Chapter Seventy-Seven:

"Try it again, Connor," Scott Summers sighed in frustration. "And this time try not to blow up the tree, okay?"

"Sorry about that, Mr. Summers," the aforementioned teenager cringed, powering up another ball of energy in his hands.

From her perch on the roof of the mansion, Rogue smiled, feeling a bout of sympathy for her former leader and friend. Bobby and the other new students had nearly driven him crazy back at the Institute, so she had little doubt that his pupils were going to be the death of him now.

Poor Scott, she thought with a soft chuckle. He's gon' need an early retirement wit' this job.

Of course, if ever a man was built for a job like this, it was Scott Summers. All-American male, clean-cut and handsome, smart and resourceful, a natural leader. He had that sense of control about him that made people follow him, and he could think under pressure, make the tough decisions, better than anyone she knew.

It wasn't hard to remember why she'd harbored such a big crush on him back in high school.

From somewhere below, a loud whoosh followed by a hiss of steam announced that Connor had just accidentally hit another tree during his training session.

"God help me," she heard Scott groan.

Laughing to herself, Rogue lifted her chin to gaze up at the sky overhead. The sun was just starting to set, casting an array of pinks and purples across the horizon. It was chilly out, the air nipping at her exposed face was frigid and unkind, but she had dressed warmly enough that the cold didn't bother her much.

"Had a feelin' I would find you out here."

Rogue didn't bother to turn around as Logan emerged from the shadows behind her. "Ya know me too well if yo' rememberin' mah bad habits after all these years."

"Trust me, kid," Logan grunted, coming forward to join her on the edge of the roof. "Some of them are impossible to forget."

"An' some o' them Ah picked up from ya," Rogue retorted, glancing over at him with a small smirk. "Ah reckon that means yo' t' blame, huh?"

"At least you never took up smokin'," Logan muttered gruffly. "Raven would have skinned me if you'd picked up that one."

"She could have used yo' claws for chopsticks," Rogue informed him gleefully.

Logan glared at her with a low growl, clearly not finding the idea as amusing as she did, but that wasn't surprising. She may have inherited a lot of things from him, like his temper, but his sense of humor was nowhere near hers. Given Kurt's jovial nature, she supposed it might actually have been Mystique who they got it from, which was a rather ironic thought in itself.

"Sorry," she apologized, even though she knew that he knew she wasn't. "Ah've spent way too much time wit' Emil, Ah guess."

"Emil?" Logan echoed, cocking an eyebrow.

"Remy's cousin," Rogue explained, smiling at the thought of the redheaded thief. "He's a great guy, reminds me a lot o' Kurt, actually. Both o' them the biggest jokesters Ah've ever met."

"Sounds like you had a nice little setup down in New Orleans," Logan observed evenly.

"Ah was happy, if that's what yo' askin'," Rogue shrugged. "Remy's family is wonderful, they took me in an' made me one o' their own from the start. They made me a part o' their family, an' Ah love each an' every one o' them. In fact, Jean-Luc, Remy's father, gave me away at the weddin' since..."

She trailed off, her stomach twisting, and looked up at him with a guilty start. It had only just occurred to her that Logan should have been the one to walk her down the aisle, that it was his job that Jean-Luc had taken.

And from the expression on his face, Logan knew it.

"Ah'm sorry," she whispered, not knowing what else to say. "Ah... Ah didn't..."

"You didn't know, Stripes," Logan said simply, his voice gruff with regret. "And even if you had, I wasn't there." He glanced away, murmuring, "I never was."

"Ya didn't know either," Rogue pointed out softly, but inside she was a mess, nothing but jumbled nerves. Were they really going to do this now? It had been hard enough to sit down with Mystique and get some answers earlier in the day, but at least she'd had Kurt there with her for moral support. How was she supposed to deal with this, what was she supposed to say to the father she'd never known as a father?

She shot him a discreet glance and was relieved to see that he seemed to be just as clueless about how to proceed as she was.

Luckily, another crash came from the ground, and Scott's rather distinct cry of exasperation floated up to their ears. Rogue smiled, grateful to have something to latch onto, and commented, "Never had Scott pegged fo' a teacher."

"He's grown up a lot since Bayville," Logan responded. "The others, too. I figure the experiences they've lived through have shaped who they are today."

"Preachin' t' the choir there, sugah," Rogue snorted.

"Yeah," Logan nodded grimly. "They don't really understand, the rest of them. They've seen what Trask and Stryker can do, of course, but not firsthand."

"Not like us," Rogue added quietly.

"No, not like us," Logan agreed. "You know, kid... seein' you and Evan in that mess right alongside me, it tore me up. I've lived through that kind of thing before, but you kids..."

"We're X-men, Logan," Rogue reminded him with a weak smile to hide the flutter of nerves in her stomach at the thought of Area 51. "We're survivors."

"Yeah, you are," Logan murmured. "But that day that we saw each other in the holdin' cells, when I saw what they'd done to you... I wanted to murder every bastard in that place."

Despite herself, Rogue smiled, touched at the depth of his protective streak, even before he'd known about their blood connection. "Ah might have helped ya at that point," she confessed. "Ah'm still not sure that Ah wouldn' snap Trask's neck mahself if Ah ever got the chance."

"Yer not a killer, Stripes," Logan shook his head.

"Ah could have been," Rogue whispered, and the truth of it rang in the air around them. "When Magneto sent his boys in fo' us, an' Ah didn't see ya standin' on that beach... Ah could have drained every last one o' Trask's men t' their deaths. 'Specially after learnin' that the Institute had been blown sky-high."

"Must have been hard for you, thinkin' that Raven had been responsible for the deaths of everyone you cared about."

"Yeah," Rogue agreed, her throat tightening at the memory of old anger that she had long since buried in order to move on with her life. Anger that she had recently learned was unwarranted, because her mother had not killed the X-men after all.

"You understand, though, now that you know the whole story, why she blew up the mansion?" Logan asked, shifting his weight slightly.

"T' keep Trask from gettin' his hands on our technology," Rogue nodded absently. "Yeah, Ah know."

"I'm sorry you had to suffer because of it," Logan replied with a remorseful shake of his head. "If we'd known you were alive, we'd never have stopped searchin' for you. I would have trekked the whole damn country lookin' for you if I'd know, you know that, right?"

"Yeah," Rogue said with a faint smile. "Ah do."

She'd always known that. They'd shared an understanding from the start of her days with the X-men, a connection forged between kindred spirits. He'd never questioned her mood swings or tried to bridle her temper, he'd accepted her just the way she was, and more importantly, he'd seen something in her that he deemed worth protecting.

"So is mah husband still in one piece?" she asked, only half-joking.

"More or less," Logan grunted.

"Ah hope ya went easy on him," Rogue said, narrowing her eyes accusingly. "Ya have an unfair advantage, ya know."

"He held his own," Logan replied with a gruff snort. "He's pretty wily for one of Magneto's boys."

"He's no more an Acolyte than Ah am, Logan," Rogue retorted, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth. "An' was that begrudgin' respect Ah heard in yo' tone?"

"Don't bet on it," Logan growled, but she knew that whatever had gone down in the Danger Room over the past few hours, Remy had proven something to Logan. She only hoped that meant that her father was going to be more accepting of her marriage now, because whether she admitted it to herself or not, Logan's approval meant the world to her, it always had.

"He down in the med-lab gettin' doctored up?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"In the kitchen gettin' some ice," Logan corrected, and off of her surprised look, he bristled defensively. "What? I told you he held his own."

"No lacerations needed t' be stitched up?" Rogue demanded incredulously. "No claw-shaped stab wounds t' be healed?"

"Cuts and bruises, that's all," Logan muttered with a scowl. "He's just lucky he married you first."

Rogue stared at him in disbelief for a long moment, tempted ask who he was and what he'd done with the real Logan, but then an epiphany came over her. Logan had actually gone easy on Remy, simply because he knew that she loved him.

Impulsively, she leaned over and hugged him, catching him by surprise, but after a pause he lifted his arm around her shoulders. She stayed there for a long moment, just savoring the feeling of being close to him again after so long, especially after the last time they had been together, back in Trask's captivity, when her world had seemed to be a bleak and desolate place without hope.

"Ya got me through it, ya know," she whispered into his jacket.

"Through what, darlin'?"

"Area 51," she replied softly, and instinctively his arm tightened around her, his muscles tensing. "Ah don' think Ah could have held on much longer if it hadn't been fo' ya. Yo' words kept echoin' in mah head, even long after they'd taken ya away. Ah couldn' let them break me, 'cause Ah knew ya were countin' on me t' stay strong."

Logan remained silent, rubbing her arm soothingly, as if he could sense the echo of turmoil that talking about that place caused to stir within her.

"But it was hard," Rogue rasped, her voice hitching as tears welled in her eyes. "An' Ah was so scared, Logan. Ah thought Ah was gonna die there, in that cold, dark cell... an' part o' me wanted it. Ah didn' want t' live that anymore, Ah wanted t' escape, even if it was jus' in death. Ah..."

"I know, Stripes," he murmured, resting his chin on her head as she buried her face into the front of his jacket. "I know."

And he did know. He'd lived that nightmare right alongside her, and there had been other terrible things like it in his murky past, things that he could only half-remember, the kind of things that no one in their right mind would ever want to remember fully.

"Ah hate him," Rogue mumbled, tears sliding down her cheeks. "Ah hate that bastard fo' what he did t' me, an' t' Carol."

"So do I," Logan said huskily, his rough hands stroking her hair absently.

Taking a few deep breaths to regain her composure, Rogue pulled back with a sheepish laugh, wiping at her eyes. "The last thing Ah need is t' get tears frozen t' my face," she muttered, using her gloved hands to dry her cheeks.

"That probably wouldn't be too fun," Logan agreed.

"No," Rogue smiled weakly. "Ah reckon not."

"You have a talk with your mother yet?"

Rogue nodded silently.

"I know this hasn't been easy for you, Stripes," Logan began gruffly, clearly searching for the right words. "Findin' out that Raven is yer mother after all she's done in the past had to be difficult to accept. And then gettin' here and havin' Charles drop yet another bombshell on you must have been a shock."

"That's the understatement o' the century," Rogue snorted softly, then shrugged her shoulders. "But Ah'm okay wit' it."

"Are you?"

"Ah meant what Ah said earlier, Logan," Rogue assured him seriously. "Ah love ya, Ah always have. Ya were the closest thing Ah had t' a father, an' now it turns out that ya really are mah father. Ah'm lucky, Ah guess."

"How's that?" Logan cocked an eyebrow in her direction.

"How many girls get t' pick their father?" Rogue retorted, blushing despite herself. "If Ah could have chosen anyone in the whole world t' be min, Ah still would have chosen ya."

A strange emotion flickered across Logan's face, and when he spoke his voice was oddly choked. "I would have chosen you, too, Rogue."

"Things worked out nicely, then," Rogue said with a shy smile.

Logan nodded his agreement, and a comfortable silence descended over them for a long while. Rogue smiled to herself, she'd forgotten how easy it was to just be with Logan. There weren't a lot of people that she could just sit with in silence for long periods of time, but he was definitely one of them. Remy and Kurt both fit into the category, of course, and a few others like Pietro Maximoff, but Logan had been the first.

"I didn't know, you know," Logan said, breaking the silence.

"Ah know," Rogue replied, not needing to ask what he was talking about.

"If I had," Logan sighed, shaking his head in regret. "I would have been there."

"Ya were there, remember?" Rogue retorted with a smile. "Ya took real good care o' me, Logan, all those years that Ah was at the Institute."

"I still would have liked to watch you grow up," Logan muttered, and she heard a twinge of bitterness in his tone. That was obviously still a sore spot for him and Mystique, one that she had no desire to touch upon whatsoever. Whatever happened between her parents, she was determined to stay out of it.

"Trust me, Ah was a terror," she informed him, wrinkling her nose. "Ah don' know how Irenie managed it."

"She did a good job raisin' you, that's for sure," Logan observed.

"Yeah, she did," Rogue agreed, feeling a tug of wistful remorse at the thought of the woman who had taken care of her for so many years. "Mystique knew what she was doin' when she left me wit' her."

"She explain to you why she did that, then?"

Rogue nodded, pressing her lips together gently. "Ah always had a feelin' it was because o' her connections t' Magneto. She couldn' be a mother while she was workin' fo' him, an' Irene had a vision o' mah powers while Mystique was pregnant, so Ah guess it jus' made sense fo' her t' leave me there until she could come back fo' me."

"She did intend to come back, you know," Logan said evenly.

"Ah know, but then Kurt happened an' everythin' jus' got so mixed up," Rogue sighed. "Ah know she did visit a lot over the years, she tol' me 'bout all the times she came t' stay wit' us in morph, even that she posed as Irene for a few months sometimes, but it's not the same, ya know? She should have never gotten involved wit' Erik, by then she was in too deep t' get out, an' Ah'm not sure she really wanted t' if she could have."

"Erik, huh?" Logan echoed.

"We... reached an understandin', him an' Ah," Rogue shrugged, not really sure how to explain why her attitude towards Magneto had changed over the past few years. She knew the man he'd once been, due to the nature of her powers, and she'd seen glimpses of that man during her time on the island.

"That before or after he gave you yer bracelet?" Logan asked, nodding his chin in the direction of her wrist.

"Honestly?" Rogue asked. "It's been a slow process over time. Startin' the first time Ah ever absorbed him. Ah know what makes him tick, ya know? An' Ah've seen the good in him, even if it is hard t' find."

"Just don't start tellin' me that yer a fan of Creed now, alright?" Logan said with a snort.

Rogue grinned. "No worries there, Ah can' stand that fleabag. An' Ah reckon if he knows Ah'm yo' daughter, he hates me even more than he did b'fo'."

"Probably," Logan admitted with a chuckle, then climbed to his feet. "My nose is tellin' me that Jeannie's got dinner ready, we should probably head back inside."

"Oh, God, Ah'm starved," Rogue groaned, letting him help her up.

"Well, you are eatin' for two now, darlin'," Logan pointed out, glancing pointedly at her stomach.

"Don' remind me," Rogue muttered. "This kid is already givin' me mornin' sickness. Ah jus' know that he's gonna be like his father an' drive me crazy."

"If he does, you can always dump him off with us," Logan offered, leading the way back towards the window. "We'll tire the kid out in the Danger Room."

"Most grandfathers take a kid to the fair or the toy store," Rogue stated dryly. "Not lock him in a steel room full of weapons."

"So I'm unorthodox," Logan shrugged, holding open the window for her to climb through. "It runs in the family."

"Yeah," Rogue agreed with a soft laugh. When he had let himself in through the window behind her, she licked her lips, then cleared her throat. "Logan?"

"Yeah, Stripes?"

"Are ya... are ya disappointed in me?" Rogue asked, then quickly tried to elaborate when she saw his startled expression. "Fo' the way mah life has turned out? Ah mean, fo' hidin' away from it all and fo'gettin' what Ah was s'posed t' be fightin' fo'? Ah know ya probably don' approve o' me gettin' married so young an' startin' a family when Ah'm just barely legal t' drink an' all, but Ah-"

"Rogue," Logan cut her off gently, gazing down at her intently. "Yer my daughter. There isn't anythin' in the world that could make me disappointed in you, darlin'."

Rogue swallowed past the lump in her throat, her eyes blurring with tears.

"And as for whether or not I approve," Logan continued. "I've seen you smile more in the past few hours than I can ever remember. And it's clear that Remy loves you, if he didn't, I reckon I'd have to kill him, but he does. Yer happy, and when it's all said and done, kid, that's all that's ever really mattered to me."

Sniffling, Rogue desperately dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve. "Sorry," she said hoarsely. "Damn hormones."

"It's okay," Logan assured her, leaning over to kiss her forehead. "Just don't expect me to run to the grocery store for pickles and ice cream at three in the mornin'. That's Gumbo's job."

Just then, Rogue felt a slight tingle in the back of her mind, and braced herself for a telepathic voice to enter her head. Sure enough, a second later she heard Jean announce, Dinner's ready.

We're on our way, Rogue sent back, glancing over at Logan who had winced slightly when Jean started talking.

He noticed her watching him and gave a rueful shake of his head. "Never have like people pokin' around in my head."

"Ah remember," she replied with a smile as they started down the hall, the sounds of students gathering downstairs in the dining room echoing up the stairs. "Logan?" she asked as they rounded the corner. "Ah'm kind o' surprised ya haven't asked me t' do a Danger Room session wit' ya so ya can get a look at mah new powers yet."

"Trust me, it's temptin'," Logan said, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smirk. "But I figure that can wait until after yer pregnancy is over."

"Huh," Rogue mused aloud as they began to descend the stairs. "If Ah'd known it was this easy t' get outta Danger Room sessions, Ah'd have gotten knocked up years ago."

Logan made a choking sound, nearly stumbling down the stairs, and turned to look at her with an expression of utter horror. Stifling a laugh, Rogue slipped past him and made her way into the dining room, taking a seat next to Lance.

Kitty entered the room a few second later, a confused frown etched on her face. "What is wrong with Logan?" she asked as she dropped into the chair on the other side of Lance.

"Ah have absolutely no idea," Rogue said, biting her lip to keep from laughing, but she couldn't help the smile that crossed her lips.

Kurt gave her a skeptical look from across the table. "Do I even vant to know?"

"No," Rogue shook her head. "Ya really don', Kurt."

Just then, Logan stalked into the room with a scowl on his face. Lance drew back instinctively as he paused behind Rogue's chair. "Don't ever do that again," her father growled.

Rogue looked up at him with feigned innocence. "Do what, Daddy?"

It was almost comical, what an affect that one word had on Logan. In an instant, his hard expression softened, and even his angry stance seemed to lose its edge. He blinked, slightly dazed, and without another word walked dumbly over to his chair and sat down beside Mystique, who was trying hard not to laugh.

Everyone else around the table was staring at her with shocked amusement, and she shrugged, picking up her fork. "What?"

"Zat's mein schwester," Kurt chuckled. "Someone pass ze steak, ja?"