Author Note: Originally written for the comment_fic prompt Rogue/Logan, Rogue is the cage fighter.

Those That Stand In My Corner

He watches as the slim streak of nothing in jeans and a black bra slams her fist into the oncoming punch of her far larger opposition and because he's got better senses than most he can see that it drains the guy much more than the girl, even though she's the one that staggers back. There's just something in the way the colour of the guy's face seems to fade slightly and a smell of vulnerability.

"That all you got?" the guy demands, laughing.

She kicks out with a bare foot and veins pulse under the guy's skin briefly where she connects, rising to the surface. He grabs her ankle, wrapping both hands around it, and throws her against the wall of the cage nearest to Logan. A small smile darts across her face as she slams into it.

"Fifty dollars on the kid," Logan says around the cigar clamped between his teeth, handing his money to the bookie as he wanders past, and proceeds to watch her wear her rival down until a solid hit to the jaw sends him to the floor unconscious.

"It's unnatural," he overhears the fight organiser say when she tries to collect the cash she's owed and is refused the full amount.

"For a bunch of guys to have less stamina than they reckon?" She tosses back a shot of vodka. "Honey, women always outlast the boys."

"I know what you are," the organiser insists.

"You don't know jack shit."

Logan follows her out when she leaves. He watches as she yanks on leather gloves and flings up her hood before fastening her coat, covering her skin before protecting herself from the cold.

"Hey, kid," he asks, dropping the remains of his cigar on the ground with a small hiss as it hits the snow. "You got somewhere to be?"

"What's it to you?"

Logan pops three claws out of the knuckles of his right hand, slowly extending them to their full length and ignoring the burn as skin splits and metal moves beneath his skin.

She watches him do it, examining him with her eyes.

"I could use a ride," she says, in the tone of someone granting a favour rather than accepting one and Logan allows one corner of his mouth to twist upwards in reply.