Author: Khaki
Category: General/Humor
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: If I owned them, would I be writing fan fic?
Archive Rights: Just ask.
Author's Notes: This takes place shortly after the end of the movie. Can you tell I need a holiday?
Summary: What does Rogue do when she needs a vacation?

Marie woke out of a dead sleep when a pillow slammed into her head.

"Up and at 'em, Rogie," an irritatingly chipper Jubilee sing-songed.

Marie groggily cracked open her eyes to see her yellow-attired roommate turn back to applying make-up, then closed her eyes again. She'd had a horrible night, besieged by not only Logan's but also Erik's nightmares. In fact, she'd only been able to fall asleep an hour before now.

"C'mon, sleepy head," Jubilee said, yanking off Marie's cocooning blankets and leaving her exposed to the cool air of the room. "We've got poetry recitals in English and a history midterm. You can't lie in bed all day."

But that's exactly what Marie wanted to do. She was too tired to go to classes today. In fact, she was too tired to even bother living today. She mumbled that sentiment to Jubilee as she buried her face back down into the pillow.

Jubilee was relentless. She opened the curtains, allowing sunlight to beam onto Marie's face, and then turned the radio on full-blast. If Marie was going to get any rest, she needed to take drastic measures.

Closing her eyes and concentrating, Marie spoke to the males who outnumbered her in her head. Logan was strongest, but Erik and David were well represented. After eight months, David was comfortably established in the back of her mind, but Logan and Erik were new and didn't get along. They'd settled into an uneasy truce for sanity's sake, but neither of them were too happy to be sharing such close quarters. None of them liked being so strongly reigned in by Marie, either, so she figured they'd all benefit by her little idea.

'I need a break,' Marie thought to them. 'I'm going to take it. You need a little bit of freedom. I'm going to give it to you. Logan, you get 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Erik, you get 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. David, you get 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. I'll take over after school. Sound good to everyone?'

At their mental agreement, she thought, 'Good, I'm gone,' and escaped into her memories.

She remembered a day spa she'd gone to with Emily for her birthday about a year ago. They'd been completely pampered all day and Marie wanted to experience it again. She smiled when she opened her eyes to see Em's smiling face.

"Oh, Marie, this is so exciting. I love your Mom."

"Isn't she great?" Marie enthused. A day of pampering and then a night of partying. Who could imagine a better sweet sixteen present?

Marie soaked in a mud bath, basked in the textures of an exfoliating facial massage, felt every last muscle surrender to relaxation under a masseuse's skillful hands. It was everything she needed. Months on the road, relentless interior voices, terrifying death threats, painful machines, all of those memories faded into the background as she succumbed to the pleasant sensations.

Before she knew it, it was 4 p.m. and time to take back control of her body. When she did, she found herself restrained to a bed in a metal room.

"What the hell?" she said, pulling at the padded leather restraints without success.

"Help!" she yelled, pulling at them harder.

Jean walked over and looked down at her with undisguised pity.

"Just calm down," she said in a slow, easy voice. "You're safe. Everything's going to be ok."

"Jean, let me outta these," Rogue demanded. "What's going on? How did I get in the Med Lab?"

"Rogue?" That was Jubilee's voice. Yep, there she was, coming up on the other side. "Is it really you?"

Marie rolled her eyes at her friend's question. "Of course it's me. Who else..." Then, she realized what must have happened. "What did they do?" she asked.

"Rogue," Jean said, now coming to understand that the girl was back in control. "I'm going to release the restraints now, but you can't leave yet. I need to observe you a little longer."

"Anything, Jean, just take 'em off." Marie answered, eager to be free.

Jean did as she said, and Marie sat up on the bed, folding her legs underneath her.

"Ok, Jubes, spill it."

Jubilee sighed and started her story.

"I think Logan took over first. You growled at me when I got you out of bed, and you refused to wear anything remotely stylish, pulling on a black T-shirt and your gardening jeans. You even started to leave without doing anything to your hair, and when I insisted you fix it up a little, you stuffed it into a hat and called it good."

Marie groaned, but let her roommate continue.

"The real clue was at breakfast. You had ham, eggs, bacon, sausage. Girl, I think you took out an entire farm in one sitting."

'Logan!' Marie mentally reprimanded.

~Sorry, darlin', I was hungry. You don't let us eat much.~

"Anyway, I think English class was the most interesting," Jubilee continued.

"I didn't."

"Oh, yeah, you did. When Mr. Summers told you to get up and recite your poem, we heard all about a girl from Nantucket."

"No! Logan!"

Logan retreated to the back of her mind, escaping her mental lashing.

"Yeah, you were acting real weird. Just sat in the back for the rest of the class smoking a cigar and making comments about the poems."

"What else did Logan do?"

"That's about the worst he got. Well, besides flirting with Dr. Grey all through biology."

Marie groaned. Great just great. You take off one day and everything falls apart.

"Logan left about midmorning and then Magneto took over. He was... interesting."

"Erik? What did he do?"

"Well, you know how we had that history exam?"

"Yes," Marie drew out the word into a sentence.

"You finished in about fifteen minutes, and spent the rest of the time criticizing Miss Munroe's questions and teaching a bare bones history of oppression and how we mutants must fight against the majority for our very survival."

"No."

"And then, in physics, you called the professor 'Charles' and told him that he was a fool for believing that humans would ever accept us. Oh, and then you took over the lesson."

"What?"

"Yeah, taught us all about magnetic fields with visual aids and everything. Thanks, by the way. All that magnetism wiped my English paper off my computer disk."

"Sorry, Jubes. It wasn't me."

"Yeah, well, that wasn't the worst. You left lunch early and were standing bare ass naked in front of the full length mirror when I got to the locker room for gym."

"What?!?"

"Yeah you kept staring at yourself until we started changing. Then, you just sat on a bench and watched while we changed. It was really creepy, Rogue. When you pulled out a camera, we called Dr. Grey."

"David!" Marie yelled. "You little pervert!"

She could feel David's presence retreating to his usual place in the outer realms of her mind as she fumed at him.

"Dr. Grey and the professor both scanned you and said they couldn't feel you in there, so they called Logan."

"What? Why'd they call Logan?"

"We thought he'd be able to draw you out of whatever fugue state you'd fallen into," Jean answered, coming back into the conversation.

"Oh no," Marie groaned.

"You have to understand, Rogue. We thought there was something terribly wrong with you," Jean explained.

"I was on vacation," Marie muttered.

"What?" Jubilee and Jean asked simultaneously.

"Vacation. Everything's happened to me so fast and with all these nightmares making it hard to sleep, I needed a break."

"So you went on vacation," Jubilee repeated, "in your mind?"

"Seemed like the perfect place at the time," Marie turned to Jean. "Can't you call Logan off?"

"He's probably well on his way by now. You could talk to the professor..."

"I'll do that," Rogue said, scooting off the medical bed and walking towards the door.

"Rogue?" Jubilee said.

"Yeah?"

"Clothes."

Marie looked down to find herself clothed in knee-length, open-at-the-back hospital gown. Looking up at Jubilee, she asked, "Bare ass naked?"

"Yep."

"Dammit, David. I am so gonna get you."

If it was possible, David retreated further into her subconscious.

Once she was dressed in dirty, grassed stained jeans and her oversized black T-shirt, she walked to the professor's office accompanied by Jubilee and Jean. It seemed like they were afraid to let her out of their sight.

She didn't bother knocking, just opened to the door to the professor's office and said, "Professor, could you find Logan and tell him..."

Her sentence trailed off as she saw the man sitting in one of the plush visitor's chairs.

"Tell me what, kid?"

"Logan. Wha... what are you doing here?"

"Was in Toronto when I heard you were in trouble."

"Not in trouble," Marie corrected. "Just taking a break."

"A break?"

"I... I just needed... well, a vacation, you know? From class and stuff."

'Great, Marie,' she berated herself. 'Show off that amazing vocabulary.'

"Well, I was thinking of taking a break, too," Logan answered.

"You were?"

"Yeah, was just talking with the professor about it. Why don't you and I take a break together?"

"What? On the road?"

"Nah, here. Just hang out, talk," he shrugged. "Relax."

"That sounds really great, but," Marie looked up at the professor. "what about class? I thought you wanted..."

"This is about what you need, Rogue, not what I want," he reassured her. "You can pursue a GED when you're ready. Plenty of students have done it before."

"Yeah?" she asked with a smile. The first strain-free smile she'd had in months. "Yeah, I'd like that. Just a month or so to get settled. That'd be great."

Then her smile faltered, "But, Logan, you don't have to stay here 'cause of me. I'll be fine."

"Why d'ya think I was in Toronto, kid? Didn't find anything in Alberta. I was heading back here."

"Really? Ok, yeah." Marie smiled again, ready for a real vacation.

The End.