Marvel owns the X-men, no profit is to be made from this work.

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Jumping on out of a rig that was hauling heavy machinery bound north, Remy turned to look for Jubilee only to see a figment of a story made real, that of how a girl from Mississippi had ended up in a part of Alberta where she had no business being. Stumbling back a step, his cold, dead heart hurt to imagine the lady he loved, then just a girl herself, hitching rides for Alaska on empty pockets, and an even emptier belly.

Sucking a breath of exhaust that stunk of diesel, he looked for the bar as she must have back then, finding something that didn't much match the picture she'd painted for him.

"What?" asked Jubilee as she stepped up beside him, her boots crushing the gravel beneath them.

"Nothing, it just not be what I expected."

Pinching her lips in a puzzled moue, Jubilee stared at the bar in a squint as if she were trying to see it through his eyes. Giving up with a dismissive shrug, she followed after the driver that had been so kind as to offer them a ride. She was right about that too, Jubilee, being that it wasn't gonna be that hard to find a ride to the bar, not with it being the last stop on the way out of town. Especially not when there was a whole mess of empty highway standing between someone and their destination.

Catching up to her with a few easy strides of his long legs, her curious crimson eyes peeked up at him from beneath her hoodie. She had something on her mind, whether a question or something else he didn't know, but the cat sure had her tongue, so he prodded her in kind, "What?"

"Nothing," Jubilee parroted, "You're just taking this a whole heck of a lot better than I figured you would. I guess having a friend of Logan's as a friend of yours means you're used to some weird in your life..."

Another dismissive shrug, and that was that as Jubilee skipped ahead to lead the way. The bar was still the better part of the gravel parking lot away, a lot filled with logging trucks, big rigs, and just about everything a man could imagine in between. Acting on an sudden urge, he pulled out his phone to snap a picture, knowing deep down in his gut that Rogue would want to see what had become of the joint where her life had changed.

A glance saw everything perfect, from the neon that littered the built up four bay garage, the signage advertising beers meant to wet one's whistle, and to the girl caught staring back at him looking so out of place herself as she stood there in the foreground. By the time he looked back, though, Jubilee was just a flash of yellow vanishing past the door.

Feeling a tickle of Deja Vu, something his Tantie always told him meant he was standing at a crossroad, but that was a road he'd crossed a long way back. In his gut he knew what lay on the other side of that door, a broken man running from the pain of letting down the lady he loved.

"Olly, Olly, Oxen Free, homme. You been running long enough, it be time you go home."

Putting one foot in front of the other, the long road he'd taken was running short, and he was mighty ready to turn tail and go home himself. Even if that meant dragging Logan back with him, punching, kicking, and clawing all the way.

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Sucking down a beer before his next fight, usually by this time o' the night he would have been done, usually. Tonight was different in that there was a crew of men bound for parts unknown, men that made a living by breaking their backs with all of a cup of coffee and hard tack in their belly before the dawn even had the dignity to break.

Beer, whiskey, and women were all going to be in short supply, aside from the kind of gals who a fella trifled with at his own peril, the hard working women who weren't none afraid of showing up the boys. He'd met women like that, ladies who held a special place in his heart, women better off being as far from him as he was from decent folk. Staring up the next son of a bitch looking to try his luck at the title, Logan got to his feet.

"The Wolverine!" So the announcer reminded the crowd, much to their adoration.

The bar he knew, the cage he'd fought in, and all the blood he'd spilt were all long gone, just dust and ash after a fire had claimed it all. The only thing to make it out of the fire that had taken down the original joint was his legend, a legend that marked him as the meanest son of a bitch to ever fight in the Cage. These days folk knew what he was, the beating he could dish out, and the beating he could take. It got him paid, and got him laid, so he couldn't give two squirts of piss either way.

"Ya heard the only rule that matters?"

He was only asking for the poor kid's sake, just like he had for all the rest who had climbed on in to prove how big their balls were. Like all the rest, this fella just went and gave a stiff and stern nod. And like all of them before, it'd be his funeral if he couldn't listen to sound advice, cuz kicking the Wolverine in his nuts was a good way to piss him off, all bets are off after that.

The bell rang to call for blood, and blood it would have.

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The joint was packed, the crowd filled with an energy that would have last call as far off as the coming dawn. Try and cut them off and there would be a riot, better for the bartender to just take the cash and pass off shots, beer, and the bottles of spirits to keep the party going.

Sitting safe at the edge of the crowd, right up there on the bar top so she could see the fight, Jubilee nursed her beer with a slow appreciation. Kicking her heels, in some dark corner of her eye she saw Remy stalking the crowd, stopped time and again by another pretty lady looking for some company. Each time he shot them down with a silver-tongued promise he was out to break, his heart already belonging to the hottie whose pictures he kept safe in his wallet.

Keeping Remy in a watchful corner of her eye, she looked back to the cage in time to see Logan thrown up against the steel mesh, his every pained grunt and hard breath ringing loudly in her ear. His skin slick with sweat, Logan looked to have finally met a challenger to put up a good fight for the title. With cash getting thrown down for last minute bets, right along with the promises of who would be paying for the next round, she watched Logan surge forward with a savage roar that was answered by the crowd.

Blood hung in the air with every punch, sprayed and spattered with a snort from a busted nose. The crowd might scream for blood, but she hungered for it, watching transfixed with her teeth clenched tight at the lip of her bottle of beer. Rolling her tongue against the cold glass, her long and slow sip tasted wrong against what she wanted, what she needed.

"P'tite?"

And just like that, the crowd separated her from the fight, the blurring of time and distance coming into crystal focus. When Remy had taken a stool next to her, she didn't know, a slip that brought with it an embarrassed blush to her cheeks. Pounding back the last of her beer, she raised her empty bottle and flashed two fingers to call for the next round, one for her and her new friend. Peeking at Remy from on high, she found him staring up at her in surprise.

"What? I'm eighteen, heck...I'm almost nineteen! That's legal here."

Scooting off the bar for a seat on the stool she'd been using as a foot rest, she turned her back to the crowd, to the cage, and to the call for blood that had so many hearts running hard and fast. Sucking a calming breath born from habits that died hard, a fresh beer was a welcome distraction, one that came with some quiet conversation.

"How old...?" asked Remy, considering his next words carefully with a swig of his own beer.

"Hard to believe, huh? Almost nineteen, and here I still look thirteen." Rewarded with a nod, a thoughtful one, the crowd filled up the uncomfortable quiet that had fallen between them.

"Merde, I must have needed this. Never have a beer taste this good before," croaked Remy at last, chased with a weary and brisk burst of laughter.

"That's one of the perks, everything tastes better. Which totally helps take the edge off, too. So don't be afraid to go for the top shelf stuff. Trust me on that, I'm an import only girl now, unless I get my hands on a good craft brew. Otherwise it's fuck domestic, bitches!"

Her own laughter had it some good company with his, an impish smile coaxing from him a sly smirk that saw them sharing a long overdue toast. Seeing one round turn into the second, all on Logan's tab, she found the courage for a question of her own, "So, who's the hottie?"

"Rogue," whispered Remy.

"She in trouble? I mean, you were all about finding Logan to save her when I found you..." ...when I turned you.

"She is sick in a bad way. Henry, our Doctor friend, he gives her weeks at best when I last call him. But don worry, P'tite, it only be this morning when I make that call."

Losing any and all appetite for her beer, she looked up at him with her crimson eyes brimming with unnatural tears. And as one spilt, he leaned in to gently kiss her cheek, chaste and innocent...or it would have been if not for how he licked his lips in parting. Blinking away those telling tears, a glance towards the cage had her think again of that picture which had started all this, the one of a younger Rogue happily posing with the man who tied them all together, her grumpy Wolvie dude.

"Okay, I'll bite. How's Wolvie supposed to help her? Gonna get him sick and hope the Doc can get all Hollywood, ya know, cure what she's got with antibodies or something?"

Suffering his sweet, sincere smile as he looked down on her, Jubilee found herself with a hankering for something other than beer. Adding a glass of Johnny Walker to the tab, Logan had only himself to blame for introducing her to Scotch, and just about every hard liquor she liked.

"You be right when you ask if she be different like Logan, and she is. Rogue, she can borrow what make a man like Logan heal, all it take is a touch, or maybe just a kiss. Like Sleeping Beauty, neh? He get to be her prince..."

"Oh, well..." Jubilee sputtered, her eyes darting to and fro from her glass to Remy in a rare bit of nervousness, "Something tells me Logan will be up for some hand holding, especially if he's known her since she was what? Fifteen, sixteen?"

Wondering just how many birthdays it had been, since that girl standing with Logan had grown into the woman Remy was out to save, a collective gasp from the crowd told that Wolvie's fight was just about over. "Ouch, even I heard that. Dumb dude Wolvie's fighting totally musta went for a head butt, close quarter like."

"The Winner, and reigning champion...the Wolverine!"

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The fatigue of a night of fighting dogged him, even if he didn't have a bruise to show for all the blows he'd taken, because he sure as fuck felt the each and every one of them. Feeling the hungry eyes of his admirers in passing, there would be time enough to pick the lucky lady who got to go back with him so he could lick his wounds, as all he had the mind for at the moment was a beer and whatever the kitchen help had whipped up to fill the ache of an empty belly.

"Beer," Logan grunted, hitting the bar hard.

Now and again a man came along to put up a fight, and damn if that last fella didn't have him wondering if they weren't so unalike, just another mutant out to keep his head down somewhere far from civilization. Not that he was hiding what he was, let 'em come...

Pounding back his first without even tasting it, a second waited with a shot of whiskey meant to sooth away the ache of sore muscles.

"Pipsqueak's got herself a friend tonight," the gal tending bar mentioned, "She's been racking herself up a few rounds with him, too, but ya didn't hear that from me."

Leaning in a little further, he saw her alright, his lil Darlin' sitting a good ten stools down with a fella who didn't look like he had any right to be keeping her company. Rolling the stiffness out of his neck with a satisfying crack, it was rare enough to see Jubilee in there, let alone talking to someone. Most nights she'd be running with her Puppies, the wolf pack he'd gone and introduced her to.

Like most folk, the only time she came to the bar was when she was looking for a drink, of one kind or another. And as tuckered out as he was, the last thing he wanted to do was go and play blood bank for the lil lady, so seeing her nursing a Heineken didn't phase him nothing. No, it was the fella holding her hand that he had issue with, "Thanks."

Snagging a pint for a stroll down those ten stools, the closer got the emptier they were. That was something that had nothing to do with his reputation either, or hers for that matter. No, that was the gussied up tool making ape remembering there were things out there in the dark that were worth being afraid of, and it didn't hurt any less every time he saw it.

"You gonna introduce me?"

Ignored for the time it took for her to find the courage at the bottom of her glass, he didn't need to see her stained cheeks to know she'd been crying, not when she cried blood. It hung in the air and clung to her, to her and her dandy fella who had the good grace to keep his trap shut. Even if he looked like he'd just gone and seen himself a ghost...

"Uh? Ya know what, Wolvie dude, aren't you supposed to be wheeling some broad in the back of your camper right about now? And by wheeling, I mean fucking." She might as well have said she was upset for all the gutter trash that came spilling out of her mouth.

"Excuse me if I got interrupted after hearin' you've been racking up a bill on my tab with a fella yer fine holding hands with." Not his best comeback to the smart mouth the kid had, but the truth could be messy.

Now, there was no faking that she'd only just notice that herself, especially with the way she jerked her hand back as if she'd just been shocked. But that didn't change the fact of what had been happening while he'd been on in the cage. Like any girl the thirteen years she looked, Jubilee rolled her eyes and let go of a long and suffering breath, only to go and glare up at him with murder in her eyes.

"Logan, meet Remy. Remy, Logan. There, I introduced you two, just like ya both wanted me to! Now if you'll both excuse me, Ima gonna go and get me some air so you guys can whip out your dicks and find out whose is bigger!"

Any other night and he'd have had his wrist at her throat, right up until the pain bled away to a pleasure he didn't rightly appreciate. The thing was this wasn't any other night, not with how the stench of a predator stayed strong and truth even with the distance his lil lady went and put between him and her. With a look to the fella she'd been keeping company, that meant one of two things, and this far into the middle of nowhere meant the odds of meeting another fang were damned slim to none.

"For fucks sake, I'm gonna need a drink for this, ain't I?"

"You and me both, homme..."

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Had they been in the cage, there would be a new king, all thanks to the two photos he pulled out of his wallet. Sitting there at the bar with the Big Bad Wolverine himself, Remy let the man have all the time he needed. Swallowing down a shot Jack Daniel's, the lady behind the bar had been kind enough to leave the bottle without his asking, something he'd have to tip her for.

"I promise her I find you, and she make me promise that I tell you this. She didn't do it for no boy."

Try as he might to lie to himself, Remy was surprised to see Logan silently shed a tear at these words. Pouring himself another shot, he passed the bottle down, sharing in that moment the second toast he'd had that night.

"She's, she's not," Logan croaked, his voice a harsh whisper, "Is she?"

"Rogue is sick, the only good news be that the cure not stick." Not that he'd known that back when they'd met, or that she'd even taken the cure for that matter, that had been her secret.

Seeing Logan's shoulders sag under the weight of a guilty conscience, he couldn't begrudge the man that. He'd been prepared for worse this whole time, every minute of every hour of every day being a moment he dreaded getting a call from Henry, one that would tell him he was too late.

"...and I bet you had plenty of other stones to go turning over before ya found this one?" Slugging back another belt, Logan stared down at that photo of him and the gal on his arm.

"The last should have been the first? Even Rogue say she not remember how she got here, not when she was just a girl hitching a ride for Alaska. The story she tell, its not like there anything for you to come back to here anyway, no?" Just a cage meant for a wild animal.

"I had my reasons."

Feeling the eyes of the other man looking straight through him, Remy didn't even need turn his head to know that Logan was looking on out the door that Jubilee had once again vanished behind. Hearing a heavy sigh, though, had in it the end of a promise to be kept, one to be sworn with a drink amongst men.

"Westchester?" Logan asked, raising up Jubilee's forgotten tumbler now freshened with a finger of Jack Daniel's.

"Oui, Westchester." Remy replied with his own shot full of Tennessee whiskey running wet down the glass.

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