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She’s particularly jittery today.
Every day has its own host of stressful situations but this day is much worse than the others. Four days ago they got a radio signal from the other side of the border, with a child’s voice hailing them.
“Please, is there anybody there? My name is Rictor. We escaped from a Transigen facility in Mexico five days ago. Please, tell me someone is there, this is our only hope.”
She’d been dozing, head rested against her hand, trying to figure out the watch schedule for the next two weeks, when that impossibly young voice caught her attention. Her head jolted up, hand shooting for the receiver. “Hello? This is Eden, repeat, this is Eden. Are you okay? Are there any adults around?”
A pause. “No. I’m the oldest. Are you...I mean, where you are, is it the sanctuary for, for-”
“Mutants.” She breathes and lets out a laugh for the first time in a long time. “You’re in the right place, sweetheart, you made it.”
“Are there a lot of us?”
What a loaded question. She takes a long pause and tries not to think too hard about the past, that hopeful time when the future was bright and the world was kinder than it was cruel. It’s all gone now, everything they built, everything she vowed to protect. All that’s left is a small compound on the Canadian border. Such a small fraction of the world is theirs. But she’ll take it. They’ll take it. “There’re enough. You’ll be safe here, Rictor, I promise.”
“What’s your name?” He finally asks.
“My name’s Rogue.”
Everything since that moment had been frantic. The air was filled with electricity as everyone ran around camp, trying to make room for twelve children. It was the first time anyone had felt hope since they crossed the border six years ago but Rogue was still uneasy.
Transigen wouldn’t just let the kids go. They were being hunted. Rictor seemed to think they had lost them but her long life of horrors taught Rogue that something could always go wrong. She just hoped they got lucky. Her eyes close tightly, fingers closing around the small X-Men insignia hanging around her neck. “Please, keep them safe. Let them get here. Just get them here.” She allows herself a few seconds of pleading with God, the universe, hell, anyone really, before she squares her shoulders and prepares herself for the wait.
There was an eight-mile hike between the kids and their convoy. Hopefully it was the equivalent to a quiet nature walk.
~
“Rogue, there’s movement in the trees over there.” Glenn calls, eyes scanning a tree line she can’t focus on.
“How far out?”
“Bouta half mile. No one looks hurt.”
“Good, that’s good. Can you count how many there are?” She asks, heart high in her throat.
Glenn nods, his hawk eyes trained on the group trudging towards them. “Thirteen.”
“There’s supposed to be twelve.”
“Guess someone showed up late to the party.” He shrugs. He continues perusing the children, taking in details here and there before his eyes narrow on something in particular. “Rogue, the thirteenth has blood all over her.”
“Dammit.” She grits out. “I knew we should have just met them at the outpost. Stupid, so stupid.”
“You couldn’t have known, Rogue, come on.” Glenn says, eyes shifting back to their human brown as he looks at her.
“No but I should’ve assumed. Nothing is ever easy.” She checks her gun again before walking towards them. “Let’s pray no one is hurt because we were too short-sighted to think things through.” It’s a low blow. She’s just as much to blame as anyone else, more so, even. But she’s so tired and pissed off and every thought in her head is about how she needs to keep her shit together because if she loses it for just one second, the last refuge for mutants will go down in flames.
So Rogue keeps her shit together and breaks out into a jug.
It takes all of fifteen minutes to reach the kids and holy hell, they look bad. Each of them are in a fighting stance, warily searching the area for space to escape if she tries to hurt them. She’s equal parts horrified and proud. At least they know how to survive.
She looks toward the tallest boy in the group and takes an educated guess. “Rictor?”
The boy’s face goes from guarded to relieved in a split second. “Rogue!” He looks at the other kids. “This is the lady from the radio. She runs Eden.”
“Yes I do.” She gives a small smile, noting that none of the children have anything more serious than a scrape. “We’re all very happy to see you. Follow me. You’re safe now.” Rogue tries to give each child a reassuring look, channeling Jean and Ororo as much as she is able, but her smile fades when her gaze lands on the small girl with lanky brown hair, severe blood stains on her clothes. She’s not like the others. The other kids are tired but relieved, with hope filling their eyes. This girl looks heartbroken, like it hurts to take every step. She stares through Rogue as if she isn’t even there. “Do you wanna walk with me, hon?” The little girl’s eyes snap into focus and Rogue finds herself on the end of a gaze that feels eerily familiar.
She gives a tiny nod and walks to Rogue’s side, tiny hand grasping onto her sleeve.
They’re about halfway to the Jeeps when Rogue finally asks, “What’s your name?”
“Laura.” The girl says quietly, eyes on the ground in front of them.
“Nice to meet you, Laura. I’m Rogue.” She introduces herself even though Laura probably already knows.
Laura looks up from the ground, her brows scrunched together. “What kind of a name is Rogue?”
Rogue laughs as she eyes the Jeeps coming into view not too far away, once again reminded of times long gone. The pain of those memories threaten to shut her down but she indulges her deja vu anyway. “What kind of a name is Laura?”
The girl snorts and looks back at the ground. Rogue just shakes her head, already fond of the girl. For a second all she feels is bemusement towards the memory of a man forever lost to her before she remembers all the pain that came after that meeting. All the complicated little emotions that Rogue has decided are best left ignored.
See, Rogue lets herself think about Logan every once in awhile, during those moments when she is weak and needs to feed off the strength he left in her that night on the Statue of Liberty nearly thirty years ago. She’s on the tail-end of forty, is unashamed to admit that there’s more white in her hair than there was thirty years ago. Rogue has successfully made it to middle age and sometimes, only sometimes, she rewards herself with letting Logan out of his box in her mind.
This is the first time in years he’s escaped without her permission.
~
It takes an hour to get the kids into Eden. The exuberance of being saved has worn off. Now they’re all quiet, Laura especially. A girl with long blonde hair asks Jelani if they have running water. Once her second in command points in the direction of the showers, the blonde girl gently take Laura’s hand and lead her towards the small building.
Rogue lets them go without a word but she does nudge Rictor towards her office. It’s time for some answers.
“You need to tell me what happened out there.” She says, barely letting him take a seat.
Rictor takes a deep breath and nods. “We left the outpost a little after dawn, I thought we were safe. There were no signs that they’d followed us. But we’d only gone about a mile before the Reavers caught up to us.”
“Reavers?”
The boy nods, dark eyes filled with a fear she hasn’t seen before. “They work for Transigen. They taught us how to fight, took us down if we were too rebellious. They’re evil.” A pause, a shaky breath. “We were running but they were catching more and more of us. I didn’t think we would make it. I thought that was the end. But, but then...”
“What? What happened?” Rogue wants to shake him. She’s never had the patience for dramatic pauses. They irk her.
“He saved us. He killed them all and he saved us.”
“Who?”
“Laura’s dad.” Rictor says. “The Wolverine.”
Her heart stops at his words. It can’t be true. There’s no way it’s true. He’s been gone, disappeared, for seven years. She just assumed he was dead because if Logan was out there, if he was really out there, well, wouldn’t he have been here? He was the only X-Man left besides her. If Logan were alive, he would be here. In Eden. With her.
That’s what she’s been telling herself for years. She’s found a certain comfort in it, in the belief that the only thing keeping Logan from this place was his inevitable, long awaited death.
A thirteen year old boy has just ruined that fragile lie for good.
“Logan saved you.” She says, dumbstruck. “He wasn’t with you. Did he, I mean, is he?”
“Dead, yeah.”
And even though Rogue has been telling herself that he’s dead for seven years, that she’s the very last remnant of Xavier’s school, the last surviving member of the X-Men, there is something so utterly collapsing about that fact actually being true.
Logan had been alive when the sun rose today. He’d been eight miles away from her. They had been so close to each other after all these years, he was so close.
But instead he’s dead.
Rogue only takes a second to tell Rictor he should go get something to eat before she falls to the floor of her shabby office and begins to wail.
~
The sun is setting when she leaves her office. Jelani eyes her from across the way but otherwise Rogue is not subject to anyone’s misplaced coddling. It’s a small encampment and she imagines that word of the Wolverine’s resurrection and subsequent death have spread rather quickly. No one will wonder why she looks like her world has fallen apart. They all know she was a part of the X-Men.
Rogue slowly walks to the cabin she shares with two other women, where they now house three little girls. One of them is Laura. She remembers promising her that they could stay together while they were driving back to Eden.
Now that she knows Laura is Logan’s daughter every interaction with her is infused with new meaning. She can see him in her. That burning, all-seeing gaze, the naturally stubborn set to Laura’s jaw, the predatory grace Rogue know recognizes in her walk. Laura must be able to heal, she thinks. Her mind echoes with envy followed just as quickly by sorrow. If she’s Logan’s daughter then she has Logan’s abilities. Which means she has Logan’s curse. “Poor thing.” Rogue whispers to herself.
Her feet half stumble into the cabin, she’s so lost in her own thoughts. So lost, in fact, that she almost doesn’t notice Laura sitting at the round dining table in the corner. “Laura?” Rogue reaches the table, stops short when she sees the X-Men comic books strewn around its surface. “Oh, sweetheart.” She coos, running a hand down Laura’s hair.
Laura simply points at an illustration. “That’s you, right?”
Rogue sits down next to her and looks at the picture. It’s grandiosely colorful, and she almost laughs at the outfits her and Logan were wearing, knowing he especially wouldn’t be caught dead in those getups. But despite the ridiculousness of seeing one’s self inaccurately portrayed on a page, the action of the scene rings with truth. She’s hanging off the side of a cliff and Logan’s the only thing keeping her from certain death. Oh, how many times had they been in situations so similar? How many times had he saved her? Saved them all?
“Yes, that’s me.” Rogue says quietly.
“So you knew him.” Rogue nods and feels melancholic sorrow at the familiar way Laura’s eyes glisten with that bullheaded need to know.
“He was my friend.”
Laura snorts, fingers rubbing over the illustration of her father. “He had friends?”
“Hard to believe, I know, but your father was a good man. An ass, but a good man. He wouldn’t have admitted it but he had a lot of friends.”
There’s a long silence, the air filled with the sound of them breathing before two sharp claws suddenly rip out of Laura’s hands. She stabs the closest comic book she can reach. “I only knew him a week.” She sobs out, leaning halfway out of her chair to fall into Rogue’s embrace.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. None of this is right. You don’t deserve this.” She tries to comfort her as best she can but Rogue has no idea what to say. Currently they are feeling to very different versions of grief for the same man. Laura is grieving the relationship she never really had and Rogue is grieving the relationship she’ll never get back.
Still, she figures grief looks all the same so up close. They’re the only two people in the world bemoaning the death of Logan Howlett.
“Laura, I’m sure he loved you. Even if you didn’t know him for long, trust me, he counted himself the luckiest man in the world to be able to meet you. To save you.” Rogue begins. “And I know that doesn’t help you. I know that isn’t fair. You should have gotten a relationship with your dad and he should be here. But I promise, Laura, I promise you, that I will be here for you. I’ll be right here.”
The tears are still streaming down the little girl’s face, and Rogue doesn’t imagine they’ll stop anytime soon, but Laura nods her understanding and Rogue supposes that’s enough for now. She takes Logan’s daughter into her arms, her middle-aged bones creaking in protest, and walks into her bedroom. They both deserve a good long rest.
It’s been about an hour. She stares listlessly at the ceiling, Laura’s warmth beside her. The girl stopped crying about twenty minutes ago, her breath has gone even. Once Rogue is sure she’s asleep she lets her emotions go. Her thoughts swim with Logan, all barriers in her mind broken. He runs rampant through her memories. Every memory that smells of home and belonging and peace has him standing on the outskirts. She never forgot that he was the one to take her to Xavier. She tried not to let a moment pass where she wasn’t grateful that he didn’t leave her on the side of the road.
The tears have almost started rolling again when Laura turns onto her back and laces their fingers together. The air is quiet except for Rogue’s fumbling breaths. Laura simply holds her hand for a long time before she whispers, “Everything’s all right. There- there aren’t anymore guns in the valley.”
The words make no logical sense but Rogue can feel in her bones that they ring with truth. So she simply squeezes Logan’s daughter’s hand and they both stare into the darkness. Eventually she says, “I haven’t told you how I met your dad have I?”