Preview: The Way of the Rogue

[scribblemyname]

Disclaimer: Marvel owns Rogue and Logan and Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. The story's mine.

This is one of the scenes from the first chapter of The Way of the Rogue: "Vagabond."

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They were on the road again, motorcycle wheels hitting the hard pavement of the open highway.

"Where we headed?" Rogue had asked him.

"North," was her only reply.

North came to have a special meaning for her. North meant freedom from constraints, from boundaries, and from relational ties. North meant Logan and wildness and untamed urges. North meant distance, time, and space separating her from all that had gone before. North meant the future and leaving her past behind.

They crashed in nameless motels with letters missing in their flashing signs. They got up early, ate at roadside cafés, hit the asphalt before nine o'clock, used rest stops and gas stations three or four times a day, and put miles and miles between them and Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. When money ran low, Logan left her with the bike and took on a bar to earn some quick cash in a cage fight or two. He never came back to her too bloody. His healing factor kicked in before he even made it out the door. He taught her how to tune the motorcycle, to yell bloody murder when he popped a wheelie, and to wear clothes that showed skin.

"I'm not sure about this, Logan," she said uncertainly when he first dragged her into a clothing store in New Hampshire.

"I am."

He bought her leathers and tight-fitting tops with straps and short sleeves. He got her a jean jacket as durable as his own and dispensed with her gloves, despite her vehement protests.

"I can't just go around touching people indiscriminately. What if I have to shake hands with someone?" she demanded, still not comfortable with this skin.

"Don't then." Logan finished the task without apology. "Just be rude."

"Like you, huh?" Rogue crossed her arms and stuck out one hip, giving her best narrow-eyed glare and her thickest honeyed Mississippi drawl.

He just shrugged at her. "Call it like it is."

And all her huffing and fuss would not change his mind.

He taught her to laugh. She laughed more on the road with him than she ever had in her entire life. The laughter drowned out the insidious, malevolent whispers in the dark corners of her mind. It kept her sane.

At night, when she would collapse across yet another thin, lumpy mattress in some unknown dive—at least it was clean—then they would come out, slowly, melting into her half-asleep mutterings and tosses and turns of the darkness woven around her. She dreamed their dreams and thought their thoughts and relived things she had never experienced. She woke up screaming, panting, or sweating every morning.

It didn't matter.

Cold shower. Hit the road.