The first time Logan left, Marie wasn't too happy about it. Apart from anything else, she would rather he'd taken her with him than just promising to come back. She found herself a job as soon as she could – she did typing in a cubicle in an office block. It was mindless work that no one wanted to do, but it was well paying and she didn't have to interact with her co-workers. When school was out – weekends, holidays – she got more hours.

She'd had the intention of travelling since before her mutation had shown up. But since she'd run away that first time, and even made a try for it a second time, she knew more about the practicalities of what was involved. Like money, a licence, hell, her own car for preference. She'd taken an afternoon off work – with her boss's blessing – and gotten that licence. Then she'd dropped history and picked up auto-shop instead.

Between the presences of Logan, Magneto, and even David, her first kiss, all in her head, she was building her own car in the hours when nightmares or insomnia kept her up when she would have preferred to be sleeping. She was doing a damn fine job of it too, if she did say so herself. David had loved shop class. Logan had a thing for cars, bikes, trucks, anything with an engine really. Which included the X-Jet, though he didn't know much about how it worked. Magneto did though. He knew how it all worked. He was most helpful in her constructive endeavours. They all were.

"I don't want to fight people," she told them as she burned the metaphorical midnight oil. "I don't care what the cause is, fighting just isn't my thing."

Not even in self defence? Logan and Magneto asked, then seemed to growl at each other for agreeing on anything.

Marie just chuckled at them. "Well, maybe then," she admitted.

She dropped philosophy after that night, took extra sessions in the danger room, listening to Logan in her head talking her through punches and kicks, listening to Magneto talking her through the use of her power – possibly even controlling it. A suggestion she clung to and worked on even in her other classes, since it was a matter of focus more than anything else.

One night, Bobby and John caught her as she stopped by the kitchen for some water between working on her motor. They were trying to be 'cool' by breaking curfew and sneaking ginger beer and ice cream.

"What are you doin'?" John asked, surprised and apparently impressed. "I never would have picked meek little Rogue for a rule-breaker."

"I'm not," she answered, filling a bottle of water from the cold tap before immediately leaving the kitchen again.

The two boys looked at each other in shock for about five seconds before they bolted out of the room to follow her.

"What do you mean you're not?" Bobby asked. "There's a curfew."

"Yeah, all good kids in bed by nine and no later," John added.

She brought herself to a halt just before the garage where she was working. She didn't particularly want either of these boys to see what she'd been up to in the late hours. Quick explanation that was half-lie, half-truth. Maybe.

"The Professor knows," she told them. "An' he doesn't mind me bein' up. I can't sleep anyway, so I'm bein' productive and non-disruptive. Unlike you two," she added, turning from them and ducking into the garage quickly while they were both stunned, locking the door between herself and them.

They didn't let her get away with that for long, very deliberately settling themselves down on either side of her come lunch time, and clearly determined to drag answers out of her if they had to.

She decided it was easier to beat them to the punch.

"You know what happens when I touch people?" she asked them.

"You get their powers," Bobby said with a shrug.
"And they get a power nap," John added.

"I get them stuck inside my head," she corrected. "For the rest of my life. Memories, hopes, dreams, ambitions, nightmares. Powers is just the diamond on top of the ice burg."

"I can see why you'd avoid touchin' people then," John said, swallowing. "Who've you touched since your power showed up?"

Rogue smiled sadly. "Well, let's see... my first kiss, since that was when it showed up," she started.

"Ouch," John sympathised.

"That can't have been fun," Bobby agreed. "Mine came when I was sick with a fever. I wanted my room to just cool down."

"I was camping," John supplied. "Playing with fire got a lot more fun, then a lot more dangerous, very quickly."

Rogue nodded her appreciation for them sharing their stories – however briefly – in exchange for her own. "I've had skin contact with two people since then."

"Wolverine," Bobby remembered, that night when they'd all seen her touch him after his claws had been sprouting out her back. "Who was the other one?"

Rogue raised a finger to brush at the white strip of her hair.

"Magneto," John realised, an awed look on his face.

She just nodded again.

"What's he like?" John asked, leaning forward eagerly.

The Logan in her mind did his eyebrow twitch of 'did you seriously just ask/say/do that?' and she could barely suppress the desire to wear the same expression on her own face. It was obvious he was asking about Magneto – who was preening slightly at the attention.

"Messed up," she answered succinctly before standing and noticing Scott heading towards them, looking less than pleased. She smirked. "You two hold tight now," she told them as she left them behind. "Someone wants a talk with you."

Scott came to a halt in front of the two boys, and Rogue held in her laughter as she wiggled her fingers in farewell. She had a little bit of free time, so she was heading back to her machine. It was nearly done now, after six weeks and a lot of help from the three guys in her head. It had been a big leap when she'd discovered that she could still access the powers she'd gotten from Magneto. Of course, that discovery had meant she could also access Logan's, but she wasn't going to unless she got hurt, which she hoped wouldn't happen too soon. She still didn't have full control, over anything, yet. But it was getting better.

She was just about ready to take off herself when Logan came back. She'd been in the danger room with Jean – dodging stuff – when the news came, and she'd launched herself at the red-head in her excitement. Forgetting for a moment about her skin, since she'd been working on controlling it.

That was a very powerful hit to her psyche. But she'd had those before.

"I'm sorry," she said with a gasp as she adjusted to the new power and knowledge in her head, backing up from the woman. "I forgot my control on my skin isn't so great yet. Are you alright?"

"Yes," Jean answered, and she seemed surprised as she looked over at Rogue. "Yes, thank you. I'm just fine."

What she means is, she's free of me, a female voice said in the girl's head.

Rogue frowned to herself, put the new addition to the side for the time being, and asked if she could be excused to welcome Logan. She was particularly glad that he was back because she'd been beginning to wonder if she would still be there when he did. She didn't want to have to put him through looking for her just to get his tags back after all, but she would have still left.

Jean waved the girl off with a smile of her own, and seemed to be more relaxed than she'd ever been before.

When she finally spotted Logan, he was following the Professor into Cerebro. She decided to sit outside, wait, listen in if she could, and sort out the new voice that she'd just absorbed accidentally when she'd jumped on Jean. Thankfully, it was pretty forthcoming about its nature, and open to what might be done with it by the new host, since clearly she and Jean were so very unlike each other. As a bonus, having Phoenix also meant that she had a lot more control over everything, just because she wanted to.

"The mind is not a box that can be opened and closed at will," the Professor was saying as the door to the great round room opened up and dumped Marie – who had been leaning against it – on her back as she fell in.

She smiled up at them sheepishly.

"I thought I'd wait outside rather than knock and interrupt," she explained, standing up.

"Miss me kid?" Logan asked with a chuckle, wrapping his arms around her shoulders – cloth to cloth, but the easy way he disregarded the danger of her touch was comforting to her.

"I'm nearly eighteen Logan," she pointed out, pushing him away in mock-frustration, grinning up at him. "Yeah, I missed you," she added, then reached for the tags around her neck.

Gently Phoenix, I want you to break whatever it is that's holdin' his memories back, she instructed the newest addition to herself. She got what felt like a nod as she lowered the tags back around Logan's neck.

He picked them up off his chest in his hand and stared at them, and seemed about to say something to her from the smile on his face, but then the smile dropped and he went very still.

Done, the Phoenix said quietly.

She was definitely getting the hang of this 'using other people's powers' thing.

"Rogue?" the Professor questioned very seriously, gravely. "What did you just do?"

She blinked innocently, and did her best to look worried about Logan, which wasn't hard, considering that he was in a bit of a daze. "I just gave him back his tags," she said quietly. It was completely true too. That was the only thing that she had done.

They both watched Logan for a minute, as he just stared at the tags in his hand but seemed to not see them, and then suddenly he looked up at her and a grin broke out on his face. He swept his arms around her and twirled her around in a circle, laughing and she squealed in surprise.

"Logan?" she asked when he finally put her down, still grinning.

"Will you excuse us Professor?" Logan asked, not looking at the man before he picked Rogue up, bridal fashion, and ran off down the hall.

"Logan what is it?" she asked once they were around a corner and out of sight of the Professor.

"Thank you," he whispered, pulling her closer against him. "I don't know how you did it, but thank you."

A little later that day, Scott and the Professor went to visit Magneto, while Jean and Storm took off for Boston, to find a mutant who had made an attempt on the life of the president. A little later that night, she got dressed and headed down the the garage. Her own nightmare of Liberty Island had been the one to wake her that night, and she was nearly done building – she was really just making the inside comfortable now, so that she could live in this truck, rather than just move about in it.

She was just heading to the kitchen for water when she heard – or the part of her that was Logan heard – people entering the mansion.

Wake up, she screamed in her mind, projecting it to everybody in the mansion that she could with the help of Phoenix. Run.

The pounding of bare feet in the halls above her head was comforting, and she looked up to see Logan and Bobby coming out of the kitchen, while a kid she'd seen nearly every night staring at the TV was also moving as fast as he could down the hall towards one of the emergency exits.

Piotr and John came up the hall, barely dressed. "The other kids are all out," Piotr said, halting between Rogue and Wolverine. "We decided to stay behind."

The invasion began then. Men in camouflage-printed uniforms, with guns and night-vision goggles over their faces swept into the mansion as silently as they knew how.

She waved the three boys and the man to follow her to the garage silently.

"Anybody got a plan?" John asked quietly.

"If they don't find anybody, then they're just going to try and find the kids that got out," Logan answered. "We need to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Best defence is a good offence?" Rogue suggested.

John cocked a mischievous smirk. "I like the sound of that plan," he said, holding up his lighter.

"That's great and all, but what are we actually gonna do?" Bobby asked.

"These goons are being led by somebody. We clear the goons out as much as we can, see if we can get our hands on the head creep, and since this is the Institute and not the Brotherhood, we're gonna do our best to not kill anybody," Rogue said.

John looked like he'd just been denied his favourite sweet.

She chuckled. "Only because you know we'd be the ones made to clean it all up if the mansion got made a mess of," she pointed out.

John chuckled and shook his head. "Wow, Rogue really isn't a meek little goodie-goodie," he observed, surprised and pleased. "I get to burn them a little?" he asked, hopeful.

"Burn, pound, give them frostbite and broken bones, but no killing. Killing people is bad," Rogue emphasised.

"You've got your running orders," Logan said, smiling at his favourite girl. "This is a safe place for geeks and freaks. Let's make the Professor proud."

Heads nodded and they moved out with Logan in front. Rogue was behind him and Piotr behind her, with Bobby and John on her left and right respectively. Rogue was also the only one visibly armed, having grabbed long metal pipe before moving out. She didn't have the best power for attacking with after all, and she sometimes used a pole-arm or blade in her danger room sessions.

They ducked back to the dorms so that Bobby, John and Piotr could get some actual clothes on – since Logan and Rogue were both dressed after their nightmares, and fighting people in your pyjamas isn't the most confidence-boosting of activities.

Invading soldiers found along the way were knocked out, and then tossed out the nearest window, and then at last they reached the main door of the mansion.

"We step out that door," Logan said, "and we don't let anybody get passed us."

"Can I blow up their transport?" John asked hopefully.

Wolverine, Rogue and Colossus sighed at him, rolling their eyes.

"Yes," Bobby said at last. "But only if you can put out the fires again once they hit the ground, or don't mind me doing it," he told his friend. "I prefer playing soccer on grass rather than burnt dirt."

John nodded. "Sounds good to me."

"See if you can do it without making it obvious too," Wolverine added. "If there's cameras around anywhere, it's not gonna look good that you were obviously attacking them."

"But we are attacking!" John objected.

"Only because the best defence is a good offence," Rogue reminded gently. "Think of it as a challenge," she added, a hint of 'I dare you' in her voice.

That got the boy smiling again.

The doors opened and more soldiers started to come in. Rogue lifted her pole and, holding it horizontally, started pushing them back. Bobby and John grabbed onto the bit of metal and helped push them back, while Wolverine and Colossus picked up anybody who fell down and threw them out.

"What's goin' on!" demanded a very sharp male voice from beyond the mansion steps as the men were ejected from the building.

"I know that voice," Logan growled.

"Bad news?" Rogue asked quickly.

"Very, but we know who's in charge now."

The four teenagers nodded.

"You get him, we'll handle the rest," Piotr said.

Logan nodded. "Hold the line," he said, "and give me five minutes to find the bastard."

It only took him three, and then Bobby and John really let loose on making sure that the soldiers not only dropped their weapons, but would never be able to use them again – lumps of melted metal didn't generally make for good guns. Blunt objects maybe, but certainly not guns.

Rogue used Phoenix to pick a few thoughts out of Stryker's mind – the phone number for the White House, and the right words to say for an interview with the President among them. Then she left him under the careful guard of Piotr and Logan, while Bobby and John raided the kitchen. She was going to make that phone call.

Half an hour later, they had an interview with the President scheduled for lunch the next day. He would be coming to them too, which was particularly nice she thought. She'd no idea he liked gumbo when she made the offer of cooking him some if he'd come to them rather than have them come to him, but it seemed that he'd happily make the short trip for the southern speciality.

The X-Jet called in at breakfast time, and Rogue was the one to answer their call, as well as explain the entire situation. They arrived just before the president was supposed to, and he arrived right on time.

"Welcome to the Institute Mr President," Marie said, welcoming him with a bright smile. "The gumbo is ready and waitin' if ya want to eat while we talk."

"That sounds wonderful," he said.

"We've also laid out a buffet for sandwich makin' if your bodyguards don't like gumbo," Marie added, leading the group inside.

In the Professor's office – he still hadn't come back yet, and when Jean probed Stryker's mind, she found out why. They'd be going to fetch him back shortly – Marie introduced the adults, and then her fellow teenagers.

"I believe you already know this man," she added with a frown as she indicated the tied up Stryker.

"Yes, now would you care to tell me what this is all about?" he asked, as he accepted a bowl of gumbo and sat down.

"Did you notice the helicopters and tanks on your way in?" Bobby asked.

"He attacked us last night, Mr President," John added. "This is a school. We got the kids out, but we haven't brought them back yet. We aren't going to until we're sure they're safe."

The talk continued for some time, and eventually Kurt was brought in, which made the president nervous until the incident that had happened earlier in his office was explained.

"I don't respond well to threats," the president said at last, looking around at the occupants of the room.

Marie chuckled. "No body does Mr President," she assured him. "An' we aren't makin' one."

"I haven't told my parents that I'm a mutant," Bobby said. "I'm afraid to. I'm not scared that I could hurt them, because this school has taught me how to control my powers, rather than be controlled by them. I just... Don't want them to stop loving me because I'm different."

"I was camping with my dad when my mutation manifested," John said. "He left me there. Got in the car and just cleared out."

The president nodded.

"Some of us have a chance of fitting in with normal society," Storm said. "Some of us don't."

"For some of us, the day our mutation manifested was the day we became afraid of the world, and of ourselves," Marie said.

Logan moved to wrap his arms around her in a comforting gesture.

"They'll kill us all!" Stryker insisted to the president. "The only way to defend against mutants is to strike back first!"

"Mr President," Logan said quietly. "I was born in 1835. I have fought in every war that America has been a part of. For a while I even worked for him," he added, nodding in Stryker's direction, even as he still stood with his arms around Marie. "I never deserted my post in the wars, but I did walk out on him when he killed an entire village of innocent people just so that he could get at some mineral deposits in the earth beneath them."

"Mineral deposits?" the president asked, confused.

Logan nodded. "A particular type of metal. Not long after I left his little 'group', he tricked me into coming back, and he bonded that metal to my bones," he explained, and slowly slid the claws out of his hands. "He wanted to wipe my memory. I was part of the 'Weapon X' program, but I got out. I got a bunch of kids out too. He was holding them in cages." Logan pulled the claws back into his hands. He could see how jumpy the bodyguards were getting at the sight of them. "Holding them like animals and laboratory specimens."

"May I meet some of the students of your school?" the president asked, looking between the two women.

"Maybe some time next week we'll take them to Washington for a tour of the White House," Jean suggested.

The president nodded his understanding. "Please do. I'd like to meet them."

"What's gonna happen to him?" John asked, jerking his chin at Stryker as the meeting finally began to break up.

"Full inquisition, court hearings, exposure of all his documents, prison I expect in the long run. I think I'll be making a lot of speeches where I quote Lincoln," the president answered.

"He was a good guy," Logan said. "Little heavy on the cider sometimes when it had been a long day, but a good guy all the same."

"Sounds like you knew him," Jean said with a raised eyebrow.

"Born in 1835 remember?" he answered. "Yeah, I worked a short shift as a bodyguard for him once. Lots of people didn't like him back then, much as he's admired today."

"Would I be able to call this school for support when I'm having problems? Only with the mutant issues I assure you," the president asked.

"Mr President," Storm said straightening her spine and looking him in the eye. "We're American citizens as well as mutants. We want what's best for our country as much as you do."

He smiled and nodded. "Thank you," he said, then stood. "I'm afraid I have other appointments today though, so I'll have to bid you all good day," he turned to Marie and took her gloved hands in his. "Thank you for the gumbo," he said with a smile. "It was delicious."

Marie smiled back. "You're welcome Mr President."

A month later, she and Logan were in her truck, just the two of them, driving up to Washington. They had been called to the White House to represent the mutants of America, and speak in the assembly, and then to the press, and a few other meetings. They weren't diplomats, and they weren't scientists of any kind, but when they were asked a question, they gave honest answers.

"Are mutants dangerous?" insisted one of the senators.

Wolverine and Rogue looked straight at him in silence for a moment, and then he spoke.

"I can be," he answered. "I choose not to be. It is the same for everybody."

"Would you care to elaborate on that Mr Howlett?"

"You've never repressed the urge to strangle somebody because you've been having a bad day, and they just did some small thing and made it worse? Most mutations manifest in the teenage years, which means they've had a full childhood of learning all about the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and following their parent's example," Marie explained.

"The same things that stop you from just finding a gun and shooting me are the same things that stop mutants from just firing off their powers," Logan added. "A person with a mutation has just as much of a conscience as a person without one. Heck, some have even more of a conscience."

"What do you mean, more of a conscience?"

"Telepaths, for example," Logan said. "One thing they seem to all decide fairly quickly is that it's bad manners to read someone's mind without their permission."

Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters had a large influx of students come the next school year, and Magneto came to congratulate the X-men on what two of their number had managed to do.

Except that those two were not there. Logan and Marie had gone to Canada.

The Institute and the White House could contact them if they needed to, but they were quite content to just live from one day to the next. Let everyone else think they'd run away. They knew that they just... didn't like being stuck in one place too long.