Chapter 3

After promising not to include updates about the cave, the shame of the last two chapters clung to her like cigar smoke to a lumberjack. People get stuck in caves all the time, that's what Bobby kept yelling down to her. Yes, she liked Tank Williams songs and not dancing in the rain. Maybe walks on the beach were calming to most, but she almost drowned once. He yelled down again, asking if she realised just how mangled her words sounded. She wanted to marry him. It felt silly now. Maybe she would die here? He wouldn't mind marrying her if it meant Logan wouldn't kill him, he told her, and quickly promised she wouldn't die. This chapter had to be labelled like a favourite. She liked the way it flowed from her head to the mouth of the cave. It was Logan before he walked away. She hadn't expected it, maybe she deserved it, but couldn't they see she wasn't the leak? Bobby said he believed her. She told him the words weren't for his ears; they were for yours.

She used a bottle of whiskey and a container of gas as a firestarter. A box of matches were lovingly dragged into her plan, and as the clock struck seven in the morning, she drank a mouthful of the spirit without a mixer. She cringed at the taste, wished it was beer, and poured the rest over the sheets. As she whispered a little prayer, she lit a match, dropped it, and watched the fire spread. Then she just stood there. She heard shouting, Cyclops mostly. Storm looked concerned and used her powers to create Noah's Ark weather. The rain swept away the fire. Everybody stared at her and then the Professor wanted a quiet word. He spoke about the danger of fire, the burden of power, and the complicated nature of adolescent love. When he talked about the gifted struggling to harness their self-worth, she sighed, and he invited her to speak about her troubles.

She slid the empty whiskey bottle across the desk and gazed at him. Her eyes looked vacant for a moment, then they flushed with tears. "Once she puts her clothes back on, you can tell Kitty she can have him."

The Professor's face creased with further concern and he spoke words of encouragement in her mind. You don't have to do this alone, Rogue. We can help you with your mutation.

She shut down his intrusive thoughts, and he flinched at the force of the psychic push. "Rogue," he uttered, alarmed.

Walking away, she only stayed in the grounds long enough to reach the gates and tap the passcode in. She needed space; she needed calm, and she needed a Bobby-free zone before she stuffed his corpse with cork and used it as a dartboard.

Logan left the danger room with his muscles aching and his tendons healing. He grabbed a towel from the locker room and headed straight for the showers. For the first time in days, he could relax. No sooner had that thought entered his head than he remembered Bobby's words from yesterday. 'Damn it,' he muttered. He'd forgotten to have that talk with Rogue. It was still early, and he figured she wouldn't leave her bed until midday at the earliest, so he still had time to work on whatever the hell he was going to say. Words weren't his strong point, and for obvious reasons he didn't teach sex-ed.

It took another twenty minutes for him to shower, dry, dress and scowl. When he reached the kitchen, he couldn't help thinking every student was looking his way and muttering about fire. He opened the fridge and glanced in Storm's direction when he could smell smoke. "Run out of chocolate milk?"

She gave him a faint smile. "That's not why the students are upset," she said, approaching him with Jean.

"Have you seen Rogue today?" Jean asked him, resting a hand gently on his arm.

The cautious nature of her tone instantly caused him to study her face instead of the contents of the fridge. "What have I missed?"

Both women shared a knowing glance and asked him to follow them outside. They walked Logan to the scene of a recent fire. He breathed in a familiar scent and with the use of his boot, he shifted some of the burnt ashes from the ground. Discovering a heavily singed photo of Bobby and Rogue that flapped lightly in the wind, his eyes darted to the trail of scorched grass. The blackened line continued across the lawn until it reached a burned boat house halfway to collapse.

He spent several minutes staring at the burned remains of something he'd definitely missed. Attempting to match the fire, smoke and smouldering ashes to the kid who hitched a ride with him in Canada, he failed. She had been shy, quiet, annoying, and too curious for her own good, but she wasn't a firebug. Her worst traits were her habit of getting kidnapped and the fact she always vacuumed his truck clean of snacks.

Jean's voice dragged him from his thoughts. "The Professor talked to her but couldn't contain her."

"Contain her?" he growled

"I meant reach her. He tried to reach her, Logan," she corrected herself carefully.

"I know what you meant, Jean," he told her, grabbing a cigar and lighter from his pocket.

Scott approached them, still sore about the fire he had come across on his morning run. "What if she's the person leaking information about our missions?" he asked them. "Why do you all look surprised? We know our missions are being compromised, and Logan lets Rogue have access to the information."

"For her to add bullet points and upload it to the system," Logan said, his eyes narrowing. "If there's a leak here, it isn't Rogue. She's just a kid battling a dozen voices in her head."

"I agree with Logan, it can't be Rogue," Jean told Scott, who frowned when he realised his fiancée had once again sided with his rival.

"I couldn't picture Rogue passing confidential information concerning our missions, Scott," Storm sighed. "Logan's correct. She's just a harmless child."

Scott gestured to the burnt remains of the boathouse. "She's a seventeen-year-old arsonist with a proven track record of spending time with our enemies."

Logan's growl darkened, and he pointed a cigar at him before heading to the garage. "A kid isn't taking the fall for your failure to lead the team, Summers. She's not the leak, she's just a pain in the goddamn ass."

Jean followed him and ignored the frown Scott cast her way. Her worry for Rogue hushed Scott's disapproval to the back of her mind. She accompanied Logan to the garage, glancing at him every moment or two. "Do you really think someone kidnapped Rogue?"

"Not physically," Logan answered gruffly. "But something's going on in that head of hers."

When they arrived at the garage, she reached for his hand and held it in hers. "I could come with you?" she offered.

He shook his head and pulled her closer. "She doesn't need spooking."

Jean gave him a faint smile. "Not here. What If someone walks in and catches us?"

They kissed, with his hands resting on her hips. Then he reluctantly stepped away, unlocking an SUV. "It shouldn't take me long to track her down and bring her back." Even he thought that sounded optimistic, and a scowl crept on his face as he slipped the cigar between his lips and held it steady. He winked at Jean, turned the ignition on and sped out of the garage, glancing up at the darkening skies. "That's all I need," he muttered, the weather taking a turn.

Horns honked as Rogue struggled on in the wet weather. Creepy guys offered her rides in their cars and an old woman asked her if she was raising money for charity by walking through a rainstorm. Even a cop pulled over to check whether she needed to see a doctor. She took offence to that because no doctor could mend her heart with glue and a cocktail of kind words. And then the tears came. Once she cried, she couldn't stop, and the cop backed away. He even told her, "You look like you could do with a good cry." Rogue remained offended and waved him off with a sniffle and eighteen tears streaming down her face.

She walked and walked until eventually she stopped. Everything just stopped. The need to run from her problems died inside her, and she noticed how her drenched clothes stuck to her tiny frame. With no money and her phone back at the mansion, she shuffled to the side of the interstate. Shivering, she held her arm out, rattled by the voices in her head and ready to hitchhike.

A silver Toyota Camry slowed with the window already open. Rogue looked directly at the driver and considered her limited options. "Hi," he said, offering her a welcoming smile.

"Hi," she answered with a vacant stare, taking the tiniest of seconds to build an escape plan with too many holes in. She approached the vehicle and wanted to hide from the rain. Suddenly, an SUV stopped a short distance away, cutting through her path to the other car.

The tinted window of the SUV rolled down and Logan gave the driver of the Toyota a menacing glare with the power to shatter bones.

"I found her first, buddy," the driver said, giving him an irritated look.

Logan kept glaring, never once breaking eye contact with the guy. If he had to leave this SUV, he would turn that Toyota into a casket.

The driver looked at the silent girl standing in the rain, then back at the irritable man sitting in the SUV. He suddenly wondered if he had driven into a family squabble. Annoyed the SUV driver had burst his dream of sleeping with her at the first motel he could find, he vented. "Little whores like you shouldn't cockblock for a fucking living," he snapped and drove away.

Calmly adding the license plate of the Toyota to a digital list on the dashboard, Logan saved it and locked the app to private. He then looked at Rogue. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," she sniffled, crying again as she went to the passenger side door and pulled it open.

He turned the heaters on high, hoping to chase her discomfort away. When she settled down and pulled the door closed, he drew her gloved hands closer to the heater on the dashboard, his way of telling her to focus on drying out. He concentrated on driving and listened to her crying quietly, deciding they didn't need to return to the mansion just yet. Ten minutes later, he parked in the lot of a bar that looked like it needed putting out its misery with Rogue's matchbox treatment.

"What are we doing here?" Rogue asked him quietly.

"You're keeping me company," he said, hauling her out into the rain and stopping to grab some clothes from the survival box sitting in the trunk. When they entered the bar, he handed her the bundle and nodded toward the restroom. "Go get changed."

Rogue nodded, dripping rainwater on the floor as she wondered why the bar was open so early. She stopped and called to Logan. "Can you buy me a beer?"

"Sure," he answered, heading to the bar.

Rogue locked herself in a bathroom stall and stripped out of her wet clothes. She didn't understand why the air-conditioning was on in the middle of the coldest, wettest winter in two hundred years, but she didn't have the energy to whine. All she knew was this: she hated anybody with the name Bobby. She hated anybody called Kitty. She hated anybody who enjoyed sleeping with people called Bobby, especially if the Bobby they slept with was her boyfriend.

Logan had given her a pair of grey sweatpants and a matching hooded shirt, which hung off her because she had no muscles and never growled. Eventually, she left the restroom, and felt like a little girl who wore her daddy's clothes. She shuffled along, not walking like an Egyptian, because she had to hold her pants up while her feet squelched in her wet boots.

Logan sat at the bar, smoking. When he spotted her, he slid a glass over to the empty seat beside him.

"What's this?" she asked as she clambered up onto the stool and pointed to the glass. Setting her wet clothes down beside her, she glanced at the glass curiously.

"A soda," he said, taking another drag of the cigar and looking her way.

She hurled a frown at him, feeling played. "Where's my beer?"

"I'm drinking it," he grunted, taking some coins from his jacket pocket and placing them on the beer mat between them. "You get to keep a dime for every truthful answer you give me."

"Why would I want a dime when I asked for a beer?" she sighed, stirring the soda angrily with a straw.

Even Logan didn't know how many ghosts were rattling around in that head of hers, but he knew how to coax her into sticking with her own personality. "There's a jukebox over there."

Rogue turned to where Logan had pointed. Every time he took her to a bar, all she seemed to do was waste money playing music on a jukebox. It was a running joke between them, something she always looked forward to before Bobby had been Bobby. She glanced at Logan again. "You smell like smoke."

"So do you," he said, passing her a dime.

She put the dime down on her side of the bar and sipped from the soda glass. "Something upset me today," she admitted.

He handed her another dime and snuffed his cigar out on the bar.

"You were right about Bobby. He's an asshole," she said, using the straw to chip the ice cubes in her drink.

Passing her a twenty-dollar bill for that comment, he arched an eyebrow right back at her. "I heard that's all I'm worth."

"The bet?" she said, almost smiling as she watched him.

"You can't keep secrets from me, kid." He snorted, amused when she set a dime down beside his beer.

She suddenly looked away, feeling ashamed. "I borrowed a bottle of whiskey from Scott's office and wanted to use it, but it was too weak. So, I took some gas from the garage instead."

"You Americans water down everything, even the whiskey and snowstorms," Logan muttered, sliding two dimes over to her.

Glancing out the window, she watched the rain twist into semi-snowflakes. "The weather's been weird today."

"Forget about the weather," he said, noticing she still wouldn't look in his direction. He reached over and turned her stool until she faced him.

Her eyes darted from the scrapes on the ceiling to the scuffs on Logan's boots until she had little choice but to gaze at his face. "Bobby and Kitty were in the middle of it."

His brow furrowed again, and he kept the last stack of dimes in his hand until she gave a full answer. "The middle of what?"

She inhaled sharply, exhaled loudly, fidgeted nervously, glanced at Logan again, looked away, feigned boredom, and gave up. "Sex."

Logan hadn't expected that answer. He dumped the rest of the dimes in front of her and nodded at the jukebox. He watched her collect her coins and shuffle over to the corner to play her songs. Muttering expletives under his breath, he considered adding Bobby to his list.

"Does your friend over there need anything?" the bartender asked when the lonesome tones of Tank Williams leaked from the jukebox.

Raising an eyebrow at Rogue's choice of music, Logan lit another cigar and eyed the bartender. "Give her a beer."