Chapter 25

Rogue looked up from her spot on the sofa as Bobby walked in, and raised her finger to indicate that she'd be off the phone in a second. "Yep. Okay. Be careful and we'll see ya on Thursday. Hang in there." She hit the 'End' button on the cordless phone and set it down on the coffee table, slipping her list of names and information back into her pocket. "Memere said Ah could use the phone," she explained, not wanting him to think she'd just made herself at home and started making long-distance calls without permission.

"Y'kin cover it in peanut butter an' eat it, for all I care," he told her, smiling. He dropped down on the other end of the couch and kicked his feet up onto the table. "Dat line's secured, encrypted, an' tied up so many ways you could probably call de president an' he couldn't trace it. Never tried, though." He sighed and let his head loll back. "And yet I gotta send secret codes through half a dozen friends of friends of friends of friends t'get five minutes' conversation wid my own ex-sister-in-law, who lives not fifteen miles from dis house."

"That's where yeh took off to?" Rogue asked.

"Yep. Callin' in favors an' leavin' breadcrumbs. She'll know what's up, an' if she's interested in talkin' t'you, she'll meet us tomorrow morning. Den we get you on a plane, an' you're off t'meet Kurt in Chicago. An' when you get back t'Remy, y'kin tell him dat we done take good care of his girl."

His girl. Remy's girl. Rogue felt her head swivel away from Bobby, involuntarily, like he'd hit her in slow motion. The title should have made her glow with pride. Instead, it stung, like the name on the passport had stung. Worse. That had only been her hurt . . . this was a lie to a man who trusted her, and who loved her, for his brother's sake. And he'd been out all afternoon navigating the minefield that was Guild politics and probably asking favors he was going to have to pay back later, because she was Remy's girl.

Except that she wasn't.

She couldn't . . . could not . . . say it out loud. That was too confrontational, too real. But every second that she sat there in silence, she was lying by omission—taking Bobby's help under false pretenses. And Remy's good, honest, loyal brother didn't deserve that from her.

"Bobby?"

"Ouais?"

"Ah don't know how to thank you for—"

"Hey, I told you—"

"Bobby . . . shut up. And Ah mean that in the nicest possible way. Just . . ." She held up her hand like a mouth, pinching her fingers 'shut' against her thumb. "Ah need to tell yeh somethin'."

Bobby obediently snapped his jaw shut and drew an X across his lips, offering her his undivided attention and the promise that he wouldn't interrupt.

"It's just . . . somethin' happened. And Ah shoulda told ya when Ah called from Tennessee, but Ah didn't have nobody else to go to, and Ah needed to get this done for him. No, he's fine . . ." She'd seen Bobby's mouth open again involuntarily, as her cryptic babbling made him worry again for his brother's safety. "He's not hurt or anythin', it's just . . ." She curled herself up, pulling her knees to her chest and scrubbing her hands over her face as though she could hide behind them. "We had a fight," she admitted, nearly choking on the word. An awkward laugh forced its way out of her throat. "We had one rip-snorter of a fight . . ."

"Did'je hit him?" Bobby asked.

Rogue shook her head.

"Well, why not?"

This elicited a genuine, if unsteady, giggle. "Wasn't that kind'a fight. Ah mean, we fight all the time, normally . . ."

"Cuz he's a pain in de butt. I gotcha."

" . . . but this one was different. He's angry. Really, really angry. Not at me, but . . . at the situation. At the people that chased us outta the Institute. At Professor Xavier for tellin' us we shouldn't fight back. At . . ." she stopped, glancing up at Bobby awkwardly. "At the humans." Well, that line had sure made her sound like a space alien. "And, uh, Ah got in his face about it, and he got in mah face about it, an' everybody yelled some stuff that maybe they shouldn't have, and when Ah touched him, somethin' . . . broke."

"Arm?"

"No. But the way we can touch, by absorbin' each other . . . you know about that, right?"

"Oh, yeah. He's told me. Gloated at me, actch'ly."

"Ah guess that . . . balance . . . was more fragile than we thought it was. It hurt so bad . . . like who he was, and who Ah was, didn't fit together anymore. Like he changed into this angry, violent thing that just burned out mah insides. So the long an' short of it is that . . . Ah don't . . . Ah think that maybe Ah'm not . . . his girl . . . anymore."

Bobby didn't answer. Rogue kept her eyes on her knees until she couldn't stand it anymore, then glanced up.

"Permission t'talk now?" Bobby asked.

Rogue sighed, a reluctant smile emerging onto her face. "Permission granted."

Bobby 'unlocked' his mouth and sat up straight, as though about to make an important and solemn announcement. "He is my brother. You've saved his life. You are entitled to food and phones. Point."

Her smile blossomed a bit more. She was beginning to understand why, despite family estrangement and the fact that they weren't blood relatives, Remy would drop everything and charge into the jaws of death to save this man without a second thought.

Once this had been established, he slumped back into the sofa cushions and pursed his lips in thought. "Oh, DB . . . what we gonna do 'bout you? He was always one a dem 'don't get mad, get even' types . . . but when he wanted t'get even, I always just got de hell outta his way."

"Yeah, well, Ah cain't get out of his way. Ah'm an X-Man. Gettin' in the way's lahk, mah job."

"Oh, je sais. If you don' mind my sayin' so, you got a lot more balls dan me. I could never get in Remy's face about anythin' . . . I just let him fight wid Pere. But you, Rogue . . . you're somethin' special."

Rogue rolled her eyes, scoffing.

"Hey, I'm serious. You got this vibe dat makes him want t'protect you, but at de same time you'll tell him where to stick it and turn around an' walk away. If he got half a brain, he'll t'ink long an' hard before lettin' his pride kick somebody like you outta his life. An' if he don't, wanna go out?"

Rogue laughed outright. "You serious?"

Bobby laughed, too. "I wish, but nah. Gettin' married next year anyway."

"Really?"

"Really really."

"To who?"

"Seattle guildmaster's niece."

"Oh." Rogue stopped, wary of saying the wrong thing in a peculiar and sensitive social situation. "Is she nice?"

"Yeah, seems to be."

"Is it . . ."

"Arranged? Yeah."

"Oh."

"'S all right. Cain't turn out any worse'n Remy's."

Rogue sighed, acknowledging and accepting the weirdness. "True enough."

They sat in silence for a minute, listening to the birds outside.

"Do yeh think he'll come around?" Rogue asked at length. "When he's had some time to cool down a little bit?"

Bobby shook his head. "I dunno. Hope so. I been watchin' de news . . . keepin' up wid what's happening in New York . . . an I'm plenty mad, too. So I understand where he's comin' from."

Without meaning to, Rogue found herself watching that night again in her mind. The salty gunpowder-smell in the wet, cold air, the confused shouting of her teammates resonating in her head, the soldiers that guarded the missile launcher looking her in the eye and opening fire. Where would she be if they hadn't come that night? Probably curled up on the sofa in the den, studying for her Japanese midterm. And Remy would be taking notes all over his electrical engineering textbook in pen . . . it had cost over a hundred dollars, a price that he found absolutely offensive, and he'd started a campaign to get his money's worth out of it by using it as a notebook and day planner as well. It wasn't much to ask, really, was it? A quiet afternoon with friends and homework, under a roof that she could call her own. Who was Senator Graydon Creed, to decide that she didn't deserve to have that because of the X-factor encoded in her DNA? Where did he get off?

The words came out . . . and if he'd heard them, Professor Xavier would have given her one of those looks, the ones that were understanding and disappointed at the same time . . . but they came out all the same. "Me, too."

A rush of air and the reek of sulphur announced that Gambit had company. He sat back from the computer . . . which had been straining his ultra-sensitive red eyes in any case . . . and twisted his neck to feel the vertebrae pop. "Hey, Blue."

"Got a second?" Kurt asked. He'd appeared on the desk, in the half-crouched position that only he could possibly have found comfortable, diabolic tail twisting absently across the tabletop. "Vhat are you even doing?"

"Workin'. Magneto wants to do a bust-out a'de mutants de goverment's been lockin' up."

"Cool." Kurt leaned over to take a look at the screen. "What did ze Professor say?"

"Nothin' yet. He been busy. New kids t'train an' all, so none of 'em blows de station up."

"Oh . . . yeah." Kurt backed off and swung his feet off the side of the desk. "So what happened vit Rogue?"

Gambit went very deliberately back to the computer. "Not'in I'm talkin' over wid you."

"Hey, man. She's my little sister."

"Older sister."

"And she's been all kinds'a messed up zese past few days."

Gambit snorted contemptuously. " Could dat be because Uncle Sam's finest just tore up her house an' shot her in de gut? Nah, she'd take dat in stride. She's tough. So it must be somet'in' I done."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Defensive much? I just saw zat somesing was up, and wanted to know if I could help."

Gambit sighed. Defensive much, indeed. He had to be at the end of his rope if he was snapping at Kurt Wagner, of all people.

"Desolé," he offered, and although the apology was muttered, it was genuine.

"Don't vorry about it. Ve're all on edge zis week. But I'm meeting up vith Rogue again at ze pickup tomorrow, so if you vanted me to tell her anysing for you . . ."

Like what? Gambit asked himself, letting the bitterness circle inside his head. Like 'I love you'? She already got dat message.

Kurt let the silence drag for a moment. When it became evident to both of them that Gambit had nothing to say, he finally relented and twisted around to the computer again. Pulling up the first document he came across, he typed a number. "Zis is ze phone we're carrying. Call her. Talk to her. Please?"

"She don't wanna talk t'me."

"Um . . . yes, she does. A lot. Just call, okay?"

Gambit sighed and nodded . . D. more to appease Kurt, whom he liked, than because he really thought that a phone conversation with Rogue was going to help anything. "Thanks, Blue."

"Vell, it's a trade. For a favor. Hank's got zis long . . . long . . . list of mutants for us to track down. Mostly friends and family of ze people we've already evacuated. So vhen I go back down planetside, I might not be back for a good long time. And Amanda . . ."

Gambit smiled. "You may look like a demon straight outta Hell, Kurt Wagner, but you de biggest softie I know."

"I just don't vant her to be alone up here. And I'm vorried about Magneto."

"He won't hurt her."

"He said so. But I'd sleep better if you were keeping an eye on her for me, just in case."

Gambit nodded his understanding. "I'll keep her safe. T'inquiete pas. Magneto'll listen t'me."

"Are you sure?"

Gambit spared a glance for the computer screen, full of research he was doing at the supervillain's suggestion. "Pretty sure."

"Thanks."

"Don' mention it."

Jean had been worried about how they were going to recover Velocity, but the process turned out to be remarkably straightforward once they'd wrestled the SHIELD chopper out of the water and got her going again. The waterlogged chopper crew tried to escape into the woods, but Logan rounded them up, lest they end up lost and starving in the middle of the wilderness. But it was only out of the goodness of his heart, he was careful to point out, because Nick Fury already owed him big time.

The agents that had been left to guard Velocity were already unnerved by the fact that one of the chopper teams was no longer responding to radio hails. They were further unnerved by Laura landing on the windshield and dragging her claws across the glass, teeth bared and eyes wild. After that, they were fairly open to negotiation. The fact that Jean had remotely disabled all their weapons helped a bit, too.

Since Logan had nothing against SHIELD in general, they just left both teams of agents tied up with a few layers of duct tape, inside their own chopper where they'd be warm and reasonably comfortable until somebody found them. He did "borrow" enough fuel off them to fill Velocity's tanks, but Jean figured this was only fair and did not raise any objection.

It was a relief to be in their own helicopter again. After days in those haunted woods that were so thick with Logan's memories, the sparse little craft felt as safe as her bedroom at home. It was her space, full of her memories. Logan took the pilot's seat, leaving Jean to watch out for and take care of any SHIELD craft in pursuit. Thankfully, there were none-they'd taken out the team before anyone could raise an alarm.

"Only one downside," Logan observed as Velocity's jet engine settled into the steady hum of level flight. "I don't get to see the look on Fury's face when he sees what we did to his guys."

"I'm sure someone will take a picture for you," Jean told him, smiling against her better judgment. Her attention swung back to Laura, who was circling the cramped interior, taking note of every detail of her flying prison. "I'd better get in touch with the Professor and find out where we can hitch a ride back to Avalon." She reached for the Cerebro headgear, but Logan shook his head.

"We're not going back to Avalon."

"What? What do you mean, we're not going back? Where else would we go?" There was nowhere else to go. Everywhere she'd ever known was barred to them.

"We're not going back right now," he amended. First, we've got to get Laura somewhere safe.

But SHIELD's never going to find her on Avalon.

SHIELD's not what I'm worried about. Magneto doesn't need another bendy-toy. We're getting her well out of harm's way before she can get caught in the crossfire of whatever he's planning to start. Out of the country, off the continent, and under the radar.

So . . . where? She checked Velocity's heading. West . . . back to Japan?

Back to Japan, Logan affirmed.

To the monastery, where you took Rogue?

She felt him chuckle, though his expression didn't change. There's a plan. No . . . the monks are peaceful people, which is all well and good in a perfect world, but if SHIELD ever finds her they're not going to be able to do jack to stop them taking her. She needs the protection of somebody who can stand up to Nick Fury.

And let me guess . . . you know a guy.

I know a lot of people.

"You're talking," Laura accused them, her voice hostile and suspicious.

Jean swung around, embarrassed. "I'm sorry . . . I forgot my manners. We were just talking about where we're going next."

"How's your Japanese?" Logan asked her.

"I don't speak Japanese."

He hmphed, amused.

"Only Spanish, Arabic, Korean, Mandarin, and Farsi."

Logan turned around and half stared, half glared at her. Jean knew, from years of living in the same household, that he was comfortable in French, German, Japanese and Russian—the languages of world wars and cold wars, a generation or more ago. Laura had been bred and trained for another age, and in it, her skills trumped his.

"Well, you might want to start, because we're headed for Tokyo." He turned back to the flight controls, annoyed at being shown up. Jean couldn't help smiling at his displeasure—it wasn't often he was beaten at anything, and she had a feeling it might be good for him. Laura caught the smile and watched it, her head cocked sideways in mingled suspicion and curiosity.

Jean turned in her chair, back to the controls of the helicopter. The Cerebro helmet sat, gleaming, at the top of the control panel. She reached for it, then drew her hand back. Who would she call, and what would she say? Everything she'd learned up here, about Logan and his past, was too private for her to share with Scott, particularly via glorified telephone call. And Logan seemed determined to get Laura out of the country before anyone connected with Magneto could know about her, so Jean's lips were sealed on that topic. She wouldn't even be able to say when they'd be returning to rejoin the team. She let her hands rest on her knees and looked out the window, away from the helmet. She'd call when they were on their way back. It couldn't be more than a couple of days, could it? A couple of days wouldn't make any difference.

The endless trees flashed by underneath them, Velocity skimming over land that it would have taken them days to cross on foot. The undulations of the land were hypnotic, and somehow Jean's tired brain was lulled by it. She watched the ground go by for much longer than she meant to, until quite suddenly the ground was gone and nothing but blue ocean and darkening sky stretched off into the distance.

She snapped back to reality and looked around. Logan looked up, startled from his own reverie by her sudden movement. She checked over her shoulder for Laura.

The filthy, bone-thin little creature was curled up on the floor at the back of the cabin, her matted hair hanging over her face. Her chest rose and fell in slow, measured beats.

"She's asleep," Jean whispered, and relief flooded through every fiber of her body. It felt like shrugging off a heavy backpack. "She's sleeping."

"Yeah," Logan agreed, and she saw one of those rare, startlingly gentle smiles tease at the corner of his mouth as he looked at the exhausted girl. "She sure is."

"Reveille-toi, cherie. C'est l'heure."

Rogue responded to the whispered voice with a string of incoherent muttered syllables. She broke the rhythm of her breathing with one reflexive almost-gasp of a breath and squeezed her eyes shut before popping them open and blinking. Too early. So too early. It was still dark. She took a second to remember where she was, and to figure out that the dark green gleams above her were Memere's eyes. What first seemed to be silence suddenly clarified into a cacophonous chorus of crickets and frogs outside her window.

"Il faut que tu t'envas bientot," Memere told her. "Tu peut te doucher, et il y a du petit dej. Ca va?"

Rogue shoved herself up against the headboard, reaching under the stripes that overhung her face to scrub at her eyes. "Ah don't understand a word you're sayin'," she admitted. "Too early for French."

Memere smiled indulgently. "Peut-tu le prendre de moi?" she asked, offering a cupped hand. At first, Rogue thought the older woman was offering to help her up out of bed, but when she hesitated Memere touched the extended palm with the middle finger of her other hand, communicating by gesture what she wanted Rogue to do.

Rogue hesitated . . . this early in the morning, when she was this disoriented, would it be safe? The last thing in the world she wanted to do was hurt this kind woman. But, she reflected, the first time she'd ever managed this trick had been a dark dreamy moment like this, when she was still relaxed and open. Ignoring her gloves where they lay on her nightstand, she brushed her finger across the hollow of Memere's hand.

For a second, she was surprised that everything stayed dark . . . the smell of the house unconsciously said Remy to her with every breath she took, and absorbing Remy always made the darkness light up with his enhanced vision. Then she felt the warm energy rushing up her arm and into her mouth. She pulled her hand back and flexed her jaw, running her tongue over her teeth and the roof of her mouth like she'd just eaten something sticky. She could feel the new language overlaying what her lips and tongue and throat already knew how to do. "A-t-il marché?" she asked, and the meaning was crystal clear inside her head.

"Sounds like it did," said Memere. "Dat's a very strange feelin', dat is."

"Well, you're just lucky Ah'm as good at it as Ah am, or it would have been a three-day coma feeling," said Rogue. "Now what did you say?"

"I said you have to get yourself outta bed and get washed up an' dressed an' get some breakfast in you, 'cause you an' Henri gotta get yourselves gone well before first light. Feelin' okay?"

"Yeah. Just sleepy. And . . ." She took another deep breath through her nose. "This house smells like him," she admitted, not bothering to specify who she was talking about.

"You miss him?" Memere asked.

Rogue laughed a little at the deceptive simplicity of the question. "Yeah," she admitted. "Ah miss him a lot."

"So do I," Memere told her.

Rogue smiled, sympathetic and sad. "It's sure been a long time since you've seen him, huh?"

"A long time," Memere agreed. "I miss how dis house used t'be full of laughter an' yelling an' breakin' things back when he an' Henri were little. He's a little hellion, but he brings so much life in wid him."

Rogue grinned. "What was he like, when he was little?"

"Filthy," said Memere. She smiled, too. "Henri was about five, a little older, when de doctor told Christine she wouldn't be havin' any more babies. She was heartbroken. Just drew in on herself. She still talked to me, an' she held onto dat little boy like her last prayer, but she just drifted off into de shadows. Guildmaster was half outta his mind wid worry about her. Worshiped her, he did. It wasn't a love match between dem—political, just like all de big guild families had back in de day—but dat just made him all de crazier t'make her happy. Used to say she was de finest t'ing he ever stole. Den one day he drags home dis wild, diseased little creature, all broken teeth an' open sores . . . an' dose eyes! Screamed my head off when I saw dose eyes. Thought he had plague or somet'in'. But his bein' in de house woke Christine up, somehow. Jean-Luc had just brought him home as an experiment, 'cause any five-year-old street thing dat could pinch his wallet an' be two blocks away quick as blinkin' had potential, he said. But before anyone knew what was happenin', Christine had just latched onto him. And turned out he needed lovin' as much as Christine needed somet'in' to love."

"Ah cain't wrap mah brain around him bein' five. Guess it seems like anybody so convinced of his own cool shoulda just appeared outta nowhere at fifteen."

Memere laughed, then reached into her pocket. "Dis is for you two."

It was a wallet-size photograph, color, but yellowed with age-a posed portrait. A woman with large dark eyes looked back at Rogue, her expression serene and composed. Her light brown hair was gathered in a formal arrangement at the back of her head, the better to show off the earrings that dangled along her neck. She looked so calm, so graceful . . . not happy, specifically, but not unhappy either. She looked in control, on top of it, as Rogue could only dream of being.

"Dat was taken before she got sick," Memere told her. "Thought you might like t'see it, an' he might like t'have it."

Rogue looked at the picture for one more minute, then set it on her gloves. "Ah promise I'll get it to him."

Memere smiled and squeezed her knee. "Git yourself dressed now."

All too soon, Rogue was washed, dressed, and fed, the photograph protected by a ziploc bag and slipped into her leg pocket. One last hug from Memere, and she was out the front door, following Bobby down to the dock at the edge of the island.

The trip back to the mainland was dreamy, still too dark to be called morning. Bobby didn't ask her any questions, letting them ride in silence all the way to the garage.

"Where are we goin'?" she asked at last, as they climbed out of the boat and Bobby fished out his car keys.

"Neutral territory. There's a place in de Quartier where Pinchers an' Rippers is both welcome enough, an' fights ain't allowed. Remy probably wouldn't'a told you about it—"

"Delphine's?" Rogue asked.

Bobby paused with the key in the lock and stared at her. "You know about Delphine's?"

"Sure. They got a franchise location up in Westchester."

"Please be messin' wid me."

"Of course I'm messin' with you! Remy and me went there when we was lookin' for you. Ah like Delphine. She's nice."

"She's smart, is what she is." Bobby slipped into the driver's seat and unlocked the passenger door. "She runs de best house in de state, an' can lay down de law because of it. Nobody makes trouble for Delphine . . . dey risk gettin' dey people banned. So it's a safe place for meetin's like dis. It was de best place I could think of, but if you're not okay with it . . ."

"Nah, I'm fine. No worries here." Rogue swung into the passenger seat and buckled her seat belt.

"You sure?"

"If Ah was gonna freak out about somethin' this week, Ah got a lot better things to choose from, believe me."

"Right," Bobby agreed, snickering. They pulled out of the garage and started up the long, rough road back towards New Orleans.

"When we get close," Bobby instructed, "Ah'm gonna drop you off and swing back in twenty minutes. That gonna be enough time?"

"You're not coming in with me?"

"The fewer fingerprints I got on this mess, the better for everybody. I'd back you up if I could, but I got de Guild to think about, too."

Rogue nodded. "Ah gotcha. Yeah, twenty minutes should be plenty."

She'd never been in the front door of Delphine's . . . Remy preferred the back entrance. The double doors were heavy, ornate, and old-fashioned, with long, heavily frosted panes of glass stretching from the top to waist level. Rogue stopped, took a deep breath, and rapped her knuckles against the wood.

There were footsteps from within the house, then it swung open without the slightest creak of protest. "Rogue."

"Hi, Delphine."

The woman who looked at her across the threshold was much more composed than the just-rolled-out-of-bed creature Rogue had seen last time she'd come to New Orleans. Delphine was dressed, in brown business slacks and a loose silk blouse, and topaz-studded combs held up the waves of her long brown hair. She looked every inch the professional, which was impressive at this hour of the morning. "Wow," Rogue said, impressed. "You musta got up earlier than Ah did."

"Haven't been to bed yet," Delphine corrected. "We haven't quite wrapped up business for the night. Come along through, and keep your voice down."

Rogue nodded and followed Delphine into the house. She resolutely tried not to think about the 'business' that hadn't been wrapped up yet. The first time she'd come here, she'd been under Remy's protection, and everyone had treated her with extreme care, as though she would freak out at any second at the thought of setting foot in an honest-to-goodness brothel. She was here on her own now, not as Remy's girl, but as an X-Man with a job to do. She didn't have the luxury of being squeamish anymore.

Delphine took her to an enclosed parlor at the side of the house, where the windows were carefully covered in thick crimson curtains. The room was almost baroque, all heavy furniture upholstered in rich reds and browns. The room had a fireplace, and the fire inside it was thinking about calling it quits for the night. There was a faint but noticeable scent in the air, a mix of woodsmoke, complex perfumes, and tobacco.

"We saw what happened to your house," Delphine told her as she swung the parlor door closed. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too," Rogue acknowledged. "And, um, the coat you let me borrow got left behind in all the fuss. Ah'm sorry."

Delphine smiled. "Well, government issue thou art, and unto government issue thou shalt return, I guess. That's life. You get much use out of it?"

"Oh, yeah. Been wearing it practically every day. It's my favorite."

"That's good to hear."

Rogue looked around in vain for a clock somewhere in the room. "Ah haven't got too much time . . . is Belladonna here?"

"She should be here any minute," Delphine assured her. "There was one thing I'd like to ask you about before she gets here, though."

"What's that?"

Delphine crossed the room to another door and eased it open. "Come in," she ordered someone out of sight.

A girl, younger than Rogue, came shuffling shyly into the room. Her hair was dark blonde, and had the ragged, uncertain look of trying to grow out after a drastic cutting. Her eyes were too big for her face, and had a hungry look to them, but despite all that she was still quite pretty.

"This is Alyssa," Delphine told Rogue. "She's only been with us about four months. Go ahead and show her, hon."

Alyssa swallowed nervously, glancing up at Rogue with trepidation. She pursed her lips a little, concentrating.

Rogue felt something blaze inside her: white-hot rage, directionless and consuming. She felt her heart race and blood rush into her face. Then, as quickly as it had hit her, it was gone, replaced with perfect, abiding calm. Only falling asleep in Remy's arms had she ever felt so safe, so whole. The sensation drained away as quickly as the fury had, leaving her dazed.

Delphine put an arm around Alyssa's shoulders and looked to Rogue, her eyebrows raised in a silent question.

"Wow," said Rogue. "That's new. What would you even call that? Emotipathy?" She gave her head a little shake to clear it and took a deep breath. "That's an amazing gift you have, Alyssa."

"They're saying on the news that failure to register's punishable by twenty thousand dollar fines and something like four years, maximum security," said Delphine, and the question that lingered at the end of her sentence was unspoken, but palpable.

Rogue shook her head. "Don't let her register. Get her on a plane to Chicago, and my people'll take her someplace safe." She recited the time and location of the pickup.

"You hear that?" Delphine asked the frightened girl, whose eyes were now bright with nervous tears. "Go pack up your things."

"I'll lose my slot if I leave," Alyssa protested, her voice hardly more than a choked whisper.

"You haven't broken any rules, so your slot's still yours. We'll keep it for you. Now go on and do as you're told."

Alyssa nodded and ducked out the way she'd come.

"She started doing that thing to the customers about six weeks ago," Delphine told Rogue, once the door was shut. "I wasn't sure what to do with her. Things got out of hand with the government, so we've just been having her lie low for now."

"She been getting headaches, anything like that?"

"A bit. I figured it was just the stress."

"That, and power overload sometimes causes headaches if you don't know how to channel it. Professor Xavier will be able to help her focus—"

Another knock on the door cut her off. Delphine went to answer it, then returned leading the woman that Rogue had come all the way across the country to see.

The one time in her life she'd seen Belladonna Boudreaux, she'd been terrified of her. She was a trained assassin, a telepath, possibly the closest thing to supermodel-beautiful Rogue had ever seen in real life . . . and Gambit's ex-wife, just to top things off. Rogue had been frightened of her on so many levels . . . scared she'd hurt Gambit, scared he still loved her, scared she'd want revenge on whoever had replaced her in his life. Rogue had felt young, naive, inexperienced, and ugly, standing in the shadow of such a woman as that.

This was so different. Belladonna was still heartbreakingly beautiful, with her long hair whipped back into a ponytail that fell down her back in one perfect golden coil. She, like Delphine, was dressed as though this were a business meeting, in a tailored suit and pencil skirt, and the kind of heels that an assassin could no doubt think of all kinds of creative uses for. She had a long cream coat on over the whole ensemble, plenty heavy enough to keep out the early-morning chill. And Rogue, in her plain jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt, without makeup or adornment, felt no intimidation. There was just a strange mix of solidarity and pity . . . at the end of the day, they were just two women, faced with rough choices and broken hearts.

"Threw you out, did he?" were the first words out of Bella's mouth.

Rogue didn't flinch. Thinking about Remy hurt, of course, but not for the reasons Belladonna thought. What she did feel was a sudden twinge of embarrassment. Bella was his ex, Delphine his very old friend who also happened to be the city's most respected prostitute. An unhelpful part of Rogue's mind was suddenly remembering Remy's kisses, the feel of his hands, the way he seemed to know sensitive spots on her body she hadn't even realized were there, and was wondering just how much these two women had to do with why he knew all that.

She felt an uncomfortable pressure in her head, like someone was pushing their thumb just above the bridge of her nose. She recoiled a little bit, then glared at Belladonna. "Knock that off."

Belladonna raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow, implying something between Knock what off? and Make me.

"Don't even. You are so bad at that. Ah'm not even a telepath, and Ah could do better than that. Ah've had lahk three whole hours of competent training, which is three more hours than you ever got, so how about you talk with your mouth, an' just to be fair, Ah won't talk with mah skin." She slipped off her right glove and flexed her fingers, the empty hand a more blatant threat than one with any kind of weapon in it.

Bella looked her over, then laughed. "You grew a spine, little girl. Last time I saw you, y'was hidin' in his shadow an' scared to death."

Rogue laughed, too, and it was no more a cheerful, sociable laugh than Bella's had been. "Ah got bigger things to be scared of than you."

And he told me he loved me, she added in the now-private silence of her head. Somethin' he never told you. There's no reason for me to be scared of you anymore.

Bella nodded her approval. "So what did he send y'here for?"

"He don't send me nowhere. You saved his life once, and so Ah owe you. Ah came so both of us could settle that debt." She slipped her fingers back into her glove and tugged into place, to give her hands something to do. "You know the penalties the feds are layin' down on mutants who don't register. You can probably guess what'll happen to you if you do."

Bella nodded. "My littler cousins said dat two kids from dey high school dat registered ain't been seen in class for a week. Rumor is dey got suspended pending investigation of if dey been cheating on every exam since kindergarten. Course, if I was de feds, an' I had a list of every twelve-year-old kid wid superpowers, I'd be openin' up a private education institution wid real think walls right about now."

"They probably are, we just haven't found it yet. There's an evacuation happening. We've got a safe place to go. If you want to get out, Ah can make that happen. That's all."

Now that she said it, it seemed silly, anticlimactic. She slipped the fingers of one hand between the fingers of the other and snugged the glove into place, to give herself something to do.

"Generous," Bella said, her tone unreadable. "But unnecessary. I know how t'stay clear of de law."

"Ah know y'do. Remy just wanted t'be sure. If you're gonna stay, just—keep your head down. The feds are startin' to figure out what to look for. Ah had to take a freakin' plane here because the Air Force is swarmin' around like mosquitoes. Don't use your powers any more than you kin help. You figured out how to shut it down at all?"

Bella nodded. "Mostly." She hesitated, and some of her queenly confidence seemed to drain away, replace with hesitance that bordered on shyness. "You live with telepaths, c'est ça?"

Rogue nodded.

"Any a'dem ever talk about havin' . . . dreams?"

"What kind of dreams?"

"Dreams where I'm bein' hunted. Like somebody's lookin' for me and it's just a matter a'time until dey find where I'm hidin'."

Rogue racked her brains. "Ah remember Jean sayin' once that when she first started manifesting, she'd pick things up when she was driftin' off to sleep or just wakin' up, and it took her a while to figure out that what she was dreamin' about was really what the people around her were thinkin'. But unless your family's schemin' to kill ya, which considering it's your family Ah wouldn't be too surprised about, it's probably just all the stress. You could cut the tension around here with a knife."

Bella nodded, accepting the answer, although it seemed like she was disappointed by its brevity.

"If you're stayin', then good luck to you," Rogue said at last. "Delphine, thank you so much. Ah know arrangin' this wasn't convenient for you. Ah've got a, uh, a plane to catch."

French lessons:

Desolé, as you know, is 'Sorry.'

T'inquiete pas: Don't worry.

Reveille-toi, cherie. C'est l'heure: Wake up, darling. It's time.

Il faut que tu t'envas bientot. Tu peut te doucher, et il y a du petit dej. Ca va? You need to leave pretty soon. You can take a shower, and there's breakfast. Sound good?

Peut-tu le prendre de moi? Can you take it from me?

A-t-il marché? Did it work?

C'est ça? That's right, isn't it?

And Author's Notes:

Um . . . I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I swear I will do better.

In other news, everybody congratulate me! I start my graduate degree in English Literature in two weeks. Yaay!