? You touched my skin?" My voice rose involuntarily on the last word as anger overtook confusion. "How could you do that You know—" I broke off, shaking my head and pushing Scott away when he reached out to stop me from jumping off the table.

"Wait. Just calm—"

"My dear, you must understand, I didn't—"

"Rogue, get back on the table. You shouldn't be—"

Everyone was talking at once, and my head swam a little when my bare feet hit the cold floor. I was clutching the sheet I figured Dr. Grey had covered me up with to my chest, and I felt the sticky pull of electrodes popping off my temples as I jerked away. She and Scott both tried to grab me, but my back was to them and even wearing gloves and long sleeves they shied away from that much bare skin.

I was angry, confused, and scared as I tried to get my bearings, and all at once the headache I hadn't had before came out of left field run into my skull like a Louisville Slugger knocking one out of the park.

I took a few lurching steps toward the door, reaching out with one hand to hit the panel that would open it. Before I could, a pneumatic hiss sounded, and when I forced my eyes up, I realized I must have been worse off than I thought.

I was hallucinating.

But maybe that wasn't such a bad thing, because the hallucination in front of me was 6'4" of solid muscle encased in denim and cotton and was the best, most wonderful, most comforting thing I ever could have seen. Or smelled. Who knew hallucinations could smell like leather and cigars? Learn something new every day.

Even though I knew it wasn't real, I felt myself speaking. Or trying to—the sound that came out sounded my like a cross between a strangled sob and a gasp.

"Lo-gan."

"What the fuck is going on here?"

Then I fainted.

Again.

So much for being a Steal Magnolia.