InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "It's big, heavy, and wood."

pasterased (pasterased) wrote in colligo_threads,
@ 2011-08-10 14:38:00

Entry tags:

james howlett, rogue

Who: Wolverine, Open
When: Wednesday morning
Where: outside the library
What: Logan arrives in Colligo and is promptly thrown out on his rear.
Rating: Teen for some cursing, threats of violence
Status: Open

The first thing Logan thought, when he opened his eyes in a strange room full of books, was that he really should be used to waking up in strange places by now. The second thing he thought was that he really should be used to waking up in strange places with no idea what the hell was going on. The third thing he thought was extremely impolite and would have earned him a glare from Charles, but there were walking suits of armor and they were throwing him out the door. Logan thought he was more than justified in swearing in his own head under the circumstances. His instincts were screaming at him that something about the knights was just wrong, and not only because they managed to overpower him long enough to toss him down the front steps.

Logan's reflexes, thankfully, were excellent, and he managed to land on his feet at the base of the steps despite his rather forceful removal from the building. He scowled and unsheathed his claws before charging the doors in an attempt to get back inside. He wanted answers, damn it, and he wasn't going to let a pair of walking tin cans keep him from getting them.

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untouchable
2011-08-10 09:40 pm UTC (link)

Slow down. Right. Rogue could do that. Sure it was a little tricky considering how thrilled she was at the moment but she also knew, if she didn't, Logan was only going to stay just as confused about the situation as he already was. And anyone who knew him knew that was not a good thing. So she stopped speaking, drawing in a breath to buy herself a few seconds to organize her thoughts. The smile remained, as bright as ever, but when she spoke again she was at least making a little more sense than before.

"Right. Sorry," she began, the smile turning a touch sheepish for a second. "This place is called Colligo. It's..." She paused, realizing just how ridiculous what she was about to say sounded but not knowing any other way to say it. "It's a city on a planet that... well, it's not Earth. And I know how crazy that sounds but it's true as far as any of us can tell. Time moves weird here, too. I've been here for months now."

Another pause before Rogue added, "It's safe, though. Or, at least, safer than back home so far. Nobody even cares about the whole mutant thing, here." And that's where she stopped, resisting the urge to hug him again and instead waiting, sure he would have questions and hoping she could answer them without confusing him too much more.

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pasterased
2011-08-10 09:48 pm UTC (link)

Everything Rogue had to say sounded completely insane. Logan narrowed his eyes and discretely checked the air again to be sure she wasn't drugged or drunk or sick. She seemed fine. Healthy. Just ... crazy? No. Not Rogue. She couldn't be, could she? Logan leaned in and rested his hands on her shoulders, expression serious and concerned. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Absolutely sure? No one's been messing with you? Promising things?"

He hated to consider the possibility, but he knew thanks to Charles that there were mutants in the world who could do things like that, reach into Rogue's head and make her believe things that weren't true. To Logan's practical mind, that was more likely than the story Rogue had spun. He reached up with one hand and carefully pushed her hair back from her face as he got a good, close look at her, careful to avoid skin-to-skin contact. Not that it would do much damage, not to him, but he knew how much Rogue disliked her powers and didn't want to upset her by inadvertently activating them.

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untouchable
2011-08-10 10:13 pm UTC (link)

She knew she sounded crazy. She'd even said how crazy she knew she sounded. However that didn't make any of this any less true. Granted, she had spent the first few weeks in the city convinced it was some kind of telepathic prison she was trapped inside but all of that had slowly eased over time, after meeting enough different people, and had evaporated fully by the time the 'Christmas in July' had run its course. Which, she realized as Logan did his best to try to discreetly check that she wasn't being manipulated in some way, she had the very same thing that had convinced her with her right now.

Her smile turned a bit softer as she peered up at Logan. She trusted he wouldn't touch her skin-to-skin. If anyone understood how much she hated having that happen to her, it was him, and she knew if he ever did touch her it would be for a damn good reason. Still, she stayed still as he examined her, just in case. When he'd finished, she simply slipped two fingers into the collar of her shirt and drew out the present the city had given her less than a month before.

His dogtags. They clinked together lightly as she pulled them from her shirt. "These showed up a few weeks ago when whoever is running this place decided we needed a Christmas in July," she said quietly. She pulled them from around her neck, holding them out for him to examine. "They're yours. The same ones you took back when you showed up at the school before Stryker attacked."

It wasn't until after she'd said the man's name that Rogue realized Logan might not even be from that point in time. He could be from before all of that happened, from the time he spent on the road after leaving the school the first go-round. Desperately she hoped that wasn't the case, otherwise her having the tags wasn't going to seem strange to him at all, yet another part of her hoped that was the case because if he was from before Stryker came after the school that also meant he was from before Jean had died. And Rogue would give anything she could think to give to keep him from still experiencing the pain he'd felt at that particular loss. Even if it did mean he was going to keep right on thinking she was insane for however long he stayed in the city.

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pasterased
2011-08-10 11:30 pm UTC (link)

There were plenty of arguments Logan could have made, plenty of reasons that Rogue could have been wrong, that Logan himself was hallucinating or being fooled. He ran through a few of the scenarios in his head, but in the end, he kept coming back to those dog tags. Logan took the offered tags and chain for inspection. He checked both sides of the tags, imprinted with the familiar "Wolverine". He even went so far as to smell them, a quick inhalation of air that told him his eyes weren't fooling him. Rogue had handed him the same set of tags he'd left with her the first time he'd left the mansion.

"Huh." Logan didn't say anything further as he handed the tags back to Rogue. Not at first. It seemed the kid was telling him the truth. They were both stuck in some weird city called Colligo ("Latin" his brain supplied from that store of knowledge he couldn't remember building but occasionally tapped into by accident) and they weren't alone. He hadn't missed the way Rogue had been talking, as though she knew other people in the area.

"Okay," he finally said, once he'd processed everything. "So. Somehow somebody kidnapped you, and you've been gone for months, but no one bothered to tell me. Is that about right?"

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untouchable
2011-08-11 02:05 am UTC (link)

There were parts of it Logan didn't have quite right. Most of those parts, Rogue would admit, were due to her own mindless babbling before finally taking a moment to think about what she was saying. However his misunderstandings still brought a smile to her face, a sort of reassuring grin that made her admit just how glad she was to see him despite him not quite grasping the situation.

"It's not that no one bothered to tell you," she corrected as delicately as she could manage. Which wasn't much, truth be told, when there wasn't any easy way to really say 'nope, you're wrong, try again!'. However rather than tacking on the last, Rogue instead tacked on what she hoped was at least a somewhat helpful, "Like I said, time moves weird here. So it's not that folks didn't tell you I was missing but more like whenever I show up back at the school, they won't ever know I was gone." She paused again, head tilting slightly to the side as she studied the man in front of her for a second. One of the problems, though, with pinpointing Logan's age is that it was all but impossible to do so. He simply didn't change. Ever.

Which is precisely what prompted her next question. A few hesitantly asked, "What is it that you remember last? I mean, as far as the school goes, and stuff. What's the last thing that happened?" Not always an easy question to ask someone who suffered from amnesia but Rogue could only hope that he would realize she wasn't asking for that reason, necessarily, but for another reason entirely.

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pasterased
2011-08-11 02:17 am UTC (link)

Had anyone else he knew asked those questions, except maybe Jean or the Professor, Logan would have taken immediate offense. But, it was Rogue asking, and even though she was a kid and sometimes did dumb kid stuff, she also had a way of knowing when she should be careful with him, and he had a feeling she was doing that now. He appreciated the gesture, though he would swear up, down, and sideways that he didn't need her to look out for him. It shouldn't be her job, not as young as she was.

"I was on the road. About two days out from the mansion." Logan was going to leave it at that until he thought maybe Rogue would need a bit more. It wasn't the first time he'd left, after all. "After that whole mess with Stryker," he added, hoping the pain of recent events didn't seep into his voice. He hated getting emotional, especially in front of the kid. She didn't need him to be a sobbing mess. She needed him to be the man who'd look after her, no matter what, even if that sometimes meant leaving her behind.

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untouchable
2011-08-11 02:44 am UTC (link)

'After the whole mess with Stryker' was all Rogue needed to hear to know exactly when Logan happened to be from, timeline speaking. Anything beyond that would wind up discussing Jean, or the chaos that had followed Jean's demise, and Rogue would rather avoid all of that if at all possible. So instead of pressing for more information, she simply nodded knowingly with a touch of sympathy and knowing shining in her eyes. "Right," she replied softly, her expression flickering ever so slightly to reveal the sorrow at the losses that would follow Jean. Then she forced it away, focusing back on how happy she was that Logan was finally in the city.

"Well, when you go back, you'll go back to the same time you left. Same as me." Another pause, with Rogue trying to decide what next to add, before finally offering, "Like the Professor. He's here, but younger. Right now he's really young but normally, here at least, he's still pretty young compared to what we're used to." Which, again, Rogue knew wasn't all that informative when Logan was used to dealing with a much older version of the man, but she held out hope he would be willing to at least suspend a little disbelief and trust her on this one.

And, if not, she figured she could always tell him about the man who would some day be Magneto. Or Mystique. If the two of them being so young didn't convince someone, she wasn't sure what would.

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pasterased
2011-08-11 02:57 am UTC (link)

"Okay, now you're pulling my leg," Logan immediately protested. "What do you mean, the professor's young? I like the guy well enough, but he's no spring chicken, if you take my meaning." Despite his own unsurety about his past, Logan knew he wasn't a spring chicken himself, so he didn't feel bad being blunt about how old Charles was. "You've got to start making sense from the beginning, kiddo, or we're going to have to keep rewinding this conversation every three or four sentences. I know you're a product of the digital age, but they still have rewind buttons on those DVR things. I've seen 'em."

This place kept getting stranger and stranger. Logan thought he might wind up with a headache, trying to keep track of it all. His healing factor did nothing to eliminate stress. It just let Logan cope with it without developing an ulcer. "Why don't you start from the top and give me a list. Things Logan should know about Colligo before a stranger brings them up and he punches them in the face. That sound good to you?"

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untouchable
2011-08-11 01:11 pm UTC (link)

Rogue grinned, unable to help herself. She knew this was a fairly serious situation and knew, without a doubt, that Logan did need to be brought up to speed before coming across somebody who was liable to say something he didn't like, but she couldn't help but smile. She had just missed him too much not to be beyond thrilled that he was here, even if it was going to take him a little time to adjust to everything. However even with the grinning, she still did her best to explain.

"Okay. Time moves weird here. I already said that. Sometimes people show up from our time, sometimes from the past, sometimes from even further along than us." She paused. "Well, that last one hasn't happened yet but it's possible. The point is, the Professor's in his late twenties, early thirties. So's Mystique. Who goes by Raven and isn't, you know, evil." She paused, a slight crease in her forehead appearing as she tried to say the last part without any hostility. "And Magneto. He's younger and not evil yet, either."

She knew that Logan would realize how hard it was for her to admit something like that, considering her history with the metal-controlling mutant, and could only hope that Logan would also realize if she was saying it, it must be true. Not wanting to dwell for too long on that, though, she moved on by adding, "And it's not just us. There are others here. People from different realities or something. So far, there's a lot of us at the school but the only one I really know from our time is Kitty. And we all stay here for however long, then when we go back home nobody even knows we were ever missing. At least, that's what I've been told by people who've left and come back."

Rogue stopped there, having more she could say but not wanting to overwhelm the guy too much. So rather than press forward she instead grinned once more and asked, "With me so far?"

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pasterased
2011-08-11 04:11 pm UTC (link)

"I think so?" Logan responsed tentatively. It was a lot to absorb. Charles was young. Magneto and Mystique weren't evil. And were also young. No one was every going to realize any of them had ever left home, because some sort of time travel was involved. There must be something keeping them from telling other people they'd gone missing, too, because Rogue wasn't the sort of girl to be kidnapped and then not tell anyone. That part probably bothered Logan the most, thanks to his murky history and already missing memories.

Then again, Rogue and Kitty? That was a scary thought, too. Logan was the sort of man who understood that all men should be a little afraid of the fairer sex, and teenage girls in groups were more terrifying than any adult woman, hands down. Especially teenage girls who were friends. He suddenly found himself feeling sorry for Charles having to face Rogue and Kitty without the benefit of prior experience.

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