Disclaimer: Rogue and Scott and their folk aren't mine, they belong to Marvel and Bryan Singer.
Note: I'm taking fencing this semester. Blame it on that.
The gymnasium is warmer than the Danger Room -- wooden floors glowing under a coat of scratched polyurethane, that peculiarly filtering light of afternoons through wire-latticed windows. It's always quiet. One wall is lined with mirrors, each as still as the next. The big room smells faintly of creased padding and laundered sweat.
It's older than it should be. Some other parts of the mansion are like that, too, worn out with exercise and anxiety. But he likes it here.
He teaches her here because she needs it. She's doing better, and he admires her for it, the way he'd admire an exhausted baby bird after watching it struggle free from its shell. Only he knows that the shell's a lot thicker than it appears. And he figures, if she has to struggle, then he'll help.
Jean gave him an odd look when he proposed the idea, but he watched her eyes heat as she began to like the thought. His virtue excites her lately. She wants him to have as little in common with Logan as possible.
Maybe that's not fair. But he's always so fair to Jean, sometimes more than fair.
He walks through the gym in his white-soled sneakers, which he stopped to put on just outside the door. The equipment is stored in the second metal locker on the left. He gets out two masks, two jackets -- he knows her size -- a set of breastplates, a cup, and two foils. Both have French grips. He tried to start her on a pistol grip, but he made the mistake of telling her it would be easier. She just looked up into his face, close to hers because he was standing over her shoulder to adjust her fingers, and said softly, "Scott, I'm not handicapped, I'm just a freak. Teach me the hard way." So he did.
She's late today. She's often late. She comes in eight or nine minutes past three, hair wild and floating around her face, and starts apologizing profusely for a few moments until she notices his smile and realizes that he doesn't mind. Then she starts to smile, and rushes off to change. Her heavy black boots mark the floor as she runs.
He does drills against the wall, bends her foil to make it flexible. When she comes back she's a different creature -- hair pulled back severely, the streak of white like the cold tail of a comet against her dark head. She doesn't smile as much in her fighting mode. He likes her focus; it'll benefit her fighting technique. She does smile when he zips up the back of her jacket over her light turtleneck and gives the velcro at the top a little flick. "Thanks," she murmurs, looking down to tug the edges of the jacket's sleeves over her short fencing gloves.
"Of course," he says. He always manages to zip his jacket on his own, before she arrives. He's flexible. And he hates to admit how frightened he is of the touch of her hands on his back, even through a layer of stiff white cotton. But touching her is all right, somehow.
He tries not to analyze himself too much.
She does her stretches, and a few drills, while he practices against the far wall and glances over only occasionally to check her progress. When she's done, she walks over. He hands her the smaller mask, the one without modifications for his visor. She tucks it under her arm and steps back, face smooth. Her sneakered feet form a neat right angle, and when they salute her dull blade cuts the air perfectly. Sometimes he's a little scared of how fast she learns things, as though she can draw the world in through the dark sink of her eyes, not just through bare white skin.
"Fencer ready?" he asks lightly. She doesn't laugh often, but when she does, it's a sweet sound.
"Ready."
He drops easily into en-garde. "Well, go ahead and fence, then."
Last week she had to defend herself with only parries and ripostes. He watched her hate that lesson. Every time he would approach, stepping carefully, her confident stance would fold in on itself until she could only back away from his attacks. He tried to explain that a collapsed defense is a breached defense, but she just gave him a look and he let it go.
Today he's decided to make her attack him. She stands in the same place, forcing him to wait, and he can see her closed lips through the grid of the mask. Finally she begins to move. She likes small steps; she's a teasing attacker, manipulative and cautious, but her lunges are quick and direct. She tries to stay away from him.
Today she starts the same way. Little steps, her eyes anchored on his bell guard and the line of his arm. Good. The rubber tip of her foil toys with his. He's going to have to teach her how to disengage soon, or she'll learn it herself, and possibly wrong.
She makes a half-hearted lunge at him, extending a little too high, and he knocks her blade out of line and drifts a touch under her arm to her belly. Her foil falls to the side. Stepping back, she sighs. "Sorry, Scott. I'm a little ... distracted."
He wonders if it's Bobby, Remy, or homework, this time. Or if she's thinking of Logan.
That last thought makes him feel so sorry for her that he drops his arm and shakes his head at her. "Let me attack first for a while, then, Rogue. You need some parrying practice. Okay?"
Her masked head dips in a heavy nod. "Sure."
His first attack is simple -- he beats her blade to the side and starts to go in for her target area, only to find the tip of her blade back against his neck almost immediately. "Uh, Rogue?"
"Yeah?" Her foil doesn't move.
"That's off-target." Which is putting it mildly.
Instantly the faint pressure is gone. "Oh, I'm sorry! I was just trying to get my defenses back quickly-I-"
"Don't worry about it," he says gently. "En garde."
This time he lunges at her, straight, and she blocks it with a well-aimed parry and just about manages to get him with her riposte. He tells her to lunge next time, and prepares to go again.
"Scott?"
He looks up.
"Can I try it again? Attacking, I mean?"
"Absolutely," he says, and takes a deep breath.
She comes at him slowly, so slowly he can see the attack begin in her mind and slide down her arm to the tip of her foil. And of course he parries and ripostes -- but she parries that strike, and her blade slides beautifully past his moving wrist to press into his chest just below his sternum.
It's her first good true attack, just on instinct, the way it needs to be -- the way it should always be with her. He eases away and carefully takes off his mask, and after a quiet second she takes off hers. Her hair has escaped its ponytail and a few white tendrils cling to her slightly sweat-damp face, the brilliant pink of her cheeks.
"I did it?" she asks, grinning now, the accent stronger than ever. He nods at her, grinning back. "I scored a hit?"
"A touch," he says. "You scored a touch."
Her smiles fades. She's silent for a moment. Then she nods, decisively, and he watches as that fighting focus seeps back into her body and crushes whatever sad weak part had drained her smile. "Good," she says, and puts on her mask again. He watches her tiny reborn smile disappear behind the metal grid, and he doesn't mind, because even as it vanishes he remembers it again, and it's beautiful. Just beautiful.
The End