He woke up to the feeling of fingers lightly brushing over his chest, teasing at some kind of cloth that's been wrapped around him. He raised on of his own hands to put a stop to it.

"That tickles," he groaned, and slowly, slowly opened his eyes. It's bright, opening his eyes too fast would have just hurt.

"Welcome back," Jean said.

"Hey."

"That was a brave thing you did," she told him.

He took a moment to think. What was it he'd done? Liberty Island, Magneto, Marie!

"Did it work?" he asked, scared that it might not have.

"She's fine," Jean assured him. "Though she took on a couple of your more charming personality traits for a while," she added, heavy and sarcastic emphasis on the word charming.

He chuckled quietly. He hoped she gave them all hell.

"I think she's become a bit taken with you," Jean continued gently.

He nodded slightly. "I'll have to talk to her about that then," he said. "Can I get up now?"

Jean scoffed gently but nodded. If he was awake, then he was fine, and there was no helping that. She went and fetched him some clothes that were more sufficient than what he'd been in while he was in the medical bay.

~oOo~

"Hey," he greeted, having tracked the sweet smell of her through the mansion to a stone bench in an out of the way part of the garden.

She smiled up at him. Practically beaming. "Hey," she answered.

"So, how were you while I was out?" he asked, sitting down beside her easily.

She was covered and he was covered. The dreaded skin contact wasn't something he felt the need to worry about, given the precautions taken.

Marie bit her lip a little bashfully. "I gave Scott and Jean hell," she admitted, though she was still smiling a little bit. "I spent a lot of time with the professor and Miss Storm though," she added, looking up, her eyes bright again. "I hope ya don' mind, but I used some of the memories I got from you an' Magneto, and worked on tryin' ta control my powers."

He smiled, laughed even. "Sounds like fair compensation," he said. "You been havin' nightmares from -?"

She shook her head. "Lots of memories, but no, no nightmares," she assured him. "At least, none that weren't mine first," she amended. "You've got some real interestin' ones. All those battles and wars ya fought in, the crazy stuff you got inta, the friends an' enemies an' teachers ye had, getting yer memory tampered with an' then it getting' completely wiped..."

He sat up straighter and looked at her with an innocent eagerness that no one else had seen since he'd woken up without any memory of his life. Silently, he was begging her to tell him more about his past.

"James Logan Howlett," she told him. "Born on February the second, eighteen-thirty-five, in Alberta, Canada. You've got a lot of story Logan, I think it would be better if we had sessions with the professor takin' your memories from my head and copyin' 'em back into yours, rather 'an me tellin' ya all them."

He nodded his understanding and wrapped his arms around her tightly. "Thanks," he said, overwhelmed by this whole revelation.

"You're welcome," she told him happily, rubbing her gloved hand along his sleeve-covered arm in a comforting gesture.

For a while, they just sat in silence like that, rocking a little now and then.

"Jean also mentioned something about you bein' taken with me?" he asked at last.

Rogue blushed deeply.

"I'm not gonna sway you off," he said gently. "You know more about me than I do right now, an' if you still care about me, then hell if I'm not gonna do my damnedest to make sure I don't hurt you because of it."

She smiled back at him hopefully.

"So you'll be workin' on control, the professor's gonna work on gettin' my memories copied back over into my head, and I am gonna work on being whatever you need me to be," he said. "Now, I'm gonna test some of my control over my 'uncharted regenerative capabilities' that have kept me alive this long," he said and, releasing his hold on the girl in his arms, closed his eyes, and concentrated.

Marie watched, stunned, as he got visibly younger while he sat there beside her.

He wasn't shorter, or really any less muscular, but everything skin-deep and shallower clearly made a broadcast of the fact that he now looked more like an eighteen-year-old than a thirty-year-old.

"Guess I'm not gonna be callin' ya 'kid' any more," he said, opening his eyes and looking at her. "It don't work in reverse though, so we'll be goin' through the years together."

She damn near tackled him in her joy.

~The End~