Logan stares at the ceiling somewhere in the blackness above his head. If she had touched him somewhere else, would it have had the same effect? His hand subconsciously goes to his shoulder, fingering the spot. He flashes briefly to Mystique's hijinks in the tent. Perhaps she knew something he didn't?

It isn't the same on the receiving end-- he doesn't feel her inside his head, but he does feel the tear right above and to the left of his heart. He had to regenerate a rib once -- before the blackness -- and had felt the crunch of bones knitting and pulling away from pinched lungs, but this rip feels nothing like that.

"We're working on it," Bobby had said. And why shouldn't they? That's what kids do. Or so he assumed. His own childhood was as lost as the rest of his life before Alkali Lake. Not knowing how old he was himself made it that much harder to feel guilty about her age.

Her fingernails would draw blood, shockingly bright and tasting of copper to match the adrenaline on his tongue. The vision was red and pain and adamantium inside his head. He rolls out of bed.

Her bedroom smells like books and flowers and soft girlscent. He can smell the apple shampoo she used to wash her hair that morning, amplified by the sleepsweat on her scalp. Her sheets are cool, cottony soft against the balls of his feet, and smelling of her skin and perfume.

Marie opens her eyes. "You came." The sheet dips when she shifts her hips, exposing a sliver of her breast-- fleshy and not too thin. Young. He places one rough hand over her heart, less than a millimeter from actual touch, and it's there-- just beneath the surface. Heat and static and something else passes between them; he can feel it beating.

Her lips are round and full and rosy from being nervously bitten, and for a moment he is afraid, but what is life without the constant threat of death? He presses his hand into the flesh of her left breast, presses their lips together, and feels his soul rip a little bit further.