Part IV: Collateral Damage

--Mahatma Gandhi

Scott surprised me the next morning by appearing at our breakfast table, where I'd taken up a quietly unobtrusive seat in Logan's shadow, trying to eat my eggs in peace. That I knew all eyes were fixed on me was an understatement--I was as aware of them as I was the color of my shirt (blue, by the way) and the fact I was gloved and people wondered about that still. As if they had nothing better to do with their time.

Logan's presence, however, discouraged others from approaching, and I supported that wholeheartedly. Even Bobby--hell, most *especially* Bobby. I couldn't take another sad, disappointed glance.

After getting home the night before, exhausted and practically floating in the door of the apartment, I'd gone almost straight to sleep, stretched out on the couch with dinner half-finished on the plate in front of me. No time to think of ways to see Polaris or figure out how on earth I could use the knowledge that St. John and Hank weren't alone in their opposition to the Polaris project. Bringing the two groups together seemed theoretically a good idea--but every time the thought popped into my head, I shrugged it aside.

Inner Logan agreed and interrupted my egg-eating as I turned the idea over in my mind for the umpteenth time.

No shit, Sherlock. I was lucky to figure out who I could trust. If that.

"Cyke's on his way, baby," Logan murmured as he speared a sausage with beautiful unconcern. I lifted my head just in time to see The Fearless Leader drop into the chair across from us, a friendly grin spreading his lips and suspicion written into every line of his body. I pasted on a smile, checked the fit, and threw it at him with all the casual charm I could muster. Hey, Fearless Leader, here I am, corrupting your favorite henchman. Nice to see you again.

He might not have gotten the humor of the situation. Frankly, I was pretty iffy on it myself.

"Noticed you weren't at the main table." A slight jerk of his head toward the seated X-Gods and Logan nodded agreeably, still focused on breakfast--he was one of those happy people for whom appetite was never diminished by outer or inner turmoil. I admired him for that. Unfortunately, that was one specific characteristic he'd never managed to pass on to me, no matter how many times we'd touched.

--It's food, baby. Don't see the issue.-- Inner Logan had often wondered about my connection between emotional equilibrium and hunger as well, and I pushed my eggs around on my plate and concentrated on the outer world. Inner convos directly in front of the Leader just didn't seem like the brightest idea, especially when the Leader was on the suspicious side.

"I need you on campus today," Scott said, and I kept my eyes trained on my eggs, piling the sausage links like little logs on the edge of the plate and forking an egg piece on top. Aesthetically pleasing, yellow on brown. "You too, Marie." Huh? I jerked my gaze up, but Scott's gaze was fixed on Logan, not me.

Logan was looking back and a thousand questions flashed through his eyes that I wanted answers to as badly as he did.

"Why do you need Marie?"

"St. John wants to run her through a few more simulations. She's already worked with the beta team, so she might as well get familiar with procedure." A slight glance at me now, amused indulgence rich in his voice. My Logan would have broken his jaw for that alone. This Logan just raised an eyebrow. "Her evaulations were good, Logan. It'll just be a few hours. I think she can leave your sight for that long."

Hmm...so it was that obvious. I tried not to flush, thanks to Logan now perfectly aware of the reason for all those glances in my direction so often. Everyone thought we were--well, we were a 'we'.

And it wasn't exactly an idea I was fighting too hard either, and not just because of convenience. My fantasy life had scenes like this one, though usually he ate the food directly off my stomach and put the syrup to creative uses not mentioned on the bottle. Spearing an egg, I nodded and glanced up as someone took an empty plate away--a girl, though all I saw was a cropped blonde head and a flash of blue at her wrist when she reached by me. I'd automatically pulled a little toward Logan to allow her to get to the plate, and blinking, I wondered when I stopped noticing things around me like that.

Or rather, stopped noticing the norms. How odd.

"You done, baby?" I jerked my gaze up, now aware of two sets of eyes fixed on me, and swallowed the egg hastily, pushing aside the uncomfortable thoughts. No need to worry about it now.

"Sure." I half rose and Logan and Scott followed--old gentleman conditioning. In Scott, it was a perfectly understandable part of his oh-so-anal-retentive nature. In Logan, it was relics of a completely different life and time, and it never ceased to fascinate me when that conditioning took effect. His gloved hand rested on the back of my neck as he and Scott exchanged a few more words that I wasn't really listening to as our plates were cleared. Looking around idly, I saw Bobby and Kitty at the far table--not that either was looking at me, but there was a turn to Bobby's mouth and stiffness to the wide shoulders that told me he was very aware I was there.

"Marie? You ready?"

I nodded, swallowing in a dry throat as we walked with Scott toward the door. The interested gazes of the mutant population were fixed with rapt attention on us again. I wasn't being paranoid.

--It is paranoia, and it's rather cute, Rogue.-- Carol's snicker filled my head. I tried to tune her out. To my own surprise, it worked. I was getting better at it.

"So when is Erik arriving?"

I blinked, focusing on Logan's voice. Information. Always good.

"He'll be back this week with Polaris. Jean should have everything ready by Friday." There was a tightness to Scott's mouth that didn't bode well. His next words told me why. "Hank was in town. Have you--"

"He left, Scooter." The hand on my neck tightened in warning--what, did Logan think I was going to blurt out everything? Please. "Awhile back. He's not going to help, you know that. So I don't see why you're still tryin'. Just give it up, let him live his life."

Scott didn't answer, but the sharp gaze rested on me, as if my presence alone was responsible for Hank's intransigent devotion to wanting norms equal. I kept my blank expression carefully in place. After a few more words between them, Logan led me outside, and I took a long breath as he pushed me gently onto a bench.

The air tasted cleaner than inside, or it could have been the fact I was no longer bracing under the pressure of all those eyes and all that speculation. Straightening, I looked around the garden and had to smile a little.

It was gorgeous weather--all pretty bright-sunlight, perfect-for-family-picnics, let's-play-a-pick-up-game-of-football sort of day that I'd looked forward to at home. Not too hot, not too windy, let's get a kite and have some serious fun in long sleeves without sweating to death. I could feel Logan gazing at me in an almost smothering worry, and that seemed normal too.

"He has good instincts. Try not to look so guilty."

I frowned up at him, and most especially at the sensible advice he gave. Scott had always had a nice paranoid streak running through him, but in my world, it'd been rigidly contained. The only thing that surprised me now after days of observation was that he hadn't ordered me into the sublevels and let Jean and Betsy double-team me until he got some answers.

That I was walking free sure as hell showed where Logan stood in the Trust Hierarchy. He'd gut me if I was a threat, and that's all Scott needed to know.

"I'm trying to look neutral." I'd seen him gut a deer once, during survival training with me, Kitty, and Paige. Paige had taken it pretty coolly with a slight moue of distaste, Kitty had vomited into the bushes, and I'd watched with unwilling fascination, my fingers flexing in time with his as if claws would protrude if I only got the right muscle combinations to work. It'd been one of those rare moments we'd been in such perfect rapport we actually twitched in unison when Kitty's noises from behind the bushes reached us.

He could mutter whatever he wanted about feeling vaguely parental about me, but the truth was, and a part of him knew it, that you didn't get our level of sexual tension from random Jacosta complexes. Those moments he would never admit to were all the proof he needed. Both of us got off on violence and we liked it better together than apart. Being X-Men, in retrospect, could be considered our version of safe sex.

"There's no such thing here. Either for us or against us." A shrug as he lowered himself down beside me, glancing around automatically, checking for surveillance or people too close. I wondered a little vaguely who would possibly have the nerve to follow Logan around. He was twitchy at the best of times--I'd bet money no one walked up behind him for any reason without *a lot* of advance warning, olfactory superiority or not.

"You draw the lines that sharp?"

"Yeah, we do." A pause, before he tilted my chin up. "Hank'll figure something out."

I could lose myself in eyes that utterly sincere. It was nice to know I had the same effect on him, as the gaze lingered longer than necessary and the thumb on my chin unconsciously stroked my skin.

"I can't stay here much longer," I said finally, and it frightened me when he didn't disagree. "They're gonna push one day. I can't--"

"If it fails with Polaris, it won't matter, baby."

"Sure it will. I don't think anyone would take the resurrection of Rogue well." Especially when they'd fucked around so beautifully with her legend.

Logan's shrug beside me was telling.

"Don't worry about it. We'll think of something."

I didn't want to have to think of something. Lifting my head, I gazed around the garden and took in the smells of flowers in bloom. It was home in a way that was starting to make me more comfortable than I should be, and I suddenly missed the rampant cases of deja vu I'd experienced those first days. I shouldn't be comfortable here.

"You don't have to hover, you know. I'm fine on my own." Show that independent streak, Marie-baby. There we go.

"You want me to leave?"

Slightly surprised, a little intrigued. This Logan wasn't as familiar with Rogue, she who needed no one and nothing--or did a kick-ass imitation, anyway. No, I didn't want him to leave--what I wanted was for both of us to leave and let me hide on his sofa under a blanket with a good book until Hank returned with a miraculous solution. Failing that, I wanted to duck quietly into his shadow and hope no one noticed me.

Funny world, this was.

"No--but I don't want you to--you know, feel obligated to hold my hand through this, you know?" I'd never wanted his obligation, though God knew, I'd gotten it, full measure. Logan took duty seriously. Very seriously. Obsessively, some might say. And while I'd never *wanted* it, in this world or mine, I'd never been one to look at gift horse in the mouth and check out the dental issues within. When someone takes up seventy four percent (and I'd done the calculations, so I knew) of your fantasy life, you took what you could get, no matter what form they came in, no matter the condition of the teeth.

"No problem." Of course not--this was something intrinsic to him. Jean had once hypothesized that he had the single most active paternal instincts ever found in a single male. I'd have to agree--it jumpstarted him into fatherhood without a single child of his blood, just the children of his heart and soul and choice. Me and Remy, Kit and Jubes to a lesser extent. The kids of the Mansion, who always knew who was most likely to let them off easy when they broke curfew, or ignore the beer parties in the boys' dorms, who would growl in frustration but still pick them up from clubs at two in the morning if they overindulged and couldn't drive. Bitch them out in colorful language, though, but that was sort of entertaining and certainly gave us all an education in selective profanity.

We had Logan's cell phone memorized and his private extension in the Mansion on speed dial. He belonged to me, to us, in ways he'd never belonged to the X-Men themselves, even Jean.

"I've been reading," I told him, dismissing the thoughts completely, and the hazel eyes fixed on me in interest. "About the war--about what you went through, all of you. I'm sorry." The memories from Kitty I just kept under wraps. No need to advertise my unauthorized use of powers on an X-Man.

An eyebrow cocked and I shifted uncomfortably on the bench.

"For--for some of the things I said. You--you were right, you know." When we fought, before I knew he wasn't genocidal, merely insular. I'd hit him with words that probably still slithered about in his mind, and even if I'd been right--somehow, it wasn't fair to do that to him. I owed both Logans far too much to do that. "I wasn't here--I can't understand what you went through."

Another shrug, but I sensed the tension under it.

"Sometimes," he said, and it surprised me, since I didn't expect a response. "Sometimes, I was glad you didn't live to see it." He paused. "We lost a lot of people."

Xavier. Jubilee.

"I'm sorry about Jubilee," I said, and received confirmation when every muscle in the body beside me tensed, completely reflexive, utterly unconscious. Damning as all hell. "Kitty--" Don't tell him about the absorption. Don't know how he'd take that. "I heard that you--you and she were close."

The hazel eyes refused to meet mine and something in me twisted abruptly--I hadn't really thought about it before, but it occurred to me to wonder....

"She died early on," he said shortly. "I got Kitty out, but I was too late for her."

He got a lot of people out. Kitty, Scott, St. John, Bobby. Questions floated to the surface of my mind even as I began to seek out Kitty's memories--vague impressions of a birthday party before the war and Logan disgusted when Jubilee threw cake at him, long nights downstairs in front of the television watching registration becoming inevitable and Logan telling them they'd be fine. Graduation gowns and Logan scooping Jubes up and throwing her over his shoulder while she laughed and beat at his back while Scott fell against the punch bowl laughing and Jean snapped pictures.

How strange, that I could superimpose the memories of Rogue over those and get such a perfect match. My breath caught a little and I felt Logan's sudden gaze at me when my scent changed. I wondered if I smelled like jealousy.

"I'm going to go look for St. John," I said suddenly, getting to my feet, trying with movement to wash away the memories. "I'll see you later, okay? Bye."

He didn't follow me. And you know, in my world, he would have.

"Where's St. John?" I asked of the first person I saw. Vaguely, I recognized her--green eyes, Sarah, that was the one. She skittered to a stop, turning so quickly she almost dropped the grocery bag she was carrying, and winced back when I took a step forward. Shit, I hated when people winced like that. What the hell did she think I was gonna do to her?

"St. John?"

"Yes." I answered, a little sharply. "Have you seen him this morning?"

She pushed her hair back from her face nervously, and I almost growled. The second wince was just icing--I wasn't going to hurt her, for God's sake.

"Never mind. I'll find him myself. Go--do whatever you were doing."

A quick bob of her head and she took off in the direction of the kitchen while I made for the stairs. Try his room, then do some interrogation. That'd work.

Bobby was absent (probably still eating) when St. John crankily answered my knock on his door, and he let me in without much in the way of conversation as I snatched the collar out of my pocket and thought about putting it on.

"Something wrong, R--Marie?" he said sleepily and I almost kicked him as I dropped onto his bed.

"Be careful." I snapped, suddenly worried. "Marie."

St. John nodded, still not fully awake, and shut the door, turning the lock automatically before brushing a hand through his short hair and glancing briefly at the collar clenched in my hands.

"You like that thing?"

Considering what I knew of his experiences with it, I understood his question.

"It keeps others safe." I paused to let him go in the bathroom--St. John Allerdyce was useless before brushing his teeth, a habit he'd picked up from Bobby. Shower too--I heard the water come on and lay back on his bed, curling my legs up beneath the discarded covers and staring up at the ceiling.

If I got obsessive about the relationship between Jubilee and Logan, I'd scream. That was all there was to it. I didn't need to worry about this--I had more to worry about than a past that was irrelevant to me and with so many other far more pressing issues. Would Hank find a way to get me home? Would Scott get more suspicious and send Jean after me? Would Magneto figure out who I was? Would the Polaris Project go on as scheduled?

Had Logan replaced me with Jubilee?

Fuck. So irrelevant. I rolled onto my stomach and was glad to see St. John had a nice, large, firm, fluffy pillow. Because I wanted something to hit.

Ten minutes later, St. John walked out of the shower and his pillow had lost something in the way of fluffiness.

"I see you're feeling good this morning, babe." His eyes narrowed on the pillow in thought. Dressed in nothing but a towel, he crossed to the closet, pulling open the door. He was smirking. Narrowing my eyes, I considered my options.

"You know I almost had sex with you once in my world?" I told him, and he dropped both towel and t-shirt. Amused, I averted my gaze and fixed it on the door while he dressed with jerky motions I could see from the corner of my eye.

"That's nice." Pretty good attempt at normal conversation mode. I was impressed. "Why almost?" He emerged into my line of sight in jeans, pulling the t-shirt over his damp blonde head. I hid a grin.

"Let's say your interest in me was purely--proxy."

"Oh." Slightly amused, more than a little surprised, shades of embarrassment. Pure St. John, and he flashed me an uncertain smile. "That's--weird."

"Yeah," I answered easily and rolled on my side, giving him a long look. "Why aren't you and Bobby--you know--here?"

A shrug as he settled the shirt at his waist and went hunting for his socks in the dresser. "No reason--never came up. Not since high school, anyway, and after Cecy died--"

"Cecy?" I'd heard that name before.

St. John turned with tube socks in hand, crawling across the carpet to dig under his bed. He didn't have a habit of putting his shoes in the closet.

"Bobby's fiancée. Met her our first semester in college--before we were discovered." Johnny shrugged again. "She died in the camps for being a--collaborator. Or fucking the enemy, so to speak. I suppose when her parents turned in me and Bobby, they didn't expect her to be arrested with us, for sleeping with a known mutant."

I shivered a little--he could say it so casually, and I wasn't used to that yet.

"I'm sorry."

"So was Bobby." He came up for air with one shoe clutched in his hand, a frown creasing his face. The other shoe was being recalcitrant, apparently. "They were engaged--God, I swear, they decided on the second date." A strangely nostalgic smile curved Johnny's lips and he sat back on his heels briefly, head tilting. "She was a carrier of the X-gene, not a mutant herself though. She was targeted as much for that as for her relationship." Johnny ducked back under the bed again. Emerging with the second shoe, he gave me a long look. "Her mother and both her sisters were taken too. Even though her father was FoH."

I thought about that, my mind turning over the implications.

"That's odd."

"FoH required gene tests after that to join the party."

Whoa. I sat up straight.

"They became a *political party*?" And didn't that just spook me in ways I didn't want to be spooked? Dearest God. Not good.

Johnny's eyebrows arched briefly in confusion, before he belatedly remembered who I was.

"Yeah. Got a full Congress and a President elected. Problem was, a third of them ended up having mutant family members. Lots agreed to sterilization to assure that their possibly corrupt genes didn't continue." Another smile that could have doubled for an animal's bared teeth. "Very interesting, how many suddenly turned up without families--sent them abroad. 'Specially their daughters--required sterilization on the kids who came back with a x in their chromosomes. We won't even cover the latents who didn't even know they *were* gamma class and found out at the ripe old age of fifty that their neat ability to always convince people with their speeches and their excellent luck in poker was low-grade psi ability."

I'd never thought of that and pondered the implications.

"What's the requirement to be considered mutant?"

"Good question. Magneto makes the rules--he's partial to alpha/beta class." A shrug. "The way we wiped through the human gene population--norms outnumber us, but you know, most mutant kids come from norm parents. And some breed true every time; those have special privileges, a weird sort of second class citizenship, like Sam's family. Work visas, can operate heavy machinery without supervision, less restrictions on travel." Viciously sarcastic. "It's the ones who started executing their own kids that Mags targets--those and the collaborators. Mutant or not."

I could see that.

"So what do you need, babe?"

I wondered if he'd know anything about Jubilee and Logan and dismissed it from my mind.

"Scott said you were running me through sims this afternoon."

St. John blinked, considering my statement from all angles.

"Yeah, I mentioned to Scott I needed to--I guess he forgot to tell me." A shake of his head. "Weird. He usually doesn't forget stuff like that."

"Probably meant to tell you this morning." Before I saw you, so I wouldn't know he was deliberately separating me and Logan. I wondered why, but St. John sat down on the bed beside me and the blue eyes looked into mine. In their depths were so many questions--I knew what he'd ask before he said it, before the blue eyes left mine and fixed on the far wall.

"Me and Bobby--you asked about that. Is it--different? I mean--"

"You and Bobby graduated from USC; you teach journalism at the school and freelance for a few magazines. You've been together for over two years," I said softly, and I heard his breath catch. I could tell him this. It wouldn't hurt anyone. "After Bobby broke up with me, you took him to Malta for awhile. When you got back, I was with Remy and Bobby was--I don't know. Weird about it. And then--well, something happened, I don't know what, but you got together." I smiled a little. "You're happy, I'll tell you that."

St. John grinned a little, something lighting up his eyes.

"You know Remy and 'Ro--"

"Yeah." I almost sighed to myself. "Remy and I broke it off after what happened with Carol--it was hard for him. I made it hard, and I couldn't--" Couldn't stand to be touched, to be near anyone I could ever hurt again. Remy got angry about it--Logan just pushed me until I gave up trying to keep him away. I remembered them fighting outside the Mansion, when they thought I couldn't hear, remembered Logan ripping into Remy for abandoning me. Logan never quite understood I'd abandoned Remy a long time before. "He and 'Ro have been pretty good friends since Logan first brought him home. I think they're developing into more." Another sigh, and I flicked a finger over the blanket--it was strange, that it didn't hurt to think about anymore. It once had. "Surprise, surprise."

His hand was gentle on my shoulder.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

A pause, longer, before he spoke again, and my luck should have figured out where he'd go.

"Is the--are the Professor and Jubilee--"

He felt my wince and drew back in surprise.

"She's fine," I said, fixing my eyes on the far wall. "Everyone is. Everyone, you know, is fine. Mostly." Leave out random episodes of mutant violence and sundry, and I turned my head a little, knowing my face would show too much.

"You and Logan in your world--you were very close."

Her laugh was malicious--Xavier and I had discussed the option early on, but the sheer difficulty of rooting through my mind and removing Carol neuron by neuron and memory by memory was a task fit for perhaps *six* telepaths of Xavier's caliber, not just one. And the dangers of losing my own memories, my own self--in balance, the risks were too great. At least in Xavier's opinion.

But rethinking the situation...

"Yes," I mumbled, wondering how I could change the subject.

"It was hard for him--after you died." I looked up. "He stayed at the school--Jean thought it was because of the girls, you know? He saw you in all of them."

I had to find some level of amusement in the fact that Logan couldn't even escape me when I was dead.

"It's no biggie," I said, seeing him ready to say something else. "Do you think you can see Polaris when she gets back?"

St. John shrugged.

"She's with Lensherr--never leaves his sight. I'll try, but--" he shrugged meaningfully, and I understood, at least a little. People with martyr-complexes didn't want to be saved.

"Makes sense." Magneto was good at what he did--he'd learned from that unfortunate incident with me, I had to guess. Twisting short blonde hair through my fingers, I gave the room a cool once-over before finally turning to face Johnny.

"Scott's suspicious."

"Scott is the epitome of paranoid. He doesn't like how you've shown up so close to the execution of the Polaris Project."

"He doesn't believe in it, you know." Usually, I didn't think before I spoke--this was one of those times. St. John leaped on the words before they'd finished finding space in the air to hang meaningfully, grabbing my shoulders and spinning me around.

"Where'd you get that idea?"

It seemed sensible, on the surface, to start spilling--but I bit my tongue and shook my head. I didn't want to trust my instinct to tell him. I couldn't pretend to understand everything that was going on, and even if Scott wasn't a cheerleader for the project, it didn't mean that he would actually bring it to a screeching halt either. In fact, I'd guess from what Logan said, they weren't going to do anything yet. They'd learned the rules of sacrifice and ethical compromise far too well.

"Just--observation." The intense gaze wasn't lessening and I wondered if this Johnny could read when I lied as easily as the other one. For a second, I thought he could, but he let me, go, sitting back to stare at the far wall with an intense expression. "Johnny--"

"Sorry." His face turned down, hiding his expression from sight. "You wanna go look at the sim programs now?"

With a quick nod, I stood up, glad to end the uncomfortable moment with some action. But I did notice that St. John's eyes didn't meet mine for the rest of the morning.

The basic rules of a successful infiltrator--or whatever I qualified as--included avoiding those who are a threat to you. Say, paranoid Fearless Leaders who seemed to be *way* too interested in your existence for anyone's peace of mind.

I blamed it on being tired. Johnny had run me through sims before and after lunch, and a late afternoon snack hadn't done much more than add to my general state of exhaustion. I wanted to curl up on a rug in some sunlight and forget the world existed.

In short, I wanted a nap.

The back porch, in retrospect, probably wasn't the best place to hang out, though technically, late afternoon really *was* a good time for semi-privacy there. Kitty was in her room with a few other mutant girls, including Betsy, and Johnny had wandered off to find Bobby. The X-Men were training or planning things in the sublevels, and most of the others seemed to have left early in the day for whatever it was they did off-campus.

It was blessedly quiet, a tiny shaded corner with a wicker loveseat and a nice view. Freshly showered and redressed in a school t-shirt and sweats, a clean pair of gloves covering my arms, I fell into its cushioned depths in a frenzy of sheer relief and shut my eyes.

"Marie. I didn't expect to see you out here."

I opened one eye and got a sideways view of Scott through the curtain of my hair, leaning up against one of the porch supports. Automatic reflex wanted to drag me straight upright, but even my reflexes were tired. They compromised by letting me lift my head a little.

Meeting the clear gaze behind the red glasses, I decided he was lying. He'd expected to find me. Because he'd been looking for me.

"Hey, sir--Scott." Slowly, I levered myself up on one arm. Without asking, he crossed the porch, dropping carelessly into the chair across from me with all the grace of a cat and twice the suspicion. Very Scott. Pushing myself fully upright, I tried to clear my foggy head enough to figure out what he wanted. Bye-bye, nap. The very thought made me even more tired.

"Johnny sent your sim reports to my office." Oh? "You're really quite good. Where were you trained?"

Well, see, that was a good question. Where *had* I trained?

--Prevaricate.-- Carol's hiss was soft.

"Different people taught me different things," I answered evasively. "It wasn't safe being alone and not know how to get outta a situation, you know?"

"Yes, I do."

The thing about Scott, the overriding decider of his personality, was his control. He liked control. Perhaps the term "control-freak" wouldn't be too harsh. It had manifested itself in a thousand ways at home--his obsession with detail, his famously cold temper, self-confidence that could be easily mistaken for arrogance. He had to control everything, even himself.

And his team. God help you if you were on his team.

To put it in a personal perspective, if Logan had been the overprotective older brother that growled at my dates, Scott was the one that interrogated them. Got their name, social security number, driver's license, family history, criminal record, and at least three reference numbers. Logan would make sure they knew he'd kill them--Scott just let them know that he'd make sure Logan knew where to *find* them.

It was something of an accomplishment, in retrospect, that I ever lost my virginity.

It wasn't just me, though--Jubes, Kitty, Paige, all of us were victims of Scott's need for control. And fighting it was like fighting a cold--cute to try, but you just have to let it happen and deal with it. In all honesty, while Scott approved of Remy far less than Logan did, Remy had a point in his favor because he lived at the Mansion and therefore was always under Scott's eye. And while he had a very nice criminal background, nothing had ever gotten through even a grand jury, and when he became an X-Man, he had another point in his favor.

Sitting back against the cushioned wicker, I knew exactly what this was about. This wasn't Leader Scott looking at a possible infiltrator right now; this was Brother Scott interviewing Logan's lover. Dear God. Dear, dear God. I didn't know whether to laugh hysterically or just acknowledge completely that this could *not* be a very complex hallucination, because even my wildest flights of fancy had *never* included Scott interviewing Logan's lover out of a concern for her intentions.

"Is there anything in particular you want to talk about, Scott?" I asked, trying to keep the smile from fighting its way across my face. Would he ask for references? Proof of citizenship? My future plans? Sexual history? Blinking, I tried to think of how on earth Scott was going to go about this subtly.

"Logan."

Okay, so not subtle.

"Oh," I answered weakly. Clean and neat in jeans and a maroon short sleeve shirt that did good things with his complexion, Scott was the very epitome of Mutant All-American Male. Concerned Mutant All-American Male. Geez. "Umm--"

"I'm not going to ask you personal questions about your relationship," Scott said calmly, crossing an ankle over his knee and apparently settling down for Serious Inquiry Time while flashing a thousand watt smile. Many dates had relaxed when they saw that.

They'd learned differently. Real damn quick.

"I'd rather not--"

"What made you decide to come to New York?"

I wished I'd gotten some coffee from the kitchen. My muscles were screaming things about pain and exhaustion and my brain couldn't quite manage to sort out those messages from my desperate inquiries of what to do about the situation.

"I was tired of being alone."

Carol only laughed and sat back to enjoy the show. Inner Logan, however, did not.

That rat-bastard.

--Noticed that.-- Okay, that was strange. Logan hadn't exactly been enthusiastic about this little masquerade, but the resentment in his voice was above and beyond that. No, not resentment. It was something else. And damned if I had time to figure out what.

"How did you know Logan was imprisoned with your sister?"

I blinked, jerking back into reality. Crap. Well, I'd said it, and I had to have a reason for it. Okay, logic. How would I--

"Another former prisoner, when I got out." Whew. Elaborate? No, that looked guilty. Well, did it look guilty anyway? Shit if I knew.

"Oh?"

"Yeah." I wasn't sweating. I wasn't tense. Forcing my mishandled body under strict control, I lowered myself back down as casually as I could, as if I had people asking me questions every day. I knew Scott. Sort of. "I--I didn't know she was dead, so I asked around. And that one--he--told me that she'd been with Logan in--" Where had Logan been imprisoned? Miami? Boston? Daytona? Palm Beach? Chicago? I should *know* this stuff. "--the camp. And that she'd died."

Scott nodded slowly and I tried not to blow out a breath in relief.

"So you never met him before you came here?"

Was Scott insinuating I was a slut? Okay, practically speaking, running off-campus to move in with a guy the first time I met him *might* be a little *risque*, but hey, it was the new millennium and all that. Maybe I was just *really* decisive.

"No."

"Hmmm." Scott crossed his arms neatly over his chest. "From what Logan said, I thought you'd met before."

The rat-bastard was back, but he might help. I took a breath, keeping my quizzical smile firmly pasted across my face. I hoped it didn't look as fake as it felt.

Logan had always been obsessively private about his relationships, that much was true. I met the lucky chicks when I couldn't avoid them, but the X-Team did *not*; at least, not until what's-her-name that I had *really* disliked just on principle. Anyone Logan had around more than three months was just *not* going to be on my top ten list. But anyway, Logan was private.

To reiterate to myself, the two Logans had the same basic personality. I just couldn't see even this close Scott-Logan friendship descending into private confidences like an alternate universe episode of "Sex and the City".

"Not before I got here." Casual. Oh so casual. Look how very unworried I am, Fearless Leader, I'm stretching my legs in complete unconcern, and not only because they are trying to cramp up. "He had information I didn't."

"Ah. I'm glad you got the information you wanted." He didn't sound glad. Abruptly, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and fixing all that dark red gaze on me with an intensity that made me stiffen. "I was surprised to learn of Logan's and your relationship." Somehow, he made relationship sound like 'sex scandal' or 'poisoned dinner'. I was metaphorically rocked back on my heels--but it was still cute as hell, no way around it, that for once, it was me being the suspected party. Me, being the one that couldn't be trusted. "Are you planning to stay long?"

Oh, was *that* a loaded question. 'No, I'm trying to get the hell off this alternate timeline and get home Real Soon Now, but thanks for asking?' Scott was actually testing my commitment--he wanted to know if I was going to lead Logan on and then cut and run. At another time, in another place, without so damn much riding on this moment, this entire conversation would have been desperately touching, a true Mutant Hallmark moment. Just, you know, not now.

"I'll be here for awhile," I answered, weighing each word. "It's--nice." Me and nice. I had to upgrade my vocabulary

Scott smiled--a pretty smile, the smile you give right before you say something that could be unforgivable, but that 'oh-shucks' smile is supposed to make it all better. It worked too--Scott was the past master of being able to state in bald terms what would be insulting under any other circumstances and manage to look justifiably hurt when you retaliated.

"Logan and I have been friends for a long time, Marie," Scott said. "I won't pretend I'm not worried about his relationship with you." Heh. Scott worried about Logan. God, I had to remember this. SUCH a cool anecdote. "He's had a difficult time since the war. I hope you understand that."

"We've all had difficult times, sir."

He frowned at the honorific but didn't comment.

"Marie, has he talked to you about Jubilee?"

Something in me froze just a little, and I found myself leaning forward without meaning to and earning a screech from my back.

Jubilee.

"No," I answered, watching his face carefully. Scott was too good at controlling his expression--but the slightest tension in the set of his jaw gave it all away. He didn't like this.

"She and Logan were extremely close, Marie. She was killed in the Daytona camp the first year of the war" A pause. "Logan couldn't locate her in time to buy her freedom. He recovered her body after the war and brought her here. So he could stay close to her."

I bit into my lip.

"Oh?"

Scott's head tilted a little, and his body reflected nothing but tired acceptance and remembered pain.

"When she died--" Scott paused, and it dawned on me--I didn't want to hear more. I really didn't. Getting to my feet, ignoring the scream of my muscles, I gave Scott a quick smile. I knew it was bad and almost didn't care.

"Thanks for telling me, sir." Gotta go, gotta run, gotta get out of here. That's what Johnny meant about the tags being with a dead girl--they were buried with Jubilee. All the evidence, and as usual I didn't pay a damn bit of attention. I should have known this, should have guessed this part. Of course, Jubilee. They'd been damn good friends on my world too. "I gotta run--get something to eat." I doubted I'd ever eat again. "Thanks for the heads-up, Cyke. I'll see you later."

Before he could say another word, and very much aware how very silly I looked, I took off for the door, pushing the screen back and plunging into the cool air-conditioned darkness of the Mansion kitchen. My eyes weren't adjusted to the interior lights yet, but a quick glance around the room confirmed that I was alone. For a frightened second, I worried that Scott would follow me when his footsteps sounded on the porch, but they trotted down the stairs and away. He'd made his point, I guessed.

Leaning into the door briefly, I tried to shut out the myriad thoughts floating in my head. Jubilee. Made sense, of course--the reason he stayed at the Mansion after the war, the reason he became a true member of the X-Men. It made perfect sense. And why was I jealous, anyway?

I bit into my lip. I wasn't just jealous. I felt betrayed. I'd been replaced.

The X-Men had some sort of meeting, which kept us on campus later than I really wanted to be. Worse, it kept me intensely unoccupied. The sublevels were sealed off to all non-team members and everyone I knew even vaguely was planning more nefarious crimes against humanity.

Or hell, maybe they were just negotiating next week's menu. How would I know?

Angry at myself, I paced most of campus, keeping my distance from the other mutants. I caught a glimpse of young Lucas and his buddies in the distance and did my best to stay out of his way. I still wanted to hurt him, just on principle, so deliberately meeting up with him could be considered premeditated assault. The thought appealed to me far too much to trust myself near him.

Retreating to the far side of the soccer field as more kids came outside to enjoy the warmth of early evening, I found a comfortable tree and sat down against it, clutching my coat and the bag Logan had given me to carry my weapons around in, turned so I could keep a eye on both the foresty area to my left and the clean sweep of the grounds to my right. Never hurts to be prepared.

It was beyond surreal to know I was packing enough firepower to take over a good size building and take hostages. I was Rogue, she who needed no weapons, she who was invulnerable to all weapons. She who--well, okay, so not invulnerable to the really uncool little red ray guns that the current Somewhat Bad Guys were sporting, but still. Mostly invulnerable. I belonged to a gun control lobby, for goodness sake. I voted Democrat. That I was packing was just a little too much to really absorb.

I didn't even try to justify the fact that I was pretty damn good with them, either.

I sighed and leaned my head into the bark of the tree, feeling Logan fill my head.

I felt a strange wave of emotional struggle before he finally answered.

--You do what you have to.-- His voice was grudging, but at least no longer pissed. I was going to have to figure him out one day. --I understand practicality.--

Yeah, he should. Idly, I opened the zipper of the bag and looked down at the gun.

I would never understand my mutation. Never. This New and Very Different Logan seemed to have left only the barest trace in my mind--vague, unfinished scenes that I couldn't quite put together. From Kitty, I'd gotten considerably more--but then, Kitty had held on longer before I could knock her away. My Logan was still quite vivid despite it being two-three weeks since we'd touched last. Carol, of course, would never go away.

Erik Lensherr from the Statue was almost entirely gone, but then, I'd never kept him as alive as I'd kept Logan either.

I frowned, mulling that.

--Yeah. I mean--why didn't I pick up more of that? Now that I know, I can trace some of those images, and I'm pretty sure if I meditate, I can find out more.-- I sighed. No one understood how my mutation worked, why it worked, or what exactly it did, besides the obvious.

--You remember how well I got along with Christy?-- Inner Logan winced. --Yeah, well, see, at least she was only fucking you. I feel even more territorial when someone's walking on my specialness turf.--

Logan laughed at me and I growled into my hair, flexing my fingers briefly before moving my hand down to the projector on my hip, hidden safely under the line of my underwear. It really was easy to get used to. Staring at the blonde strands that trickled across my eyes, I pushed them back and sighed.

See, the thing was, he meant it. Sad, but true. I could look like shit after a mission, covered in dirt and blood and my hair an absolute windblown mess, and he'd never notice. I was Marie, therefore I was pretty. How nice.

--Sometimes, sugar, you are really useless.-- Sighing, I checked the sun's position in the sky. --He said they'd be done by seven. It's getting close--I'm going to go wait for him in the foyer and try to avoid dinner. I smelled liver casserole and you know, I really wanna avoid that. I don't care how good it is for me.--

--Raw or cooked, sugar, it doesn't do much for me. Still bleeding only makes it less attractive.-- Pulling my jacket on, I threw the light bag over my shoulder and thought about requesting Oriental tonight. Surely, somewhere in New York, there was some sesame chicken. Surely.

"Marie."

I fixed my bag over my shoulder again, smiling up to see Logan approaching from the direction of the school. He was good at finding me, always had been.

"Smelled me out?"

That got me a full grin and he paused while I crossed the stretch of velvety green grass and fell into step beside him. Questions about Jubes, all thoughts of Scott's talk, were dismissed. No effect on me. So there.

"I could find you anywhere." His hand brushed across my back, pausing when he didn't feel the line of the shoulder holster. "They in the bag?"

"My arsenal?" I gave him a glance and shrugged. "You said off-campus."

"So I did. Prefer you wore them when you go outside this far from the Mansion." He brushed my hair back from my face with gloved fingers. "Just for safety, baby. I don't like this second attack."

Tilting my head, I really couldn't exactly disagree there. Wished I could, but the hell of it was, it was real now. These were what I needed to be safe. That was absolute fact.

"Okay." His hand settled on my far shoulder and I watched the students in the shadow of the Mansion, fewer now. Getting ready for dinner, I supposed. Liver. Eww. "Are we leaving?"

Oh, a suspicious pause. I didn't like that and turned my head up, coming to a stop when Logan didn't answer immediately.

"Okay, this isn't good. What's wrong?"

Under my gaze, Logan shifted uncomfortably, then sighed.

"Scott wants us on campus tonight."

"Why?" There had to be a good reason. Somehow, I didn't think the request was normal. Logan was too big on personal space and privacy.

"The FoH cell we cleaned out was funded overseas--government support. Full support. Campus security is fine--but Scott and I are flying out early tomorrow morning and Scott wants us on campus."

His eyes evaded mine. Heh, good trick, sugar. But didn't work on me. I reached out, catching his chin.

"What else?"

He sighed again and folded his fingers over mine.

"You're pushy, you know that?"

"What a revelation. What's Scott worried about?"

"You."

Well, should have expected that. I felt myself stiffen, but Logan tightened his grip on my hand, not letting me withdraw.

"What's he think?" After our little discussion--well, I supposed I hadn't done much to comfort him on that score.

"He knows you were in the restricted area the other night and he knows Hank was in town." The muscles in his jaw clenched. "Your little buddy Lucas decided to go to Summers after I tossed the report."

"Because you restricted him to campus?"

A tiny smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

"Heard about that, huh? That, and the ripping of his throat you promised if he went into the restricted area again." Logan shrugged. "I told Scott you had permission from me to go and he wanted to know why you wanted to go there and why you threatened Lucas." Logan shifted his grip on my hand, pulling me along to walk again, but our angle was a little different, giving us a longer time before we got back in the Mansion's vicinity. Ah, he didn't want to look suspicious. Got it.

"What did you say?"

"You wanted to check up on someone who knew Danvers and that Lucas annoyed you." Logan shrugged slightly, but there was something on his face that worried me. The lightest edge of strain. Shit, he and Scott were close--hadn't I noticed that before? Logan wasn't the type to like this sort of subterfuge--it wasn't in his nature to betray his friends. Looking down, I hated that I was making him do this.

"I'm sorry," I said softly.

"Nothing to be sorry for. Scooter's tense right now, with Polaris and the attacks and Mags riding his ass about getting the younger mutants trained. Mags doesn't quite understand why Scott doesn't want to rush all the kids into uniform now and get them on the front lines."

"The front lines?"

Logan nodded slowly and I watched the sun play off the short dark hair, bringing out the rich mahogany and traces of sun-bleached blonde on the tips. He spent a lot of time outdoors.

"Camp control. The beta and gamma class are trained for that. We're strapped for personnel and we don't put anyone out who's not completely trained. The restricted zones are run by the humans themselves, but not the camps."

I thought about that.

"I didn't realize--"

"That we did that?" Logan's smile twisted a little. "When I got here, before the war, I taught every kid how to defend themselves, but I never taught them how to kill. It was the line we drew in the sand, that we would go this far and no further. During the war, that's the only thing I taught them to do. Control of their powers be damned--just make sure they could survive the field. Bobby was one of my best students, and on the field humans were scared to death of him. It's one thing to die from Scott's direct hits with the visor or from Jeannie's dropping things on them--but a whole new level of hell to freeze to death in the middle of summer under one hundred degree heat. He was good--better than good. Still is."

"What about Johnny?"

Logan winced a little and I wondered where that came from. Looking up, I saw the hazel eyes were fixed on a distant point in the far field.

"It was a long time before John--before I trained John."

I frowned.

"But he was responsible for a lot of the destruction during the war, on the field...."

The expression that crossed Logan's face stopped me. I remembered Kitty's voice, clear in my head, telling me how long it'd taken for St. John to emerge from his mental distance.

"That was John's power, but Jeannie's mind. They broke him in the camps." Logan paused and I shivered. The usually warm voice was absolutely flat. "We needed him. We had to separate Bobby and John when we split our fronts up and Kitty wasn't enough to keep him stable. Jeannie would feed through him and direct his power. It was hard on both of them, Jeannie especially. She hated that we had to do it and hated what happened to John after." Logan's hand tightened in mind. "But Scott gave the order."

"And no one disobeys when Scott decides?"

Logan's glance at me was telling.

"Not when he makes the right call. We needed Pyro--we needed most of the kids. With Kitty to give him familiarity and Jeannie to control him, we got more done faster. And it had to be fast--when we started the war, the experimentation camps became death camps. We had to get them out fast or there wouldn't be anything left but bodies."

The raw, simple words hurt me more than anything else he'd said. Without meaning to, I leaned into him, lacing my fingers through his.

"I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago."

"Not to you." The strong fingers squeezed mine and I smiled up at him, trying to change the subject. "So, where's your room on campus?"

Ooh. Interesting reaction. On any other creature on earth, that would have been a flush. But not Logan. Of course not.

"Marie, I know that the situation has been--but you know, you don't have to--"

Oh. Yeah. Right. Situation.

"It's a big bed," I answered. Was I pushing for this? Yes, yes I was. This was necessary. That was it. Gotta keep the cover. "And anyway, it'll look weird otherwise, you know?" Hurry on to new subject. Got it. "Can we run get some clothes first though? I need something to wear tomorrow." Maybe change into pretty underwear tonight--oh *shit*, Marie, what the hell are you *thinking*? With an excess of virtue, I shut down all those thoughts and concentrated on logistics. "And get some Chinese food or something? I can't face liver for dinner."

Logan laughed and I realized we were nearly to the back porch. No Scott in sight. This day was seriously looking up.

"Whatever you want, baby."

See, I liked the sound of that.

Ten inches.

Exactly the amount of space that separated us. Me in my sweatpants and a t-shirt, gloves and socks, since I really didn't feel like wearing the collar to bed at the Mansion and having a night emergency. I had grabbed an extra sheet from the linen closet, pleased to note that the air conditioning was kept as low as always, and Logan and I picked sides of the bed.

Logan was a long time falling asleep, so I pretended first and curled up on my side, facing the wall. Logan got closet side. That was dandy. Trying to discipline myself into sleep was not easy. No sir.

Logan was in my bed. Or I was in his. In any case, we were sharing a bed. A big bed granted, and that wasn't exactly old hat or anything, but neither was it completely new. I mean, he'd spent bad nights with me. Of course. I'd even slept practically on top of him when I was fighting Carol.

See, the real difference was, this was Logan. *Logan*. Different Logan. Highly attractive short haired Logan in his own t-shirt, sweatpants, and socks combo, looking so incredibly delicious stretched out inches away from me that it was a pain to remember that this was *not* what I needed to be thinking about.

Checking his breathing, I knew he was asleep and rolled on my back, then to face him, rearranging the extra sheet around me. I wasn't in any claw danger--yippee invulnerability--but also because he knew my scent as familiar in the bed. At least, that's how it'd worked in my world and I figured it couldn't be that much different here.

The fine strong bones of his profile were etched in sharp relief against the cool white and brown of the wall and closet door, lips slightly parted. I could spend all day just tracing the lines of his face with my fingers. Sometimes, I could almost imagine I could draw him from memory, though God knew, I didn't have any artistic talent whatsoever. Logan did, though. Frowning, I felt the edges of a memory trying to nudge its way out. The smell of lead pencils on paper and charcoal, a physical memory so strong I rubbed my fingers together to get rid of the imaginary dust.

Settling down to watch him, I watched his chest rise and fall with his breathing. God, I wanted him.

Whoa.

Blinking, I almost sat up. No, I didn't. I wanted my Logan, once upon a time. This was *not* my Logan. This was the head of campus security. This was the current instructor of camp security officers. This was a revolutionary and an oppressor and a very, very different man from the one I'd grown up with.

A very different man, but the same. Still honorable in a different set of ethics. I suddenly wished I'd told him what Lucas was doing in the restricted zone--a lapse of faith, of belief on my part. He wouldn't countenance that. He wouldn't. He *wouldn't*.

Reaching out before I could think better of my impulse, I shook his shoulder and he came cleanly awake, eyes finding me instinctively.

"You okay?" One hand slid down my shoulder, stopping just above the edge of my t-shirt. I nodded, then bit my lip. In retrospect....

"I lied."

He raised himself on one arm and ran a hand absently through his hair, then rolled on his side, tilting his head. He'd always been a quick riser--unlike me, he could actually *think* upon regaining consciousness.

"Lucas was trying to rape me in the restricted area. He thought I was human."

Inner Logan's warning was milliseconds too late.

Logan sat straight up and a very, very familiar expression crossed his face. The word was feral. I *really* should have planned this better. Or at all, for that matter. Before I could draw in a breath, I heard the sharp sound of metal and felt my breath catch as three claws ripped the air inches above the bedspread from his right hand.

"I'll kill him."

See, this is why I should always think things through. Logan threw the blanket back and I lunged, getting hold of his waist and jerking him back down on the bed. Score one for me--I was stronger and Logan fell down on top of me, knocking the breath out of us both. He scrambled up, arms going around me and pulling me into a sitting position across his knees.

Talk about suggestive as all hell....

"Marie?" His bare fingers were against my head, skimming my hair back to look into my face. "Baby, you okay?" Hazel eyes looked frantically into mine, and he drew in a sharp breath when I slowly nodded, before he roughly pulled me close.

Pressed against his chest, with long fingers stroking my hair back--shit yes, I was okay. I was better than ever. That was probably not what he meant, though. Taking a breath, I looked up and smiled.

"Invulnerable. It works for any and all occasions."

Logan nodded and made as if to move me. Claws on one hand were still out--he was careful with those. I figured he'd be very careful cutting Lucas into pieces, too. I wrapped both arms around his clothed waist and held on--just to keep him in place. Only reason.

"Don't."

"He touched you." It was a growl.

"He failed. I said I'd kill him if he went into the zone again."

Logan looked down at me, studying my face.

"Marie, no one touches you. For any reason."

"I'm fine. He failed. I hurt him. Don't kill him."

This might not work. Logan heated up fast and sometimes, just sometimes, it took awhile to bring him down. Sometimes a long while. Days, maybe. I shifted until I could get both hands to his face, make him look down at me. This wasn't good. He wasn't calming. And shit, I couldn't exactly say I was that against the idea. Young Lucas was high on my list of people who needed to be removed from civilization. Antarctica sounded good to me.

Killing him, however....

"Marie--"

"Don't kill him. Promise me you won't kill him." I made him meet my eyes, feeling Inner Logan shake his head at my efforts. Thanks, babe. You're being sooo damn helpful. "Please, Logan."

That got me a sigh and Logan relaxed a little. He was thinking. Thank you, God. I let my grip ease just a little, studying his face until the final signs of utter rage dissipated, replaced with cool appraisal of the situation.

"He's gone tomorrow--he and his two friends. They were there, weren't they?" He said it like he already knew. Well, two guys were there. I opened my mouth, then shut it. There was no use saying the two guys hadn't done anything--they'd stood by and watched me be attacked. Just as guilty.

"Two guys were with him, yeah. I don't know who."

"They're gone. Out of the zone." His entire jaw was tense. "Little bastards." The strong arms went tight around me, pulling me close again, and I rested my face against his chest, careful of the bare skin of his neck. "That shouldn't have happened. No way in hell." He growled something softly and I wondered if he needed some Danger Room time to work out his aggression. For Logan, there were only two releases for excess stress--violence or sex.

A vivid image of me pushing him down on his back here and now took up the entirety of my mind and Carol inside my head began to laugh. I deserved it. Logan growled, but I ignored him.

"Do people--do we--do mutants..." I choked it off, not sure how to frame the question.

"Mutants aren't allowed in the restricted zone without authorization from Lensherr, Scott, or me." Logan paused briefly. "The sentries are supposed to report entrance."

"They told the sentries they were from Lensherr."

"He couldn't authorize them if he wasn't here. Verbal confirmation is required on all access. They called me when you went in the zone." Logan paused, frowning into the air to my left. "Crap. I haven't been paying attention."

Huh?

"You?"

Logan nodded, arms slowly loosening, but I really didn't feel like moving yet.

"Yeah. The camps and restricted zones are my responsibility for personnel assignment." Logan growled something that could have been profanity. "Gotta check with Remy in the morning and get replacements. Shit."

Slowly, I withdrew and watched as Logan ran through mental checklists. He was head of school security AND assignor of camp and restricted zone personnel in New York zone. That was--interesting. And complex.

And sooo very different from my Logan. He'd have hated responsibility like that.

"Logan--"

"I'll be right back--Remy's up and can handle this now until I can go over the rosters tomorrow." With another growl, he reached across the bed and ran light fingers through my hair. "Go back to sleep. I won't be long."

"I'll wait up," I answered, then looked around the room, then back to him. "It's--sort of weird without you."

That got me a smile that dizzied me, before he moved from our bed with cat-like grace. He was wearing socks. It was cute. I watched him unlock the door and walk out, shutting and locking it behind him with the keys he grabbed from the bedside table and I moved over a few inches, curling up in the warm spot he'd left, taking in his scent. Silly maybe, but it felt good.

"Marie?"

I lifted my head in surprise to see Jean standing in the open doorway. No need to ask her how she got in--a telekinetic had her ways. Sitting up, I wondered if I'd fallen asleep.

"Hey." Blinking, I noted it was still full dark outside and the bed was empty except for me. "Where's Logan?"

"He and Scott are currently making several people's lives very miserable. I thought you might want to grab some coffee." She smiled then, shaking her hair back from her face. It was annoying--how could anyone have just woken up and still be that beautiful? In worn blue cotton pajama bottoms and a t-shirt (both of which were obviously Scott's), no makeup, and her hair a mess, she looked like a centerfold come to life. Inner Logan was appraising that too. I rubbed my head, trying to push back the involuntary images that lingered like ghosts in the corners of my mind. "I'm sorry if I woke you up."

"S'okay." I yawned and pushed the blankets back, running a hand through my hair. "Yeah, coffee would be good. Whose lives are they making miserable?"

Jean grinned as I came out the door and we walked companionably to the stairs.

"A few restricted zone personnel, some camp guards, and three kids pulled from bed about an hour ago.." She gave me a sideways glance. An hour ago. Ah. Logan was making use of his mutated lungs apparently.

But they weren't dead. I'd bet anything that Scott's main function right now was to make doubly sure of that.

"Did Logan wake Scott up?"

Jean flushed a little and shook her head quickly.

"I did. I--felt--Logan's temper." She shrugged delicately as we got to the bottom of the stairs. "Logan and I used to have a link of sorts--I can still pick up strong emotion from him. When he's like that, he needs someone to ground him. Scott's very, very good at that."

I felt my mouth drop. A link? Logan let Jean *do* that? Scott and Jean had had one for most of their lives together, that I knew. My face must have reflected something, because her hand rested lightly on my shoulder.

"No, Logan and I weren't involved. But--during the war, it was difficult to keep communication between the cells. When I came back from Genosha, Betsy and I set up a sort of--it's hard to explain." She frowned a little--explaining telepathy to a non-telepath sometimes sounded like some sort of psychotic episode. I should know--explaining my personalities to others had elicited a similar reaction. "It was a thread, you might say. Logan, Scott, Ororo and I set it up between us, to keep contact on the separate fronts and coordinate with Genosha when other forms of communication were impossible. It wasn't very strong, but it let us know that something was happening and when Erik rebuilt Cerebro, I could use it to speak to all three easily, even from Genosha."

That made sense--but I got the feeling she was simplifying even more than necessary. Her power trickled along my skin in a soft buzz, a reminder of the amazing mind behind those mild brown eyes. She was so strong. It still surprised me to feel it on her. As we walked into the kitchen, the cabinet threw itself open as if in welcome and the coffee slid out, patiently hovering near the coffee pot. As Jean got cups out of the cabinet, the water turned on and the pot floated over to wash itself out before filling up and dancing back across the room.

Fascinated, I watched a filter skip up from the far cabinet and slide into the receptacle, before coffee grains poured into it, then the pot cheerfully returned to pour water in. By the time Jean had the cups out, the coffee maker was on and the rich smell of coffee filled the room.

"Okay," I breathed, utterly entranced. "That was very cool."

Jean turned to look at me, then laughed before opening the refrigerator and getting out the cream and some leftover cake.

"I've had a lot of practice."

No shit on that. I would be surprised if my Jean could get the pot under the water without dropping it.

As Jean sat down, I looked at the green mug with a happy little frog on it. The handle was a frog leg.

"Cute," I said, pointing to the mug. Jean grinned.

"Yeah. I like thematic mugs." She gave me a long look over the rim of her cup--a happy pig. I wanted one of those. The tail was the handle. "I don't need telepathy to know something happened to you in the restricted zone. Logan's anger was enough. What happened?"

I sighed, playing with the mug and Jean's eyes grew distant as the coffee maker finished--that sucker was fast. The pot took flight and came over for a visit. I sat back as it poured into my cup, then Jean's, before taking a comfortable position between us on the potholder that ran over from the stove just in time to slide beneath.

I loved this. I wanted to see more. But Jean had a question, and I got the feeling she might be waiting for an answer.

"Lucas--thought I was human."

Jean's expression remained smooth and curious--I took a breath, then let it out slowly. She didn't know either--about what went on there. What the sentries had allowed.

"He--tried to attack me. Rape me."

Jean was a good enough telepath not to project under stress, so I didn't feel her project. What I *did* feel was the tingling of her power jump, strong and hot against my skin. I drew back, all unmeaning, watching her eyes narrow.

"Little rat." She stared at her cup. "Logan is exiling them from the zone. He'd rip their citizenship if he could, but we can't do that without Lensherr's approval. Damn." Taking a drink from her coffee, she pressed the tip of one finger to her mouth. "That explains a lot about Lucas' absences. I assumed he was going to New York."

I nodded a little blankly, taking a sip from my coffee.

"Well, at least that explains why Logan was so--determined." A little smile turned up her mouth as she looked at me. "Are you settling in okay? Logan's furniture is terrible."

I almost choked on my coffee.

"Pretty good," I managed between breaths. I should be ready for stuff like this.

"In a few days, I'll take you into New York, and we can look for something better." Her smile turned mischievous as she cut us each a piece of cake. "He doesn't have any taste. Trust me, we've tried."

That I knew. I smiled back, taking another sip of coffee and thinking about how I'd like to redo the living room. Leather couch would be nice, wood finish. A better coffee table--something simple and strong, yeah, but undamaged would be good. Maybe a bigger bed--

--hello, my name is Marie and I am utterly insane. No question.

"Yeah," I murmured, unsure what else I could say. Jean was making some serious headroads into the cake, I noticed, and she caught me watching and grinned, licking the icing off her lips.

"Hungry a lot," she told me. "It's normal." She gave the coffee a glance. "I'm caffeine limited, but I don't think anyone wants to see me deprived completely, even Nathan."

Who was Nathan? My expression must have showed it, because she paused with the last crumb of cake on her fork.

"Logan hasn't told you?" She paused, shaking her head. "I suppose he wouldn't yet. I'm pregnant."

My eyes widened. Jean was pregnant. That was--well, that was excellent news. My Jean had been talking about it, but--I leaned back into my chair.

"That's wonderful," I answered sincerely. "Congratulations. How far along--"

"Fourteen weeks," she answered, taking another sip of coffee and finishing off the fork. A glance at the cake, then she shrugged and cut herself another slice. "We--weren't sure I would make it this time, but so far, all's well." Unconsciously, her hand had dropped to smooth over her stomach slowly. "Everything's checking out normal. I'm not worried."

This time? I shut my mouth over the question and took a drink of coffee. She was worried. She was stressed as hell and it showed--even though she wasn't projecting, I could feel her tension.

"I guess Scott's excited too?" I said, trying to think of something that wasn't all the questions I wanted to ask. This time. There'd been other times. Her smile lit up her face and I caught my breath--so did Inner Logan, but for once, I understood. I totally understood.

"Very. It's a surprise he hasn't grounded me to campus." We shared a smile over men and their strange ways. "He's been tracking down parenting books left and right."

I could imagine. Once an overachiever, always an overachiever. I finished off my coffee, pouring by hand another cup and this time adding a little cream and sugar. Black was preferred for my first cup, but I liked it either way. Curious blend of Inner Logan and Marie there.

"You want to ask what I meant by this time."

I sputtered through my taste of creamed coffee and looked up. The dark eyes were calm, but suddenly seemed years and years older. Somewhere in my mind, Kitty's memories were trying to push forward, but I pressed them back. This was personal--something between Jean and I alone. I didn't want a sneak preview.

"Was I projecting?"

"A little. Just curiosity. People are usually sensitive around me--sometimes it becomes a little annoying." God, tell me about it, Jeannie. All that 'being deprived of human touch' crap had done strange things to those around me. I hated the pity, the veiled curiosity, the careful wording of the questions that finally would be asked. Sometimes, I would have given anything for someone just to ask outright and damn well stop pussyfooting around the issue like I'd shatter if someone was just straight with me.

"I'm sorry. I know--I understand. I was wondering if it'd been difficult to conceive, that's all." My Jean had never mentioned any problems, after all; then again, that wouldn't have been something she'd have discussed with me. That was 'Ro's territory, or her close friends. I was her little sister, her surrogate daughter, not her friend. Not really, not in that way.

"To conceive, no. To carry, yes. I miscarried in the camps and medical treatment wasn't forthcoming." She tried to shrug it off lightly, but the brown eyes didn't change.

A cold shiver ran down my spine.

"God."

"It makes things difficult. There aren't a lot of mutant gynecologists or obstetricians I can consult with." And hell if anyone would trust a norm with Scott Summers' wife. I could completely see that. "So we worked with what we have. I'm hoping--this is the longest I've carried so far."

"I hope so, Jean."

Her smile lightened.

"So do I." Another absent stroke of her stomach. Nathan. She thought it was a boy already. Maybe she knew--for all I knew about telepathic doctors, they could tell sex at conception. And Nathan was a nice name. Taking another drink of coffee, I thought about what it would be like to carry a child. I couldn't. Jean at home had never had to tell me so--I'd had enough biology and neurology from college and general exposure to be aware of all of the possible problems. Conception was the least of my worries--there was no way to know whether the child I carried could even survive my body, if my mutation recognized it as alien and tried to absorb it. And if I carried to term--would I be able to touch my own child? Probably not. Could inherit my mutation, and what kind of thing was that to do to a kid? What kind of parent could I be?

The thoughts were unsettling--the truth was, I'd never really wanted it either. I was too young, still an X-Man, and it wasn't like I had a lot of prospects for a possible sperm donor wandering around me. Watching Jean's soft smile, though, the way her gaze turned interior--it reopened the door I'd closed.

I shut it as fast as I could even as Inner Logan breathed his way through my thoughts.

I gritted my teeth and slammed my shields down, knowing Jean would sense that and probably wonder why.

Maybe that could change, though. But God, wasn't this just the most wrong time in the world for it to happen?

"So is Scott hand carving a nursery?" I asked in a bright voice, taking a definitive drink of my coffee. Jean laughed and picked up another forkful of cake.

"He would if he could." Jean shared another smile with me and got down to some serious cake eating. "In a few weeks, I suppose we'll start decorating the nursery." Her voice held the slightest trace of nervous uncertainty--and I wanted, with all my heart, to tell her that everything was going to work out just ducky. That she'd have her little Summers kid and all would be well. Damn it, I was relating personally. This couldn't be a good thing.

"Ladies."

If Jean had been beautiful before, the appearance of Scott Summers just changed the universe's concept of beauty. Dearest God. I glanced back over my shoulder as Scott sauntered in, hair brown-blond mess, slightly flushed, and in a matching pair of flannel pajama bottoms. How very cute. Just adorable. Logan wandered in after and I almost swallowed my tongue.

Anyone who can look that sexy wearing tube socks should be put on display somewhere for the masses to drool over.

I turned back around and dived into my coffee as Scott grabbed a chair and pulled up to the table, his wife feeding him a bite of cake.

"All well, Fearless Leader?" Jean asked with a grin.

"Three deep scans tomorrow morning, before they're taken out of the zone," Scott answered absently, licking the icing away and taking another bite from Jean. This was just too cute for words. "Who made carrot cake?"

"Ro and Betsy did this afternoon. They hid this one for me." She shook her hair back and gave him a smile. "I can do the scans before breakfast--are they downstairs in containment?"

"Yes." That was all. I felt Logan's presence just at my back and Jean looked up, giving Logan another smile, warm and completely friendly. There was something damn weird about the X-team being this all-over friendly. I shook my head and felt Logan pull the chair back, dropping beside me with an interested glance at my cake. I pushed it over to him and he grinned and took the fork. Logan never refused food.

"When Lensherr gets back, I want them out of the country."

Scott looked up and nodded from behind his red glasses.

"So do I. But I doubt Lensherr will give a damn."

"Not for entering a restricted area, probably not." Logan's voice was disgusted. "But for attacking Marie, they signed their own ticket out. Stupid of them to report Marie in the first place." He gave me a glance. "Stupid not to tell me immediately."

I flushed and looked down at my cup. Vaguely, I heard the cabinet open and two cups hovered over the table before settling in front of Scott and Logan. Neither looked particularly surprised. They were so spoiled. This was an interesting show.

"This doesn't help sleep, Jeannie," Logan remarked over his last bite of cake and Jean snorted.

"Caffeine has almost no effect on you. And Scott burns it out fast. Besides," she gave Scott a glance, "sleep is overrated."

"Jeannie," Logan's voice was amused as Scott flushed. Sugar shock was setting in from all this adorableness--and with it, a brief flash of envy. The X-Men of my world had never been so easy with each other and this Scott had somewhere along the line acquired a better version of his sense of humor. Logan poured himself a cup of coffee, glance darting between me, Scott and Jean, and the doors. I took a quick view of the room to confirm my suspicions. Yes, both he and Scott could see all three kitchen doors easily and no one could possibly sneak up on them. I wondered if they even knew they did it anymore--the automatic positioning of Scott's chair, the way Logan leaned on the table that kept everything in view. It showed.

"You done, Marie?" Logan asked, and I blinked, readjusting to here and now, then drank the last mouthful of coffee down and stood up, forgetting my slice of cake. Logan was already on his feet and pulled my chair out. "Kids, go to bed."

"Since when do you give me orders?" Scott asked without heat. A smile was turning up his lips.

"Around the time I started listening to yours, Cyke. Night." His hand dropped to the small of my back and I followed the pressure of his fingers to the door and he pushed it open for me. The halls were still dark and we made our quiet way up the stairs in companionable silence. Then Logan stopped, head cocked slightly, and he laughed softly.

"What?"

"Listening," he answered and gently pushed me forward. Straining, I couldn't hear anything. But--

"Oh." I felt myself flush and Logan grinned as he followed me up the stairs.

"Jeannie's having a hormonal surge." Logan sighed. "And people wonder why I don't wanna stay on campus. Not something I wanna run into in the middle of the night."

I giggled at Logan's pathetic tone and pushed open our door, stretching the crick from my back before absently crawling on the bed and collapsing on my side. Vaguely, I heard him scout the room, locking the door again and checking the bathroom.

"For God sake, you think someone wandered in while we were gone?" I asked. The noise was getting to me. "Come to bed already."

He laughed softly and I heard him pad across the room and one knee dropped the mattress on his side of the bed.

"What, not checking under the bed for gremlins?"

"Gremlins?"

Well, my Logan probably wouldn't have known that reference either.

"They come out after midnight--by feeding furry gizmos--" I reached for the rest of the storyline, then gave up. And truth be told, it sounded like a mental breakdown. "I'll find the movie. Never mind." Rolling on my stomach, I worked the blankets out from under me and yawned. "What time are you leaving in the morning?"

"Six. In about--" he must have checked the clock from the pause, and where was the clock anyway? --"three hours."

"Sleep."

"You're hogging the covers."

I lifted my head and glared.

"I never hog the covers." Well, maybe a little. I was used to sleeping alone. Kitty said I looked like a burrito at night. And she was right.

Logan dropped beside me, bouncing the bed, and I snuggled into the pillow, eyes growing heavy. Tomorrow I had things to do. Tomorrow night, Hank was going to finally go see the machine and start finding out what made this happen to me. I might have my chance to go home.

Slipping into sleep, I wondered why the thought wasn't quite as exciting as it had been only a few hours before.

Between the Danger Room, Johnny, and an afternoon of foosball, I had a day that was completely unproductive, exhausting, and probably the most enjoyable I'd had since my arrival. It was rather easy to slip back into normal relationships with my teammates, given the fact that they had no idea who I really was. Well, except Johnny. Bobby was more problematic, and the icy blue gaze fixed on me with a strange sort of pity that grated on my nerves more than I thought possible.

I'd never been a big fan of pity, after all, especially when I couldn't figure out what the pity was for.

After the third game of foosball (me and Kitty won), everyone drifted off to their evening duties or dinner, and already aware that the kitchen was serving a bastardized form of beef stroganoff, I ducked into the rec room and curled up on the couch with a book from the library. Logan was supposed to be home before dinner--please God, don't make me eat that stroganoff. No matter what universe you happened to be in, it was rarely done well, and a Russian next door neighbor as a child had given me a palate that did not take bad imitations.

I heard their voices before I saw them--Logan, his usual abrasive post-mission self, and Jean, softer and warmer. Ouch, how familiar. Ducking down on the couch, I dropped the book beside me, trying to find a way to look casual and not-sneaky-listening-to-other-people's conversations. No more missing important chats for me, oh no. And this might be important. This was *not* sick curiosity about what kind of relationship existed between Jean Grey-Summers and Logan here. Not at all, because shit if I gave a damn. Period and end.

"--and you seem to be the only one she's really comfortable with. So get her into the lab. Talk to her. I want to get this over with."

Wouldn't you know, it was about me. Damn. I glanced at the far door that led outside, but making a run for it just seemed--well, cowardly. And they'd see me--if I was right, they were in the absolute worst spot for me to get away without being caught.

"She doesn't like labs. Bad memories." I steadied my breathing as they stopped at the rec room door, a good thirty feet from the couch. "I'm not gonna push her either, so just feel free to fuck off, Jeannie. Leave her alone, let her get acclimatized to everything."

I didn't want to get acclimatized to this. That scared me more than anything else.

"It's more than just a fling, isn't it, Logan?"

A longer pause. I held my breath, hands beginning to sweat inside my gloves.

"None of your business."

"Logan--"

"Fuck. Off."

"Logan, I'm happy for you." It came out in a rush, as if she was afraid he'd be gone before she could get the words out.

Whoa. Huh? Slow down. Rewind. Apparently, Logan was having a very similar reaction, because he didn't walk away from Jean, which I'd half expected them to do.

"Jeannie--" Soft warning, almost a growl. But--

"I know." Her feet, coming closer, and I took a chance and ducked my head out, saw her reach out one delicate hand, brushing his shoulder before I ducked back down. "You don't want to talk about it, you don't want anyone to comment on it, and you're pissed because we noticed. Sorry--we've known you for seven years and lived inside your mind for one of them. There's damn little you can hide from us anymore."

The silence wasn't so much tense as resigned, and I almost felt Logan's breath hiss out.

"It's not like that."

"Yes it is." A voice of liquid understanding--that was my Jean Grey, pure compassion, love, feeling. Tears prickled behind my eyes--oh, this wasn't right. This wasn't. She couldn't be the same person who invaded minds, who helped give orders to imprison thousands. She couldn't be. "I don't have to read your mind to see the way you watch her, the way you are with her. It's--I know what you've been through, but it's not destiny, Logan. You don't always have to be alone."

"I don't wanna talk about this." His voice was soft. God, this was a conversation that wouldn't exist in my world. I took a breath, letting it out slowly, my fingers digging into the book beneath my hip.

"Just stop waiting for the axe to fall. It doesn't have to. You won't lose her too."

Oh fuck. Oh God, dear God, fuck, fuck, *fuck*.

I let myself sink down into the cushion, shutting my eyes against everything that was implied in those three sentences.

Nothing. Not even a clue that he was there.

I heard his footsteps cross the rec room, out to the dining room, and Jean fade down the hall toward the offices. I peered out from behind the couch to check for bystanders, then scrambled to my feet. He didn't need to know I'd heard that. He didn't. Ducking out into the hall, blessedly free of Jean's presence, I leaned back against the wall for a few minutes, then forced myself to walk back in the door. Logan was coming back through, and a grin turned up his mouth as he walked toward me. My mouth went dry.

"You ready?"

I jerked my gaze up, unable to move for a moment under the patient smile in his eyes. I took his hand, letting him pull me out of the doorway, for the first time really noticing how he touched me, how often he did it. I liked it, yes. Looked forward to the arm loosely draped around my shoulders, the casual touch of his hands. I kept my gaze on the floor as we approached the front door and he pushed it open for me, emerging into bright sunlight, his hand pressed against the small of my back before resting on the back of my neck. Possession, pure and simple, marking me for all to see. I'd thought--I'd thought he'd done it to cement my alibi in the minds of everyone around us, the reason I was staying with him, to keep the curious away. And he was, no question, and for all those reasons, but also because it was true.

He was doing it because he liked it, because he wanted to. Because he didn't want anyone else to touch me, to see me and think I was free, anyone at all. He wanted those things, even if he couldn't admit them to Jean, to me, even to himself.

Under the fading sunlight of evening, I acknowledged it, and I knew, knew, I'd been hiding it from myself as well. As someone stopped us to ask him a question, I realized I was leaning into him, taking in his scent, imprinting it into my mind, and my gloved hand was idly playing with the buttons of his jacket.

I'd made a lie the truth. This was how it happened. I wanted it too.

"You hungry?"

I started from my contemplation of my fingernails--no, they weren't that interesting. Nor were they worth the bother--constant glove-wearing had made my interest in my nails pretty much non-existent. My box of duck l'orange had been picked over several times before I gave up and took it to the fridge. Emotional equilibrium and hunger, too damn connected. If I ever got really stressed, I'd starve to death.

"Not really." And I wasn't--before I could say anything, Logan was beside me, tilting my head up, and I noted again that he was wearing gloves. Almost always did now, in fact, and I wondered when that had started.

I had to guess when I reappeared in his life.

"Anything wrong?"

World in crisis, I'm in crisis--take your pick. I tried to find something to say, avoided looking at him--but my Logan had never let me get away with that and this Logan was no different. He tilted my chin a little farther and met my eyes.

"You've been quiet since we left the school. Wanna tell me what's bothering you?"

"Everything," I said finally. His finger brushed against my cheek, an almost-caress that left me breathless. He had to hear my heartbeat speed up at the touch--it was all I could hear, pounding in my ears, a rush through my body with the casual contact no one in my life had ever given me before. And he froze, staring into my eyes.

"Marie--"

I jerked my head away, staring down at my hands.

"I'm fine." It was a lie. He could smell it all over me. For a second, there was nothing, then he stood up, crossing the room and, for a moment, I thought he was going to leave. But--the sound of the locks being turned in the door and he came back, sitting in the chair across from me, reaching for a cigar in the box on coffee table shelf before leaning back into the chair.

"Tell me."

Tell him what? That I was getting used to the touching and the attention and having him near me, having him want me? That he'd never been anything but my friend and my guardian and maybe in some weird way my father-figure? That I'd given up hope a long time ago and he'd brought it back--because my Logan had never, ever looked at me like he did. Never touched me like that, never watched me with that steady gaze that turned on parts of my mind I'd long ago turned off.

Never trailed his fingers across the small of my back until the clothing didn't seem to exist, and I thought I could feel his fingerprints etched into my flesh.

Fuck. Logan. Reaching out, I groped for the collar, jerking it around my neck and clicking the lock into place, taking in a sharp breath at the rush of dizziness before it faded--I was getting used to it. Running my fingers through my hair, I leaned back into the sofa. His eyes fixed on the collar with something in them that seemed almost like satisfaction and almost like shame. But neither one, and I couldn't make anything of that.

"I don't know how to start."

"Beginning works." He lit the cigar and absently, I reached for one too, seeing his eyebrow jump a little when my fingers closed over it, raising it to my mouth.

"Just because they're quiet doesn't mean I don't keep some of the preferences." I tried a smile on, found it lacking, and got up, sitting on the edge of the coffee table. "Light it?"

The hazel eyes measured me briefly, then he took out the lighter, leaning forward to cup a hand around it when I placed the cigar between my lips. He met my eyes and the lighter flared to life in his eyes.

I couldn't look away. After a few seconds, I stopped wanting to. The endless moment stretched between us, with the flame burning and the heat of it faint against the skin of my cheeks, like the touch of his fingers.

"Okay." He leaned back and I automatically drew in a breath and nearly coughed myself into asphyxiation. When I lifted my head, I saw him grinning a little and snorted at him. "Very smooth. Not gonna get outta this chat that way, though. Tell me what's botherin' you."

I realized I was still sitting on the coffee table and began to rise, before his hand came down on my thigh, freezing me in place.

His *bare* hand now. I swallowed, looking up briefly before biting down on my cigar. I sooo understood Logan chewing on those suckers. Much superior to worrying at your lip or grinding your teeth. Tasted pretty good, too--but then, I liked cigars. I didn't like the taste of tooth enamel as I ground it off.

"Talk."

I took another drag, then slowly held it, letting it out. He watched me for a moment, the hazel eyes fixed on my face, before he sat back--shit, removed his hand. A flare of recognition in his eyes at my posture, the arch of my fingers, the casually careless position on the coffee table when I leaned back on one arm and enjoyed the flavor that lingered on my tongue.

"You learned that from him." He gestured toward the cigar and I glanced at it briefly. Him. The other Logan.

"Yeah." I paused, taking the cigar from my mouth. "Cubans. Did you know I had a cigar preference before I could legally smoke them?" I grinned, staring down at my hands, realizing I was still wearing my gloves. "Cuban black. I had contacts that'd get them for me. I guess I was the only sixteen year old girl in New York who had connections to the black-market cigar trade." It was weird, come to think of it. Bobby and Johnny had taken the occasional hit of X and Jubes, Remy, and Kitty would get stoned out on the lawn (okay, so I participated in that a bit), but me, I had my Cubans and my bottle of Jack Daniels secreted in the floor of my room, wrapped around with a metal chain and a dogtag for when I needed to lose myself in someone else.

"You said you're--you and he--are friends?"

I nodded, playing with the end of the cigar for a moment before looking at him again.

"Yeah, sugar. Best friends." I paused a little, thinking about that. "You taught me to drink water when I did shots so I wouldn't have a hangover and let me crash on your couch. Like now, just--" I waved at the empty space where most people would have a TV, "--with television and stuff."

I felt his eyes on me, running over my body as if he was removing each piece of clothing one by one to study the skin beneath, and I took another long pull from my cigar. When I let out the smoke, Logan pushed the ashtray closer to my hip and leaned back in the chair. He wasn't going to let go of this. Crap. They both had to be the stubborn sort.

"I was sixteen when I met you and you--you saved my life. I had--feelings." I puffed at the cigar--God, bad idea--and let out the smoke in a rush of words. "I got over it. I did. Not a big deal, you know?"

"You're lying through your teeth." He said it casually--and here was the difference, that reminded me that this wasn't the Logan I knew. The other Logan would have avoided this topic at all costs.

"Logan--"

"You can lie your way through the school, Marie, but you can't lie to me." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees to meet my gaze without hesitation. I shivered--he was too close, I was too aware of it. My fingers began to shake and I lifted the cigar to my lips, wanting to avoid saying anything else--because what he'd make me say was the truth.

"You never got over it."

"I moved on." There we go, crap to hell. The cigar was plucked from my lips, ground out in the ashtray and put on the floor beside our feet. His expression was unreadable.

"I can tell--ever since you saw me, I've smelled it on you. You never got over him."

"Stop it, Logan."

I began to get up, but a hand slid over my thigh, and everything just *stopped*. Breathing, thought, nothing but the feel of his fingers moving over my jeans-clad thigh, up to my hip, rubbing slow circles deep into my skin, marking me. I shivered as he shifted closer, felt his breath brush my hair when I forced my head to turn away.

"I can smell it on you, feel it on you." Against my ear, inescapable. "You like it when I touch you."

I couldn't deny that. Shit, I couldn't deny anything, and a hand cupped my cheek, turning my face. The hazel eyes burned into me, before the lightest brush of his lips over mine--God, Logan was kissing me. He was kissing me. He was--

A little more pressure, gentle, searching, coaxing out my response, and I couldn't stop myself--oh that was a lie, I didn't want to. I didn't want to stop, wanted more, everything I could get. Opening my mouth, I slid an arm around his shoulder and let him push me back on the coffee table's firm surface. He settled over me, pressing my legs apart, sharing my sharply indrawn breath at the feel of him pressed into my body, and his tongue slid between my open lips, tracing the line of my teeth, exploring inside, his hand in my hair tilting my head further.

My first real kiss. Cody, the boy I almost killed, with silk for Bobby and Remy, but this--this was my first kiss. This was the one I wanted to remember, wanted to burn into my mind. How he tasted and smelled, how he filled my mouth and wrapped his tongue around mine. Warm and wet and heady and slick, mapping my mouth with every stroke.

I drew my foot around his knee and pushed myself down against him, grinding through two pairs of jeans, and felt the instant response in the soft growl into my mouth I couldn't help but echo.

He was right--it was all over me. And he was right too--I'd never moved on, not completely.

He pulled back abruptly, staring down at me, and I could hear my own harsh breathing as I ran my fingers through his hair, down to scratch lightly at the back of his neck when his tongue traced the line of my jaw.

"Marie, baby," he whispered against my ear, biting sharply into the skin just below, and I stopped breathing. His free hand trailed up my side from my hip to my breast, thumb brushing the nipple, bringing my entire body alight--he wanted me, he wanted me, knowing it and having it were so different, so good, I shut my eyes and let my body take over, finding the buttons of his shirt, fingers shaking when he moved to my throat.

"God, Logan--" I whispered, and his hands were rough, lifting himself so he could take the edge of my shirt, pulling it up, and I half-rose so he could pull it over my head. Then he kissed me again, hands roughly cupping my breasts--no scarf, nothing between us, nothing, I couldn't get over that, the feel, the taste, the scents that seemed suddenly so vivid, brilliant, like colors I could feel. Nothing like this, nothing could be--I dug my fingers into his back and pulled him closer, the warm skin of his chest against mine through the opening of his shirt and my bra, tightening a leg around his. "Please--" I wanted my gloves off, I wanted to feel all that skin, that body, I wanted to trace it with my bare flesh and mark it, wanted to see what I could make him feel, how he could make me feel. Nothing had prepared me for this.

He lowered me back on the table, supporting himself with both hands, panting softly, trying to bring himself under control. But why--

"Who's touching you?"

Huh?

"What do you want, Marie? Who do you want?"

My hands froze, and I stared up into the hazel eyes--and I didn't have an answer. For a second, we looked at each other, then he sat up, crouching on the balls of his feet, pulling me up into his lap, and I felt him hard against me, pressing up. I couldn't stop the gasp, the soft moan and I rocked myself into him, feeling his response in the tightness of his body, the bunching of the muscles under my hands. His fingers twisted at my throat and pulled--and I saw the tags tangled between his fingers, pulling me so close our lips were a breath apart.

"Who are you thinking about?"

"You," I whispered.

"Which one? The one who trained you and cared for you and taught you to smoke that cigar? Or me?" I wanted to turn my head away, but the chain bit into my neck, forced me to keep that burning gaze. He'd never been less than perfectly honest with himself, and he demanded that from others, always had. "Look at me, Marie. I'm not him. I've done things he hasn't. I haven't done anything for you--I didn't save your life on the Statue."

"You wanted to." I didn't want to examine this, didn't want to make it into an issue, think about what I wanted--because I didn't know. Oh God, I didn't know for sure.

"Does that matter? Here and now?" A pause. "You don't want me, Marie. You want him." With a gentle push, I was seated on the coffee table and he was standing up--he couldn't look at me. I clasped my trembling hands and he crouched again, reaching for my hair, ruffling it lightly, like my Logan had so many times before, but the hazel eyes avoided mine. "Go to bed, Marie." Then he stood up and grabbed his jacket from the chair, going to the door. As I heard it close and lock behind him, I slowly found my feet, walking into the bedroom and pausing at the door, my body still aroused, my mind utterly in shock.

I ignored the lights, tripping over my discarded boots and stumbling blindly into the bathroom, flipping on the switch and staring at myself in the mirror. Lips swollen, rashes of red across my neck, and the bright metal of the collar circling my throat. The darkening bruise beneath my ear, and I pushed my hair back, seeing the indents of his teeth in my skin.

I didn't look much like Rogue anymore. Not any girl I'd ever been.

"What do you want?" I asked, reaching out to tap the glass, almost as if I expected an answer. I wasn't staying here--I was going home, my home, the place I grew up, with my family and friends and their support and love and see Logan smile at me over breakfast and tell me my hand-to-hand sucked because I depended too much on my strength.

I'd always depended on my strength--the strength to walk away from a hopeless crush, a hopeless lover, a hopeless battle. Bobby had called me cold once, when I was able to keep fighting with my allies falling all around me, when I was able to tune out everything else around me and get the job done. I depended on my strength, my speed, my reflexes, my training, my invulnerability.

I wasn't as strong as I'd thought. I couldn't walk away from home, though Hank had as good as said it was hopeless. I'd never walked away from my feelings for Logan.

And I couldn't walk away from what I felt for the man that had just left the apartment--no lie I could tell myself would convince me that making love to him would just be a substitute for having the man I loved with all my soul. This was just as real, just as powerful, and a thousand times more possible.

Sinking into the cool tile floor, I shut my eyes and buried my head in my hands, tears burning behind my closed eyelids.

God, it was always the hopeless that made me stop walking.

Hours later, I watched dawn break outside the window of his room, curled up under the blankets that smelled so much like him--and like me, too, a mix that was pleasant and faintly comforting.

Distantly, I heard the door open and stiffened.

There were faint sounds of him in the other room, the soft pad of his approach to the bedroom, and a pause--almost uncharacteristic of him, to not make the decision immediately. I wondered for a moment if he was going to come in or wait until I emerged, before he pushed the door open. Knowing it was useless to pretend I was asleep, I sat up, absently brushing my hair from my face.

For an endless moment, we stared at each other--he looked tired, almost sad, but the intensity struck me again, and I felt like something infinitely precious, wanted, even needed. Another hesitation, almost imperceptible, before he walked in, shutting the door behind him.

"Why are you still wearing it?"

My hand went up to the collar--I hadn't slept in it before. And I knew what he was thinking--I'd forgotten because I'd been so upset. He was thinking that he'd hurt me, and he was regretting it, hating himself for it. I knew that--I knew him.

I *knew* him.

"So they'd be quiet." A pause, then I pushed the comforter a little farther down, feeling his eyes on my throat, my chest, slipping down to my waist. Wrapped in one of his old flannel shirts that smelled of him. "I was--I was waiting."

"For what?"

For you. For me. For my mind to convince me that this was an illusion of the real thing--that what was before me was nothing more than displaced memory and passion for someone else.

I've never been good at avoiding the truth. Reaching up, I twisted my fingers through the chain around my throat, taking a moment to remember everything I was willing to give up. The man who saved me on the Statue; the one that held me when I cried. The one that had taught me everything I knew, and who I'd loved more than anyone on earth.

Then twisted, feeling the chain break, and I threw it across the room, hearing it hit the wall.

I didn't watch it fall.

"For you."

A pause, before he leaned back against the door, eyes closed. He'd given up before he stepped foot in the apartment that morning--probably before the moment he left, knowing his decision had been made when he lit that cigar. Logan had never been able to walk away from me, not in this world, not in the other. God knew, he'd tried his damndest.

"Marie, what if--what if I don't care anymore?"

God. I waited, letting that flow through me, the way out he was giving me, giving my conscience, letting me pretend to myself this had nothing to do with him at all. Then I kicked back the blankets, bare legs still damp from my early-morning shower.

I was so much stronger than that. I could live with the truth.

"He's not up here." I tapped my temple, then paused, shutting my eyes briefly, clearing my mind of everything extraneous. I wasn't going to walk away, and I should have known from the beginning I wouldn't be able to. "I want you."

There was no hesitation at all, no time for me to be horrified by what I'd chosen, nothing but the weight of him on top of me, tongue pressing inside my mouth, hands braced beside me. It wasn't the slow seduction of the night before, flavored with tobacco and things neither of us were willing to say. Just bright heat, quickening my body when I unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it out of my way, when he parted the flannel with a rip of the few buttons I'd fastened, lowering his mouth to my throat, finding the bruise from the night before and growling in satisfaction. I ran my fingers through his hair, exploring his back with my bare nails, digging in when his lips settled low on my shoulder over the muscle as I arched up into him. His hands cupping my breasts, and I wrapped both legs around his waist and gasped when he ground into me.

"Marie," he murmured as his teeth found the sweat-slicked skin of my chest, the tops of my breasts, sliding his tongue between to trace an invisible line from my sternum to my navel, then a quick bite to the side of my breast. I shivered at the feel of the sideburns against the sensitized skin, brushing my nipples hard, an ache forming between my legs, and I tightened my thighs to grind up against him. My hands could just slip between us and I loosened the hold of my legs and slid my fingers down his chest, over the hard stomach that had showed up in more than one of my fantasies, down to his jeans, sliding the heel of my hand the length of his erection.

There was a hard nip to my throat, a low growl against my stomach that told me he was close to losing what little control he had. And that was what I wanted; I wanted it stripped from him, stripped from me, wanted no time to do anything but feel--all that bare skin, all that beautiful body, all mine. I got his jeans undone as he ran rough fingers between my legs, pressing hard with his thumb once, enough to draw a gasp from between my lips. I used my feet to push his jeans down while he kicked them off, still feeling his hesitation, his fear of hurting me--but I knew what he could do, what he was capable of, and I wanted all that too.

I wanted everything.

Pushing him back a little, I drew my legs up and slipped two fingers into the edges of my underwear, pulling them slowly down my body while he knelt before me, utterly still as I discarded them on the floor. Watching him, I pressed my legs apart with the palms of my hands, sitting slowly up and shaking my hair back. The hazel eyes met mine for the briefest instant, before I slid my fingers inside myself and heard his sharply indrawn breath, twitching between the desire to touch me and fascination with what I was doing for him.

Breathing harder, feeling his gaze on me, I pulled out, raising my hand to slide my wet fingers across his lips, his tongue instantly slicking over them, taking in the taste of me. Every nerve in my body was strung taut, before I felt the snap in him, the snap in me, when he caught my wrist, pinning it to the bed beside my hip, pushing my thighs farther apart and his mouth pressed between my legs.

"Oh God, yes," I heard myself gasp at the flood of raw sensation, as he braced a hand on my thighs, holding me open, tongue licking expertly along my clit, sliding down to push inside me. I arched my back at the feel, hearing my own breathing loud in the room, punctuated by his low growls of satisfaction. I sank my nails into the sheet beneath me, heels digging into the mattress, until everything condensed inside me--how I wanted this first time, what I wanted from it. Reaching down, I dug shaking fingers into his hair and he slowly pulled away with a nip that tightened everything almost to the snapping point.

"Please, Logan--"

I wasn't even sure anymore what I was asking for.

He understood, sliding up my body, rubbing against every supersensitized inch of my skin, his full weight covering me, hot and heavy and close between my legs before the first thrust that filled me completely, utterly, suspending thought, suspending fear, suspending everything but the feeling.

Everything that was touch, that was Logan, that was the utter impossible fantasy brought to technicolor life behind my closed eyes until I forced them open. I needed to see this; I needed to believe this.

I arched my back with every thrust, his hand tangled in my hair and mouth buried in my throat. Fucking me like he wanted to crawl inside me and stay there, like he wanted to imprint me with his body so everyone could see and know who I belonged to, like I was the only thing he'd ever wanted in his life. I pressed my nails into his back and locked my ankles together, gasping in breaths that weren't enough, pure pleasure white-hot through my body, every nerve registering off the scale.

I wanted to lose myself in him, because here and now, nothing else made a damn bit of sense. This was *mine*.

"Marie," he whispered against my ear, grinding into me hard enough to send a shock of hot pleasure through my body. "Baby, that's it...."

He was whispering more words against the skin of my shoulders, my throat, my cheek, my lips, words strung together, words that had power behind them. Words that were simple and direct and more true than anything anyone had ever said to me before in my life. How I felt and how I smelled and how he wanted me and needed me and owned me and would never let me go. He told me the things he wanted to do to me, the ways he wanted to mark me, and I said yes and held tighter, nails digging into his back to pull him as far into me as flesh would let me.

I knew it was coming, felt it quivering in every muscle of my body, every inch of sweat-slicked skin, his hand tightening in my hair with the first convulsive shudder, his eyes meeting mine and holding them when I threw my head back and whispered his name. He kissed me then, finishing with staccato thrusts into me and a low growl as the aftershocks of my orgasm consumed me.

And finally, we were utterly still, and I slowly lowered my trembling legs, wrapping an ankle around his calf to keep him close and running my hands in fascination down his sweat-slicked back and through his hair, wondering how on earth I'd ever lived without him.

"I love you," I whispered against his ear, his body covering me, mouth against my shoulder, still buried deep inside me; he was worked into every pore of my skin, every nerve, every thought. I'd never felt more alive in my life, more complete, more utterly at peace with myself.

I'd fucked up and knew it, knew I'd just bought myself hell on earth, and I didn't give a good damn.

"Are you hungry?"

Surreal, to say the least. Food wasn't something I remembered even existed and it took considerable effort to even try to figure out what he was talking about. Food. Hmm. Logan shifted a little and I muttered something unintelligible even to me, digging my nails into his chest. With a low chuckle, he settled back and let me continue my explorations.

Barely awake, I thought it might be near time to get up, but couldn't really be bothered. There was just so much of him, so much skin, and I couldn't get enough of touching him. He didn't seem to mind--let me spend hours exploring everything about him, finding out what he liked, what he didn't, the textures skin could be, the differences between his chest and his hip--

So far, he was on board with anything I wanted to try. And I was sore--God, I'd never been sore before, never like this. Even my legs ached.

"Not really." I lowered my head back to his chest, feeling his low, soft purr when I licked his skin, the mix of sweat and Logan and myself filling up my senses. A lazy hand twisted lightly in my hair, stroking through the tangled strands, letting me map him inch by inch with the tip of my tongue. Shutting my eyes, I laid my head down and let him stroke me softly, finding the sore muscles with the tips of his fingers and easing them into dull acceptance. Rolling me on my stomach, the strong hands worked gently over my shoulders and down my back, loosening muscles I hadn't even realized I'd tensed.

"When's the last time you ate?"

I had to think about that--bracing my head on one hand, I focused my eyes on him for a brief moment, then gave up trying to remember anything that didn't have to do with sex or him.

"No clue."

"Shit." Another long stroke of my hair, down to the small of my back, before he gently pushed me onto my back. "You're too thin to skip meals. Be right back."

I pouted a little and that earned me a grin.

"I've seen your refrigerator. The things in there don't qualify as food. Some of them have started moving." And duck l'orange just wasn't a food to wake up to. Just no way.

"You're cute, baby. I'm ordering in." A pause. "And calling in, unless there's some damn good reason you wanna go back to the school today."

"None at all." Stretching, I felt his eyes travel down my body--sheet be damned, I didn't want to cover myself ever again. It was amazing, the feel of sheets and skin against mine, the way I didn't have to be afraid. Logan grabbed his jeans from the floor, pulling them on quickly before going out the bedroom door in search of a phone, and I rolled on my side, drawing my knees up to my chest and concentrating on relaxing every muscle I'd ignored for the last few hours.

God, I'd forgotten that sex could make you sore as hell. It'd been a damned long time since I'd made love without invulnerability. And never with nothing but our skins between us. With a grin, I ran a hand down my side, wincing when I felt the reddened and abraded skin along thigh and stomach.

"Sore?" He was standing at the bedroom door, giving me a long look that took in my entire body. I stretched lightly, refusing to wince at the pull of the bruises on my back and the tension in my calves.

"Not enough to care. Come here, sugar." I had sex time to make up. Logan shook his head and I half sat up, rolling my shoulders a little. My back ached, my legs ached, and I--

"Oh *shit*," I gasped, sitting straight up and gaining a new variety of screaming muscles. "Oh God, I didn't--I can't believe--" I forgot. I totally, completely, where the fuck is your head, Marie? Logan frowned and crossed the room, dropping on the bed beside me and I felt his hand brush through my hair.

"Marie?"

"We didn't--" I took a breath, letting it out slowly. Had I not been talking about babies with Jean? Had I totally forgotten sex ed class? Was I an idiot? "I'm not on the pill--Logan, I--"

"Oh, that." Well, that was blase indeed. I jerked my head up and studied the unconcern on his face. Not expected. "Don't worry."

"Don't worry?" My voice rose an octave at very least and Logan grinned a little.

"Not the right time, baby."

I blinked.

"How would you know?"

He sighed softly, and his fingers dropped to the back of my neck, rubbing the muscles I'd just abused. I let him turn me around and the wonderful hands began to rework all the muscles I'd reknotted so quickly.

"Good sense of smell, good instincts, and basic biology. Don't worry."

I twisted my head around to look at him hopefully--come to think of it, I'd just gotten off my period. I restrained myself from asking if he'd picked that up as well. Some things I didn't want to know.

"You're absolutely sure?"

"Absolutely sure." He paused for a second, working the middle of my back and I moaned softly in relief. "We'll be more careful."

"Okay." I'd take it on faith. I'd also run a blood sample through Jeannie's lab--I'd get Kitty to help me out. It just didn't seem like a good idea for me to try and go to Jeannie's lab myself.

"Marie, take off the collar for awhile."

I frowned a little, trying to twist around again. Logan patted me on the back and got up, going to the dresser and picking up his gloves.

"I don't--"

"Marie, can you even walk?"

Oooh, good question. At some point today, I might need to walk. Couldn't imagine a damn thing that could make me leave this bed, but, well, it could happen. Frowning, I nodded reluctantly and he tossed me the key I'd left on the coffee table. Absently, I slipped it into the lock and let the collar fall off, wondering why Logan had put on his gloves and was reaching for his shirt--

"Marie, listen--"

Something hot tingled through me and my vision went dark--oh damn.

My entire body convulsed in shock, as my skin came back on with a vengeance, and a burning spread down every muscle of my body as invulnerability tried to catch up with the damage. I tried to breathe through it but couldn't even control the jerks of my body, before I felt something large and quite strong bear down on my wrists and shoulders. Strength was flowing back, but there was no control, and I wondered if I'd hurt him without even meaning to.

After endless minutes of pain-filled darkness, I slowly emerged into full consciousness to see Logan still straddling my body--shit, I could have seriously hurt him.

"You okay?" he asked, and I nodded numbly. Logan eased his grip on my wrists and sat back on his heels, still over my waist.

"Are you?" I sat up, almost colliding with him, and looked him over frantically. "Shit, sugar, I could have--I'm stronger than you and my skin--"

"Don't worry." Logan shook his head, dismissing my fears and cupping my face. "I've handled post-collar shock before. I was gonna warn you--" he ran his fingers over my face. "Extended periods of time has some weird fucking effects. Just lay down for a while--you might begin to itch a little. 'Stique was clawing her own skin during the worst of it."

I felt myself begin to tremble a little and Logan pressed me back, lowering himself down beside me and wrapping me up in the sheet carefully before his arms gently circled me, pulling me against him.

"That was after weeks, though. You'll be fine. If you feel itching, take a shower." Gently, he stroked my hair back. "Effects should wear off in less than an hour, so don't worry."

"Okay." I snuggled back against him, getting slightly sleepy--there was a light itching, but nothing I couldn't handle and almost subliminal. "I'm fine, sugar."

"Go to sleep." Another stroke of my face, before rolling me onto my other side and drawing me close. Shutting my eyes, I snuggled carefully against his covered chest as his hands slid comfortingly over my back.

"What are we doing here anyway?"

Leaving that bed, as far as I was concerned, was just damn silly. There was so much left to do, and we were here, doing--this. Damn. Most people might think thirty-six hours of sex was a little excessive. Most people weren't me. I was just warming up. And having a superhealing lover was something that should be required by law. All unwitting, I caught myself tracing his wrist with the tips of my nails through my gloves, and never had I resented my uncontrolled skin as much as at that moment. His fingers caught mine, squeezing lightly, and I tried not to pout at his half-hearted try at a frown.

God, I was obvious. Though of course, he'd been the one that delayed us in the garage for an extra ten minutes against the hood.

Logan shook his head at me and I skipped ahead, half turning to watch his face. He was very good about controlling his expression, but involuntary muscles had a life of their own. He gave away more with his lack of reaction than he sometimes did with a visible one. He didn't want to be here either. He'd much rather be comparing and contrasting the couch, the floor, and the kitchen table in terms of maximum sexual positioning potential.

So far, the table was winning, but only by two.

"I'm going to catch up on reassigning personnel. You're going to go train and look very, very interested in being a good little mutant. Allerdyce gonna go with you?"

I shook my head shortly and sighed.

"The Danger Room is boring, sugar."

"You like it."

"That's before someone worried about my safety locked me out of the upper ranges." I snorted. "It's boring."

I got a wolfish grin.

"Easy to override. Use my settings and shut down the safety protocols if you need to." Logan paused, coming to a stop and obviously thinking about what he'd just said. "Leave the comm open--if anything goes wrong, I can shut it down with a verbal command."

"You'll be in your office?"

"Yeah. Mostly."

Logan had an office. Just strange. I waited for him to join me at the steps and his fingers wrapped through mine.

"You have a weird look on your face, baby."

"Just the concept of you in an office fazes me a bit. Give me time. Paperwork. Just--" I waved a hand in the air vaguely--it *was* dizzying in weird ways. Logan and paperwork--it would be like Scott choosing to become a rock star or Kurt taking up a life of celibacy. Just not--well, in character. Logan flashed me a grin.

"I don't do it. I just look at it."

"Turn it into confetti."

"When I can get away with it, oh yeah."

We grinned at each other as we walked inside and I handed off my coat to a norm near the door. Up ahead, Kitty was coming down the stairs and stopped as she saw us, a smile turning up her mouth.

"Marie, where you been?"

Logan dropped a kiss on my head and tossed Kitty a grin before he walked off. I tried not to watch him too long, but Kitty was beside me before I could manage to look away. He had a provocative walk. Well, damn, he had a provocative way of breathing. Hey, Marie, you are seriously losing it.

"Uh-huh." Kitty smirked and I felt a flush creep up my face. "That's an interesting color." Her gaze went to Logan with a slight grin. "He's looking perky." Heh. Logan perky. There was some impossible imagery. "You busy?"

I thought about it, and about the digital phone Logan had tucked into my jacket pocket that morning. He was so cute when he was worried. Hmm--Kitty or the Danger Room? Wow, wasn't that easy to answer.

"Not really. You need something?"

"The Salem Complex Director called. They had an accident and need a medic--Jean's on assignment, so they asked for me."

Surprised, I met the dark eyes.

"You're medical?" In retrospect, not a huge surprise--she'd always been into hard sciences.

Kitty shrugged as she got her jacket from the hands of a young boy I didn't recognize and pulled it on, reaching down for her bag he put at her feet. I took my coat back without comment and slid it on, feeling the leather brush heavily over the backs of my calves with very feminine pleasure. I really liked this coat.

"I got paramedic training during the war," she said as she pulled the pack over her shoulder. She looked me over. "I didn't have another--useful skill other than infiltration and hacking, so--" she shrugged a little. "When I was needed, I was called. Logan said he armed you--"

I nodded in surprise, pulling back the folds of my coat so she could see. She nodded quickly.

"Good. Bobby and Johnny are on assignment too, and we're not allowed unaccompanied into the camp proper." Pulling her hair back, she fastened it away from her face and I watched as she checked through the pack quickly before nodding to the door.

"They don't have guards?"

Kitty's expression was oddly fixed for a second--it dawned on me that she was uncomfortable.

"Lensherr made the assignments to Salem Complex, not Logan." She hesitated. "They're not very--easy to be around." Pushing the door open, we emerged outside into the bright sunlight. "Logan sent my car back with new tires," she said conversationally as we approached the garage. "Something about bad roads."

I flushed but didn't comment at her little grin, and I wondered if she knew why she'd lost a tire--or two.

"All right," I answered and felt the weight of my gun against my side. It was comforting, and that worried me a little.

Guns shouldn't be comforting.

I was glad I remembered my ID, and even gladder that the director wasn't someone I'd met before my interesting hair color change. Captain Reherr wasn't in evidence--even better--and the tower was nicely full of people paying no attention to us.

"Sorry to call you down here, Ms Pryde," the director said. He was a big man in a way I couldn't quite understand--because he didn't look big. He *felt* big. He speared me with a glance that was supposed to be intimidating and definitely was. I tried not to draw back. "I'll assign you an escort--"

"This is Marie Danvers," Kitty said quickly, and there was a definite trace of nervousness in her voice. "She'll accompany me."

His look was speaking. I'd never looked terribly intimidating even on my best days, I was well aware of that. Even in un