Carol flew for hours, until she was completely exhausted. She'd cried most of the way, letting the winds dry her cheeks. She hated Rogue. She hated Logan. She had lost her body and her health to Rogue years earlier. Now, thanks to both of them, she had lost her home and her future. They weren't going to stop there, though. She could hear them inside her mind, and now they wanted her life.

Well, she wasn't just going to lay down and die. She'd figure out something. She'd find a way to go back to college. She'd change her name, change her appearance, and live a new life. But how do you hide from a telepath? She was sure that by now, they were tracking her, and despite the mental shielding she had learned at the school, she wasn't strong enough to hide from the professor.

She landed on the outskirts of a small midwestern town. She didn't know the name of the town, or even what state she was in, but she needed to rest.

Walking into Mary's Diner, she plopped down in a booth as worn out as she was. It was pitch black outside, probably 1 or 2 in the morning, and she felt lucky that the place was still open. As it was, there was only one other customer, an older man sitting at the counter.

"What can I get for ya, hon?" the kind, middle-aged waitress asked, shuffling over to the booth. Taking in Carol's rumpled clothes and red, puffy eyes, she asked, "Are you ok, honey?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Carol answered, although she felt far from fine. She ordered an early breakfast, and closed her eyes, trying to push down the voices that were screaming in her head to go back.

She sat there for an hour, her meal long gone, just resting and trying to work out where she would go from there, when she heard the bell on the restaurant's door jingling. She turned and saw a familiar, old face.

'How did he find me?' she wondered, her thoughts racing. She'd thought she would be safe here for a couple more hours, and of all the people she'd expected to see, he was the last on her list.

"Hello, my dear," the refined voice said. "May I join you?"

Carol nodded dumbfounded, and watched Magneto sit across from her in the booth.

"What are you doing here? How did you know where..."

"My dear," Magneto said with a light chuckle. "You don't think I let Charles' school go unmonitored. I knew the instant you left, and I know why you left... I have a proposition for you."

"DAMN IT! Look what you've done!" Logan shouted at the room full of X-Men behind him. He glared out the window after Carol, flying away with his Marie's body.

"What we've done, Logan? Who's the one who frightened her so badly?" Jean asked, her voice cold. Logan could tell from her scent that she wasn't so unemotional, though. She reeked of fear and self-doubt.

"If *you* had all done your jobs in the first place, Ms. I'm-a-Psychic-I-Can-Help-You, then Carol would never have been able to keep Marie's body! That bitch had no right to stay in there, shoving my Marie to the side! Damn it all to hell and back, Jean, she blames Marie for her death when it was no one's fault! And she'll never let Marie have control again, if someone doesn't do something to fight her from the outside. You all are too busy being pure and shameless to do anything," Logan said hotly, turning to face them. His eyes blazed. "If someone--and of course, there's no need to name any names here, is there?--had bothered to *look into her mind*, then maybe you could have realized that Carol wasn't only one in there! But, no, you had to stick with your damn ethics. TO HELL WITH ETHICS!"

Logan walked forcefully across the room, shoving Scooter out of his way. He made it to the door before anyone else managed to speak.

"Where are you going, Logan?" Professor Xavier asked.

"I'm going to find that bitch, Chuck. And when I do, no matter what it takes, I'm going to make sure that she isn't in control of Marie's body anymore. Got a problem with that?" Logan asked with a low growl.

Professor Xavier was silent as Logan slammed open the door. Everyone else kept their mouths shut until he was out of the room. Then all hell broke loose.

"How dare he--"

"I can't believe he--"

"Carol couldn't have kept that secret--"

"*Someone* should have guessed--"

"It'd be great to have Rogue back again."

The last comment brought the silence crashing back down on them own. The speaker, Jubilee, stood up.

"I'm gonna go with him. He's gonna need help convincing that girl to let go, and he won't be able to hurt her to help Rogue. I can," she said simply. With that, she walked out the open door.

Logan found the motorcycle he'd seen Scooter working on and grinned ferally. It was fitting that that asshole could supply his ride once again. He was just throwing his leg over the seat when Jubilee walked into the garage.

"I'm coming," she said.

"No, you're not, kid. There's only room for two on this bike," Logan said gruffly. He appreciated that Jubilee, once she realized that Marie was alive, wanted to help, but this wasn't a job for kids.

"That's okay," Jubilee said. "I've got my own."

She hopped onto a mint-condition Harley that looked like it had been ridden often and cleaned well. She pulled her shades down. "You ready to go?" she asked.

Resigned, Logan nodded and gunned the engine.

"I'm offering you a place in the Brotherhood of Mutants," Magneto continued.

The Logan within her mind raged, wanting to rip apart the man in front of her, while Rogue cringed, wanting to get as far away from Eric as possible. Carol wasn't sure what to think. "I've fought against the Brotherhood for years. Why do you want to recruit me now? How could you ever trust me?" Silently, she added, 'How could I ever trust you?'

"I'm approaching you now, because for the first time, you're out from under Charles' influence. You've finally seen the true colors of your compatriots and the darker side of their rose-colored world."

The man in front of her, a man she'd been taught was one of her worst enemies, was making surprising sense. Carol answered him quietly, "I could never fight my friends."

"Your 'friends' want to kill you. They want to rip your mind from the body you fought to keep alive after the accident; the body you struggled to rehabilitate; the body that is rightfully yours. They want to turn it back over to the weak girl that stole your life."

"How do you know that? There's no way you could know that unless..." As Carol looked in his eyes, she saw her suspicions confirmed. "You've got someone in the mansion."

Magneto smiled, and cryptically replied, "I like to stay informed."

"Who? How long?"

"Who is not important. As for how long, long enough to know that they've been taking advantage of your gifts. They've been using you, but they don't care about you. In the Brotherhood, you could be so much more, Carol. You at least need a place to stay, to sort out your thoughts, to become yourself again. I know that animal made you absorb his personality. We can give you a haven, and time for him to fade."

At Magneto's mention of him, Logan growled, a growl that came out on Carol's lips. The loss of control scared her.

"Sorry," she apologized, "you made him mad."

"I understand completely, my dear. The man is a cretin. Let me help you."

"What the hell," Carol said, rising from the booth and following Magneto out of the diner.

Charles Xavier tossed and turned for hours, but sleep eluded him. How could he have been so blind? How could he not see that Rogue had survived after the accident and had languished under Carol's control for years? He hadn't believed that Carol could take over if Rogue's core personality had been intact, and he had just relied on the assumption, never bothering to check its validity. He had maintained his moral superiority and allowed Carol's reticence to be mind-scanned dissuade him from trying.

On the other hand, Carol, like any other person, deserved a chance at life. She had spent years in Rogue's body, doing the physical therapy, getting back into peak shape, fighting to regain a normal life. Didn't that earn her a right to continue to live?

It was a staggering moral dilemma. One he wouldn't solve tonight, that much was certain. He was concerned for Carol and Rogue, and he had to know where she (or was it 'they?') had gone after fleeing the mansion.

Making his way down to Cerebro in the pitch black of early morning, he affixed the helmet on his head and followed the hint of Carol's mental signature. She was in a run-down diner, the faded name, Mary's Diner, was too generic to tell him exactly where she was. She was getting up from a booth and walking towards the exit, following..."

Xavier ripped the helmet off his head, letting it fall on its stand. To the empty room, he whispered, "Eric."