There are some things you just can’t escape, no matter how fast and how far you run.

Last fifty years or so we have lived practically isolated from the world. There are some things we need. Some things that we can’t make ourselves, and every now and then we have to go to the settlement to buy them. Not often, maybe couple of times a year. She hates those trips. So do I. But they’re necessary. It’s not just the stuff we buy. It’s the people. Other living beings. We both need them. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s the fucking truth.

People. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.

For the past ten years we have been scouting our surroundings. By bike when we still had gasoline. I have been meaning to turn my bike solar powered. Haven’t gotten round to do that yet. We have time. All the time in the world. Now my bike, maybe only one of its kind, waits in the far corner of our woodshed, covered with a tarp. We have a truck instead. Ugly, clumsy truck. It was ugly already when I bought it. We tinkered a bit with it, and it turned more ugly, but now we can drive it on almost any kind of terrain, and it’s armed.

I remember watching a movie once, must have been nearly four hundred years ago. I watched it with Marie, and we were both laughing our asses off. We thought it was the most hilarious thing we had ever seen. Futuristic world after nuclear war, lone, futuristic hero wandering around, basically just looking for gas for his wheels. I think it was called Mad Max. The movie. And that hero. We laughed back then. Well, we are not laughing anymore.

There wasn’t a war. It didn’t happen suddenly. Everything just started winding down. Slowly at first. Very slowly. It had been going that way for quite a while already. Winding down. First one to go was oil. Then electricity. Shortly after that society. After that everything else.

For the past fifty years we have been winding down. Winding down from everything that happened before. I have been mostly sleeping and taking long walks. Marie… She has been writing. When I first built this cabin, we had two rooms. Bedroom and a kitchen. Now we have three. Bedroom, kitchen and Marie’s room.

Marie’s room. It’s filled with stacks of notebooks and bottles of ink. She learned how to make paper and ink when real paper and pencils became impossible to find. There’s a desk and a chair I made for her. She learned how to make candles, and I just wait for the day when she accidentally torches that place. Luckily that hasn’t happened yet. Our whole life is on those pages. Four hundred good and bad years, written down with her neat and punctual handwriting. She has even written down my past. The only dark spot in my memory. Somehow she managed to squirm past the blocks that prevent me from remembering what happened all those centuries ago, in that lab from where I got the metal on to my bones, and what happened before that. She hasn’t showed those pages to me. I don’t mind. When I asked her about it once, she got awfully quiet and jittery, then told me she would burn them if I asked ever again. Maybe it really is better that I don’t know.

“Marie, time to go!” It never fails. No matter how long you live, women always take their precious time for primping and preening before they can show their face in public… Well, I know that in this case it’s not about insecurity or wanting to look good. She’s stalling. She’s stalling because fights are in the settlement tonight, and she knows that I know that, too.
“Marie! If you don’t haul your pretty ass over here soon, you’ll be walking…” Uh… Christ.
“Could you really do that? Could you really be that mean?” Umm… Uh…
“Honey, shut your mouth. You’re drooling.” And whose fault is that?

Maybe things have cooled between us a bit. I love her. I think she loves me. Has to. Don’t think she would have put up with me this long if she didn’t. But it’s not that all consuming, fiery, eating-your-heart-out feeling anymore. I don’t roll over and die if she spends some time on her own, week or two just wandering around. She stopped nagging about my small trips about hundred years ago. We don’t get the urge to jump on each other hourly, daily, or even weekly. Doesn’t matter. I’m quite happy and satisfied. And I’m sure I would have noticed if she had something to complain about.

But now…
“Have you gone nuts?”
“What do you mean?” Oh, that sweet and innocent routine won’t work anymore. I fucking know you inside out, darling.
“I’m supposed to keep my eyes on the road, not ogle you.” Stop fucking pretending. That ‘confused as hell’ face won’t win any prizes.
“Logan?” Don’t you ‘Logan’ me…
“You did that on purpose? I promised that I wouldn’t go to the arena already.”
“Did what?” You know what I’m talking about.

She hasn’t looked as radiant and alive in years. Now, don’t get me wrong. She’s beautiful. She’s my fucking wife, and I could spend all day just watching her when she tinkers around, washing laundry, chopping wood or just sleeps in the sun, but…

“I just brushed my hair and put on some clothes… You said you were in a hurry so I didn’t have the time to…” She doesn’t have any make-up on. Just that pale skin, cheeks little flushed, those huge eyes searching mine. She has put on jeans, and loose, long-sleeved shirt. She has even gloves on, because lately it has been safer for her to move around with her mutation on because all of the freaks wandering around.

“Turn your skin off.” Do it now. Come here.
“Logan… What… We’re going to be late already, you said we’d have to hurry…” There’s no better way to shut her up. Those lips of hers, they’re meant for far greater things than talking. I don’t get to kiss her nearly enough. We do not spend enough time with each other anymore.
“We can go tomorrow. I have a better idea how we could spend today…” I think she’s getting on board with that plan of mine, if those moans are anything to go by.

There are some things you can’t escape.

From the moment I saw her in that sleazy bar in Laughlin I had a thing for her. And mind out of the gutter. Now. I mean that.

She was just a kid back then, but somehow… There was some kind of connection. I could practically hear and feel something clicking in the back of my skull when I met her eyes across that counter we were leaning on. It was like some sort of deja vu, only backwards. I don’t believe in that destiny and faith –crap, but I felt like I would know her in the future. That I would be spending some time with her. That was maybe the only reason I took off without skewering the guy that tried to poke me with that fruity knife of his. Wanted to remember that feeling of knowing her instead of feeling of that bastard’s blood flowing over my knuckles.

We have had our ups and downs, but as long as I’m with her… They don’t matter. As long as she keeps smiling and lets me close to her, they don’t matter.