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The ice cream shop smelled like burnt sugar and waffle cones. The kind of place with handwritten chalk signs and too many flavours squeezed into one glass case.
Valentin already had both hands flattened against the counter, staring into the tubs with the concentration of somebody trying to decode state secrets.
“They got dill pickle.”
“That ain’t ice cream,” Rogue muttered.
“It absolutely is,” Sofia said at once, scandalized on the shop’s behalf.
“It absolutely shouldn’t be.”
Hotoru pointed silently toward another metal tub. The green ice cream inside glittered faintly beneath the display lights.
“Wasabi pistachio,” he read.
Becca looked appalled immediately. “That sounds criminal.”
“You got no vision,” Valentin informed her.
Rogue leaned one elbow against the counter while the kids argued over flavour combinations that sounded more like dares than desserts. Their voices bounced around the cramped little shop, warm and alive and blissfully untouched by the heaviness lodged behind her ribs.
She tried to stay present with them.
With Sofia dramatically insisting lavender honey belonged with blackberry.
With Hotoru looking genuinely tempted by the wasabi.
With Becca defending vanilla bean like it was a moral obligation.
Anything except the memory of John Stelton on his wheelchair with that rifle in his hands and fury carved so deep into his face it had looked permanent.
You ruined my life.
The words lingered under her skin now, stripped of their original fury and made heavier by how quietly they returned to her.
Rogue had gone there believing she could do something useful. Maybe she could apologize. Explain herself. Offer help somehow. Maybe there was some version of this where she left knowing she had eased even a fraction of the damage she caused.
God.
What kind of fantasy had she built for herself? As though regret counted for something after the damage was already done, after surgeries and debt and pain had carved through a man’s entire future.
“Rogue?”
She blinked hard.
The teenager behind the counter was smiling patiently at her while Valentin held up two sample spoons triumphantly.
“You gotta try these.”
“One of them got jalapeño in it,” Becca warned.
“That ain’t a warning.”
Rogue accepted the spoon anyway.
Cold sweetness hit her tongue first. Then heat.
“Well,” she coughed lightly, “that’s certainly a decision somebody made.”
Valentin burst into delighted laughter.
For a second, despite herself, she smiled.
It faded quickly.
John Stelton’s mutation had shown people the worst thing they had ever done. The ugliest impulse. Every buried cruelty dragged into the open whether anybody deserved to see it or not.
And Rogue could still remember the look in his eyes after she absorbed him. The horror had not been aimed at her, at least not entirely. It had turned inward almost immediately once he realized what his mutation was showing him about the people closest to him, about his wife and neighbours and family.
“You okay?”
Sofia’s voice softened around the edges.
Rogue looked down to find four pairs of eyes on her now.
Too perceptive, every last one of them.
“Yeah, sugar. Jus’ thinkin’.”
“That usually means you’re upset.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
Sofia shrugged. “I spend a lot of time around you and Mr. Gambit.”
Something twisted warmly in Rogue’s chest at that.
Before she could answer, the employee behind the register started packing their cups onto a tray.
“That’ll be free today.”
Rogue frowned immediately. “No, honey, I can pay.”
The young man shook his head. “Nah. You’re good.”
“We ordered enough sugar to kill a horse.”
“That so?”
“Yes.”
He slid the tray toward them anyway.
“Still free.”
Rogue narrowed her eyes slightly.
The boy only smiled wider.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could practically hear Remy sounding innocent in exactly the way he only ever did while actively being guilty of something.
She accepted the tray slowly. “I’m gonna have questions for my husband later.”
The cashier laughed outright at that.
Yep.
Definitely Guild-related.
The kids spilled outside with their ice cream before she could interrogate the poor employee any further.
The air outside felt damp enough to breathe through, and Rogue found herself oddly grateful for the ridiculous jalapeño-peach ice cream slowly melting against her tongue. Across from her, Hotoru looked entirely too pleased with his wasabi pistachio choice.
He walked ahead already checking directions on his phone toward the oddities store.
“Apparently they got a two-headed raccoon.”
Becca looked horrified. “That cannot be ethical.”
“It’s taxidermy.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
Valentin nearly choked laughing into his mango tajín scoop.
Rogue followed behind them at an easier pace while her ice cream melted slowly down the side of her cone. The sweetness sat heavy in her mouth.
The oddities shop sat wedged between a boarded up shop and a narrow little café with fogged-up windows. Its faded sign creaked softly overhead in the humidity, painted letters peeling just enough to make the place look older than it probably was. Dusty purple curtains framed the display window, where a collection of cracked porcelain dolls and animal skulls stared blankly out at passing tourists.
“Oh, this place is definitely haunted,” Valentin announced immediately, sounding delighted.
Becca looked mildly alarmed. “Why are you saying that like it’s a selling point?”
Hotoru had already reached the door before anybody else, drawn in with the quiet intensity he always got whenever something genuinely interested him. The bell overhead gave a tired little jingle as he pushed inside.
Cool air brushed against Rogue’s face as she stepped in after them, carrying the scent of old paper and incense. The lighting inside stayed deliberately dim despite the afternoon sun outside, every lamp casting pools of amber light across crowded shelves packed with jars, fossils, antique jewellery, old records, taxidermy, and enough strange little trinkets to overwhelm the eye.
Valentin stopped dead in front of a glass display case.
“No way.”
Inside sat what appeared to be an extremely ugly monkey statue wearing a tiny velvet cape.
“That thing definitely cursed somebody,” Sofia said.
“Probably several people,” Rogue agreed.
Becca wandered toward a shelf of old books while muttering something about dust allergies, and Hotoru had already become entirely absorbed by a display of pinned insects arranged beneath glass frames. Rogue watched him carefully from the corner of her eye anyway. The shop was cramped and cluttered in the particular way places became when too many objects occupied too little space.
Easy grounds for sensory overload.
But Hotoru looked fascinated rather than overwhelmed, moving slowly from shelf to shelf with his shoulders relaxed for once.
Rogue leaned briefly against one of the wooden display tables while Sofia held up a necklace shaped like an eyeball and Valentin tried unsuccessfully to convince Becca to buy a taxidermied frog in a tiny cowboy hat.
“You are not bringing that thing into the house,” Becca informed him.
“Remy would love him.”
“That is unfortunately true.”
Rogue smiled despite herself as the kids continued bickering around the display table. Somewhere along the way, Haven House had started feeling startlingly normal in moments like this, full of teasing arguments and inside jokes and children comfortable enough to be loud.
That part still caught Rogue off guard sometimes, especially now after standing in John Stelton’s backyard and seeing the wreckage she had left behind all those years ago.
“Hero”.
The word made her stomach turn…
How many people had she hurt before she found Xavier?
How many choices had she made because Mystique pointed her in a direction and taught her survival mattered more than morality?
John Stelton had not been collateral damage buried in some mission report. He had been a man with a wife and a future that got carved apart after Rogue tore through his life like a hurricane.
And she had done that.
The guilt followed her relentlessly now, working at her from the inside like something with teeth.
What kind of role model was she supposed to be for these kids?
The thought had barely settled before a sharp crash split through the shop.
Everybody jumped.
Somewhere near the back, an entire shelving unit had tipped sideways into another display case, sending glass jars and small trinkets smashing across the wooden floor. The noise ricocheted through the cramped store loud enough that Hotoru visibly flinched, one hand flying instinctively toward his ear as several customers started talking over each other at once.
“Oh my God.”
“Watch your step!”
“Ma’am, don’t move!”
Rogue reacted automatically, already turning toward the commotion, but Sofia reached it first.
“Everybody back up a little,” she called, her voice cutting cleanly through the noise without sounding panicked, without a tremor.
Valentin stopped where he was immediately, catching onto her tone at once. Even Becca, startled as she was, shifted out of the way while Sofia crouched beside an older woman sitting awkwardly against one of the fallen shelves.
“You hurt anywhere?” Sofia asked carefully.
The woman blinked rapidly behind oversized glasses, still trying to orient herself. “I think I twisted my ankle.”
“Okay,” Sofia said gently. “Don’t try standing yet.”
Meanwhile, Hotoru had gone pale from the sudden noise and cluttered chaos around him, shoulders tightening as another customer accidentally kicked shattered glass farther across the floor with a sharp scraping sound.
Sofia looked over immediately.
“Hotoru,” she said, still calm, still steady, “look at me a sec.”
His eyes snapped toward her.
“You’re okay. Just breathe, alright? Nobody’s hurt bad.”
Something in her tone seemed to cut through the overload enough for his shoulders to loosen by a fraction.
Rogue slowed to a stop a few feet away, watching Sofia take control of the situation with a steadiness that felt deeply familiar. There was something unmistakable in the way she balanced gentleness with authority, checking on Hotoru while keeping the rest of the room focused and calm at the same time.
Rogue had heard herself sound like that before. The realization settled somewhere deep in her chest.
It took a few minutes for the noise and confusion to settle, but eventually the customers relaxed once it became clear the damage looked worse than it actually was.
Rogue barely noticed herself smiling until Sofia looked up at her.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
But it wasn’t nothing, because suddenly Rogue could see it clearly.
Somewhere along the way, the kids had started modelling themselves after the people at Haven House in ways that had nothing to do with powers at all.
How to comfort somebody.
How to stay steady when things went sideways.
How to protect people softer than you.
How to become kind.
The ache inside her did not disappear. John Stelton still existed. The damage still existed. There would never be enough apologies in the world to return what she had taken from him.
Maybe some sins stayed with you forever.
Remy believed that.
Unspeakable sins, he called them sometimes when old memories crawled too close to the surface. And yet Rogue had never once looked at him and seen a monster.
What she saw instead was the version of Remy these kids knew. Remy stayed up through nightmares, cooked for the whole house, remembered tiny preferences nobody else kept track of, and carried a kind of endless patience for the children that still caught Rogue off guard sometimes.
A father.
The word came carefully this time, so tender but true.
Remy spoke about his past like it stained everything it touched, but these children still trusted him with their fears, their grief, and all the fragile parts of themselves people only handed over when they felt safe.
Maybe redemption was not something earned in one grand gesture.
Maybe the closest anybody came to redemption was simply refusing to let the worst thing they had ever done become the only thing they continued to be.
Rogue looked at Sofia helping the injured woman toward a nearby chair while Becca hovered anxiously beside her with napkins.
Good kids.
Their kids.
Love hit her suddenly and hard enough to almost hurt.
For them.
For Remy.
For the strange little family they had somehow built together from scraps and bruises and second chances.
The ache in her chest did not loosen, and perhaps it was not supposed to. But alongside the guilt sat something steadier now, something that urged her forward instead of dragging her under.
And maybe later tonight, after the kids were asleep and Remy finally admitted whatever ridiculous arrangement he had clearly made with the ice cream shop, she would sit beside him on the porch with two drinks and tell him everything.
Maybe they could talk to Kurt too.
A little spiritual counselling from her fuzzy blue brother probably could not hurt at this point.
Lord knew the two of them carried enough Catholic guilt to keep Kurt occupied for another decade.
By the time Rogue pulled the truck into the Haven House driveway, the humidity had settled into her bones so thoroughly that even the rapidly melting ice cream earlier had barely cut through it. The kids piled out noisily before she had even fully killed the engine, still arguing about the playlist Valentin had forced everybody to listen to on the drive home.
“I’m just sayin’, that song was objectively good,” Valentin insisted while slamming the passenger door shut.
“It sounded like a robot having an emotional breakdown,” Becca shot back immediately.
“That’s the point,” Sofia said.
Hotoru climbed carefully out of the backseat, still cradling a paper bag full of pinned insects with alarming care. “The bass line was interesting.”
Becca stared at him like she had been betrayed. “You too?”
Sofia snorted as she swung the truck door closed beside Rogue. Rogue shook her head, unable to stop the smile tugging at her mouth as the argument instantly grew louder again.
The front door opened before they even reached the porch.
And there he was.
The sight of Remy standing barefoot in the doorway hit her with a sudden warmth that settled straight through the lingering ache in her chest. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Hair slightly mussed. Looking at all of them like they hung the damn moon.
Looking at her like that most of all.
For one brief moment, Rogue forgot entirely about John Stelton and grief and guilt and every ugly question that had followed her home from that porch.
Remy’s whole face brightened the second he saw them.
Then he was already moving.
“Remy, don’t you dare,” she warned immediately, pointing at him with her keys still hooked through one finger.
The grin he flashed her in response was downright criminal.
The kids started laughing before he even reached her.
“He’s gonna do it anyway,” Sofia announced.
“Absolutely gonna do it,” Valentin agreed.
And then Rogue barely had time to yelp before Remy scooped her clean off the ground.
“Remy!”
He spun her once across the lawn while the children groaned dramatically around them.
Rogue’s laughter escaped her before she could stop it, startled and bright after the heaviness of the day. She grabbed onto Remy’s shoulders instinctively as he pulled her close enough to kiss her properly, sweet at first before he deepened it just enough to send heat rushing into her cheeks.
Lord.
This man.
She patted his chest after a second, already aware of Sofia and Valentin watching them with entirely too much amusement.
“Put me down, Cajun.”
His eyes danced with delight as he lowered her carefully back onto the grass.
“Missed you, chère.”
He said it so softly that Rogue felt heat rush through her all over again.
Because she had spent the entire afternoon wondering whether people like her deserved forgiveness, whether becoming better actually mattered once enough damage had already been done.
And then there was this.
This house and these children.
Remy standing in front of her with grass stains on his jeans and love shining plainly across his face like it cost him nothing to offer.
Rogue reached up automatically to smooth a strand of hair back from his forehead, her fingers lingering briefly against his temple.
“Missed you too.”
Something gentled in his expression then, subtle enough most people would have missed it.
Rogue did not.
Before she could ask about it, Remy swung an arm around Valentin’s shoulders and another around Sofia’s.
“You gonna tell me how de trip went, petits?”
“We saw a dead frog in a hat,” Hotoru said immediately with complete seriousness.
Remy nodded solemnly. “Did ya now?”
“It was horrifying,” Becca informed him.
“It was elegant,” Valentin corrected.
The arguing resumed almost instantly as the kids started herding themselves back toward the house, dragging Remy into the conversation with the full chaotic force of their excitement.
Rogue followed them toward the house more slowly, her gaze lingering on Remy as he laughed at something Valentin said while Sofia rolled her eyes hard enough to threaten permanent injury.
The guilt remained exactly where it had always been. She no longer expected it to disappear.
Maybe it shouldn’t.
But as Rogue stepped through the front door behind the rest of her family, she found herself thinking about something Kurt once told her years ago: that remorse only meant something if it changed the way you moved through the world afterward.
And God, she wanted that to be true.