It’s 2am and Rogue’s eyes are closed.

She wishes she could dream, or at the very least sleep, but for all the training she’s had that day (surely evidenced by the bruises that rise so easily to the surface), she isn’t tired at all.

There is a piazza in Tuscany, Erik says, with a vineyard so close by you could almost pick the grapes for the wine yourself.

And Rogue listens avidly, moulding her imagination around the scene, even as she knows that the pictures that develop in her mind are not from imagination alone. Just as she knows that he visited the piazza every day he was in Tuscany, not for the views or atmosphere she’s sure would be found in a country as romantic as Italy, but for the boy who waited tables in a nearby café.

His eyes were blue, his lips full and pink, and Erik drank espresso in solid white mugs as he read his morning paper, and watched the boy with an expression knowledgeable enough to make the young man’s cheeks flush.

She very nearly sighs, her envy is that acute, and carefully doesn’t mention the way the sunlight gleamed on the boy’s shaven head.

What happened? she asks, and Erik doesn’t bother to pretend innocence in the matter.

Instead, he shows her: rapid images that slow and reverse, snap together to form a story, a coherent plot. She sees: Erik, turning the page of his paper, and setting his mug down on the gnarled white-iron table. The boy, approaching with a shy vulnerability and an offer he’s certain can’t be refused. Erik, coolly assessing the boy, snapping his paper closed, leaving.

Why? she cries, tone drenched with dismay. Why did you do that? He offered himself to you and you… God, that’s just so… callous.

Half of my enjoyment in the affair was the challenge of it, making the unattainable… attainable. Was there a point in continuing the chase after that, do you think? he asks, and Rogue doesn’t know how to reply. She can’t agree with him, because he’s *Magneto*, and he’s *wrong*, but she can’t quite figure out why, or how to explain that to him.

So she says nothing, shuts down her mind until all she can feel of him is the faint residue of his laughter.

The following day Logan sees the dark smudges beneath her eyes, and she imagines they look like thumb prints pressed into her pale skin as identification, as proof of purchase. Ownership, she thinks, and shudders a little, but the notion doesn’t frighten her as it perhaps should; instead, she feels a curious thrum of something she’s not yet certain enough of to call anticipation, and she shrugs a little when Logan asks how she’s been sleeping.

“Got my nightmares, eh, kid?” he asks, and she ducks her head, lets her hair slip forward in front of her face to cover a countenance she knows is guilty.

Not because she’s lying to him, exactly, but because she likes it. Likes that he feels responsible for her, for what he thinks he’s done to her, likes that that makes him more malleable, easier to manipulate.

And when Erik slides back in, sly and pervasive, she thinks that it must be his thoughts she’s channelling, his need to control and strategize.

A little, perhaps, he allows, but you can’t blame everything on me, now can you?

Of course I can, she thinks, and though she doesn’t direct it towards him, he hears her anyway.

Indeed. I could be influencing your thoughts, unpalatable as that may seem, or… we could simply be more alike than you’d prefer to admit.

No. I’m not like you, she says, and he smiles, all sharp edges and cruel lines.

Come now, Rogue, he chides. That isn’t true at all. If we’re to be anything with one another, let’s at least be honest.

But Rogue doesn’t want honesty, doesn’t want to know what she knows or who she sympathizes with  -- Ignorance is far from bliss, he inserts, before she closes the door on him -- but when she leaves the kitchen with a worried Logan trailing her, she feels oddly disloyal.

What’s odd is that her loyalty is not, has never been, his, but rather belongs to Xavier. To Logan. To those who have shown her they care, have proven themselves.

And yet when Xavier gently suggests a sleeping pill to help her get a little rest, she shakes her head, says she doesn’t want to start relying on medication. Lies through her teeth.

Rogue gets into bed, closes her eyes, and waits; not for sleep - no.

She’s waiting for a bedtime story.
 

end