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Author's note: Short chapter, I know, but it was such a perfect cliffhanger (hahaha) that I couldn't resist...

Sam

"I don't know if you're hot enough to pull that off."

My response to Bobby Drake's comment, where he had draped himself over a stool at the kitchen's island, was my middle finger. I felt wasted tired today and had avoided the crowded cafeteria full of staring students, opting instead for the quiet confines of the staff kitchen. The thought of eating food made me want to gag, but I had managed some hot tea and a small bowl of grits. I was preparing a tray of tea and toast to drag upstairs to Lila, hoping she'd be able to stomach something. She was still fast asleep when I had headed downstairs, and I hadn't wanted to wake her until I had to. My brave girl had been through another treatment two days ago. She had earned some extra sack time.

"Seriously, dude, your hair was like, fifty percent of your sex appeal." He wiggled his fingers over his steaming coffee, and I watched ice crystals crackle their way down the side of the mug. "Just saying, you may want to re-evaluate your grooming choices with a chick as hot as Lila." I ran my hand over the peach fuzz that had finally managed to grow back across my scalp after I had finished my sixth and hopefully final treatment.

"I'll take it under advisement," I said sarcastically. He nodded and sipped his now iced coffee.

"So…" he drawled, "how's Lila doing?" I clenched my jaw and froze mid toast-buttering. Bobby and I were tight. He, Rogue and I had gone through some shit as part of the baddest squads of X-Men to ever exist. I mean that literally, half the squad had been villains we were working to reform at the time. Rogue had been our leader, and she had done a hell of a job given the circumstances, made some damn tough calls no one else seemed to want to make, fought against impossible odds. The whole thing had ultimately blown up in our faces, but one good outcome was the strength of the friendship between the three of us. We had always been acquaintances, Rogue and Bobby had been really close at one time, but we had walked through fire together. It was love between the three of us, like brothers and one mouthy sister. For me to hear Bobby's thinly veiled question really pissed me off and I was not in the mood. He, like everybody else, wasn't asking 'how's Lila doing' to see how she was really feeling, he was asking 'how's Lila doing', as in, 'when is she gonna be ready to go after our friends?'

"Are you fucking serious, Bobby?" I snapped, my tired nerves adding a little extra venom and profanity to my voice. Bobby raised his eyebrows at my f-bomb over his coffee cup, and blinked a few times before he set it down. I jabbed my butter knife at him. "I'm gettin' real sick and tired of y'all breathing down her neck. Back the fuck off!" Bobby raised his hands defensively.

"Whoa, hey, sorry! I just wondered how she was doing! She had a treatment a couple days ago, right? I know it's really hard on her, just wanted to know how she was feeling. Didn't mean to get all up in your business." I breathed in a shaky sigh and threw the butter knife onto the counter. It clattered noisily and skidded into the sink.

"No, I'm sorry, Bobby. It's just…" I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. "Everybody wants this thing over with yesterday, y'know? And Lila's recovery is going slower than planned, the treatments so much harder on her than on me…" I dropped my hand and looked pleadingly towards him. "She feels so damn guilty about what happened, Bobby. She feels like she got us into this, and that she's failing us somehow by not bein' able to get through these sessions. I keep telling her that no one thinks that, not you or me or Hank, not Rachel or Storm or Gambit…" Bobby's face twisted like he had just drank a mouthful of curdled milk at the mention of Gambit's name. "What?" I asked him. "Something else on your mind, Drake?"

"It's nothing."

"Bobby, I am too tired for this today. Either spit it out or I'm out that door and up those stairs." He grumbled and nodded.

"Just….Gambit, y'know? All these years and that guy still gets on my nerves."

"Thought you two got along pretty well. On the same squad not too long ago, right?" He set his jaw and concentrated on the coffee cup in front of him.

"Yeah, we were. It's just…Rogue." He flicked his eyes up to mine and they were surprisingly dark, dangerous. "He's not good enough for her. Never has been. He plays with her head, strings her along. Everybody else falls for his shit, but not me. I don't like it, I don't like him."

"He loves her, Bobby." I had seen it, the pain etched on the man's face when he talked about Rogue. Bobby snorted.

"When it's convenient he loves her. And he and Storm have been getting awful cozy lately, don't you think?"

"Oh, come on, Bobby. Ororo's helping him with his recovery." Bobby shook his head and scowled. "And it wasn't real convenient for Gambit to love Rogue when she couldn't control her powers."

"Sure it was, Sam. Remy the martyr loves the untouchable girl, rescues the damsel in distress. It's his fucking MO. You weren't here right after that mess with the Shadow King and Muir Island, back before the blue and gold days, but Gambit's little…manipulations of Rogue got him in real good with the rest of the team, won him lots of brownie points. Even won over Wolverine, cracked the old adamantium nut, you know Logan always had a soft spot for Rogue. Make no mistake, Sam, it was in Gambit's best interest to flirt with her and string her along, and in the meantime he got to rub up on one of the finest pieces of ass to ever wear the x-uniform…"

"Bobby!"

"Oh, fuck you, Guthrie. Like you don't know Rogue's hot." I grimaced.

"She's like my sister, man. I though she was yours, too." He glared at his coffee cup again.

"Yeah, you're right. Permanent resident of the friend zone, me. I had hoped, a long time ago, that maybe there'd be something more. Hell, even if I was just a shoulder for her to cry on…" He puffed out his cheeks and blew out a loud frosty gust of air. "Look, I know I'm in the minority here when it comes to those two. I've always thought she deserved better, deserved someone who would treat her right and I don't think he's that guy. He's so…slimy, always thinking with his dick. I'm telling you, something's going on with him and Storm, but it'd probably be the best thing for Rogue if he is sniffing around someone else. Pretty sure I'm the only one who cheered when they broke up the last time, though I wish she wouldn't have gotten tangled up with Magneto. That girl makes worse dating decisions than I do."

"Amen." I held up my tea cup and he clinked his mug against it.

"I really did want to know if Lila was okay, Sam." I smiled at my friend.

"I know. She is. And thanks."

"How are you feeling?"

"Getting stronger every day. Hank wants to run a few more tests but he's cautiously optimistic that we got it all this last time." Bobby's face split into a big grin.

"That's awesome! Then you can start re-growing your hair!" We both laughed. Truth be told, I was real worried it wouldn't be the last round of therapy, and I didn't know if I could handle any more. I wanted to be strong, to be a man and show Lila that she could handle it if I could, but each treatment had been more painful than the last, an absolute torture session. McCoy was monitoring my system for any traces of Surge, and, like I said, so far, so good. It had been two weeks since the last round, but Bobby was actually being kind about my hair. I looked like a damned zombie.

Bobby stood and drained his mug. "Look, Sam, I've got to go corral the students. Place doesn't run itself…" He stepped up and bro-hugged me. I felt another pang of guilt. I knew he wanted to be into what we were doing to rescue Rogue and Wolverine, but somebody had to run the school and he had been elected. "Keep me posted, okay?" He patted my shoulder on his way out of the kitchen.

Rogue

Five days he had been healing. Five of the longest days of my life. He had yet to regain consciousness, though his wounds finally closed into red, angry, puckering gashes. I felt so helpless just watching it happen, not being able to do anything to ease his pain. He twitched and convulsed while I just sat there. Last night, he had started sweating something fierce, and his belly was inflamed, his hot sweaty skin sending out angry red fingers. Infection, no doubt about it, but we were only about a bajillion miles from the nearest course of antibiotics. I hadn't slept or ate, and my nerves were frayed and ragged. I had been trying my best to keep him comfortable, and had him laid out on our new fur rug on the floor of the cave. I got his clothes off and fetched water, scrubbed the caked blood from his body and mine, tried my best to keep his temp down. I shivered and stepped down from the protected entrance of the cave, stuffed my hands deep into my jacket pockets. Keeping him cool had been easy. I'd swear the outside temp had dropped a good thirty degrees in the last couple days. There had been another of those goddamn thunderstorms last night, all the rain and energy of a day's worth dumping down in the course of about five minutes. I was thankful as hell for the shelter of the cave shielding Logan from the wicked strokes of lightning that turned night into high noon. I had stood at the entrance, hypnotized by the spectacle.

I exhaled and started walking away from our camp, my breath trailing a vapor cloud behind me. Didn't want to leave him, but I needed to look for food. Guilt threatened to drown me as I realized I had needed to get away from the cave, get away from him, from seeing him like that, if only for a few minutes. The only time I had left his side since he had been hurt had been to go clean myself up and gather water, and then, last night, to watch the storm. Oh, Jesus, what was I gonna' do if he didn't make it? The thought slid cold and clammy across my skin. If I had eaten anything in the last few days I would have thrown it up, and I had to stop, swallowing the sick taste that had ventured into my throat. I started shaking, hard, and covered my eyes with my hands, ground them with the heels of my palms. Get a grip, girl. This was Wolverine. He would be just fine. So what if he hadn't opened his eyes yet? His healing factor would save him, like it always had. I rubbed my wrists, feeling the ghost of the bone claws lurking beneath the surface. His powers should have disappeared days ago, but the feel of them still whispered under my skin. Charles would have been proud, I had managed to hold onto an imprinted power for days, under extremely stressful conditions.

Oh, God. I bit back a sob. I had almost lost him, could still lose him. I had been kidding myself. Whatever little game we had been playing with each other, our little flirty back and forth, had completely blown up in my face. I loved him. Jesus H. Christ, I loved him. When had I let that happen? I started walking again, furiously charging to absolutely nowhere along the top of the still muddy bluff, the river churning full and frothy in its banks far below, the angry energy echoing my mood. Over my thoughts, I heard the distant roar of yet another coming storm. I needed to head back, but I pulled my phone from my pocket, its charge still holding thanks to Stark's solar panels. I typed in my pathetic little password and flipped into my pictures. Remy's face, so beautiful it carved out a piece of my soul, smiled back at me. Guilt added itself to the twisted sickness of my insides. Why hadn't we been happy together, sugar? The passion had been there, Remy loved me, I loved him, but all we took were wrong turns. There had been so many things we hadn't been willing to overcome. The trust never came from either of us, and it was always drama, one of us hurt, the other guilty, the two of us stuck in some deranged feedback loop. It had gotten to be sickening, the lengths we had gone to hurt each other in the name of love.

Deep in thought, I slipped and skidded in the thick mud. I lost my footing and, flailing, skated down towards the edge of the bluff like I was sliding into home plate. I scrambled, muddying my leggings all the way up to my butt, digging my hands into the squelching cold muck trying to gain some purchase. I stopped myself at the edge and watched in horror as my phone, and Remy's face, flew over the edge.

"No!" I screamed and lunged blindly, unthinkingly, hoping to catch ahold of my last bit of Earth. The phone bounced and skittered to a stop on a rocky outcropping just below me, and I inched to the edge, hanging the top half of me over to reach for it. "C'mon, c'mon…" I bit back a sob at the sight of the screen, the glass cracked right through Remy's smile. My fingers were inches away, and I stretched, almost there…

The edge of the bluff, rain soaked and suffering the abuse of my added weight, gave way under my hips. I couldn't keep my balance. With nothing else to grab ahold of, I tumbled into the air, flipping ass over end I felt my head bash into the rocks, then my shoulder. The icy impact of water, like smacking into concrete, was the last thing I remembered before the darkness took me.