Title: Don't Look Back
Category: X-Men: The Movie
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst/Romance
Pairing: Wolverine/Rogue (Logan/Marie)
Word Count: 463
Summary: When she leaves the mansion, she tells herself it doesn't hurt.

Don't Look Back
-Drabble-

When she leaves the mansion, she tells herself it doesn't hurt. She refuses to look back, to worry or regret or feel anything akin to fear. She says silent goodbyes to all of those who've been there and those who wouldn't hear them even if they were said aloud. She wonders if even in death a telepath can hear voices and then shakes her melancholy thoughts away. She's got a stash of money in her pocket that makes her feel like a target rather than give her comfort. She buys a bus ticket to the farthest place she can get to if she catches a ride that night. She buys a pop and a bag of chips that she knows will be stale before they even exit the vending machine, but she can't waste her money on anything edible, not when she's got a life to plan for now. A life without the limit her skin previously gave her; a life without the friends she made, or the boyfriend she had, or the fearless hero she'd stapled herself to the side of some years ago. Now it was Marie's time to live and Rogue could only watch from the sidelines.

With a bus ticket in hand and a stash of money now hidden protectively in her backpack (she dearly hoped Logan understood her taking it), Marie Wolfe stepped up the metal stairs to a sparsely filled bus, ready to face her new life, come whatever. She took a seat somewhere in the middle, put her bag next to her in hopes of a ride alone and stared out the window at the dying sun as it ended the last day Rogue would ever show her face to those she had thought she fit in with.

With a shudder and a rumble, the bus started its journey to a small little town whose name alone spoke of anonymity and quiet. She remembered a time when she'd been a young girl, setting out to live in Alaska somewhere, as far as she could get. And now here she was, alone again and running for the same reason; once it was her mutation and now it was the lack thereof. Seemed it had its way of haunting her no matter what she did.

Her bare fingers touched the glass window as they began their long drive, felt the cold seep inside and wet her skin with condensation. She hated the part of her that hoped he'd come running, that he'd appear beside the bus, a cigar between his lips, and ask her to stop, to give it a chance, to at least stay with him where she'd be safe. But he never came and she closed her eyes, deciding if she didn't look, she couldn't hope.