For Now (The Fuck Waiting Remix)

Remix Author: Katherine

Original Story: For Now by jenn

Summary: Rogue grows up. Logan waits.

Rating: R

Fandom: X-Men Movieverse

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Part One: At Seventeen

"What was it like?"

I was beginning to wonder if she’d ever spit it out. She’s been crouched in the snow several feet away for the past half hour, arms wrapped round her knees, watching me work on my bike. Okay, Cyke’s bike, if you want to get technical.

Not a fucking peep out of her til now. No ‘hello.’ No ‘how are you.’ Which is just fine with me, but that usually means she’s stewin’ over something and it’ll spill out sooner or later. A quick glance in her direction tells me she wishes she hadn’t opened her mouth at all -- lower lip caught between her teeth, her face flushed red. Not quite looking at me.

Eight months on the road by herself and I can still see everything she feels, just by looking at her. I have no fucking clue how she survived. Sometimes I hope she never learns to hide herself.

Turning back to the bike, I give her an easy out. “What was what like?”

She doesn’t take it. Marie is the type of kid to follow through on what she does, even if it’s blurting out half-formed questions in this soft, lost-sounding voice.

“The world.”

Shit. She’s not one for the simple questions, is she? God knows, to Marie ‘the world’ includes everything beyond the fucking fence, from Salem Center’s 7-11 to Tokyo and everything in between.

“Hmm.”

She ain’t allowed to leave the grounds, you see. ‘Not unaccompanied by a member of the team,’ so says Xavier himself. ‘Untrained and as yet unable to control her gift, she poses too great a risk to those around her. Her life here is a pleasant one, Logan, if perhaps a bit too controlled for your liking.”

I was basically told, politely, to mind my own damn business because he and the rest of ‘em know what they’re doing. If her life is so fucking ‘pleasant’ here, why the hell is she out here crouched in the snow, pulling her huge sweater over her legs, asking me to tell her about the goddamned world?

“Yeah . . .” she trails off, realizing there ain’t no way I can answer that question for her.

The fuckers are lucky I don’t just toss her on the back of my bike and take off for good. The only thing stopping me is the fact I know they’re pretty much right. This is a good place for her to grow up and and live around other mutants and get an education. And what would I do with her, out on the road? Tell her to park it on a stool while I fight in a cage? Haul her around with me while I search for my past? That’s no kind of life for her, either.

She’s shifting her feet in the snow, and even if she is completely covered up in layer after layer, she’s gotta be freezing her ass off. But she’s out here ‘cause I’m out here, and it won’t do a damn bit of good to tell her to go on inside. It’s like this whenever I come back -- she’ll hover and follow, watching me do whatever, just staying near me.

Like I said, she has a way of wearing her heart on her sleeve.

Any other kid and I’d tell it to her like it is and not mince words, either. Marie isn’t like any other kid, though. Actually, Marie isn’t like anyone I’ve ever known. She’s one of the very few, as far as I can recall, that don’t annoy me just by breathing.

Mostly she just sits close by, quietly watching. But then she’ll say something or ask something and I find myself telling her about all kinds of shit I’ve never talked about before.

“What did you do?” And maybe tomorrow or the day after, when she asks again in a different way, I’ll go into detail. But we’ve been out here too long, and while the cold don’t bother me a bit, I’m not about to carry her frost-bitten ass back inside.

I glance back at her, checking her mood. She’s watching me with those big brown eyes of hers, eyes that really are a bit too big for her face. She’ll grow into them sometime soon, and here’s hoping she grows into that nose, too. Even if she doesn’t, it’s easy to see the kid’s going to turn into one hell of a knock-out any day now. Too bad she overdoes it with the scarves and gloves and anything else she can find to cover up every last inch of skin below her neck.

She’s clearly waiting for an answer that tells her all kinds of things about me and my life and how I live it. Makes me wonder about how her absorbed memories work, or if they faded away until there’s nothing left but spontaneous, inappropriate growling and the kind of mouth any sailor would be proud of.

“What I do,” I finally say, shrugging. She’s kind of cute when she doesn’t get her way - the kid’s an inch away from out-right pouting at that answer. “Just move around.” And I turn back towards the bike before I actually smile or something.

“You were in Canada again?”

“Yeah.”

I can hear her shifting around on the ground again, trying to keep warm or get warm, either one. Getting herself as comfortable as possible.

I can practically smell her irritation with that kind of answer. If I bothered to look, I’d find her eyebrows scrunched together, eyes narrow, mouth frowning in the kind of way only people with a mouth like hers can frown.

“What was it like?”

Frustrating. Empty. A complete waste of my time. She knows I left the last time because Xavier gave me what he thought was a rock-solid lead, a clue to my past and who I used to be. I should have told her not to get her spirits up, because I pretty much knew before I was even out of New York state that I could chase my own tail and come up with as much information as I was likely to find in Canada.

“Uninformative, Marie.”

I don’t feel like rehashing the whole thing with the kid, not today. I don’t want to tell her all the ways I came close to finding something concrete, only to come up short. Like always. Went from Calgary to Vancouver, down into the States through Michigan and some parts of the East Coast.

I didn’t find any mutant kids needing to be rescued, either, which Xavier isn’t likely too thrilled about, but fuck it. I agreed to come back and fight with the X-Men whenever he contacted me by speaking directly to my mind -- freakiest fucking thing ever, by the way -- and I agreed to send any mutant kids I stumbled over his way, too. In return I’d have a home of sorts, a permanent place to keep my stuff, a bed of my own that I never have to wonder what kind of bugs have been crawling over.

Not a bad offer, especially considering the fact that Marie lives here, but that wouldn’t have been enough if he hadn’t also promised to work with me on recovering my memories and finding out what happened to me.

His lead had me tracking down two men reported to have been part of Weapon X. One died several years ago at age 87 and the other lives in a nursing home and can’t speak. I have to say, I didn‘t exactly look too hard this time for mutant kids to send Xavier, but on the other hand, any I‘d find would more than likely prefer to stay in their shitty situation than climb into a truck with me and my good mood.

And most mutants in trouble just don‘t have the courtesy to find me in a bar and hide in my truck.

Meeting Marie in Laughlin City was a fluke I’m not likely to ever repeat. And thank God, too. Yes, she’s the reason that my life has some sort of stability to it now, which I didn’t even realize I wanted. Yes, she’s wormed her way into my heart whether I liked it or not. But for fuck’s sake, one lovesick seventeen-year-old is just about all I can handle per lifetime.

She sighs, annoyed by my answers or the fact that I’ve spent most of the past half-hour turned away from her, I don’t know. She’s been out here long enough, anyway, and I’ve done about all I can on the bike until a part I ordered comes in on Tuesday. And truth is, I want to spend some time with the kid, pay attention to her even if Xavier and all the rest of ‘em say that isn’t exactly the best thing to do.

The whole damn school talks about us and wonders just exactly what kind of relationship we have. I know what it must have looked like when Storm and Cyke brought us to the school -- a grown, rough-looking man and a pretty, barely-legal Southern girl. Didn’t help matters when she came into my bedroom to wake me from that nightmare and ended up with three claws through her shoulder, and all they saw of it was Marie in a torn, clingy nightgown and me on the floor, knocked-out cold from touching her.

It’s been a little while since then and it’s clear that Marie isn’t my wh-- well, that we’re not together or anything like that. I might have crossed many, many ethical lines in the sand over the years, but the kid’s just that -- a kid, and I like my women grown, thanks.

So she’s got a crush on me. Big deal. Given everything that happened and how I, for whatever reason, seemed to be the first to give a crap-and-a-half about her, I’m not surprised. I don’t give a flying fuck what Cyke says about me spending time with her. She’s a friend, one of the few I have, and I’m not about to ignore her or brush her off for something she’ll grow out of.

And I miss her, especially when I’m in or around Laughlin City. Sometimes I find myself wondering if she has any school breaks coming up, and even more disturbingly, if she’d be any help if I brought her along with me next time.

I stand up, brushing my hands off on my jeans, reaching into my pockets for my gloves. While I’m here, I usually try to keep a pair of gloves on, ‘cause I’ve seen the kid sit there watching all the bare skin around her with this look on her face that makes me want to look around for Cyke because I feel like punching someone.

I walk over to her, pulling the gloves on. “Nothing to do right now?”

Her mouth drops open but she closes it immediately, biting back the smart-ass comment on the tip of her tongue. I have a pretty good idea of what she was about to say, and it’s hard, keeping a grin off my face.

“Not really,” she finally answers. In a place this big with this many people? On a school day? I’m wading in bullshit as deep as the snow drifts now.

I offer her a hand up, and the way she glances at it for a split second irritates the hell out of me. Before I have time to get worked up over the fact that nobody in this fucking place seems to have balls enough to touch her through several layers of material, she reaches for my hand and wraps her fingers strongly around my wrist.

As soon as she’s on her feet again I put an arm around her and turn back toward the school, and I wonder if this is a shock to her system, too. God damn, does no one touch this kid at all? Ever? My guess is no, if the sudden spike in her heart rate’s anything to go by.

After a few steps toward the mansion she sneaks her arm beneath my jacket, wrapping it around my waist and -- God. Well, maybe there’s another reason why her heart’s pounding. Cyke’s probably watching from one of the hundred windows, ready to shoot my old ass down with those fuckin’ beams of his.

If Marie were anyone else, I would have left her here and been done with it. Saved her life twice, job well done, too young to screw, toxic skin. But there’s something about her that forces me to care and hell if I know what it is. The fact that I care about anyone at all is strange to me.

“You up for a little workout?”

When I’m back here at the school, I always make a point to work out with her, for several reasons. For one thing, I’ve seen how Cyke trains the mutants Marie’s age, and I’m not all that impressed. Straight, honorable fighting is all fine and good, but Marie is going to learn how to use every goddamn dirty trick in the book so she can get out of a fight with her life.

And for another, it’s time I can spend with her that isn’t watched and criticized by everyone from Xavier to Marie’s little friends.

She shrugs her shoulders beneath my arm as if she doesn’t care one way or the other. As if I can’t hear the way her breath hitches just a little before she answers.

“Sure.”

Pulling away from her as we enter the gym, I reach up and ruffle her hair, messing it up, and that pisses her off. Her arm drops from around me, and she all but snorts in frustration as her heart rate slows a bit. Maybe this way she’ll focus more on what I’m teaching her, and less on the fact that I’m touching her.

She steps away from me, pulling off her jacket. Plopping down on the floor, she tucks her legs up under her chin, arms circling her legs again. There’s this look in her eyes, behind the sudden wide-eyed innocence, that just means trouble. It’s a mixture of irritation and orneriness, eyebrows just a bit too high for normal.

I strip off my own jacket, along with a few shirts as I wait for her to say something.

"Logan, can I ask you a question?"

Kid’s smart. I’ll give her that. But the thing is, I may not be quite sure when I was born, but I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t yesterday. I don’t trust that tone of voice.

God only knows what she’s going to ask me. She’s trying her best to look seventeen and not a fucking day older, all awkward knees and elbows and innocent eyes staring up at me. I ain’t buying it -- the kid has my memories, Magneto’s memories and a horny kid’s memories swirlin’ around inside her head.

“What?” I ask, and all but brace for impact.

She starts wringing her hands a little, just a bit, looking up at me like I have the answer to her every question. The hair on the back of my neck rises.

She holds the look for a moment, catching her full lower lip between her teeth. Then: “There’s this guy . . .”

Aw, fuck. She’s good.

I sit down across from her, wondering just how soon I can get away from her and this question. I know what she’s doing -- okay, maybe I shouldn’t have treated her like a kid just then. Because now I get to deal with kid problems.

It’s clear she’s out to make me squirm -- and part of me admires that. But I don’t want to sit here and talk about some sniveling twerp, whether he’s real or not. My gut tells me she’s making it up, though I’m not sure enough to call bullshit.

Because if she’s asking me now about boys, sometime soon she’ll ask me about sex. I sure as hell don’t --

“Hey.”

Goddamn. The kid’s got me so wound tight that I didn’t even notice Jean approaching.

I look up from Marie’s face to the woman standing behind her, up long legs and a slim waist, up over small, high breasts, her long, pale white throat. Red mouth turned up in the corners, green eyes smiling too. She’s got her hair wound up in a simple pony tail and my mouth is suddenly dry, wanting to taste her.

I’m up on my feet as she steps around the kid, moving toward me. “Jean,” I say, and even I can hear the relief in my voice.

There’s a twisting in my gut some would call a flutter, and I know she feels it too. I can see it in the way her eyes widen a bit, in the way her nostrils flare just slightly. I can hear it in the echo of her mind, when she touches my thoughts.

But this thing between us, whatever it is, won’t ever happen. She loves her boy, for whatever reason. I’ve seen the way she looks at him, the way they treat each other. If she cheated on Cyke, even with me, she wouldn’t be Jean.

And she’d wake up hating herself just a little more than she’d hate me.

I turn my thoughts back to Marie and her ‘situation’ just when Jean’s presence in my head grows. *Problems?*

It always takes me a minute to answer. Both Xavier and Jean taught me how to do this, so they could reach mentally reach me whenever I’m needed for the team, or if something happened to Marie.

*She’s asking me about boys, some guy in particular. I’m pretty sure she’s yankin’ my chain.*

Her head tilts a bit, questioningly. *Why would she want to ‘yank your chain’?*

The obvious responses are just that. Too obvious. *We were about to start training when I made her feel like a child. I think she’s trying to turn it around on me.*

*Smart girl,* the mental echo of her voice says, and she leans toward me, touching my arm. *You don’t need to be rescued, do you?*

*God. Please.*

She drops her hand, turning toward Marie with a little grin. “Rogue, why don’t you come by my office when you and Logan get finished?”

It’s an effort, but I manage to keep my eyes off her ass as she walks away.

Marie looks like she’s had the wind knocked out of her sails, poor kid. I know Jean’s not her favorite team member, and it ain’t that much of a secret why. She wanted to talk about boys, though, and by God she’s going to. Even if she has to make them up.

Just not with me, and not today.

I flex my fingers in the gloves, letting go of all thoughts of my Marie and boys her age sniffin’ around her. It seems like just yesterday she was pulling her gloves off in the cab of my truck, asking if I had anything she could eat.

“Get up, kid. Let’s do it.”

She rises to her feet, her body lacking the easy grace of a grown woman. She’s still in something of an awkward phase, still more child than adult, but she’s come a long way from the skinny kid I met in Canada.

Right now she’s still a girl. Tough, strong, and smart, not to mention beautiful, in a way that’s all her own. And soon she’s going to be a woman.

Sometimes I hate that she’s seventeen.

Sometimes I wish she’d stay seventeen a little longer.


Part Two: At Nineteen



The night guard on duty is already out of the little control booth when I pull up to the front gates of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. He starts walking over while I cut the engine.

“How’s it goin’?” he asks, handing me a clipboard and a pen when I’ve got the bike balanced beneath me.

I scribble down my information on the log-in sheet. Name: Logan ? Time In: 2352 Reason For Visit: I live here sometimes.

“It’s nearly midnight,” I tell him, handing him back the clipboard and pocketing the pen. “And I’ve been on the road since noon.”

He winces in sympathy, not even bothering to check what I wrote. He used to have a fit-and-a-half when he read over my entries, saying that I was filling them out in a ‘flippant’ manner and that might just be grounds enough to turn me away. So naturally I ‘flipped’ him a single claw -- guess which one -- and things have been much more pleasant between us the last year or so.

He steps back inside the booth, picking up a phone that links him to the campus security office. The cameras at the top of the gates move just the sightest bit toward me, and the guard gets a confirmation on my identity. Of course, I was being monitored as soon as I got within two miles of the place, so the check doesn’t take all that long.

Sometimes I don’t bother doing it this way, the ‘right’ way. I get over the fence without being noticed by any of the hundred hidden surveillance cameras on the grounds, into the school and my room without tripping a single alarm. It takes some effort and more than a little time, but the look on Cyke’s face when I show up at breakfast pretty much makes up for it. And then the next time I come back, the security’s a bit tougher to get past.

But it’s late and I’m fuckin’ wiped out. And that greasy cheeseburger I had for lunch was a hell of a long time ago.

The guard, Bill I think his name is, pushes a big green button and holds it down while the gates slowly open. He waves me through and I drive the three miles up to the front of the mansion, parking the bike near the front doors. Either Cyke’ll move it in the morning or it can sit there -- I don’t feel like going through the hassle of waking someone up this late so that I can park it inside.

Though the thought of draggin’ that boy out of Jeannie’s bed at this time of night just to let me park his own bike in the garage -- well. Not sayin’ the idea don’t have its merits, but I’m too tired and half-afraid of havin’ my brain fried by a pissed-off telekinetic telepath to even consider trying it.

The front door’s unlocked when I try it, and as soon as it’s closed there’s an electronic beep so high and soft most dogs would have trouble hearing it. There‘s a lamp on a side table giving off a soft glow, but I don‘t really need it to get around. I start heading down the second of three corridors, listening as nine interlocking deadbolts across all four sides of the door slide home with a series of ‘clicks’ behind me.

It’s nearly midnight on a school night, but there’s still a buzz of noise. Televisions left on or still being watched. Several kids whispering into their cell phones, and I think at least two are actually talking to each other. Faint, furious typing and mouses -- computer mice? Fuck if I know -- clicking away. According to policy spelled out to me by Cyke, Jeannie, Storm and Xavier himself, none of this should be going after eleven p.m. Heh. At the end of the hall, I turn right and head down the so-called Adult Wing.

Unlike the majority of adults that live and work here, I wasn‘t assigned one of the permanent-resident suites. Those are more like apartments, with living rooms and kitchens and multiple closets, things I don’t recall ever having a real use for.

I’ve got one of the four single rooms at the end of the wing, nothing more than a fairly large bedroom with a desk on one side and a smallish entertainment center set up against the other. There’s a small refrigerator by the desk and one big closet for everything from towels to clothes to whatever junk I’ve picked up along the way. A bathroom with a deep tub and hot water that never seems to run out.

I’ve even put a few pictures on the wall. Strange, huh? Shocked the shit out of me, too, and I was the one puttin’ the nails in the wall.

When I get to my room, I pause with my hand on the doorknob, a familiar smell tickling my nose. Opening the door, it hits me like wave, washing over me -- the scent of Marie.

She’s not in here, I can tell that before I even hit the light switch because for one thing, the kid snores like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Maybe she came in to do her homework or something and stayed for awhile, which God knows I don’t blame her for. If I had to live with two other people, no matter how much I liked them I’d want to spend time somewhere else, and hell, I told her she could.

The room’s a bit messy, pretty much the way I left it. Sketchbooks and papers still scattered over the desk, a few books on the nightstand along with a bottle of booze or two. Ashtrays left out. The bed’s unmade, which does surprise me a little, since the cleaning staff here usually goes ahead and does that when they bring in fresh towels and vacuum.

Oh well. They probably figured they’d have time to get to it before I got back or something.

The mattress sinks beneath my weight, creaking, and I’m about to unlace a boot when I feel a knot of material under my leg. Lifting a thigh, I reach under it and pull a wadded ball of silken material free from the sheets and, God, I don’t even have to shake it open to know what it is.

I’ve suspected it for awhile, but she’s in my room with me often enough to explain away her lingering scent -- we watch hockey games in several hour stretches when I’m home. She does some reading for school in here while I watch tv or sketch her or whatever.

It doesn’t take long to find the other glove. It’s tucked beneath my pillow, not balled up like the other but inside out, stripped from her arm. Now I know, without the slightest doubt, why my room smells so strongly of her.

Marie slept in my bed last night.

A weird feeling settles in the pit of my stomach, growing hot and moving lower. She slept in my bed, probably not for the first time, and of course, yes, that *is* the scent of her shampoo on my pillow, why didn’t I recognize it before? The myriad smells that make up Marie’s unique scent permeate the the blankets and sheets, the mattress and pillows, the entire bed.

I know what her sweat smells like from training closely with her, day after day. I know what her tears smell like from letting her cry on my shoulder. I know what her feet smell like when she peels her socks off at the end of the day. I know those smells and many more, and here they all are, concentrated in my bed.

I can all but see her sleeping here, stretched out on her stomach with a book in her gloved hand, long legs tangled in the sheets. Her long hair -- warm chestnut, platinum white, like silk to the touch -- spilling over the pillows. It’s nearing the end of May and the nights here are growing warmer, and I bet she started sweating when the air stopped moving, got hot and stripped her gloves off.

The scene shifts before I can stop myself from going there.

She’s still in my bed, naked now, but she ain’t sleeping and she ain’t alone. I‘m in bed with her, making her sweat beneath me, sliding a hand down over her side, the curve of her ass and her long lean thigh. Catching her behind the knee and pulling her leg up a little higher on my hip, sinking that much deeper inside her while her gloved fingers rake down my back.

It’s me that strips off her gloves, tugging them down her arms, off her hands, off her very fingertips. Letting the scraps of material get lost in the sheets and blankets around us. Pulling out of her incredible heat just far enough to thrust back in, deep and hard, her body arching under mine, nails digging into my shoulders with a sting they didn’t have before.

Her mouth against my throat while I move inside her, while we move together, gasping, biting sharply, sucking gently, licking my skin with the flat of her tongue. Telling me she loves me, over and over.

I can feel her breasts press against me, full and round, the perfect size and shape, nipples hard against my chest. Her body slick with sweat, arms and legs wrapping tight around me, and I work a hand between us to touch her, to stroke her, to make her burn even hotter for me.

She bucks wildly beneath me, beneath my hand, wet, so tight, *mine*, her voice crying out my name as she comes, wide brown eyes staring up into mine. My voice answering her, “Marie. Marie.”

Fuck.

It’s a minute or two before I come back to myself, and sweat’s just pouring off me. I need some air.

I can’t get the window open fast enough, breathing in deeply as soon as I do. I get my jeans refastened, standing there at the window and staring out over the moonlit grounds while my heart slows back to normal.

It’s not the first time I’ve thought of Marie like that. Most of the time, though, one or both of us is covered, or there’s some sort of sheet of flimsy material between us to protect my life and her mind. Sometimes when I dream of her, she’s stripped bare, wrapped around me, skin no danger at all.

Either way. Whether she has her skin under control or not, most aspects are the same. The . . . end result certainly is.

She’s usually around twenty or so, when I think of her and me, sometimes twenty-five. Old enough to have outgrown the crush and understand what she wants as a woman.

She always tells me she loves me. That never changes.

It’s important. In a way I never thought it ever would be. It’s part of the reason I leave often and stay away for weeks, months at a time. I want to give her time to grow out of the crush, move beyond it.

Then there’s this whole issue with Jeannie. You see, thing is, there are pretty much only two women on earth I fantasize over. And I only think of Marie like that when I’m not busy dreamin’ about Jeannie.

Because Marie is only nineteen, had her birthday a few months ago. She’s still a few years away from being anywhere near ready, as far as I can figure.

But as I stand here, beginning to catch my breath, a thought occurs to me.

What if she left those gloves for me to find?

What would that mean?

I need to take a shower.

-

A few hours later and I’ve washed the road grime off, changed clothes, watched some television. Too wired to sleep.

When I decide I might as well put my things away, since I’m awake and all, I realize I left my backpack with the bike. So after managing to get back outside, get my bag, and get back inside -- what with security, I put my boots back on in case I ended up climbing the wall -- I head in the opposite direction of my room, making a pit stop in the kitchen.

It’s been a hell of a long time since lunch.

The kitchen is impressively well-stocked. It’s not even the main kitchen, either, the one where they cook the majority of the meals with industrial equipment meant for serving large groups of people. This is just one of three ‘auxiliary’ kitchens, one per wing.

I grab a plate and pull a few bags of deli lunchmeat out of the fridge, along with some butter, mayo, mustard, and a jar of pickles. Right before the door closes I spot a bag of sliced smoked cheddar, and pull that out as well.

I bring everything over to the small dinner table tucked away in the corner, and head back long enough to grab something to drink, the loaf of bread and a butter knife.

Footsteps approach quickly, quietly, right as I’m taking the last bite of my third honey ham, smoked cheddar and turkey breast sandwich. I’m about to get up and see who it might be, runnin’ around at a quarter to four, but in walks Marie.

And from the looks of it, she’s on a mission, heading straight for the fridge like a horse with blinders on. She’s barefoot, wearing a faded blue, cotton v-necked nightgown that reached to mid-thigh. She’s thrown a fuzzy, ankle-length pink bathrobe on over it, whether for warmth or what, I don‘t know. Her hair’s a snarled, tangled mass hanging down her back and there are more than a few red crease lines on her face and throat from her pillow. The kid looks like a walking wreck. And yes, those are my tags around her neck, disappearing beneath the shirt to rest between her braless breasts.

I’ve missed her even more than I thought I did.

I watch, remaining silent, as she pulls the milk carton out and slowly pours a tall glass of milk, eyes darting toward the door every few seconds. As soon as that’s done, she’s back in the fridge, bent over, pushing things aside and digging around for something.

When she wiggles back out (which is a sight that’s gonna stay with me awhile), she’s got a can of beer in her hot little hands, staring at it like a winning state lottery ticket. Which surprises me, because I’ve heard her say more than once that beer disgusts her.

But here she is, hopping up on the counter facing away from me, popping the tab. She takes such a big drink you’d think she was dyin’ of thirst, throwing her head back and drinking until she has to stop to breathe.

A shudder wracks through her body and it’s then I realize that she does hate beer. But one of the guests in her head, namely me, probably has her cravin’ things she don’t need or want.

Before she has the chance to take another drink, I speak up. “When did you start drinkin’, kid?”

She jerks at the sound of my voice, turning around on the counter to stare at me with wide, startled eyes while I pull a pair of worn leather gloves out of my pocket and tug them on. She glances over the sandwich stuff on the table, evidence I’ve been here awhile, and then she’s back to staring at me like I’ll disappear at any moment.

“Logan?”

I’d tease her about her lack of observation skills, and talent for stating the obvious, but I’ve been where she’s at many a time. When you want a beer, you go get a beer, and you ignore everything that doesn’t help you get it any faster.

She stares at me a little longer, smile growing, and then she’s hopping down off the counter and I’m up and walking toward her. I take the beer from her, barely giving her bare hands a second glance before we’re hugging. She keeps her exposed skin away from mine easily enough, hands flat in the middle of my back, her face against my shoulder as she presses close.

After a moment or two, she pulls back far enough to look up at me, hands drifting down toward my lower back. “How was your trip?”

I don’t like calling them ‘trips’, though I guess that’s what they are. Trips away from home. Hmmph.

“Okay.” Unless I really have anything new to talk about, I usually leave it at that. No leads to my past. Two new mutant kids sent to the school. Did a bit of smuggling. The trip went ‘okay’. But Marie being Marie, she‘ll press for more information, so I add, “Damned cold, though.”

I take her by the arm and lead her to the table, watching as she takes some bread and spreads a little butter on it. For a minute or two I think I might want a fourth sandwich, but I figure I’ve had enough for the night. And I’ve still got that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, thinking about the gloves she left in my bed, and what they could possibly mean.

“So you gonna tell me what’s going on now, or do I guess?” I wonder if she even knows what I’m talking about, if she knows I’ve already found the gloves.

“Nothing. Everything’s been pretty quiet,” she answers with a shrug, a strange expression flickering over her face for a brief second.

“And you?” I ask, hoping she’ll tell me about what’s been going on in her life lately. I don’t know what I’m hoping she’ll say.

She gives another little shrug, sinking her teeth into the slice of bread. “Just training, “ she answers, chewing.

She’s a Sophomore in college, and she’s only been training for the team for close to three years now, but there aren’t many here who can take my girl down in a fight. Sometimes even Storm has trouble getting her pinned. I like that she’s training hard; makes me feel a bit better about leaving her alone here for the most part.

I reach for the beer I set on the table, taking a swig while she watches, mouth dropped open in outraged indignation.

“You’re too young,” I say, all but daring her to tell me otherwise. And then I take another drink, because it’s getting her riled up.

Her mouth quirks and I wish she’d spit it out, but it looks like she’s not going to. An arched eyebrow is all the answer I get.

She leans back in her chair, dark eyes on me, twisting a lock of hair around her finger over and over. It’s not hard to figure out what she’s thinking. Whenever I bring up anything about her age, she always looks at me as if she’s just remembering that I’m more than likely as old if not older than Xavier.

I wonder if that ever bothers her, or if she even cares. I’ve never asked and she’s never exactly volunteered.

“Make you a deal,” I finally say. “Stop with the sneaking the drinks and on your twenty-first birthday, I’ll take you out. In town. You can drink until you throw up and I’ll even be nice and bring you home.

She loves the idea, easy to see, and even though it’s a year and a half away, I know she’ll hold me to it.

“What if you’re not here?” Which has happened before, on her eighteenth, even though I made it up to her as soon as I got home. From my ‘trip’.

“For you, Marie -- I’ll be here.” It’s as good as a promise. Something about what I said annoys her, probably me calling her Marie instead of Rogue, like everyone else here does. But she smiles, tilts her head and acts like she’s deciding whether or not to take me up on my offer.

Finally, with a gleam in her eye, she agrees. “Okay,” she says, smiling.

The day I leave again, she’s going to be down here at four in the morning, ass deep in the fridge digging out the last can of beer. I know it.

She‘s about done with her slice of bread and butter.

“Finished?”

She tosses her bread crust down on my plate and for a second I wonder whether or not we should put everything away. But the housekeeping’s morning shift starts in about fifteen minutes, so I’m not too worried about it.

After standing and pushing her chair in, she reaches into her robe’s pocket and pulls out a crumpled pair of gloves. My heart sinks a little at the sight, because it’s obvious she didn’t leave the other pair of gloves in my bed as a sign or anything like that. She left them because she’s actually been going to sleep wearing gloves, as if she could hurt anyone in her sleep. Especially alone in my room.

“Don’t bother,” I tell her, and with a bewildered expression on her face, she stuffs them back into her pocket. I grab my duffel bag in one hand, taking her hand with the other, my leather-coated fingers twining with her bare ones, and I lead her through the dark halls toward my bedroom. Though I’d venture to guess she knows damn well and good how to get there on her own in the middle of the night. Her fingers squeeze mine a time or two on the way, even if she did look at our hands as if I were treating her like a child.

Once inside my room she lets go of my hand after a lingering moment, and flops down on the bed, looking a bit panicked.

I have a good idea of what’s got her frazzled. If she forgot her gloves, she may very well have forgotten when the last time she slept here was. And if anyone has a good idea of what my senses are like, it’s Marie.

I drop the duffle bag on the floor, opening it and digging through it while she watches. I toss out dirty clothes, shoes, some papers, until I find what I’m looking for. A small bag, wrinkled and a bit smashed, and I toss it in her lap.

She stares down at it, clearly unimpressed.

“What is it?”

Her nose wrinkles up just a bit as she pokes the bag, and yeah, it’s not the best-looking thing on the face of the earth, but it’s inside that counts. She can’t look past the dirt and bit of blood on the outside of the present.

I crouch in front of her, waiting. “Open it.”

She eyes me for a moment then does so, gasping as soon as she sees what’s inside.

“Where’d you find these?” she asks, her voice soft and breathy. She picks the gloves up, smoothing her bare fingers over the leather. I watch as she tries one on, breathing a silent sigh of relief when they fit like -- well, when they fit like a glove.

“A leatherworker in Brazil.”

I’d drawn her arm from memory, the bend of her elbow, the shape of her wrist, the size of each finger, and I’d had them custom made from the thinnest leather in the shop. Which coincidentally turned out to be the most expensive leather in the shop, but money don’t really matter to me, especially when it comes to Marie.

“These are great,“ she says, as I watch she flexes her fingers inside the glove, slipping on the other. She stretches her fingers and runs them up her legs, from her slender ankles up over her calves and knees, over the material covering her thighs. For a split second I wonder what those long, strong legs would actually feel like wrapped around my waist, but I push the thought out of my head when I realizes she’s watching me watch her.

I stand up again, turning toward the dresser, opening the top drawer. I usually keep a stash of cigars in here, but I guess I need to get some more tomorrow because it looks like more than a few are gone. Hmmm.

“So how’re you and Bobby?” I ask, and for the life of me, I don’t know why. I don’t want to hear about Marie and her little boyfriend. Except that I have the feeling that things aren’t going so hot. The last few times I’ve come home, she wasn’t wearing the tags, but now she is.

I had mixed feelings when I first realized that she and the ice guy had a thing going. On the one hand, I was glad to discover that her crush on me wasn’t stopping her from looking around at the guys her own age. Having a boyfriend was something she should experience, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t find anything wrong with the boy.

On the other hand, I’d realized at some point in the last six months or so that Marie was going to be it for me. The one. And that if she and Bobby got serious and stayed that way, there might not be anything I could do once she did grow old enough for a relationship with me.

After that I never spoke to her about her relationship again. If she had a problem, she knew she could ask me, but otherwise, it wasn’t any of my business.

“Past history.” There’s a dead quality to her voice that makes me wonder what happened. What exactly the ice pick said to her, or did to her, to make her sound like that when speaking of their relationship. Or former relationship, I guess.

I sit beside her on the bed in easy silence as she looks over my clothes with a critical eye. And then she looks a little speculative, like she’s hoping I’ll forget she’s there and start getting undressed to sleep. Not likely.

After a few quiet moments, she yawns, and then looks as if she wants to shoot herself. I can’t help but grin a little. She’s cute when she’s sleepy and irritated.

“Bedtime,” I tell her, which only makes her bite back a string of curses. I grab up her hand in her new, thin leather glove, hauling her to her feet, and I pull her along to her own bedroom in one of the other wings.

The kid actually skips for a minute, mockingly I think, so I let go of her hand since we’re near her door anyway. And she looks up at me, nearly swaying on her feet, and I can’t help but brush my fingers over her cheek, thumb caressing over the high bone.

I turn back towards my own room then, and when I get there, it’s nearly five a.m. Beside the clock are her old pair of gloves, the ones she left here, the ones I thought meant something. Picking them up, I fold them together and walk over to the closet, pulling my keys from my pocket and crouching down.

There’s a box I keep in here, locked, and it takes me a minute to find the right key. When I get it opened, I look at the pictures inside, along with some other mementos. I add the folded gloves, tucking them into the corner of the box, and lock it. I stow the box away against the back of the closet, a knot of disappointment forming in my chest.

I strip down for the second time tonight, thinking over the past several hours. I wish she’d left the gloves on purpose, but if I’m honest, I know she isn’t ready, or even close. But I also hate the fact that she feels the need to wear them in here when she’s all alone, when all she does is sleep.

Utterly exhausted, I drop naked into a bed that smells like Marie. And I pull the sheets and blankets around me.


Part Three: At Twenty


“Hey, Mr. Logan.”

It used to be that all activity would stop whenever I entered a room in this place.

“Nice trip?”

Kids would freeze in their tracks -- literally, in more than one case -- and stare at me with these horrified looks on their faces. Like they truly believed I’d come home to eat their heads off or something.

“Where did you go this time? Costa Rica? Tahiti? Brazil?”

Can’t say I didn’t enjoy it.

“What did you bring me?“ This, from timid Kitty Pryde, standing behind the kitchen counter, oven mitts covering both hands.

Bouncing on her heels in utter delight. At the very sight of me.

There’s a reason I usually time it so I show up at the school in the dead of the night. Now I remember.

“Why would I bring you a damn thing?”

For God’s sake. Now there’s dimples. “Let me think . . . maybe because I type up all your reports and do all your non-classified paperwork ’cause you can‘t be bothered, thereby keeping the Professor and Scott off your back?”

I pull a small package from the inside pocket of my jacket, watching as her eyes fix on it, her smile growing even bigger.

“Where is she?”

Kitty doesn’t hesitate. “TV room, watching something with Scott on the History Channel.”

I toss the little box at her underhanded, but she must have forgotten about the oven mitts because it hits her squarely in the chest, bouncing off again. At least she didn’t phase out. The kitchen all but explodes with laughter, and I almost catch myself smiling along with them. Even if her hands were free, she wouldn’t have caught it. I’m out of the room and halfway down the hall when I hear Kitty squeal.

Some sort of music gadget for her computer. She shouldn’t act so surprised. I mean, she left nothing to chance -- wrote down which kind she wanted, what color, where I could get one and how much it would cost me. Left the slip of paper in my jacket for me to find, attached to an envelope filled with pictures of Marie.

But that’s another story.

Marie’s right where Kitty said she’d be. On the couch in the living room/game room/whatever with Cyke, watching a show on tv about the making of different types of war planes used in World War II. Cyke’s a geek who likes to watch or read anything having to do with airplanes, and Marie’s got a guest in her head who lived through Nazi Germany.

The room’s completely cleared out. No fucking wonder the kitchen was crowded.

The couch faces away from the door, and the volume’s up pretty high, so neither one hears me walk up behind them.

“Kid.”

Both their heads snap toward me. Marie’s up and on her feet in an instant, tossing the bag of chips in her hand toward the cushion between them.

Cyke gives me the barest hid of a nod, mouth a flat line getting thinner by the moment. I really wish he’d learn to contain his enthusiasm.

Marie, on the other hand, looks like she’s an inch away from launching herself in my direction, but then she doesn’t. I used to brace for impact when she got that look on her face, but now, here she is, hesitating after a few steps. Stopped in front of me, a foot between us.

“Hey,“ she smiles, toying with her gloves. “You’re back early.”

“You complainin’?”

“Absolutely.”

Except for her face, she’s covered from head to toe. Scarf, long sleeves, gloves. Except for the scarf, I’m just as covered. And here she is, anxious about something as simple as a hug, when we haven’t seen each other for nearly a month. Probably because Cyke’s sittin’ there, and he gets real worried when she tries touching anyone, even fully covered.

Fuck it. Reaching out, I get a gloved hand around the back of her neck and haul her to me, wrapping the other arm around her waist. She’s rigid against me for the briefest of moments, stiff with surprise, and then she relaxes, arms winding around my back, pressing closer. A hitch in her breath, and even though she buries her face against my shoulder, my fingers slipping through her hair to rest on her back, I can tell she’s afraid. Of me, of herself, of what Cyke says, I don’t know.

It pisses me off. I let her go and she steps away, satin-covered fingers reaching up to toy with the ends of her scarf.

I glance toward the tv, the bags of chips and Cyke. “You busy here?” I ask her, though I can’t imagine she is.

“No,” she shakes her head, back to smiling. “Why? Where’re we goin’?”

“Thought we’d go see a movie,” I say, shrugging. “And if you’re good, I might even feed you after.”

Her eyes light up, almost obliterating all traces of fear. Almost.

“I have to change,” she says, glancing down at her clothes. She looks fine to me in her jeans and sweater, but then again, what the hell do I know?

I glance at my watch. “Ten minutes.” That only gives her time enough to change her entire outfit twice. I learned the hard way that Marie will take forever and a day getting ready, if you let her.

Her eyes go from me to Cyke and then back to me again, and it’s obvious she doesn’t know if she should leave the two of us alone together. Why wouldn’t the two of us get along just fine without her? Just ‘cause I stole his bike several years ago. And still flirt with Jeannie, though now it’s more for fun than anything else. I guess I also just stole the one person in the entire school willing to watch the fucking’ History Channel with him on a Saturday afternoon.

“Nine minutes.”

She rushes by me without a backward glance, heading for the stairs.

Cyke gets to his feet, brushing crumbs off his pants and grabbing up bags of chips as she leaves the room. I have to hand it to him, though -- the fucker waits until she’s completely out of earshot before her starts in.

“You know she’s not allowed to leave campus until she’s --”

“-- twenty-two,” I finish right along with him. I can probably recite the entire fucking speech back at him, verbatim, I’ve heard the damned thing so often. “’Unless she learns to control her mutation, she’s only allowed to leave the grounds while supervised by an adult member of the team. She cannot be left alone at any time while other people are around, she cannot remain off grounds for more than sixteen hours at a stretch unless it’s required for training, she cannot remove her gloves for any reason other than personal care while out in the community.’ She cannot enjoy her life, she cannot worry about anything other than the personal safety of everyone else around her, and by God, make sure she knows she cannot *ever* act like a normal fucking human being.”

Red splotches grow beneath his visor, mouth twisting. “You think you’re --”

“Did I get all the rules right? Cover every one of ‘em?”

“Not everyone regenerates from near-death comatose states,” he grits out between his teeth. “She has a devastatingly destructive mutation and to act like she doesn’t is foolish and stupid. Why am I not surprised you don’t get that?”

“I understand exactly what her mutation is and what it means for everyone around her. Better than you, better than anyone here. I know exactly what she’s capable of, and no, I don’t think she should act as if she’s not dangerous. But her life don‘t need to revolve around it.” My knuckles itch like fire, I want to pop the claws so badly. It’s not like I don’t see his side of it, either, which only pisses me off a little bit more.

“What do you suggest we do, then?”

“I suggest you people stop treating her like she’s got the fucking plague. Like she’s nothing more than a ‘devastatingly destructive mutation’ on legs, like she’d touch everyone she could reach and drain ‘em dry if only she were left unsupervised.”

Looks like a point or two hit home there, and he ain’t too happy about that fact, either. “It’s not that simple,” he says, regaining composure with a visible effort. “And I wish it was. We all do.”

“It could be. You‘re not gonna listen, though, you never do, and next time I come back she’s going to be a little more covered up and a little more afraid of herself, of the world around her.” I let that sink in for a moment, then add, “Think she’ll turn out to be a decent X-Man when she can’t even be trusted to make basic, everyday decisions that directly affect her own life? I don‘t.”

Scott’s silent for a few seconds, some of the wind taken out of his sails. “We do the best we can with Rogue. We all love her, we all want her to have the best life she can possibly have. But we have to be realistic and we *do* have to think about the immediate safety of everyone here.”

“I get that.” I really do. “But at some point, Marie has to either learn how to control her mutation or she has to figure out how to live around it. Right now she’s got you and Xavier and Jeannie and all the rest of ‘em dictating how to dress, where she can go, if she can go alone and if not, who can go with her. She needs to learn how to make decisions for herself, not despite her mutation but *because* of it. It’s obvious that her ‘gift’ has to be controlled, for her own safety just as much as anyone else’s, but she’s old enough and careful enough, *smart* enough, to control it herself.”

“Maybe she is,” he admits, jaw clenched at the effort. “But it’s a risk we aren’t prepared to take. Not with so many students on campus, not when it’s a fatal mutation we’re talking about.”

What a fucking asshole.

“Don’t you fucking see that *she* needs to be the one to take that risk? She’s stuck, covered from head to toe, incapable of growing like she needs to? She’s never going to be Rogue, she’ll never be an X-Man, if you don’t let her have control of herself. If you let go of her just a little, she might just thrive and shock you all.”

“She might kill someone, too,” he answers. “Wind up with even more memories and an extra mutation she doesn’t understand how to use.”

And that’s all he’ll ever be able to see. The safety of the whole, and not what the individuals want or need.

“I’m takin’ her out tonight. I don’t know when we’ll be back.” Or if, the way I feeling right now.

“You can’t just march in here and tell me that we’re screwing up with her, that we’ve smothered her spirit and robbed her of the ability to think for herself, and then just take off with her for as long as you want.”

"Last time I checked, I don't need your fucking permission to take her to a movie."

Behind me, I can hear Marie approach, and I wonder how much she’s heard. She slows as she gets to the archway, stopping before she enters behind us. Listening, her heart pounding.

“We have rules --”

The fucker’s lucky I don’t take his rules and shove them straight up his ass. “She’s twenty and it’s a movie -- I’m not taking her to fucking Canada for a month. I’ll bring her home before midnight, and, if you’re lucky, I’ll even bring her home in one piece.”

He opens his mouth to say something, because I guess he’s not nearly as bright as everyone around here seems to think he is, but I’m done with Cyke and his bullshit.

“Marie.”

Cyke jerks a little in surprise, face flushing with what I hope like hell is guilt or at the very least, embarrassment.

“Yeah?” She’s trying to sound as if she has no idea that Cyke and I are fighting. Were fighting. My knuckles are still itching like a motherfucker.

“You ready?”

“Sure.”

Cyke gives me a look like he wants to say something else, maybe tell me that we can’t go because he forbids it or some shit like that. But he won’t lose it in front of a student, so he gives me a glare that fails to scare me, and then he leaves.

I feel like following him for a moment, but then I tell myself that he’s not worth it. I literally have to shake the anger off before I walk toward the door, pulling the car keys out of my pocket.

She’s changed but she don’t look all that different. Covered in layers. Scarf, coat. Gloves.

I hate those fucking gloves.

“Take them off.”

She stares up at me, confused, nose wrinkling.

“Huh?”

I wonder just what she thinks I’m referring to. The thought amuses me. And it’s damn hard to hold on to anger when she’s around, anyway.

I pull each of her hands up, watching as she looks at them for a moment, and her expression shifts from blank incomprehension to utter shock and disbelief. “I can’t,” she blurts out, trying to tug her wrists free.

Well, she can try.

She struggles for a minute but relaxes when she realizes that until I decide to let her go, she ain’t budging. And I’m not about to let her go.

Her eyes plead with me. "It's dangerous,” she warns me. As if I don’t know.

“So’s walking ‘round with metal in your hands,” I answer, trying not to snap at her while I work on pulling the glove off her curled-up fingers. “But you’ve noticed I manage anyway.”

She tries pulling away again but I’ve got her close up against me. “That’s different,” she complains, twisting around. “Yours is based on muscle control. Mine isn’t. Someone could accidentally touch me.”

She’s parroting shit she’s probably heard a thousand times. But I can hear real fear there; smell it, too. God.

In a last desperate attempt, she tries curling her fingers up into a tight fist, even though by now I‘ve got it mostly off her. The leather is thin, very flexible, and I peel it right off her stiff fingers. And I can’t help but stare at it for a moment, wondering at how all-consumingly important these fucking scraps of material have become to her.

I tuck it in my pocket and go for the other.

“Logan --”

“No one will touch you by accident. I‘ll be there, ” I tell her, tugging the material off her arm. “And if they touch you on purpose, they’ll have a hell of a lot more to worry about than whether or not you suck them into your head, darlin’.”

As soon as I get the glove off the tip of her fingers, she thrusts her bare hands into the pockets of her coat and gives me this look, like, ha, what are you gonna do about it now, huh?

I actually laugh, reaching into her pockets and pulling them right back out, and I turn her away from me long enough to unwrap the scarf from around her neck.

When I get her turned toward me again, I pull her coat open and hold it while I look.

“I’m not wearing it,” she hurries to tell me, but shit, she’s lied about it before. She was about to climb on the bike so we could go into town and shop for new clothes when I noticed the seam on the bare inch of arm visible between her glove and her shirt sleeve.

A fucking bodysuit made of sheer nylon, worn beneath at least one full layer of clothing. I damn near stripped it off her, right then and there.

I check her for it anyway, running my fingers along her shoulders where the bodysuit’s seams are thicker. I don’t feel anything beneath her shirt, but I’m wearing gloves so I push her coat off her shoulders to check where her short sleeves end.

“Why does it matter?” she asks, when I let go of her coat.

“Because it does.”

The look in her narrowed eyes tells me she‘s not going to leave it alone. “Why?”

I want to shout at her, tell her it matters because she’s letting the gloves and the scarves and the fucking bodysuits take over her life. But all I do is shake my head, giving her a little push that gets her walking.

She deserves some sort of answer, though.

“You should be able to dress like any normal girl.”

“I’m not normal.” And she says it like I’ve got to be the dumbest fucker on the planet not to notice.

“Then why leave at all?” I wave the goddamned scarf in front of her face before I toss it on the floor beside us. She looks like she wants to reach down and grab it back up but thankfully she doesn’t. “Just lock yourself in your damned room and don’t ever take a single risk.”

She looks a little surprised, at my tone or at my words, I don’t know. I don’t care. “You might as well, if you’re going to hobble yourself like this all your life.”

Marie stops in her tracks, turning to glare up at me fully. “That’s not fair,” she says, sounding stung. “I could hurt someone.” There’s a slight hesitation before the ‘someone’ and I wonder if she has anyone in particular in mind.

“Everyone takes that risk the second they get up in the morning.” I give her another little nudge to get her going again, saying, “Everyone has the possibility of hurting someone by accident. That’s what bein’ alive means, and you can’t live your life worryin’ about it.”

“I could *kill* someone!” she sputters, like the possibility's never crossed my mind. I crowd her through the front door so she can’t stop or dig her heels in, though I’ve told her before that I have no qualms about throwing her over my shoulder and going on about my business.

“So could I. One accidental twitch --” And the claws pop with a *snikt* and some searing pain, sliding over her shoulder. She doesn’t jump, only startles at the sight of the blades several inches from the side of her face. She watches as I let the metal slide back inside my forearm, looking slightly horrified. God knows, Marie’s probably the only other person who knows how much it hurts when the meat and muscles tear and slice open, only to reform and heal within seconds.

“-- and someone’s dead,” I finish, wiping the blood off my knuckles. “Like you could’ve been if I hadn’t been careful. If I hadn’t learned to control it.”

"It's different."

Shit. "It's different because you want it to be."

"It's different because--"

"Because I couldn't cover these with something--I *had* to learn to control it or someone in the cage would die or I'd kill someone by accident. There wasn't the option of finding some adamantium gloves to keep it from happening. And you'll spend the rest of your life with your life preserver of gloves and scarf because you don't want the responsibility of learning to either control it or compensate for the fact you can't. You'll play it safe. Stop being so fucking afraid of yourself."

She turns on her heel to face me, and I don’t remember ever seeing her so angry.

Good.

“You think I *like* looking like a modern-day mummy?”

I hadn’t thought about it much before, always figured that she wore all that shit because she thought it was strictly necessary. But now that I think about it -- “Yeah, I think you do.”

Clearly, not what she thought I was going to say. Her mouth opens and closes before she says anything. “You like to make the point that you’re not normal -- you’re not like some of the others, that carry visible signs of difference -- you pass easily enough for normal and you don’t like that. If you could, you’d wear a sign around your neck to declare to the world you’re a fucking leper or something.”

Just so she’s clear, I add, “You’re not.”

She stands there, pissed off, hurt, glaring up at me. “You’re wrong,” she says, voice quavering. And then she’s biting her lip, blinking back tears, and I feel like a shit.

She needed a little push, but I went too far, took the wrong path. I meant to piss her off, but I never wanted her to cry. She stares at the ground so I don’t see it.

“Marie.” Quiet, because I’m done yelling at her. Reaching out, I push her hair back from one side of her face, fingers brushing gently over her cheek. “Look at me.”

She sniffles, silently refusing, so I take her chin and lift her head until she has no choice about it. Her lashes are wet and when she lifts her eyes to mine, they’re wet too, and something twists inside me.

She’s beautiful. The moon is nearly full tonight, bright enough to cast everyone and everything in this silvery kind of glow, and God, she looks . . . I don’t know what the word is. Ethereal, maybe? I don’t know. Her skin looks smooth, so soft, the light picking up the platinum streaks framing her face, making her look strangely fragile. And lost.

“You’re safe with me,” I tell her, thumb sweeping slowly back and forth over the line of her jaw. “There won’t be any catastrophes because you act normal for a night. The world won’t end, no one starves to death in some third world country, and keeping up this weird penance because you were born a mutant ain’t going to change a damned thing.”

She grips the edges of my jacket, bare fingers curling into the leather.

“Take a risk,” I tell her, smiling. “Trust me.”

She nods finally, letting go of me. I slip an arm over her shoulders, pulling her close against me and getting us moving toward the garage again.

--

The movie’s nearly over. Finally. For fuck’s sake, chick flicks are a torture I’ll only endure for Marie. Up on the screen, some dumbass is twirling around in the rain, shouting over and over that he loves whatsherface. Whatsherface looked irritated at first, but now there she is, twirling around and getting soaked, laughing her happy ass off. Nobody acts like this in real life.

All over the theater, women between the ages of two and ninety are sighing, some are wiping tears from the corner of their eyes. The few men not asleep look like they want to shoot themselves.

Marie’s been pretty calm for the past hour or so. Nobody touched either of us. Nobody got anywhere close enough to touch us, really. Marie kept one hand in her pocket, the other around my arm, and the worst thing to happen was getting looks from strangers plainly letting us know that I’m robbing the cradle.

Yeah, thanks for that particular heads-up, fuckers. Not that Marie seemed to notice.

Anyway.

Getting her coat off was an issue, because of the short sleeves and lack of gloves. She only struggled briefly, glaring for all she’s worth, but in the end she chose not to make a scene and let me take it off her shoulders and fold it into the chair beside me.

I kept my jacket on, tugging off one glove so I could eat popcorn, and stretched the other arm along the back of her chair. For the longest time I thought she’d sit ramrod straight through the whole damn thing, but eventually she relaxed, leaning her head back on my arm. Comfortable enough to reach across me for the rest of my soda after she’d finished hers.

But now the credits are rolling and she’s tensing up again. Pulling away. Looking around at the groups of people getting up from their seats and shuffling toward the aisles as the house lights come up.

“Let’s just sit here a minute.”

“Why?”

She rolls her eyes, irritated. “I want to find out who played the guy’s third best friend.”

Right now I don’t have the luxury of waiting with her, even if I wanted to.

I wipe my buttery fingers off on a few napkins and pull my glove back on, standing up. Tossing her coat into her lap, I say, “Suit yourself.”

Startled, she grabs at my sleeve. “Where are you going?”

That’s panic in her eyes. For fuck’s sake.

“I have to take a leak, Marie.”

“Oh! Sorry.”

She lets go of my jacket but I catch her hand in time. “Did you think I’d just leave you here?”

“No!” Too fast. “I mean . . . no, of course you wouldn’t.”

I give her a squeeze and let her hand drop free. “Of course I wouldn’t.”

A few minutes later I find her in the lobby by the door. Except for the few people cleaning up, the place is deserted. She’s got her coat wrapped tight around her, hands tucked into her pockets, looking at the Coming Attractions posters while she waits.

“Who played the guy’s third best friend?”

She turns toward me, smiling. “Brian James.”

Marie‘s a crappy liar. “Good to know.”

“No problem.”

I reach into her pocket and bring her hand back out, lacing my leather-coated fingers with her bare ones as we step out onto the sidewalk.

“Hungry?”

She thinks about it. She’s probably too nervous to be all that hungry, but she missed dinner and popcorn is no kind of meal. Unless it walked around on four legs at some point in its life, it’s not dinner.

“Yeah. Where’d you have in mind?”

“Come on.” She’s gonna love this. “We’ll walk.”

I took Marie on a walk with me one afternoon in the fall, back when she was seventeen, eighteen. The kid was huffing and puffing by the time we got back, covered in sweat and anxious to get the hell away from me.

Marie stares up at me, horrified, gripping my hand. “You’re kidding.”

“You need the exercise.”

She growls, deep in the back of her throat, and I can’t help laughing. I’ve heard rabbits sound more threatening. The first time she did it, Cyke was getting on her ass for not reporting to kp duty when she should have, and she actually bared her teeth at him. Nearly shocked the shit out of me. I think I scared more kids by laughing than I ever have glaring at them.

“Where’re we going?”

“It’s a place I found,” I tell her, slowing enough so that I’m not actively hauling her along the sidewalk. “You’ll like it.”

“A bar?”

I bet she thinks when I leave the school, I travel from bar to bar, cage-fighting and drinking my weight in whiskey. Occasionally looking for my past if I remember.

“No.”

“You’re kidding.”

She’s sadly disappointed. It’s not like I don’t know she still sneaks drinks every now and then.

"When you're twenty-one, darlin'."

"Cute."

We walk for awhile in comfortable silence, down several streets into a part of town Marie’s probably never been in before. A part of town I don’t want Marie to be in, at least alone.

When we get to the diner, she looks completely unimpressed. All she sees so far is chrome, black and white linoleum, worn-out chairs and a clock on the wall that’s only right twice a day.

She also sees Brenda, one of the better-looking waitresses, and she gets this ‘it figures’ look on her face. Brenda, on the other hand, stares at Marie so long she nearly misses me quickly shake my head at her.

One of the newer waitresses comes over instead, and one look at her face makes me wonder what Brenda might have told her. I forget what her name is -- not that it matters, because I don’t ever plan on spending more time with her than it takes to order. The first time she waited on me, I wondered what she’d be like in bed, and but by the time the food arrived I’d decided I’d rather look than touch, thanks. That kind of sheer cheer might be catching.

Marie and I both ask for coffee and a few minutes to decide, and the waitress looks disappointed with us. Brenda’s over by the soda machine, waiting for her to report back. This might not have been the best idea I’ve ever had.

I study the menu as if I’ve never seen it before.

I found the place by accident, out walking through town while hiding out from one of Xavier’s benefit dinners. Brenda was my waitress. I ordered a steak and fries, liked both, and in the morning, Brenda made me an even better breakfast.

That was a little over a year ago. A wedding ago for Brenda, and the last time I was in here she was showing me black and white picture of a bean, asking me if I thought it looked like a boy or a girl.

Then she asked if I had any more pictures of my girl. Turns out that while she was going through my wallet the morning after, trying to figure out my name, she’d found a few pictures of Marie. Judging by her age, Brenda assumed she was my daughter.

Two hours, five cups of coffee and two pieces of pie later, Brenda knew all about ‘my girl.’

“Interesting place,” Marie comments, in pretty much the way she said my camper looked cozy.

I barely glance up at her. If only she’d open her eyes, she would see that this is one of the most interesting places in town.

“Yeah.”

She waits a beat, then: “Why do you like it?”

There’s more than a little jealousy in her tone and I realize she’s too wrapped up in worrying about the waitresses to look around at anything else.

It’s cute. But not the point.

“Take a good look around and tell me what you see.” And then I go back to the menu, watching her out of corner of my eye. I’ll give her a push, but she needs to figure some things out on her own.

It takes her about two minutes. She turns toward each of the waitresses, studying and mentally discarding all but Brenda and one other waitress I don‘t know yet. She tries the coffee, makes a disgusted noise and sets it back down.

And then finally, she begins looking around at the other patrons.

“Oh.”

I smile, looking up at her. She got it a bit quicker than I thought she would.

“They’re mutants, aren’t they?”

“Yep.”

She looks around the diner again. At Martha, a woman with inner eyelids that blink vertically, who runs a bookstore a couple of streets away. At Jason, in the corner with his brother and a friend, ears covered in blue tufts of fur.

She looks at the waitresses again, seeing past the big smiles and the big tits this time. She spots the odd-colored eyes, the third nostril, the extra ears. How she missed the long, curly tail the first time, I have no idea.

“When’d you find it?”

"A year or so ago. Got bored with the kids, started checking out the city."

She don’t look particularly pleased with that answer. All of a sudden, she’s interested in her menu, her mouth a little pinched.

I reach over and push her menu down to get her attention.

“And you notice they aren’t trying to hide, dontcha?”

Her jaw clenches tightly at the words.

“He’s wearing gloves,” she grits out, nodding toward Jason in the corner.

"He can't touch anything above a certain temperature." Found that out one night while four of us played poker at one of the tables in the middle. If he does, he starts going into shock because he can’t tolerate the relative heat.

She looks over the diner again, and everyone in it, and then she looks at me. “I get your point.”

"And it took less time than usual.“ A muscle ticks in her cheek at that. “Good girl."

I move my legs before she even thinks to kick me. I saw those boots.

The blonde girl bops back over to take our order, and this time Marie’s so busy searching for her mutation that I order hamburgers and fries for the both of us. I leave her alone for the most part, even after our food arrives with a wink for me and an extra large order of fries for Marie.

Brenda’s back behind the counter watching us, hand pressed to her heart when she catches me stealing some of Marie’s fries. She keeps telling me that Marie just needs some time, that I have to be patient with her. Nudge her when she needs it but otherwise let her find her own path.

Nudging, swift kicks in the ass, pretty much the same thing. Right?

I should have brought her here long ago. Let her see other mutants, young and old, living life around their mutations. Happy for the most part, with normal, everyday problems and a need for the kind of apple pie you can’t find anywhere else in town.

“Logan?

I grunt a ‘What?’ around a mouthful of fries.

"Why tonight?"

There’s something in her eyes, in her voice, that makes me think that maybe she’s beginning to understand. I try several answers in my head -- ones I’ve thought of on the road, when I first planned to bring her here.

I always seem to forget that with Marie, it’s best just to put it right out there, whatever she wants to know.

“You’re not just Rogue.” I check to see how she reacts to that before going on. She’s listening, but she ain’t thrilled. “You don’t have to spend the rest of your life being a mutant and using it as an excuse to avoid bein’ anything else.”

I wait for her to say something. Do something. Anything.

Touch me, for God’s sake. Take a risk.

She drops her eyes to stare at her own bare hands. Nodding. Looking at her plate. Looking anywhere but at me.

I’ve been wasting my breath here. Yelling at Cyke was pointless. He and Xavier make decisions for her everyday life, creating rules and guidelines for every eventuality, giving her little to no room to think for herself. And I thought that was the problem, that given the chance to live and choose and think for herself, she’d take it.

But now I know she lets them run her life. Because she’s too fucking scared to run it for herself.

The waitress starts walking toward us with the check, and I drink the last of my lukewarm, bitter cup of coffee.

Swallowing my disappointment right along with it.



Part Four: At Twenty-One


11:52. God. Thought I’d never find the fucking room.

I’ve been away for the better part of five months, and while I was gone, Marie moved from one wing of the school to the other along with her two friends.

They’re living in the wing for those in training to join the X-Men. There’s a nameplate on the wall outside their room: Shadowcat/Rogue/Jubilee, and beneath that, Training Level Omega Three (Squad A-7). Very official looking. Except for the happy face sticker next to Jubilee’s name.

The door’s unlocked and I make sure to shut it quietly behind me. The room’s dark, but there’s a soft glow given off by a butterfly nightlight, so my eyes adjust quicker than they normally would.

The room is bigger than their last one, but they’ve arranged it pretty much the same. Two beds jut out from the far wall, side-by-side desks separating them, a third bed in the corner on the opposite side of the room.

Tie-dyed comforter and bright yellow sheets tell me the first bed’s Jubilee’s, and from somewhere beneath the covers, she snorts in her sleep and then goes back to snoring. Even the numbers on her digital clock are an annoyingly bright shade of yellow.

I can see Kitty in the next bed, legs tangled in her blankets, and shit, I can’t quite make it out but I’m pretty sure that’s a stuffed animal she’s clutching.

That leaves Marie in the corner, the butterfly nightlight plugged into the outlet beside her bed.

Villains of the world, beware.

Marie’s stretched out on her back, the covers pulled up to her chin and still smooth. She used to snore when she was younger, but now she sleeps too deeply, like the dead, hardly moving from the looks of it. Her training’s been kickin’ her ass -- in her last letter, she said gets up before six a.m. now, and starts her day by jogging five miles with the rest of her squad.

Even the little sad face she drew looked tired.

The mattress sinks beneath me, springs squeaking, when I sit beside her hip. She’s sleeping too deeply to notice she‘s beginning to slowly slide my way.

Any other day and I’d leave her be, let her get the rest she needs. But I didn’t drive several hundred miles with an eye on the clock just to watch her sleep. A deal’s a deal. I promised.

Besides, she’s cute as hell when she first wakes up. And I’ve missed her.

“Marie.”

She stirs, twisting slightly, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. A slow, quiet ‘mmmm’ in the back of her throat, and fuck, I’d pay anything to see what she’s seein’ in her dream.

11:54. Maybe another day I’ll find out.

“Marie.” Louder this time, and I reach out to brush the tangle of hair away, fingers lingering. My gloves are leather, fine and soft, so thin I can feel the smoothness of her skin.

She leans into the touch, sighing, her face sleep-warm against my palm.

God.

11:56.

“MARIE.”

Her lashes flutter and I let my hand drop to the mattress beside her head. She blinks, slowly, eyes bleary, disappointment flickering over her face. Musta been some dream.

“What the fuck are you waiting for? Christmas?” She’s still more asleep than awake, disoriented. “Get the hell up.”

I shake her by the shoulder, which seems to get her attention.

“Logan?”

She’s still sliding toward me. There’s more blinking when her hip bumps into mine.

“Who’d you think it was? Santa?” Chuckling at the look on her face, I slip my hand from her shoulder down her arm, looking for her hand beneath the covers. “Get up, before Scooter figures out where I went.”

Right around her elbow, I feel it. The edge of her glove.

Fuck.

“For God’s sake, Marie --”

Still confused, she tries to sit at an angle, struggles, tries again and gets it right. She blinks a few times when her breasts press against the arm I’ve got braced across her body, and her eyes focus real quick all of a sudden.

She ain‘t exactly moving away. I’m not exactly complaining.

“Logan!” Yeah, hi. “When’d you get home?”

“A few minutes ago. Are you coming or not?”

A second or so passes. “Coming?” she repeats dazedly, staring up at me, soft lips parting. Her warm, sleepy scent is shifting slowly toward true arousal, and it’s absolute hell, ignoring it.

“Out. Coming, out, somewhere not here. You turn twenty-one in two minutes. Let‘s go.” I move my arm away so I can brush the hair out of her face again, and it’s hard not to grin at the little disappointed noise she makes at the loss of contact.

“I need to carry ya or what?”

That gets her moving. Uncoordinated and jerky, but moving nonetheless. God help the woman if I were an intruder.

“Tonight?”

Big frustrated sigh.

“Yeah. So’s I was thinkin’ -- I don’t usually raid your room this late.”

Well, she’s certainly awake enough to roll her eyes at me. I doubt she’s ever too tired for that.

“Can you wait outside or something?”

Modest and sincerely shy. It’s cute, and I laugh.

“You got twenty minutes.” And the door’s barely closed behind me when I hear her feet hit the floor.

Even though I’m leaning against the wall across the hall, I can hear everything happening on the other side of the door. I wonder if she remembers how sensitive my hearing is -- even if I can’t see her, I can track her progress through her room just by listening.

Right now she’s tearing through her closet, shoving hangers across the bar with a sharp scraping noise. It’s loud enough to get her roommates stirring in their sleep, heart rates beginning to beat to a faster rhythm as they wake.

Marie -- heart pounding, easy to differentiate from the other two -- kicks something out of her way, probably shoes if the two thuds are anything to go by. Footsteps hurry toward the bathroom.

“Rogue?”

Jubilee. A sleepy, thoroughly-irritated sounding Jubilee. Maybe I’ll get to see some fireworks while I wait.

Marie rushes back to the bathroom‘s doorway. “Jubes. Go back to sleep.” Not exactly the most soothing voice I’ve ever heard.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m outta here, babe.” She’s back in the bathroom again, probably in front of the mirror. And she honestly sounds like she can hardly contain her excitement.

Good. In many ways, neither can I.

Jubilee is up and in the bathroom with her now. “Twenty-one,” she says, voice soft and amazed. “He came home, didn’t he?”

Marie doesn’t answer, the beat of her heart growing stronger in the quiet.

The sound of hair being brushed is distinctive, easy to miss if I weren’t straining to listen. Marie yelps in pain, and damn, Jubilee has to be jerking the thing through her hair for her to make a peep. Marie’s not especially tender headed, and I’ve seen her get tossed into walls during training and pop back up for more without complaint.

“Kitty!”

Jubilee, calling for back-up. How many people does it take to get just one woman ready in under twenty minutes?

Kitty stumbles out of bed and rushes to join the other two in the bathroom, nearly tripping over her own feet twice.

“Rogue,” Jubilee barks, clearly in command. “Whatcha wearin’?”

“On the bed,” Marie answers immediately, a little too loudly, as if she were responding to a drill sergeant or somethin’. Jubilee is eight inches shorter than Marie, and the image forming in my head is ridiculous.

Kitty retreats to the other side of the suite, to check the clothes Marie picked out, I‘m guessing. In the bathroom, drawers and jars and cabinets are being opened and shut, one after the other, and neither speaks for a few minutes.

“He’s going to figure out something is up.” A whisper from Marie, sounding dazed and more than a little nervous.

“Let ‘im.” Jubilee starts talking about something that stays on no matter what, telling Marie to take it with her anyway, and then she scoots them out of the bathroom and toward Marie’s bed. They talk about clothes and I quit trying to follow along.

Because I’m still back on ‘he’s going to figure out something is up’.

Possibilities run through my head, running the gamut between ‘I met this guy while you were gone, I think you’ll really like him’ and ‘I’m all done working through my shit -- c’mere.’

Fuck. Nearly ten minutes to go.

Jubilee’s ordering her to go change again when I tune back into the conversation. God. No more changing -- let’s get this show on the road already.

“What’s wrong?” She sounds confused by Jubilee’s snapped command.

“Are we goin’ schoolgirl crush or tryin’ to seduce someone in a bar?” Spoken slowly and carefully, and she ain’t joking around, either -- Jubilee wants an answer.

So do I.

“Jubes,” she blurts out, “all my underwear is like this.”

Mental images I don’t need, one right after the other. Marie in nothing but her underwear, Marie in nothing at all. Damn it.

This is what I get for listening in.

“Technically, it is her birthday,” Kitty says, considering. There’s some movement I can’t identify, and then Marie’s heading for the bathroom again, door closing with a click.

“I wonder if her legs are shaved,” Kitty whispers immediately. “Did you check? Does she have time?”

“Remember that burnt-sugar smell the other day?” Jubilee asks. “She waxed them. Screamed like a crazy bitch, too, each and every strip.”

“I can’t believe she was about to go out with Logan -- Logan! -- wearing those god-awful granny-panties.” A snort, and I can all but see Kitty shaking her blonde head. “I mean, geez, they could’ve covered Canada.”

“I know! Thank God we found a bra in her cup size to match the thong, which is gonna freak her out enough as it is. But the gloves --”

“You’re kidding!” A horrified shriek from the bathroom.

“Hurry,” Jubilee calls back. “You got less than four minutes, hon. Make it quick.”

The next time I leave on a trip, I’m going to bring back anything Jubilee asks for. Anything at all.

She doesn’t get an immediate response. “He’s gonna be gettin’ impatient,” she adds, stifling a giggle.

Which isn’t exactly true. I’ve been waitin’ on this girl forever, it feels like. And I passed ‘impatient’ quite awhile ago.

The bathroom door opens. “Perfect,” Kitty says.

More movement I can’t identify.

“No fucking way.” Marie sounds absolutely scandalized. Knowing Kitty and Jubilee, I have a pretty good idea what they just handed her. And I’d love to see the look on her face right now.

“In case he forgets.”

Yep.

“What the hell --”

“We believe in being prepared,” Kitty says, talking right over her.

The door opens, finally, and Marie stumbles into the hallway, pushed out of the room by a friendly shove. She stops in front of me, staring down at the ground before looking up at me and -- oh, sweet Jesus.

Black boots with a three-inch heel. Long, lean legs in black hose, black skirt ending mid-thigh. A form-fitting top in a red so deep it’s nearly burgundy, the neckline a ‘v’ low enough to show some serious cleavage. She’s wearing just enough make-up to make her big brown eyes look even bigger, a little lip gloss to draw attention to her mouth, and her hair’s a tousled mess of dark brown and shocking white over her shoulders.

She’s gorgeous.

There’s an inch or so of pale white skin showing between her shirt and her skirt. Short sleeves reveal bare arms, black leather gloves ending at the wrist. She’s tied a long, sheer black scarf loosely around her neck.

For once the gloves and the scarf don’t irritate me. She’s not using them to hide, from the world, from herself. From me.

Jubilee smiles innocently, standing in the doorway. “Bring her home before next week, ‘kay?”

She tosses a jacket that lands at Marie’s feet, and she leans down to retrieve it, glaring fiercely at her friends over her shoulder.

“Sorry,” she whispers, standing, horribly embarrassed.

“I’ve had the pleasure of Jubilee’s company,” I tell her, and her eyes narrow suspiciously for a moment.

She doesn’t ask, though. She only pulls on her jacket, and thank God, because I don’t know what I’d say if she did ask.

Several years ago, a few months or so after her eighteenth birthday, I was sitting in the kitchen by myself one morning, drinking a cup of coffee. Reading the paper. Enjoying the relative quiet. Then Jubilee bounced in with a couple of photo albums and dropped them on the table across from me. She said she’d be back in a minute.

When I got up to leave, I’d noticed a few photos had slipped out, and I picked one up. It was of Marie, head thrown back in laughter, happier than I’d ever seen her.

Curious, I opened the album and started flipping through picture after picture of parties and field trips and everyday life at the school. Since Marie’s been one of Jubilee’s roommates ever since she came here, both Marie and Kitty were featured more than any of the other kids in school.

When Jubilee came back with another armload, I was slipping a photo out of its sleeve and adding it to a growing pile beside me on the table. All candid shots of Marie -- laughing, eating, chatting with Kitty, playing foosball with Bobby and John. The posed ones I left alone.

“That’s stealing,” Jubilee informed me, picking up the last picture off the pile. Marie curled up in an armchair with a book in her bare hands, oblivious to everything around her.

I took it back from her. After a moment spent watching me, she started pulling photos from one of the other albums. And then, when I still didn’t say anything -- and what could I say, really? -- she started telling me stories that went with the pictures.

When I left, I asked her not to say anything. She looked offended that I’d even think to ask, but went ahead and said she’d keep quiet. “I think it’s really rom --” she started to say, but I cut her off with a quick glare.

From then on, she’d either send me an envelope of photos or slip them to me whenever she came back. In exchange I’d bring her little gifts from Canada, Italy, Peru, from anywhere I went.

And since she had to tell someone or ‘just die‘, Kitty found out and wanted in on the deal, too. Neither one ever asked about my reasons. They probably knew I wouldn’t tell them.

I keep the pictures in a locked leather box at the back of my closet. Marie has probably seen it, but so far she hasn’t been curious enough to break into it.

“Where’s Scott?”

I’ve got a good grip on her hand, since she was a little unsteady on the heels at first and going far too slowly. She’s beginning to get the hang of it now.

“Jeannie’s distractin’ him.”

And how. Last I saw, she was backing him up against the foosball table, giving me a mental push toward the right direction, a room number repeating in my head.

She slows almost to the point of stopping beside me. “Jean knows?” She ain’t too happy about that.

“Had to find your room somehow,” I shrug. “I know you don’t live in the dorms anymore.”

Marie nods and we continue walking, down several hallways and through the kitchen door so we don’t run into anybody.

I’ve got the bike parked several yards away, a helmet resting on the seat for Marie. It’s black with ‘Rogue’ stenciled in white on the side, years old, and she puts it on without her usual fuss about helmet-hair. She climbs onto the bike behind me, skirt hiking indecently, and wraps herself around my back.

The entire drive into town, she clings closely to me. Arms tight around my waist, soft breasts against my back, thighs hugging the outside of my own thighs. And I have to force myself to stop imagining those two scraps of brand-new lingerie she’s got on underneath everything else.

--

Once we’re inside the bar, she looks around, shaking her hair out. “This isn’t your kind of place,” she comments.

She only says that because there’s no straw on the floor, no cage in the center. I may have met her in a bar like that, but I’m not about to take her to one. Well, not tonight, anyway.

This is just a regular, easy-going bar. Not too small, not too large, decent lighting. I’m the roughest-looking man in here, so it shouldn’t be too scary for her, even if the place is a bit crowded.

She grips the back of my jacket, though, and follows close behind me as I work my way toward the bar. Here’s hoping she loosens up a little, or else she won’t have much fun at all.

“What’ll you have?” I ask when we get there, and she lets go of my jacket.

She blinks, surprised. In the year and a half since we made the deal, she hasn’t given a single thought to what she wants her first legal drink to be? “Pick something,” she tells me, smiling sunnily to cover.

“Hmph.” Turning her away from the bar, I give her a push. “Get a table.”

I get the attention of the bartender and he nods that he’ll be with me in minute. In the meantime, I watch Marie weave carefully through the crowd until she spots a free table. Or a booth, from the looks of it.

She begins heading toward it, only seeming to realize too late that she has to cross the dance floor to get there.

She slows for a moment. But she doesn’t stop. A year ago she’d have come back and waited for me.

You’re doing it, baby. All on your own.

“Sir?”

I look away, turning toward the bartender. “Bottle of bourbon. Two shot glasses.”

He doesn’t balk, thankfully. I pay and take the bottle, tucking the glasses in my pocket, and I head after Marie.

Just in time to see some drunk young fucker get up in her face.

“Pretty girl,” he’s slurring at her, getting closer. “You wanna dance?”

She backs warily away from him. “No.” The little shit doesn’t listen, dancing right up to her. He gets a hand on her back, dangerously near the inch of skin she’s finally dared to expose, and I’m still too far away.

He says something else to her, and she all but snarls in his face. “Get the fuck away from me!” she hisses, and I’m there, grabbing the boy up by the back of his neck and pulling him off her before his hand can slip any lower. I give him a hard shove away from us, but he’s too drunk and stupid to stay put. He tries rushing me and I growl, popping three claws in front of his face. Suddenly, he can’t get away from us fast enough.

I swear to God, if that ignorant asshole’s scared her back into covering herself up from head to toe, well, he hasn’t seen the last of me.

I retract the metal immediately, getting a hand on the small of her back long enough for her to feel the leather against her skin and know I‘ve got her. I have to loosen my grip on the bottle before I break it, and I’m ready to sit down now, thanks.

“What’d you do?” she asks, sounding shaken.

“Looked mean.”

She glances back at me while I’m rubbing the ache from my knuckles. That and the slice in the leather across the back of my hand gives me away, and she frowns, concerned.

“Oh,” she comments. “That’s not very inconspicuous, you know.”

I’m not too worried about it. “He’s so drunk he’s probably already forgotten about it.”

We reach the booth and she gives a last glance at the dance floor before she slips into the seat. I slide in across from her, setting the bottle on the table between us along with the glasses.

She eyes the liquor, looking momentarily startled.

Just in case she‘s changed her mind: “You sure you wanna do this?”

Irritated, she works up some good, haughty scorn at the question, tossing her hair. She arches her back, stripping off her fitted jacket, and her breasts strain against the clingy material of her top in a way that gets my attention real fast. Along with every other male in the place.

“No, I’m just here for the atmosphere,” she tosses off, eyes rolling. “I have been to a few parties, Logan.”

Might be true, might not, but I’m willing to bet she’s never been drunk in her life. Her cheeks are flushed, but so far she’s not backing down.

She’s got a plan here, that’s obvious as all hell, but I’m not sure she has an actual goal in mind. And that’s okay. Having a plan at all means she’s beginning to think about what she wants, and how to get it. It’s more than I expected tonight.

The hard part’s going to be deciding how much encouragement she wants or needs, and how much she actually wants her plan to work.

“I’m just checking. You done this before?”

Her mouth wants to say yes, of course she’s done this before. Her eyes say no, no I have not, and I laugh even if it does annoy her.

“Easy,” I lie. It’s not going to be easy, not the first time, not the third or fourth time. She don’t need to know that. “You’ve seen it done. All at once. Got it?”

I pour both shots and slide hers over. She hesitates, staring into the glass for a moment, and then she picks it up with a leather-coated hand. The sight of those gloves sickens me, suddenly, thoroughly, and I get my hand around hers, stopping her.

“Gloves off.”

She bites off a curse. “How’d I know you’d say that?”

In the past year, I’ve made her take them off every single time we’ve gone out. She hardly argues about it anymore, and tonight she tugs them off and tosses them on the table without trying to fight me.

“What if --”

“Marie, darlin’,” I cut her off, “there ain’t no one comin’ over here for any reason.” I hold up my gloved hands for her to see. “I’m wearin’ mine, so no worries. Ready?”

I let her hand to pick up my shot glass, and I wait for her to do the same.

Her fingers, bare, smooth, and so pale, are wrapped so tight around the glass her knuckles whiten with the pressure. “You think I won’t do it,” she says, waiting for me to agree so she can prove me wrong.

“I think you’ll do anything you please,” I answer. Before she can mouth off and dig herself in deeper, I lift the glass higher. “On count, one, two, three.”

Her face screws up tight at the terrible taste, eyes scrunching tight as it burns going down. I laugh, harder than I have in a good long while, and it’s a full minute before her throat muscles relax and her face begins to smooth.

“What?” she demands, and somehow the hoarse croak of her voice manages to sound indignant.

“Nothin’.” I pour two more shots, sliding one over. “I’ll give you to three.”

She takes the glass, her grip a bit looser this time.

“Why three?”

Because I don’t want to stop on the side of the road for you to puke in the bushes. “You don’t have my tolerance.”

Another eyeroll. “Logan, you don’t have tolerance, you have a healing factor. There’s a difference.” A beat later, she adds, “And I can get past three.”

Even she doesn’t believe that.

She knocks the second shot back, taking it easier this time. I watch her closely, and she gets the strangest look on her face, almost as if someone just slapped her. Her eyes are pained, jealous, and slightly unfocused.

“I don’t need to remember that,” she whispers, and I reach across the table for her hand, closing my fingers around her wrist.

Her eyes meet mine and I wonder whose memories are stirrin’ inside her head.

“Remember what?”

She looks away, focusing with effort on the glass in her hand. Refuses to answer. Biting her lower lip, she slams the glass down on the table hard enough for the noise to startle her.

I open my mouth to ask if she wants to slow it down, but she leans across the table, grabbing my jacket. She reaches inside and goes straight for the inner pocket, pulling out a cigar.

I try not to grin but I don’t think I’m too successful.

“Figured you were the one snatching them.” Though really, who else would it be? I’ve known for years. She looks at me, brown eyes guarded, toying with the cigar.

“Just because I have one now?”

This is going to be fun. “Nope,“ I answer, nearly smiling. “You leave your scent on the drawer.”

She blinks and tries to wrap her mind around that little piece of information, trying to work out what else I might know. “You couldn’t,” she sputters, shaking her head. “Sometimes it’s months --”

She cuts herself off before she says anything else that might give her away.

“And since no on one goes in there ‘cept me -- and apparently you, darlin’ -- it stays for awhile.”

Her face colors immediately. She looks like a damned deer caught in the headlights, she’s so stunned. Does she truly believe I can’t tell when she’s been in my room and touched my things, that I can’t tell when she’s slept in my bed?

I pour her another shot and pass it to her, brushing my fingers over hers. She brings the glass to her lips immediately, visibly braces herself, and then she downs it in a single gulp.

I watch as she sets the glass back down with a heavy thud, wincing as the bourbon burns through her. “How’re you going to explain to Scoo -- Scott, I mean -- getting me drunk?”

I don’t need to explain anything to Scott. Marie’s getting herself drunk, she’s responsible for her own choices, and she doesn’t need to feel like she has to blame me if someone dares question her for having fun. She’s twenty-one years old; legally old enough to drink what she wants to, smoke if she likes it, go anywhere she wishes to go. Old enough to live her life any way she chooses.

I’d tell her so, but she’s too drunk to listen. I just shrug instead. “Not gonna,” I tell her, and nod toward the cigar between her fingers. I pat my jacket and pull out a lighter, flicking it on. “You want me to light it, Marie?”

She looks at it for a moment like she forgot it was there. Then she lifts it to her mouth and easily bites the tip off, spitting it back out like she’s done it hundreds of times before. It’s a wonder she’s never realized that I keep the drawer stocked with far more cigars than I really need.

“Yeah. Go for it, sugar.”

Sugar. That’s new. Her soft Southern drawl is deepening with each shot, her voice throaty from the alcohol. Sugar. I wish she’d say it again.

Her soft, glossy lips wrap around the end of the cigar and I catch myself staring. She’s too trashed to notice it takes me a second try to get the tip lit. She takes a deep drag, sucking strongly on the end, clearly enjoying the taste. A slow exhale, dark eyes on mine as smoke clouds around her. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten so hard so quick.

She takes a second drag and I pour myself a shot, knocking it back and pouring another.

“You graduate yet?”

Marie stares at me for a long moment, looking surprised. What? I can make small talk.

“Yeah,” she finally answers, looking around the bar. I was beginning to think she forgot the question. “I want to dance.”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she tries to stand and fails. She’s tilted over the table, about to fall over sideways, and I get a hand around her elbow and push her back down toward the seat

“Not at that angle.“ And I get the cigar out of her hand before she sets something on fire, setting it down in the ashtray. “Sit.”

She does so, pouting.

“Give it awhile,” I tell her. “That’s three in less than ten minutes. You won’t be able to stand upright.”

Somewhere around ‘awhile’ she stopped listening. “Will you dance with me?” she asks, smiling brightly all of a sudden.

I don‘t dance. She knows that.

“You’re kidding.”

Marie leans toward me, elbows on the table, and her breasts nearly spill out of her top. “Nope,” she argues, grinding a finger into the table to make her point. “My birthday. You promised.”

She’s too far forward, her balance too shaky, and I get a good grip on her elbow to steady her until her ass lands on the bench seat behind her.

“I want another shot.”

“No way in hell,” I answer, smiling. I move the bottle out of her reach before she even thinks to make a grab for it. “You’ve had enough for now.”

“I can outdrink you,” she lets me know, in just about the loudest voice possible. She knows she can’t outdrink me -- no one can -- and the last shot she took stirred up someone else’s memories.

Reconsidering, I pour two more drinks. If she’s looking to me to set boundaries for her, like Xavier does, like Scott and Jeannie do, she’s in for a surprise. She wants another shot? Okay.

She’s going to spend the night puking it up and wishing she could just die already, and I’m probably going to be the one holding her hair back. Her head’s going to feel like it exploded and got put back together wrong.

I want her to make her own decisions, learn from her own mistakes. And this one’s going to bite her in the ass. Maybe next time she won’t say things like ‘I can outdrink you’ to someone who’s never had a hangover like the one she’s gonna have tomorrow.

I hand her the glass and she takes it, bringing it immediately to her mouth. “Now,” she whispers, and throws it back. There’s a wince and when she opens her eyes, she’s lost in another memory.

“Did you even know her name?”

So it is my memories bubbling up inside her. Shoulda figured, with the bourbon and all. And it would have to be *those* memories. She goes for some more and I reach across the table, pinning her hand to the bottle so she can’t lift it. Her wrist is delicate, the bones fragile-feeling beneath my fingers, and I brush my thumb over her fluttery pulse.

“Nope,” I answer. I have no idea who she’s actually talking about, but chances are, no, I didn’t get her name. “Slow down.”

“What’re you afraid of? Maybe forgetting I’m your little sister?”

That was bitter and she’s already regretting it. I wonder when she started telling herself that I look at her as a family member. Or if anyone else planted that idea in her head.

It’s amazing, how blind she can be.

“I don’t have any sisters.” I let her hand go and pull the bottle from her grasp. I don’t trust her to pour at this point. “It’s your headache.”

“Take the shot,” I tell her, handing her the glass. “On two.”

I take it with her, watching as she knocks hers back, half-rising. Her coordination’s shot and she grabs for the table to keep herself from falling right over. I can’t help laughing at the look on her face, like her own body’s betraying her and it’s pissin’ her off.

I pour her another.

“Sit.”

She remains upright for a second or two, just long enough to let me know that she’ll sit when she’s good and ready.

Once her ass is firmly planted in the seat, I slide the shot across the table to her.

“Do it.”

She stares at me, more than a little suspicious.

“You told me to stop.”

So I did. “You’ve never listened to me before now,” I point out, smiling.

Her eyes sparkle at that. “You never gave me an order worth following, neither.”

“Then follow that one.”

She picks up, glancing at the bourbon for a second, and then she throws it back. Slams the glass down on the table with more than just a little defiance. This time she stays with me, no memory immediately clouding her eyes.

Pushing the glasses aside, she gets her elbows up on the table again and leans toward me, giving me a hell of a view down her shirt. “Where were you?”

Where the hell did she pull that question from? “Recently?” I ask. What made her wonder? “Cincinnati.”

“Why?”

She doesn’t need to know I was tracking yet another lead that went nowhere. Another complete waste of my time. I won’t lie to her, but I don’t want to get into it, either. Not here, not tonight. So I don’t bother answering.

Instead I ask, “You like it?”

Her head tilts to the side as she slowly, carefully thinks about what I could possibly be referring to.

“Bourbon,” I clarify, shaking my head a little.

“Oh,” she answers. “Yeah.”

And then her mind’s somewhere else for a minute. Her eyes harden a little, and she looks down at her bare hands, at her short, even nails.

“You don’t even have scars.”

There are a number of women she could be thinking of right now. Women with big hair, fake tits, and long, false nails that scratched down my back.

Marie’s getting more and more jealous the longer she thinks about it. I want her to look at those memories, dig them up and examine each and every one of ‘em -- I’ve been with many, many women, a few I’ve even cared for. I want her to see, no, I want her to *understand* that just because I didn’t leave her on the side of the road, just because I did whatever I could to save her life, I’m not some hero.

I’m just a man who’s done a whole lot of shit I’m not all that proud of, more of an asshole than anything else. I stay in one place as long as I feel like, leave as soon as the idea strikes me. I wake up screaming and clawing from nightmares I lived through, and Marie knows firsthand how pleasant that is. I’ve been told I’m antisocial, mostly by Marie herself -- I’ve met many people since waking up in Canada twenty years ago, and so far I’ve only liked a handful of ‘em. I brawl in cages because I like to, and the money I make off winning’s just a bonus. I’m never likely to change any of that.

Except for one or two things. It’s been several years since I touched Marie, and the women she’s recalling now are nothing to me, forgotten long ago. If she had my recent memories, she’d realize it‘s ridiculous of her to be jealous of anyone. I haven’t been with anyone in a damn long time now.

And she’d know why, too.

“Remembering, huh? Thought as much.”

She‘s clearly surprised I understood what she was talking about. “How’d you know?”

“Something the Professor said awhile back about all those memories of yours.”

Actually, it was the afternoon I saw her bare her teeth and growl at Scooter. It surprised me, the exact way she mimicked my stance, expression and sound as best she could. When I finally stopped laughing, I started thinking about the other times she’s said something a certain way, or moved a certain way while fighting. Like an echo of me, quickly suppressed.

Before I left, I spoke to Xavier about it, and he nodded as if he’d been waiting for me to notice. He didn’t tell me much, because he said her mind is one of the hardest he’s ever tried to read and understand. Essentially, he said, she absorbed my memory entirely, along with large chunks of my personality. Magneto’s too, to a much smaller degree. Even that boy she kissed, she still has a few fragments of his mind.

It’s all locked away, buried deep for the most part. Forgotten and left alone. But every now and then, something will trigger a memory to surface and she’ll ‘skip personalities’ for a moment. Long enough to growl at Scooter, long enough to flirt with Jeannie, long enough to remember women I’ve met in bars like this one.

Marie moves around, gets her knees up on the bench beneath her and leans her weight on her elbows and forearms. She’s half-way ‘cross the table now, skin damp with sweat, and she smells like cigars, like alcohol, like vanilla and pure want.

Her big brown eyes lock on mine, slightly unfocused but full of resolve and drunken bravado. If she’s expecting to back me up, she’s in for a surprise -- it’s all I can do not to reach out and haul her to me.

“What do I remember?”

I raise an eyebrow at that. “Depends on what bourbon reminds you of.”

Her eyes are completely focused on me now. “You,” she whispers.

Marie stares at me for a long moment, almost as if she’s seeing me for the first time.

“Logan.” Voice steadier now, stronger and serious. “Why don’t you want me to wear gloves?”

There are so many reasons I could give her. What can I say that won’t scare her off? What can I tell her to make her understand? I have no idea what she wants me to say.

So I tell her the truth.

“Because I don’t like them on you.”

She recoils slightly at that. “And you decide what you like and I do it?”

Oh darlin’. If only.

But she’s too jittery to hear that right now. “So far,” I answer, shrugging.

She leans away from me, pissed, pulling back across the table. And she snatches up her gloves.

Fuck.

I grab her wrist before she can get them tugged on, and she looks up at me, eyes angry, defiant. She doesn’t try pulling away from me, which is a good thing. I wouldn’t let her go.

“You scared to take a risk still?”

She jerks as if I slapped her. “I’m not scared of anything!”

Bullshit. “You’re scared of yourself. Half the time you’re scared of being Marie, half the time you’re scared of being Rogue. Like you can’t have both, like you can’t be who and what you are.”

She‘s already shaking her head, mouth set angrily. “Forget the fucking gloves tonight, Marie,” I tell her. “Because this is one night you can be both and it won’t matter.

“You don’t understand.”

“No -- you want to sit back and hope everything falls into place the way you want it to with no effort expended,” I snap at her, angry now. “Like some fucking day you’re gonna wake up and be able to touch.”

I get her hand flat on the table, pressing hard, and she winces. “Maybe you won’t,” I continue, keeping her hand pinned beneath mine. “Why the hell is it stopping you from doing whatever the hell you damn well want?”

Her mouth drops open.

“Or didn’t you learn that yet?”

She gets her wits together enough to shut her mouth. “Fuck you,” she spits out, jaw clenching.

“Booths are uncomfortable,” I tell her. “Trust me.”

Marie doesn’t answer, eyes growing distant all of a sudden. She’s lost in another memory, and I notice her fingers shaking under mine. I turn her hand over, palm up, and trace the lines with a gloved fingertip.

It looks like she’s tuning back in. “Tell me what you remember.” I catch her eyes with mine, willing her to stay focused.

“A lot,” she answers, sounding wistful, looking trapped. Like she wants to run but she can’t figure out how or where to go.

So I slide out of the booth, standing, and I haul her to her feet before either one of us time to think about it. Her scarf slips from her neck to the floor and fuck it, the thing can stay there for all I care.

As soon as we get to the edge of the dance floor, several yards away from the booth, I turn and pull her into my arms. The music’s slow, thankfully, but I don’t think she’s even listening. Her bare hands are fluttering and she tries to break away from me.

“You wanted to dance, right?”

I slip my hands down her back and pull her closer. She looks up at me, startled and scared, and God, I wish she’d relax, realize I’ve got her, and let herself go.

“What are you doing?”

“Dancin’.” Her hands are at my waist, nearly touching me. “Like you wanted.”

She turns her head back toward the booth, looking at the gloves left lying on the table.

This is what she asked me for, just a few moments ago -- to dance, to be close, to be like all these other couples around us. Here we are, and she’s hardly moving, too panicked to enjoy herself.

It makes me wonder what she thought dancing with me would be like.

"The thing about a fantasy -- it's never as good as reality is,” I whisper near her ear, and she lifts her head to meet my eyes.

"You fucked Jean so you'd know?"

She’s angry, and that’s okay. I’ll take that over blind fear any day.

“Nope. Maybe even the reason I don’t want to anymore. It’s easy to have one and say to yourself that it’s better to keep it and ignore anything and anyone else.” I slip my hands further down her back, to the bare strip of skin at her waist. I trace the hem of her shirt, watching her face. “But you know that, don’t you?”

She stiffens against me, realization dawning as the words sink in.

When she says nothing, I add, “It’s even worse to get what you want and find out it isn’t what you thought it was.”

Marie closes her eyes. “This your new and improved idea of a lesson, Logan?” When she opens them again, she looks at my shirt and not me. “What’s the moral this time?”

It’s easy. “What do you want?” I ask. “And think before you answer, Marie.”

This girl still wears my dog tag almost every day of her life. She’s happy when I come back to the school, cries when I leave, and writes me letters while I’m gone. She sleeps in my bed when I’m not home, and follows me around when I am.

She wants to be with me. I know that.

But is it the idea of me she wants? Or the real man?

She can say nothing, do nothing, and keep a fantasy version of me in her mind. She can tell herself we’re not together because I think of her as a little sister, or because I want Jean.

Or she can choose me, the real person, and chance finding out I’m not really what she wants at all.

She pulls free of me and I let her go.

It hurts more that I thought it would. And I knew what she’d choose.

“Even now, huh?”

We’re done dancing.

Marie turns away from me and goes back to the booth, stopping long enough to snatch the scarf up off the floor. Can’t forget that. She grabs the bottle off the table and takes a long drink, and if she feels it burning down her throat she doesn’t show it. She sets the bottle back down and picks up her gloves, turning to see if I’m watching.

“Let’s go.” I want to turn and leave, let her follow along behind me when she‘s ready. But she’s shaken and too scared to deal with the crowded dance floor alone, so I wait while she tucks her scarf inside her little purse.

Once outside, she sucks in deep lungfuls of cool night air, looking up at the moon, at the skyline, at the ground. Anywhere but me.

“How do you know if it’s worth the risk?”

She’s pissed-off and confused, from the sound of it. How can I answer a question like that?

I want to tell her that everything will be fine, to trust me, that things will work out. But that would be lying, because I have no better idea than she does.

“You don’t,” I say instead. “You just have to jump and figure that it’s worth falling to find out.

Not the answer she was hoping for, clearly. She chews her lower lip for a moment, a hundred different emotions flickering over her face.

“Why don’t you want me to wear my gloves?”

I get one of her gloved hands, bringing it up between us so she can see it. “Because it scares you so badly,” I tell her. “And it didn’t used to.”

She stares at her hand, at the leather of her glove. At my hand wrapped around it.

The longer she goes without saying a word, the deeper it hurts. For me, and for her.

Because after all this time, after everything, she’s still afraid.


Part Five: Close Your Eyes


I’ll bet you’ve never seen Central Park in the middle of a fuckin’ thunderstorm.

There’s hardly anyone around, even though it’s barely noon. And thank God, too -- people get stupid in a hurry when they’re cold and wet, and they do stupid things that make me want to pop the claws. Like driving entirely too fucking fast and then nearly skidding into my truck when they try to pass me. Or walking right into me during a downpour because they’re too worried about getting water on their glasses to risk looking up.

I found her car about fifteen minutes ago. And I could tell I’m not too far behind her, because the engine was still warm, giving off a few quiet ticks and pings as it cooled. I stood there just long enough to get a sense of where she‘d headed, and then I began following her trail toward the heart of the park. Lightening streaked the sky, a boom of thunder followed moments later, and the storm broke overhead while I struggled to keep track of her scent.

The rain’s really coming down now, sheet after sheet of it, drenching the earth and everything in sight. Individual scents -- people, animals, food, wet soil -- they’re all mixing together now, washing away, and tracking someone in this shit ain’t exactly easy.

There’s a knot of anticipation twisting in the pit of my stomach, a tightness in my chest bordering on pain. And that’s probably not helping anything, either.

I’ve nearly lost her scent several times now. Whenever someone passes by too closely, smelling like damp wool, wet hair and whatever they had for lunch, I lose track of her for a second or so. Then I catch a hint of her on the wind, only to have that same wind suddenly shift a different direction, leaving me with nothing to go on.

She wants me to find her, there’s no doubt in my mind. I taught her how to lose herself in a forest, how to camouflage her presence and cover her tracks. Trained her for nearly an entire summer, until she learned enough to nearly lose me when I tracked her through the woods around the school. She’s using none of those skills now. In fact, she seems to be doing everything possible to leave as obvious a trail as she can.

On a clear day I would have found her a little under ten minutes ago, despite the thousands of differing scent trails throughout the park. The storm’s made it much more difficult, but not impossible. It’s just going to take me longer than usual.

Fucking rain.

A familiar sound catches my attention. It’s soft, almost lost between the howling wind and the pounding rain, but I can hear it clearly now that I’m listening.

The sound is to the right of me, from somewhere beyond that thick cluster of trees.

Marie.

And she’s laughing.

-

She went searching for answers a week ago. Just as soon as she could think around her hangover and walk without falling right over.

We didn’t talk much, the night before, after we got back to the school. What else was there to say, really? Besides, by the time we got past security at the front gate, and then around to the back of the mansion so we could go in through the kitchen doors, she was nearly half-asleep.

She had trouble getting off the bike, and even more trouble standing in her heeled boots. She gripped the edges of my jacket in her gloved hands, swaying on her feet as I gently pulled the helmet off her head. Before I could warn her, she started shaking her hair out, only to stop abruptly, eyes widening. She let go of my jacket immediately and clutched at her stomach with one hand, covering her mouth with the other.

Marie turned and stumbled toward the door, but there was no way in hell she’d make it in time. It was a wonder we made it to the bushes. She doubled over, braced her hands on her thighs, and I swear to God, up came everything she ever ate or drank in her entire life.

I kept her hair away from her face and out of the mess, holding it up behind her head, and I rubbed her back until she started hitting at me with a flailing hand.

“Don’t look at me,” she croaked out. I didn’t move away or let her go, and she groaned, clearly embarrassed, and she pushed at my leg. “I don’t want you to see this.”

“Too bad, darlin’.” Truth be told, I didn’t particularly want to see it, either. And I really didn’t want to smell it. She didn’t need to hear that, though. “I’m not going anywhere.”

That took the fight out of her. She leaned her weight against me while she tried to catch her breath between heaves.

“I would have thought you’d be happy to leave me out here.”

I shook my head and started rubbing her back again. “We fought. It happens. Doesn‘t mean I‘m done with you.” I let that soak into her thick head for a moment. “It don’t work like that.”

She took a deep breath, but no answer came. Instead, she gave the bush another good coating. We waited a little while to see if there was anything else her body felt like tossing out, but that seemed to be the last of it.

When she straightened up, she leaned so heavily against me it was a wonder she kept her feet under her. I got an arm around her back as we made our way to the door, and I managed to keep her upright while I entered the security code into the keypad.

Once inside with the door locked behind us, I leaned down to get an arm behind her knees. She figured out what I was doing just in time to get an arm around my neck, and she gave this kind of ‘urp’ sound when I lifted her off the ground.

I didn’t trust that ‘urp’ sound. Not with her face that close to my neck.

I carried her -- quickly -- through the kitchen, down several corridors, and up a flight of stairs to her dorm. I gave the door a few swift kicks, and Jubilee opened it to let us in. Then she immediately backed away once she caught a whiff of Marie.

Kitty was still up, too, sitting on Jubilee’s bed with a bag of chips in her lap. She stared at us as if she were watching some fucking movie, sighing deeply when Marie tried to bury her face against my shoulder. Kitty didn’t quite grasp that Marie was more interested in hiding from the overhead light than she was in getting closer to me.

I headed for her bed in the corner of the room, leaning down to ease her to the mattress. She clung to me for a few seconds before letting go, and fought me a little when I pulled her arms out of her jacket and stripped off her gloves.

“Careful,” she mumbled, half out of it. “My skin -- too close -- be careful of my --”

“Can it, would ya? God.”

Behind me, both girls gasped, probably in outrage or something. On the bed, Marie watched me with heavy-lidded, sleepy eyes while I untied her boots and slipped them off her feet.

“Logan.”

“What?”

She bit her lower lip, staring up at me while I grabbed her blankets and covered her up. When she still didn’t say anything, I sat beside her on the mattress. “You gonna spit it out?”

“I . . . forgot what I was going to say.” She blinked a few times, wrinkling her nose. “I think it was important,” she added, sounding slightly pissed.

She looked so frustrated, I couldn’t help laughing at her. “You should drink some water,” I told her. “I’ll have Jubilee get you a glass when I leave.”

“No, I don’t want anything to drink,” she said, shaking her head carefully. “Ever.”

I didn’t blame her. Not after seeing her throw up the entire content of her stomach and then some. “You need to keep hydrated, Marie. Take some aspirin, too.”

“Don’t want any water.”

“You’re gonna wake up in hell tomorrow,” I warned her. “If you have some water now, it’ll be easier for you.”

“No!”

I shrugged. Her choice, her mistake to make. “It’s your headache,” I said, and stood to leave. It looked like she was a second or so from sleep, but she grabbed my sleeve to stop me.

“Wait! Logan!”

“Yeah?”

“I remember what I was going to tell you,” she said, suddenly wide awake.

“What, darlin’?”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out, breathing deeply. “For earlier. Logan, I . . . I’m . . . “

I crouched down beside her bed, and took her bare hand in my gloved one. I knew she was just as disappointed with herself for what happened back at the bar, just as frustrated and angry as I was. Probably even more so.

“Hush. We’ll get it worked out, Marie.”

“Really?”

“I hope so.” Couldn’t lie. “You need to go to sleep. You‘re gonna have a pretty tough morning.”

She mulled that for a moment. “Are you going to be here tomorrow?”

“For fuck’s sake, where do you think --” I stopped before I could say anything else, reminding myself that she only wanted reassurance. “I’ll be here tomorrow. I have things I need to do, and I might not be around for a little while, but I wouldn’t leave without telling you, kid. You oughta know that by now.”

“I do. I just . . . good night, Logan.”

“Good night.”

I squeezed her hand and let it go, and watched as she folded it up against her chest. Her fingers traced her collarbone, as if searching for something.

Turning away from her, I found Kitty and Jubilee staring at me. Not even bothering to pretend they weren’t listening. Jubilee blinked first, opened her mouth to say something, and I pointed at the two of them.

“Don’t.”

I didn’t stop by and check on her the next day, figuring she’d spend the morning sleeping off her hangover and wishing she would die. I wasn’t too sure she’d want to see anyone, let alone me, the man responsible for introducing her to bourbon in the first place.

And I wanted to leave her alone, just let her be for awhile. Give her time to think.

I lasted until nearly noon before I went to her room. I spent the morning in the library, writing out a report for Xavier covering my last trip, and I’d brought it with me for Kitty to type up. What I really wanted, though, was to see if Marie was alive and kicking yet.

The suite was empty when I knocked, the door unlocked when I tried it. No one was there. I left the report on Kitty’s bed, and then I went over to Marie’s corner of the room. I didn’t think she’d feel up to leaving her room, or hell, her bed, so I was surprised to find her gone. Her pillow held only the last of her lingering warmth when I laid a hand on it -- she hadn’t been there for at least a half hour.

I thought about leaving her a note, saying I’d come by, that I’d be back later. I decided against it, thinking I’d let her come find me when she wanted, and left.

There were things I needed to get done in town, but I’d left my jacket on my bed, so I headed back to get it before I left.

Thirty feet from my room, I saw the door was hanging nearly wide-open. Realized I’d been following a fresh trail, all the way from her room to mine. My stomach twisted, clenching tight, and I knew without a doubt who and what I’d find inside.

Marie. Sitting on the floor, her back to me. Going through my things.

I always knew it could happen. She slept in my bed more often than not when I was gone, did her reading for class in here. Felt free enough to steal cigars from me. I knew, each time I left, that this might be the time she got curious. That she might go looking, dig deep, and find everything.

Strewn all across the carpet were things I’ve kept over the past several years. An old leather cigar case was sitting open by her knee, and it looked like she’d pulled everything out of it. All the letters she wrote me, kept in order and tied together with string. A watch she gave me for Christmas years ago, which I never wore but couldn’t bring myself to throw away.

Pictures were scattered around her in small piles, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she thought when she saw them. Photos of herself, one after the other, taken by Jubilee at dances and parties, on graduation day and summer trips. All mixed in with shots of her doing nothing but living her life.

She didn’t seem to hear me enter the room and shut the door quietly. I leaned against the closet door and watched her for several long minutes. On the floor between her knees was another case, one she’d broken into, and inside she’d found an old pair of her gloves. She had one tugged on, the fit looking a little tight, and I wondered if she ever did remember leaving them in my bed.

I could only guess at what she must be thinking. Her face was blank with utter shock.

“Found it, huh?”

She didn’t jump at the sound of my voice, didn’t jerk around toward me. She only glanced at me briefly before turning back to the box and everything I had kept inside it. I walked over to her and crouched behind her, leaning lightly against her back as I reached around to hunt through the case.

A phone card for fifty minutes of international call time, used in its entirety on Christmas morning the year she‘d turned eighteen. She’d chattered on and on about how happy she was at the mansion, but after awhile she brought up her family in Mississippi. And how she wondered if they ever still thought of her. When I told her that we only had thirty seconds left, she said she missed me and that she wanted me to know how much it meant to her that I’d called. I was cut off before I could say anything, before I could tell her that I missed her, too.

Ticket stubs from a play we’d seen in New York for her eighteenth birthday, because I missed the party by two days and she was upset I hadn’t made it in time. I bought her ice cream afterward and we ate it at midnight in Central Park, and she said she’d only forgive me, finally, if I let her have a bite of mine. I told her I’d have to think about it, because the cookie dough was really just that good. She turned the big eyes on me then and before I knew it I was eating chocolate chunk and she was licking happily away at the cookie dough.

There were other little things in the case, other mementos I’ve tucked inside and locked away. Things that mean nothing to most people, that mean everything to me.

Like a thin strip of cheap paper with a fortune printed on it -- ‘Your love is wrapped in careful layers.’ Nonsense to anyone else, but I kept it and didn’t read it to her. She hadn’t liked her own fortune after breaking the cookie open and wanted to switch. I told her I didn’t think fortunes worked that way, and that was one time the big eyes didn’t work.

I picked up a few pictures and studied them, each smile and arched eyebrow familiar, and I got lost in a few more memories before dropping them back into the box. Her heart was beating wildly, I could feel it against my chest. I wondered if she could feel my heart beating, just as hard, against her back.

I’m not exactly what you’d call the most sentimental man on the planet, but there’s a reason I like holding on to all these things, all this useless stuff. These keepsakes remind me of Marie, and the first good times I can recall after forgetting an entire lifetime of memories.

“I don’t understand.” Whisper quiet, booming in the silence. And surely she did understand, at least a little, with the evidence all around her. “I mean, do you need an engraved invitation or something? I haven’t been obvious enough, or blatant enough, or were you waiting for me to strip naked and sit on your bed in some cheap centerfold pose to wait for you?” She took a breath, hands clenching tighter in her lap. “Would that have gotten the point across better?”

“If you had, at least I’d know you weren’t scared of being touched.”

I didn’t pull back and let her go when she stiffened against me. I continued sifting through the items in the case while she thought about it, while she figured it out on her own.

Her response was a long time coming. “It’s not that simple,” she said, more than a little defensive.

“It is that simple. You want it to be some issue that can’t be fixed without divine intervention or some crap like that,” I told her, surprised she wasn‘t already denying it. “And for while there, you didn’t think like that -- you didn’t make it the center of your universe and the axis on which everything had to turn.”

I reached for the glove left draped over the side of the case, picking it up. “And I find these in my room,” I continued, deciding not to let her know I found them not just in my room, but my bed. “Granted, it was a nice thought if you did it deliberately, but four hours later I knew you hadn’t. You slept with them on, when you were alone, in here. When you couldn’t touch anything or hurt anyone.”

I let go of the glove, let it fall back in among the other memories. Her breath hitched in her throat but she didn’t say anything, didn’t pull away.

“So I try to find out what the fuck happened that made you so scared and no one knew for sure, though the first indicator was around the time you and your little boyfriend parted ways. And at first, I thought he’d done somethin’ to scare you or hurt you --” Thank God he didn’t, because I’d have ripped his head off and handed it to him. “And your buddy Jubilation caught me stalking the poor kid outside and dragged me back in and asked for an explanation.

Jubilee actually hopped on my back when I got in Bobby’s face. The kid disappeared while I was distracted, slipped away and ran off while I pulled the annoying little yellow thing off me. Once we were both calmed down enough to talk, she demanded to know what the fuck it was I thought I was doing.

I told her I didn’t like it when Marie’s feelings were hurt, and that I’d taken the kid aside and warned the little fucker when I first noticed the two of them makin’ eyes at one another. She shook her head, telling me I had it all wrong.

Jubilee spilled it all quickly. Said things were going fine between them until they started getting closer. Then Marie started wearing my tags again, even though Bobby didn‘t like that too well. And it was Marie that broke up with Bobby. Not the other way around.

“She told me that nothing had happened,” I said. “And that was the whole problem.”

Marie leaned a little more heavily against me, listening to everything I said, fingers shaking in her lap. I took her bare hand in my gloved one, turning it so I could run my thumb across the lines etched along her palm.

“Nothing happened, did it?” I asked her, almost gently.

I waited long moments for her answer.

“No.”

“And I considered that it was other people you couldn’t trust,” I went on. “And I tried to make you see that you could. It took me awhile to work it out -- it wasn’t that you didn’t trust anyone else, you go to a school for mutants, so they know the score, right? It was you. And I could deal with you being afraid of other people,” I told her, doing my best not to sound as frustrated as I felt. “But how the hell do I get into your head to figure out how to fix you being afraid of yourself?

I let her hand go after a minute, and pulled my arm back, resting my elbow on my thigh.

"I'm not a kid anymore,” she informed me, voice shaking slightly. “I don't need you to fix me."

I took a deep breath and let it out, holding on to my patience. She leaned back against me, head turning slightly toward mine, and I knew she wasn’t nearly so defensive as she sounded.

“You’re so young, Marie,” I said softly, near her ear. “And I forgot that.”

I stood up then, and grabbed my jacket off the end of the bed.

And I left her there so she could think -- about what she’d gone looking for in the first place, and about what she found instead.

-

I’ll bet you’ve never seen such a beautiful sight.

Marie’s standing in the middle of a small clearing, cloak lying in a shapeless heap on the ground nearby. She’s wearing a plain t-shirt and jeans and they’re utterly drenched, clinging wetly to her every curve like a second skin. Her hair’s hanging down over her shoulders in thick, heavy strings.

She’s got her face turned up toward the sky, giving another little giggle as she spins slowly in place, arms outstretched. The few people passing on the sidewalks look up from under their umbrellas just long enough to stare at her as if she’s completely lost it.

And honestly, it don’t look like Marie gives a flying fuck what anyone thinks of her right now.

While I watch, she wraps her fingers around the end of her flimsy scarf and tugs it free from her neck. Water-logged, it floats to the ground and she stares at it, watching it fall.

In the past few years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear the same scarf twice in the same month. She has more scarves in more varieties and colors than I ever thought possible. Sturdy cotton in brown, like the one around her neck the first time I laid eyes on her. Thick wool in forest green, actually worn in order to keep warm a time or two. Sheer silk in pale pink, so thin you can hardly tell you’re not actually touching her soft, warm skin.

She has scarves to match everything she wears. She’s incorporated them into her everyday wardrobe like someone else might remember to wear socks that go together.

She’s worn scarves so often for so long now, she doesn’t look quite like Marie without one.

Thunder rolls through the park, shaking the ground beneath my feet.

She steps on the scarf.

--

Later that evening, I went looking for Marie when she didn’t come to dinner. It’s not like her to miss a meal, especially when it’s pasta of any sort.

She wasn’t in my room, she wasn’t in her own room, and beyond that I didn’t want to do a search on my own. The school is enormous and there are hundreds of people living in it that double back and retrace their own tracks a dozen times a day; it was much quicker, popping into the security control room and scanning the bank of monitors until I spotted her.

Since I had to pass by the main kitchens to get to her anyway, I stopped to ask one of the cooks if she could make up another plate for me. I know all the cooks pretty well, and some are nicer than others. If I go back for seconds or ask to take something with me when I leave the school, I usually try to ask the redhead. For the life of me, though, I can never remember her name. Melinda? Morgan? M something.

I waited for her to notice me standing there instead of calling her the wrong name. Truly, nothing pisses off a woman more. Try it.

“What can I do for you, Logan? Still hungry?”

“Could you make me up another plate of whatever that was?”

She laughed, her smile brightening her entire face. “Pasta. Alfredo. With grilled chicken breasts. Green beans. Seriously, do you not look at what you eat, or slow down enough to taste it?”

She filled a plate as she spoke and I snagged a beer out of the bottom of the refrigerator. I grabbed a fork out of the drawer along with a paper towel. “Thanks . . . “ I looked at her, still drawing a blank.

“Emily!”

Shit. “Sorry.” I took the dish before she threw it at me.

Marie was out on one of the mansion’s many porches, sitting at the end of a glider. She had one leg tucked up under the other on the seat, slowly rocking the swing with the ball of her foot. Her hair was a mass of brown and white twisted up behind her head and secured there with a clip, tendrils falling free in several places.

There were dark circles under her eyes, and it looked as though she’d fallen out of bed directly into a pile of laundry, putting on the first pair of jeans and t-shirt she landed on. An unbuttoned flannel shirt over the whole thing; it covered her from neck to well past the tips of her fingers, not surprising since the shirt was actually mine. I hadn’t noticed, earlier. I was worried about other things.

She didn’t look up as I approached. She was too busy reading a letter from the case she’d brought out with her.

“You look like shit, darlin‘.”

Her mouth quirked a little at that, but her eyes remained on the letter. “I feel like shit. Which birthday of mine is Ororo talking about in this letter she sent to you in Tokyo?”

“Nineteen. Put that down, would ya? I brought you something to eat.” That got her attention and she looked up at me. And blinked in surprise.

She folded the letter back up and tucked it in its envelope, and set it with the others in the case. “I missed dinner?”

“Just by a little while.” More than two hours ago. “You been out here stewin’ all day?”

“Yeah,” she answered, taking the plate. “And there are things I still don’t understand.” I handed her the paper towels and the fork after she tucked both legs up under herself and got comfortable. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem.” I took the case and put it on the floor so I had room to sit. The glider creaked loudly beneath me. Damned delicate furniture.

She reached for the bottle in my hand. “Did you bring the beer for me?”

“Yes,” I said, and popped the top off. There were still some things she didn’t understand, eh? I took a long pull off the bottle. “We’ll share.”

“Hmph.”

I stretched my arm out along the back of the glider and brought an ankle up to rest on the other knee. She took the beer from me anyway.

“So,” she began, and concentrated on twirling strands of noodles around the tines of her fork. “I have some questions.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it pretty much all boils down to three or four, really.”

I could only imagine what those might be. “Shoot.”

She ate a few bites first, had a few sips from the bottle. Took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“About what?”

“About having . . . I mean, that you . . . urg.” She stopped herself and took another deep breath, poking the food around on her plate with her fork. “I used to think I embarrassed you. By following you around when you were here, by wanting to spend every single possible moment with you. I knew people laughed about it, I knew you were teased about having a puppy. And I thought that maybe you’d come back more often, stay longer, you know, if I just left you alone.”

God, I felt awful. “I won’t lie and say you never made me uncomfortable, the first year or so I knew you,” I began, and her shoulders sank a little at the words. “You were so young, still in high school, and everything I said or did with you was watched. By everyone. And it was hard sometimes, trying to figure out how to pay attention to you without leading you on or hurting your feelings.”

“Oh.”

“Marie,” I said, and waited until she looked at me.

“What?” A little testy, and I smiled.

“You were only part of the reason I left and stayed away so long between visits. I had things I needed to do, you know that,“ I said. “But if anything, you were always the biggest reason I came back. Especially as you grew older.”

I thought that would make her feel better, but if anything, that only upset her more. “Why didn‘t you ever tell me? For years you let me go around believing you saw me as your little sister or something --”

“Actually, you came up with that one on your own.”

“-- and all along, all this time I’ve spent mooning over you and dreaming of being together, you’ve been . . . I don’t know, picking up scrunchies I’ve dropped on picnics or something, locking them away in the back of your closet. And not letting me know a damn thing about how you felt,“ she said, getting angrier by the second. “You should have . . . God. You should have told me.”

“And said what, exactly? Christ, Marie.” I shook my head, and took the beer from her lax fingers. “You were barely eighteen years old when I first started seeing . . . I don’t know. Flashes of the woman you’d become. I saw who Rogue would be, who Rogue could be, and I wanted her. I was willing to wait for her. How could I have explained that?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, eyes wide. “You could have tried.”

“And I would have scared you.” Didn’t she see that? “Besides, you’d fallen so hard for the idea of me, for the hero version of me you created in your head, you probably would have listened to what I said and heard something else entirely.”

“But --”

“You weren‘t ready to know how I felt. I wasn‘t ready to tell you.”

She thought about that for a moment, wrapping more pasta around and around her fork. “You’ve been waiting for me,” she finally said, voice soft and wondering.

“I’m still waiting.” She looked up again at that, surprised. “You‘re not quite there yet.”

That pissed her off. “How do you know if I am or not? Don’t you think I’d know?”

I reached out to brush the tendrils of hair away from her face and she flinched, hard, before she could stop herself.

She took a breath and I dropped my hand.

“That’s how I know.”

Marie set the plate down on the floor beside her ankle. “So it’s about touching?” she asked, upset. “That’s the test?”

“No,” I answered. “It’s about being unafraid to be close to someone, and I’m not just talking about sex here. If you let yourself touch and be touched, you’d risk getting injured or injuring someone else. You tell yourself you cover up and keep yourself apart from everyone because you’re dangerous. I think it’s because if you cared for someone and let them care about you, you might get hurt and you might hurt someone in return. And that’s got you scared shitless.”

There were angry tears in her eyes by the time I finished. “What makes you so sure?”

I got her hand in my gloved one, squeezed it gently. “You’ve been asking the wrong questions, Marie,” I said quietly. “Ask me why I’ve kept every letter you ever wrote me. Ask me why I’ve saved tickets and postcards and pictures of you.”

Silence.

“Ask me why I’ve kept your gloves.”

She stared at me, mouth forming voiceless words. Tears welled and the silence stretched on and on.

Her fingers gripped mine tightly and I rubbed my thumb back and forth across her wrist, the pulse strong enough to be felt through a layer of leather. She wasn‘t going to ask but her eyes said she wanted to know. “It’s because I lo --”

“Stop!”

I let her hand go and took a long drink of beer. I hardly tasted it. Disappointment surged through me, heart sinking, and beside me on the glider she began to cry.

I set the bottle on the ground and slipped my arm off the back of the glider, slipped it around her shoulders instead. “C’mere,” I said, and pulled her up against me. She laid her cheek against my chest and I gathered her close, resting my chin on top of her head.

We sat like that for quite awhile. I kept the glider rocking slowly, gently, and eventually her shaking slowed to nothing.

Marie sniffled a little and I could feel where she’d soaked my shirt with her tears.

“I don’t want to be afraid,” she said.

And that was half the battle won, right there.

--

I’ll bet you never felt warm standing in the middle of a cold rain.

Marie jerks the hem of her blouse up, pulling it free from the wet t-shirt left beneath, and lifts it over her head. She tosses it to the ground, and stands there looking at the damp skin of her own bare arms.

Bringing her hands up slowly, she stares at the black leather, at the gloves she’s rarely been without since she left Meridian and the life she knew there. Then she starts tugging on the wet material covering her fingers.

She strips off her gloves while I watch, and drops them on the ground. Grinning, she steps on one, then the other, stomping them into the mud. Joggers run by, slowing as they pass her, and she raises a pale white hand to wave at them.

“Marie.”

She laughs as she turns toward me, like she’s been waiting for me, like she knew I’d find her all along. Wet hair falls in her face but it can’t hide her smile, or the sparkle in her eyes as she spots me between the trees.

I linger at the tree line, pretty much protected from the rain. “What the fuck are you doing out here?”

“When’d you get back?” she asks, giggling at me. “How’d you find me?”

I guess I’m staring, but that drenched little t-shirt doesn’t hide much, including the fact that she’s cold. The wet denim of her jeans clings to the curve of her hips, hugs the sleek length of her thighs, and I’ll be damned if I’ve ever wanted anyone the way I want her now.

“Got back an hour ago and followed the route of your car, baby.” She’s probably wondering what took my ass so long to get here. “I could find you anywhere.”

Marie doesn’t respond. She’s too busy kicking off her heavy boots, adding them to the circle of discarded clothes surrounding her. Water swamps her socks and soaks them instantly, and while I watch she squishes her toes into the muddy ground. That’s not enough, though, because then she squirms around and manages to get a sock off her small, white foot.

“I’m assumin’ here -- and it’s a stretch, darlin’ -- that you left that obvious a trail for a reason.” I lean my shoulder against a tree and watch as she dips her big toe into a puddle of water. She looks utterly delighted with the sensation. “You wanna share why we’re in Central Park in the middle of a damned storm?”

“Not really.”

She gets the other sock off, kicking it away, and then jumps. She lands in the center of another puddle, giggling, and water splashes up her legs. She looks over at me, smiling. “Lose some clothes there, sugar,” she calls out over the roar of the rain. “Wet leather ain’t that much fun -- I just discovered that with wet wool.”

Marie pokes at the heap of her water-logged cloak with her toes. She watches me, and for the first time since I can remember, I can’t tell what’s going on inside her just by looking at her face. No matter how deeply I search her big brown eyes, she gives nothing away, and I don’t have the first clue as to what she’s thinking.

Her smile grows wider by the second as we stare at one another.

“Do it, Logan.”

So I take off my jacket.

--

Five days ago, Xavier got wind of a Sabretooth sighting.

We knew he wasn’t dead, we’ve known for quite awhile now . He’d been keeping to himself for the past several years, living in a cabin up in Adirondacks and pretty much staying far away from populated areas.

Until he was spotted a week or so ago, entering a warehouse in downtown Detroit.

Unsettling, sure, and certainly suspicious, but I wondered why Xavier thought it necessary to gather the entire alpha team together to discuss it. And then, up on the wall-sized screen behind him, he displayed surveillance photos of other former members of the Brotherhood entering the same warehouse.

The series of photos ended with a single shot of an average-looking man in the process of shifting into something with blue scaly skin. Mystique.

It was decided, after very little discussion, that I would go alone to investigate what kind of shit they were up to now. If I were to be discovered digging around -- and Sabretooth’s got senses just as sharp as mine -- I’d have a far better chance making it out alive than anyone else. Cyke wasn’t too thrilled about being left out of the fun, and neither were Jeannie or Ororo, but Xavier had other plans for them.

The meeting ended and Jeannie caught my arm as I was about to leave. “I’d like to talk to you for a moment,” she said. “Alone?”

I followed her to her private office. I’d figured this was coming -- I’d seen it in her eyes the night I got Marie’s room number from her. She had concerns. And she clearly wanted to tell me all about them.

The door had barely closed behind us when Jean got right to it.

“She’s too young for you, Logan.”

“She’s twenty-one,” I pointed out, making an effort not to grit my teeth. “And it ain’t any of your business.”

Her eyes narrowed at that. “I’m concerned for her. That makes it my business.”

“Like hell it does.”

“She’s going to get hurt,” Jean said, and it looked as though she honestly believed what she was saying. “She’s just not ready, you know it as well as I do. Anyone can see it.”

The conversation went downhill from there. We kept repeating ourselves and talking in circles. By the end of it, the whole thing had escalated into yelling at one another and frankly, it was eating into time I could have been spending with Marie before I had to leave for Michigan.

I left Jean’s office, letting the door slam shut behind me, and I headed for my room to pack, stopping long enough to pick up a packet of information Xavier had ready for me.

Marie was lying on the bed when I got there, a thick novel in her gloved hands. She looked up from her reading, surprised to see me, and smiled. “Hey,” she said, and began to put her book away. “What’s up?”

“Trouble,“ I answered as I opened the closet to grab my duffle bag off the floor. I brought it over to the bed and dropped it beside her while she slowly sat up. “I’ve got to leave for a several days, maybe a week.”

“When?”

“Just as soon as I get packed.”

She didn’t ask where I was going, or why; she’s been in training far too long for that. I wouldn’t have said anything even if she did, because she was already worried enough without even knowing the details.

I was actually kind of excited about the whole thing. I enjoy beating the shit out of stupid mutants, especially the ones with dumbass plans to conquer something. But damn, the timing couldn’t have sucked more -- just when we were starting to get shit worked out between us, I end up having to leave for a little while.

On the other hand, I thought it might be for the better. Maybe time away from me would give her room to breathe and time to think.

Marie sat quietly for awhile, watching me pull clothes out of the dresser. I tossed shirts toward the duffle bag, along with socks, underwear, a few pairs of jeans and a sweater.

“I don’t want you to go.”

She told me that the very first time I left, in just the same way -- phrasing it so she wasn’t actually asking me to stay but instead just letting me know she didn’t want me to leave.

“It’s just a mission.” I grabbed a shaving kit out of the bathroom and tossed it on the bed along with everything else. “Won’t take long,” I told her. “I’ll be back.”

Marie started packing everything into the bag. “I don’t want you to go,” she said again, a slight tremble to her voice.

Having someone give a rat’s ass about my personal safety still throws me a little, even after four years. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.

It’s nice. Knowing there’s someone out there who thinks about you when you’re gone, hoping you’re all right -- before Marie stowed away in my trailer, I never knew what it felt like to have someone actually care about what happened to me.

I like it.

I grabbed a few more things out of the closet and brought them over to the bed. She had everything packed inside the bag already, and she was far too busy studying its contents to look at me.

“You worry too much, darlin’.”

“Yeah,” she answered, deceptively light. “I guess if you can survive me, you can survive anything.”

I sat beside her and added a few more items to the duffle bag, then zipped it up and dropped it on the floor. She was wringing her bare hands and I took them from her lap. When the leather of my gloves touched her skin she hardly stiffened at all.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her quietly, giving her fingers a strong squeeze.

Her lower lip trembled with the effort it took not to burst into tears, and then she crawled into my lap, getting her bare hands around me to press flat against my shoulder blades. I wrapped my arms tightly around her shaking body, holding her close, and she tucked her head beneath my chin.

My hands moved over her back in long, soothing strokes while she sniffed back tears. I couldn‘t resist teasing her a little -- she‘d been more emotional in the last several days than she‘s been in good long while, which I knew irritated her. “You’re pretty when you cry, darlin’.” She shook her head quickly.

“I’m not crying.“ She must have noticed the way she sounded all but choked on her own tears, because she cleared her throat immediately after saying it.

“Sure you’re not.“ I slid my hands up over her back and into her hair, tilting her head back to look at her damp face. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back in one piece. Maybe carve you a new pair of gloves out of the son of a bitch causing problems this time,” I said, and smiled at her. “You like Sabretooth’s hide?”

She smiled back, giving a strangled little giggle that made me feel better about leaving. I moved her around a little, and dropped her back on the bed while I got to my feet. Lifting the bag, I turned and headed for the door, stopping long enough to glance back at her.

“I stocked up on cigars, baby.” I felt a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Feel free.”

I shut the door behind me, shouldering the duffle bag as I walked down the hall. I knew she’d worry about me the entire time I was gone, knew she’d smoke my cigars and go through some more of my things. I knew without a doubt she’d sleep in my bed.

What I didn’t know until right then was just how much I looked forward to coming back. Because I wasn’t even thirty feet away from Marie and I missed her already.

-

I’ll bet you never got everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

She watches my face, bouncing slightly on the balls of her bare feet, and it’s all I can do not to grin at how demanding she’s being.

I peel off my jacket, the wet leather trying to cling, and I toss it on the ground. I wonder what she’ll ask me to strip off next.

“There’s this great thing called roofs,” I tell her, trying to frown as she skips closer. “Created to keep out of stuff like this. For a reason.”

“Be a man, sugar, take a little water.” She finally closes the gap between us, giggling, and I reach out to push aside the wet hair that’s fallen in her face. She doesn’t stiffen even the slightest bit when my fingers brush her bare skin. “You’re not getting the full effect,” she says, leaning into the touch. “Get out from under that tree.”

"No fucking way."

She gets a hold of both my hands and starts tugging, drawing me out from under the shelter of trees.

I’m drenched within seconds. I shake the cold water from my hair, frowning at the chill, and she laughs.

“What the hell is with you?”

“Life. Rain. Greenery,” she answers, and stretches her arms out to indicate the park and everything in it. “You ever dance in the rain? You’ve missed something special, lemme tell you.”

She takes a step back, grinning, and deliberately kicks mud all over my jeans. I pull her back towards me with a single jerk, and I watch her face closely as I touch the bare skin at her waist, my gloved hand slipping up under her shirt. For once, it’s not fear that makes her gasp like that.

“What are you doin’?”

Marie grins up at me in response.

“Being Rogue,” she says. “You like it?”

It takes a moment for the weight of her words to sink in, and her smile begins to fade the longer I stare. My heart leaps inside my chest and something like pure adrenaline rushes right through me as I search her face.

I look down into Marie’s big, sparkling brown eyes as she digs her heels into the muddy ground. For the first time, a grown woman looks back.

Do I ‘like it?’ Good God.

“You’re getting filthy.”

She grins, and it‘s a little wicked. “What’s wrong with gettin’ dirty?”

Before I can think of a damn thing to say, she leans down and quickly scoops up a handful of mud. She smears it right across my chest and I’m so fucking stunned I let go of her completely.
She skips backwards, out of arm’s reach.

“You threw mud at me.” I still can’t quite believe it.

Marie laughs in a way I can’t ever recall hearing from her before. She sounds relaxed, even happy. And utterly carefree.

“Smeared it,” she corrects, sounding rather proud of herself. “Whatcha gonna do, sugar?”

I know a challenge when I hear one. I drop into a crouch, eyeing her.

I grin at her, eyebrow arching. “You really wanna know?”

“You’ll have to catch me first,” she teases, taking another big step backwards. Her bare foot lands in the middle of a puddle, and muddy water splashes over her toes.

And I laugh, just for the hell of it.

“You get fifteen seconds, darlin’.”

I could have given her a fifteen minute head-start, it wouldn’t matter. Hell, even without enhanced sense, I have experience on my side -- I’ve chased after Rogue for years now, looking for her everywhere.

“Run.”

--

I didn’t find her gloves until this morning.

The situation in Detroit was taken care of. I’d spent a few days watching the warehouse, tracking everyone who came and went on a regular basis, listening to their meetings. It turned out they didn’t have a plan at all -- not yet. It was just talk about forming a new alliance and standing firm against humans and X-Men and, from the sound of it, just about anyone who wasn’t one of them.

On day four of surveillance, I got bored and torched the place. Nothing says ‘quit it’ quite like destroying their headquarters.

After days of sleeping in my truck, if I slept at all, and eating incredibly bad food, I wanted to spend the night in place with an actual bed. So I got a room at a decent looking motel, ordered a pizza and had a good night’s sleep.

I checked in with Xavier as soon as I woke up, and let him know I’d be home later in the afternoon. Then I went digging through the duffle bag and there they were, tucked beneath my shaving kit.

Marie’s gloves. The ones she wore the last time I saw her, in my room before I left.

I recognized them instantly. And it’s a damn wonder I didn’t realize it before. When Marie packed my bag, she’d been wearing those gloves. Afterward, when I had her on my lap, her hands had been bare.

She was sending me a message. But what exactly was she telling me?

I drove over six hundred miles in under seven hours to find out.

--

I’ll bet you never got more than you ever thought you wanted.

She turns and takes off running, laughing, and I watch her dart between the trees until I can no longer see her.
I tick each second off inside my head. Twelve. Thirteen.

She left all her discarded clothes behind, heaped on the ground, and I grab the sheer scarf from the pile, shoving it in my pocket.

Fourteen. Fifteen, and I take off after her at a dead run.

Her scent is faint, the majority snatched away by the shifting winds and pouring rain, but it’s still more than enough to go on. I follow the path she took through the woods, noticing all the times she either lingered in one spot or doubled-back to throw me off.

She’s just up ahead, giggling with each step from the sound of it. I catch up in no time, and she never even sees me before I slam into her from the side, tackling her by surprise.

I turned us so I’d break her fall, and I land hard on the ground, grunting, flat on my back. Marie’s sprawled out on top of me, the wind knocked right out of her, and she braces a hand on either side of my shoulders. She grins down at me and struggles to catch her breath, wet locks of her hair creating a curtain around us.

I drag a palm across her collarbone, leaving a smear of mud behind, and I reach around her arms to take her face in my hands.

“I think you won,” she tells me, a hitch in her voice as she looks at me.

I roll us so she’s on her back, and I brace the bulk of my weight on my forearms. My hands have streaked quite a bit of mud along her jaw and cheekbone, and I brush a thumb over her chin, streaking more.

There’s probably not even three inches between my mouth and hers, and her hands grip fistfuls of my shirt. “I think so too,” I whisper near her lips. “Close your eyes.”

She shakes her head just slightly, eyes glittering as she studies my face. “I don’t trust you,” she says, a hint of laughter in her voice. “You gonna rub mud in my face?”

The idea has merits. She has no idea how beautiful she looks, dirty, wet and disheveled.

“You wouldn’t.” She stares up at me, searching my eyes.

“I might. Take it like a man, baby. Close your eyes.”

She stares up at me, searching my eyes. After a long moment her lashes flutter shut and I get out her scarf, slipping the sheer material over her face. Then I kiss her, through a cold, wet scrap of silk that smells like Marie and the rain and the ground she threw it down on. Her mouth is soft and warm against mine, the taste of her soaking through the scarf, and I’ve dreamed of this a hundred times. A thousand. Reality is so much better.

In shock she starts to stiffen, letting go of me to dig her fingers into the earth beside her.

“Trust me.”

She begins to relax beneath me, through sheer force of her own will. She’s chosen to let go of her fear, chosen to live her life around it -- and that was something she had to learn on her own, something I could never teach her.

Against her lips I whisper, "Trust yourself.”

I push my fingers into her hair, getting a hold of her head and tilting, and this time she melts into the kiss, her sweet mouth opening under mine. Cold rain falls all over us, all around us, soaking us both, and God, I’ve never known heat like this in my entire life.

Tugging the scarf down over her throat, I drag my open mouth along the line of her jaw and she brings her hands up to grip my shoulders. I kiss the hollow of her throat and then lower, grazing her delicate collarbone with my teeth while her heart pounds just as hard as the rain.

Grinning, I lift my head to see her face.

“Say it,” she whispers, and I bring my gloved hands back up to her face. She wouldn’t let me say it before, too scared to hear what she already knew. My thumbs brush over the curve of her cheeks, streaking dirt and a wet blade of grass across her face, and I stare down into the depths of her eyes.

She’s not scared anymore. Not of me, not of this. Not of herself.

“I love you.”

I’m so damn proud of her, so happy for her, for us, I can’t even think of the words I need to tell her all of it.

She wraps her arms around my back, holding on tight, and she laughs. Thunder rumbles all around us as I drop my forehead to her shoulder, breathing her in, and I smile against her skin.

“What changed?”

I press my mouth to her shoulder, giving her a brief bite through her shirt. Her body arches beneath me and I can feel her nails drag deeply down my back.

Her answer is a breath in my ear. “Everything,” she says.

And I believe her.

---

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Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their owners/creators/copyright holders. This fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.