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** ** indicates telepathic communication.
‘ ’ indicates thought
“ ” indicates spoken words

*BEEP BEEP BEEP…..*

The uniform tone of the machine is the only thing piercing the silence of the room.

He is lying there, as silent, as still as a corpse, which he might have become had he held on for much longer.

He is there, while she is here….a clear sheet of bulletproof glass separating them.

She has been sitting here for hours now. She doesn’t notice the time…doesn’t need to, doesn’t have to, doesn’t want to….because seeing him like this, each second lasts for an eon.

Yet, she is here, on this side of the screen and not on the other.

-----

“How are you feeling Rogue?” she tentatively reached out to lay a hand on the girl’s forearm, a pair of opera length gloves separating her dusky skin from the girl’s pale….untouchable one.

“Much bettah ‘Ro,” the accent and words are still a jumble of various regions, sexes and backgrounds, but the underlying personality is once again her, the young woman who had just started becoming comfortable with calling her older teammate and more importantly former teacher by her name instead of Ms. Monroe.

“Good,” Ororo smiled at the recovering girl, already knowing what the next question was going to be.

“How is he doin’?” And there was it.

“He is still unconscious, but recovering,” the smile faltered a bit, both from the intense gaze of the girl and from the memory of seeing the bursting open of the skin of the girl’s savior.

“You went to see him?” The question held a foreboding tone.

“Yes,” the answering nod causing a lock of platinum-white hair to fall free from the sky-blue clad shoulder.

“You shouldn’t have.”

----

“You shouldn’t have.”

‘Three words….just three,’ she rolls them over in her head. Three words that might as well as have been three slaps….if not for the great sadness with which they were spoken.

People give her an odd look when they see her like this. By people, she means those who have come to either see him or see her.

Rogue came primarily for him. Kitty and Jubilee accompanying her, both for their unconscious friend, mentor and former teacher as for her.

Seeing them like this, she remembers the time when they were the three charter member of the Logan fan club. That is what the other students and sometimes even the teachers used to call them.

Charles’s visit was just like it always is. He seems to possess an unlimited treasure of caring which he uses for everyone…every time. Checking and failing yet again to contact Logan telepathically, he had come to her. He didn’t have any words or sermons. He merely smiled his enigmatic smile that said, ‘I understand.’

Jean and Henry have been in and out, sometimes alone, sometimes both of them together. They come, check his stats, update the chart and leave. Henry sometimes sits and spends some times with the fellow feral, reading one of his novels or scientific journals to pass the time.

Jean on her part has been a great help, even though she carries some major scars from her last dalliance with her patient. She usually comes during the day, her own condition, warranting that she avoid stressing herself…not that there any dearth of it nowadays.

Davis, for his part, just came once. It seems that someone has informed about the her past with the newcomer. He is giving her the time and space that she do desperately needs right now. The all are. All except one…..the one who never does, never needs to. Remy.

----

Remy came and sat beside his sister, draping an arm over her shoulders, as he was wont to do.

‘’e saved her,’ his voice had carried a respect for the unconscious Wolverine that she had never heard before. Maybe it was because he finally realized that a man who was ready to lay down his life to say another, couldn’t be all bad….or maybe he had just gotten over his own twisted sense of jealousy he had towards the Logan-Rogue relationship.

“Yes,” Ororo nodded her head. “He promised to take care of her, no matter what.”

“Uhmm-hmm,” the charmer’s free hand played with the unlit cigarette. Even he respected the no-smoking rule, except for his near blowout in front of Cerebro.

“’e’s gonna be okay,” he patted her shoulder, pulling her to rest her head against him.

“Yes,” her answer seemed somewhat hollow, except for the hope that the unbeatable healing factor would once again trounce over absorbing skin.

Both sat in silence for the new few minutes, before Remy dropped his own bombshell.

“You love ‘im?”

-----

“You love ‘im?”

‘Three words….just three,’ this time she does chuckle, humorlessly.

Remy’s questioning statement carried three words, the same as Rogue’s semi-accusatory advice.

She wanted the answer for why the girl made hers, but doesn’t want the same for herself….she didn’t answer to Remy’s question and she still doesn’t. ‘Hypocrite,’ the sound comes from somewhere within her.

If she was a paranoid person, she would suspect that the two lovers are playing a game of good cop-bad cop with her, one trying to yank her away from the man lying on the other side of the mirror, while the other trying to push her towards him.

-------

“I shouldn’t have?” Ororo felt as if she had just been punched in the gut. “Rogue, about what….”

“He smelled you,” the girl cut off her explanation. “He smelled another man on yah,” she repeated softly.

It was then that Ororo realized the pained look on the girl’s face wasn’t completely hers, there was Logan in there too.

‘Another man,’ Ororo’s eyes clenched as she recalled the potency of Logan’s senses.

“Ah, don’t know what it is supposed to smell like,” Rogue continued innocently. “But the him inside me, I got quite a few of his memories, an’ this one wuz one of the newah ones. He knows that you haven’t done IT, but also knows that you have someone and he wants to do it with ya.” The accent was still a jumble. “He says he can smell his arousal on ya.”

----

‘He smelled Davis on me,’ Ororo is rubbing her forehead in an unsuccessful effort to relieve the tension.

She had been with the blonde Davis before the x-wing returned with its precious passenger, and even though they have yet to cross the sexual line between intimate friends and lovers, she and the new man in her life have become quite close.

‘Closer than what YOU let Logan be,’ there is that accusatory voice again. ‘You were so adamant in getting to know him as a friend that you forgot…neglected what you had initially started with.’

‘I was getting there,’ she tries convince that inner Ororo. ‘Until he….until HE betrayed me…us,’ she doesn’t want to say until he went behind my back and slept with Jean.

‘Hey, it was you who said no commitments until we commit. So how come there was an US to betray at all,’ she now realizes that the voice is a part of her conscience, one that she hadn’t been able to convince that what she made…tried to make Logan do wasn’t her own fear of being betrayed and left alone….like Forge did all those years ago.

----

Logan had come out and told her right on her face that he liked her and want to be with her and wanted to know if she wanted the same.

“I know ya want me,’ he was completely like himself, without even the barest shred of tact. “What I wanna know, is it just for fuckin’ or do ya really wanna be with me?”

“Logan!” the dumbstruck Ororo had tried to feign shock at such an *absurd* insinuation.
“’Ro, I can smell it on ya,” that took care of that. “An’ the nose knows. It never lies.”

“If you are so sure Mr. Logan,” the well practiced and time perfected Ice Goddess persona was up in an instant. “Then why even bother to ask.”
“I asked darlin’,” her cool, detached demeanor did not have the desired effect….in fact it had no affect at all. “’cuz that is not all what I want from you. Not anymore. Earlier, yeah, that would done the deal. Not now….now I want more.”

“More?” snowy eyebrows knit together in confusion.

“Yup,” he nodded, stepping closer to her, allowing her to clearer inhale his outdoorsy scent, mixed with his usual cigar and leather odor.

“I want all of ya.”

------

‘Well, he didn’t want me when he was with Jean,’ the solitude allows her…forces her to face the issues she had thought long gone.

‘You forget Ororo,’ the internal war doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. ‘You were the one who said that you would be friends until YOU were comfortable enough and that you didn’t want him to push you anything, just as you wouldn’t push him. You didn’t want anything to change, just because you were trying to prepare yourself for a relation.’

‘He sure didn’t change,’ her bitterness surprises even her. The fact that her conscience seems to be chuckling at her doesn’t help matters.

‘He never said he was going to be monk waiting for you to come down from your high seat. He agreed to your wishes and promised to never bring it up...until you came forward or until he managed to hold back,’ the previous point is brought up again. ‘Well, that day, when he came to you….it was him not being to hold back any longer. And what did you, you plucked him out of your life and discarded him like a weed.’

‘I didn’t ask him to leave,’ her eyes catch the return of the person who has been there longer and more times than anyone else has, maybe except her…but that too because she was still recovering herself for half the time he has been there.

Moving with Logan’s borrowed finesse, Rogue prowls to and settles herself in the chair kept next to the bed for any visitors. Looking up, she waves bye to someone. Craning her neck to see who that person is, Ororo’s lips twitch at Remy’s familiar form. He too has matured to Rogue’s attachment with Logan and realized that especially now, when the Canadian is so strong in her, Rogue has an intrinsic need to be near him. It is as if the Logan inside her wants to be near the actual one.

‘You didn’t have to,’ the mental admonisher doesn’t let up. ‘He knew that wouldn’t want him in your life, not for quite some time. So he made things easy for you and gave you what you wanted.’

‘I didn’t want him to leave the mansion,’ she reiterates her point.

‘You wanted him to stay?’ the reverse is thrust at her.

‘I didn’t want him to leave,’ she repeats, not able to clearly say whether she wanted him to stay.

------

Lost in her thoughts she missed the twitching of an index finger from the bed, while the glass prevented her from catching the soft groan.

What she did not miss….what she could not miss, was the affect it had on the ever vigilant and since her re-absorption, an extremely attentive Rogue.

“Jean, Hank,” she leapt for the door, her cry echoing in the empty corridor. “Come quick….

….Logan is waking up.”

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