Ave Verum Corpus

Two AM and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake:

“Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?

I don't love him and winter just wasn't my season.”

There's someone singing in the conservatory, he can tell from his room: something sweet and low in a soft voice. He strains his ears for a moment to catch the words.

Just some teenage angst song, he figures, ready to tune it out, and maybe whoever it is singing does too because the voice stops here and the music tapers off into a sigh.

When he first hears the slow, measured notes of a new song on the piano he is sure it is only his imagination. He closes his eyes for a moment as he always does when the music strikes him: he breathes deeply and smells sweetbread and apple pie over the mansion's overtones of old oak and Christmas holly, and he can hear echoes of a woman's laughter. If he concentrates hard enough he can almost feel a small, cold hand in his own.

But the song continues hesitantly on past what he can remember and his eyes snap open again. Ten seconds later he is standing outside the door to the conservatory with his forehead pressed against the dark wood, lips moving to a song he doesn't know. He is sure he's never heard the song before except for in his head, yet he knows every note and phrase by heart. Before he can stop himself he is bursting through the door and demanding, “What's that song called?”

The crash of notes on the piano and sudden scent of fear remind him that not everyone is as aware as he is. Marie is sitting at the piano, eyes dark and skin pale. She's not wearing her gloves and she looks just like she did the first time he saw her. “Logan! You scared me.”

He doesn't have the time to feel guilty; the memories are already fading. He grasps at them desperately. “The song,” he repeats. “What's it called?”

“I don't know,” she says. He can smell her defeat, shares it. “I hear it sometimes. At Christmas. And singing,” she adds, “Beautiful singing.” She looks away.

His memories, Logan thinks, and spends thirty seconds consumed by self-pity and jealousy. Then Marie says, “I'm an intruder in my own head,” and he hates himself a little bit for making her feel that way.

He spends a few regretful minutes wishing that Jean or the Professor were here. As much as he once hated the invasion of privacy it would be nice to have some answers for once. After all, he thinks bitterly, it's Christmas – Christmas without Jean or Wheels or even old One-eye. Morale is at something of a low.

Suddenly Marie shivers and reaches for her gloves on top of the piano. Logan remembers the first time he saw her without them and the happy weeks afterwards and the smell of heartache and resignation that followed.

She broke up with Bobby when he asked her when she was going to get another shot.

“Can you play it again?” he asks awkwardly. He doesn't know why needs to hear that song. It's not so hard to hear when he has someone to share it with, maybe.

She shakes her head. “It's gone now,” she says quietly. He knows – he can't hear it either. “I'm sorry.”

Logan isn't really sure what to say so he shrugs. “Play something else,” he suggests.

Marie launches into a slow and soulful version of O Come Emanuel and those words, too, appear on his lips. He holds them back and watches her gloved hands caress the keys. A few measures from the end a yawn swallows her words and she closes the cover over the keys. The clock on the wall ticks over to two-thirty a.m. “I should go to bed,” she says, and Logan nods without saying anything.

Long after she's gone he stares at the piano, feeling the warmth fade from the room. He lights a cigar and smokes it slowly, waits till it burns down close to his fingers and stubs it out in a pot plant. He knows when he goes to bed he'll hear her voice in his dreams – not Marie's, he doesn't know her name – he'll hear her voice and the song he thinks they maybe used to sing. It makes him uncomfortable: he, too, feels like an intruder. He knows he used to be someone else.

At quarter past three he closes the door to the conservatory and returns to his own room. His sleep is haunted with the strains of an old piano.

*

The five of them are trying to organize a holiday concert to raise the children's spirits but Marie has her doubts. Ororo means well but she hasn't got much musical talent to bring and the children won't forget the spirit of their dead professors. Bobby can play guitar and Kitty plays trumpet; Jubilee is an expert at anything with a drum but none of them has smiled properly in weeks. They haven't got the spirit to pull it off themselves.

“We need a gimmick,” Jubilee decides. There are dark shadows beneath her eyes.

“You could blow up an amplifier,” Bobby suggests.

Jubilee throws a French fry at him.

It's Ororo who really motivates them. “Come on,” she says. “If things don't improve around here we'll have to send everyone home, and most of them don't have homes they can go back to.”

Marie hears what she isn't saying: Don't let the Professor have died in vain. And beneath that: Logan didn't kill Jean for nothing.

Maybe Ororo doesn't know that. She overheard him telling her that the energy had just ripped Jean apart. Marie saw the whole thing, right down to the gasoline and the match he'd burned her body with and the way he sank onto his knees when the body caught fire.

It's probably Eric's influence, but she suddenly knows what it will take to save this concert. “Logan can sing.”

There is dead silence before Jubilee and Kitty break into laughter. Ororo and Bobby exchange sceptical looks. “You're kidding, right?”

Marie shakes her head. She's not kidding. She may not have heard it herself but she knows it just as surely. Jubilee says, “Prove it.”

This could be tougher than Marie thought. Not that she ever thought it would be easy to convince Logan to perform in any capacity whatsoever.

Well. Maybe in one, but that wasn't exactly a public event.

She thinks for a moment. There is only one thing Logan wants enough to agree to do anything other than kick ass in public. Truth be told she is willing to help him with that without anything in return, but if she wants to help the school she'll have to make a bargain.

She looks up and sees him across the cafeteria, standing silhouetted against a window. She says, “Give me three days and I'll have proof.”

Kitty crosses her arms. “What makes you think you can get him to agree?”

Marie glances down at her hands, then back up. Somehow her gaze lands on Bobby. “I have the ultimate bargaining chip.”

*

Logan's first thought is Is she crazy? He clenches so hard around his cigar that the end goes out and he throws it in the trash.

He doesn't think much about what must be his past. He tried, once, to get answers at Alkali Lake, but they don't tell him much: just what happened to him once he was taken. He doesn't trust anything Stryker might have told him about who he'd been – he had no motivation to tell the truth.

It's only since Jean died (since he killed her when she begged for salvation) that he's had dreams this vivid. He knows if he doesn't find the truth soon he never will; he doesn't know how he knows that, but he's not one to doubt his instincts.

And if he needs anyone's help, it's probably hers. She already knows all of his secrets anyway.

“Okay,” he says. Marie looks about as surprised as he is. “Where do you think we should start?”

They end up in the conservatory with a tape recorder and the piano. Marie plays a few warm-up scales and he watches her fingers. There's something familiar about their movement and he's not sure what it is. After a moment he nudges her sideways and sits beside her on the creaking bench, touching the keys as if feeling for a heartbeat.

Whatever it is, it eludes him. He's about to give up in disgust when Marie stands and slides gloved hands overtop of his own. For a moment he smells her shampoo but when her fingers start to move it's not her scent at all but something older and deeper. The scales are rough and juvenile but better than he'd have managed on his own and there's something in the back of his mind that almost clicks, so he plays them through until Marie sits beside him again.

“Do you hear it?” she asks, focusing on the movement of her fingers.

“Yeah.”

When she strikes the first note he closes his eyes and loses himself. Words bubble to his mouth and this time he doesn't bother stopping them: his voice is unused and rough and Marie's is too low and sugary but he can almost hear the echo of years past. There's a ghostly whisper of lips on his cheek and the fading impression of a ring on his left hand – then the warmth of someone behind him, arms around his chest.

Beside him, Marie starts and falters, the notes tapering into cacophony. When she stops he notices she's shivering beside him. “Did you,” she begins.

“Yeah,” he says before she can finish. He's oddly grateful he's not the only one who feels it. It's another minute before he realizes he's shivering, too. “That's enough for tonight.”

She doesn't disagree with him, but reaches up on top of the piano to stop the recording. “I'm going to put this on my computer,” she explains. “Maybe if we get another piece, we can put them together.”

He nods and rubs his chin. He wants a cigar, but he's not quite ready to share that part of the evening. Instead, he follows her upstairs and watches her disappear into her bedroom.

The wind howls outside his window but in his dream there is only warmth and laughter. For a second there is a flash of naked flesh and then it's gone and he's wide awake staring at the ceiling. The woman's name sticks in his mouth but his tongue can't quite shape the word.

Down the hall he hears Marie rise from her bed and close her door, can almost taste her when she pauses outside his room. Then she pads back in the darkness.

*

It takes Marie two more days to work up the courage to show the rest of the group. As per usual it is Bobby who provides the impetus. She no longer finds this trait charming.

“So,” he says, leaning forward over the table. Marie doesn't miss the fact that Kitty's hand is on his knee. “Three days are up, Rogue. Where's your proof?”

She sighs. “You'd better follow me.”

She makes Jubilee lock the door and shove the rug up under the crack before she even turns on her computer. The school needs this, she reminds herself as they stand there waiting for the sky to fall. “Try not to judge,” she sighs, and hits play.

The piano on her computer speakers is weak and tinny but the voices are commanding. In the past few days they've put together almost a minute of whatever song it is, though not all in sequence. The look of utter shock on everyone's face is almost worth the guilt she feels at betraying the secret.

“What language is that?” Kitty asks in awe after a moment of silence.

Marie doesn't know, so she shrugs. Bobby says he thinks it's Italian, maybe Portuguese.

Jubilee pipes up with, “Don't worry, kiddo. We won't tell.” Ororo just nods thoughtfully.

She turns off the computer and waits for the inquisition. She isn't disappointed.

Kitty, Bobby and 'Ro are gone but Jubilee has thrown herself onto Marie's bed. “Who's the chick?” she asks, motioning towards the computer.

Marie crosses her arms self-consciously. She hadn't recognized her own voice, either. “Me,” she says as firmly as she possibly can. “Do you recognize the song?”

Jubilee shakes her head. She still looks a little dubious that the voice is Marie's; Marie doesn't blame her. “No idea. It's nice, though. What is it?”

She folds her hands in her lap. “I wish I knew.”

*

May he turned twenty-one on the banks of Fort Bliss

Yesterday he sat down to the flask in his fist

Ain't been sober since maybe October of last year.

Here in town you can tell he's been down for a while,

But my God it's so beautiful when the boy smiles--

Twelve o'clock when the mansion is quiet she finds herself in the conservatory again. They haven't made plans to meet tonight, both of them dealing with the aftermath of sleepless nights and vivid dreams. She feels the ghost of Logan's touch on her skin almost as often as she feels the press of the woman's and it startles her awake every time.

Maybe it's normal that she still feels him – the only touch she felt for years – but the burn in her chest and his face under her fingertips and his lips on her forehead have never felt like this before, like she knows all of him instead of just a few inches.

She doesn't hear the other songs: not Cole's or Bobby's. Not Eric's or Carol's, either, she shudders: she hates the forced absorptions more than the others. They are invasive and cloying, though most of the time the Logan in her head roars them into submission.

It's times like this that the piano is her solace, though she isn't singing his song tonight. The first few bars flow off her fingertips without effort or thought. She doesn't catch herself wandering this time as her fingers fly over the sharps and flats: this is her time, not Logan's. His song stays quiet.

Deep breath, repositions hands on the keys, closes her eyes. The words don't come quite as easily as when she plays for Logan but they come anyway.

Her fingers try to start into the next phrase but they trip into the old familiar haunt instead. Startled by her own actions, she looks up to find Logan staring. Unaccountably, she's irritated. “Don't you ever knock?”

As usual he takes her bad mood in stride. She can just see the edge of his smirk in the half-light. “Don't you? I've been sitting in the corner for almost an hour.”

Marie wonders for a moment why she didn't smell the faint residue of leather and cigar smoke, but then, her senses aren't what they used to be. “Can't sleep?” she asks.

He doesn't answer her but he lights a cigar and exhales a cloud of sweet smoke into the room. Marie takes a drag when he offers. “You keep seeing her?”

She nods. She doesn't see the woman, not exactly, not all at once: just traces here and there, a hand, a slender calf, a cheekbone and part of an eye. “Who is she?”

For a long time he says nothing. When the cigar is finished he grinds it into a tiny stub. Marie is sure he isn't going to answer, but just when she's about to retract her question, he says, “I think you know.”

*

They're making real progress with his song now, two and a half minutes' worth, and Marie is toying with the idea of finding someone who speaks Italian who can maybe transcribe a verse. Then she can look it up, at least, and they'll finally be able to play the whole thing.

The more they put together the more they dream and remember: there's a whole face now, and rich dark red hair Marie wishes she could resent him for, but even her fingers itch to run through it. Intimate moments surface in her mind at the oddest times: during dinner, or when she teaches her dance or history class, or in the shower. Sometimes there is only one set of hands, effeminate and ethereal, and others she feels what she knows to be Logan's, as well, rough and deceptively large. There is the press of a breast against her cheek or the caress of fingers on the back of her neck, and goosebumps appear all over.

Jubilee catches her daydreaming at lunch time, eyes straight ahead and cheeks flushed, the slide of a phantom body against her own prompting a reluctant fantasy. “Rogue? Where've you been lately, girl?”

Marie doesn't know the answer. If she did, that is where she would go now, Logan in tow. Maybe there is something left for him. Without thinking, she asks, “Do you think Logan was ever married?”

Jubilee stares at her for a minute before groaning. “I don't really think he's the marrying type, sweetie. We don't have to stage another intervention, do we?”

Flushing, Marie pushes her plate away. That isn't at all what she meant. Quietly, she admits, “I'm having flashbacks.” Her friend still looks confused. “His flashbacks.”

“Oh,” says Jubilee, and then, “Ohhhh. No wonder you're distracted.” A heavy silence hangs over the table for a few minutes. Then she asks, “How long ago?”

Marie doesn't know that, either. From what little she's glimpsed of hair and clothes, it was sometime earlier this century, basically confirming her suspicion that Logan has finished aging. “Forty years,” she guesses. “Maybe fifty.”

She wishes she could enjoy the look of shock on her face. “Did you tell him?”

Marie fidgets with her cutlery. “He's having them, too.”

“So that's why you've been spending so much time together.” Jubilee says this as if it is a major revelation, as if they haven't always been close. “Bobby was beginning to wonder-”

“It's none of his goddamn business,” she barks, and sounds so much like Logan that she wants to glance around to see where the voice came from.

“Right,” the other girl agrees, looking as if she wants to back away. “That's just a little--”

Weird, Marie finishes in her head. Even for a mutant. At least she doesn't have to worry about Jubilee gossiping anymore. “I know. Listen, do you think Kurt speaks Italian? I know he's German or something but I thought he might be able to help.”

Jubilee shrugs, still a little leery. “Ask him,” she suggests. “He's probably your best bet.”

*

It turns out the song is really in Latin. Kurt identifies it right away.

Marie express orders the score off of the internet and when it arrives she corners Logan in the danger room with the folder. “I've found it,” she says, and he doesn't need to hear any more.

They sequester themselves in the conservatory, locking all of the doors and closing the blinds. It's only eleven o'clock in the morning, but it feels much later.

As soon as she plays the first note Marie knows this is it. She plays the whole piece through before they try it with the words, and it's in the very last bars of the song that she hears the word whispered in Logan's voice, though it can't have been him that said it.

Jane.

It's almost, she thinks, ironic. Of course her name was Jane. Of course her hair was red. Of course Logan had fallen for Jean, only to have to kill her in the end.

On the last note there's a vision of a small white-washed house somewhere, a number etched into the side of a country mailbox. Beside her Logan breathes a sharp breath and they both recoil from the piano.

Logan says, “I know where that is.”

Her only answer is to get their coats.

*

Logan insists on taking the truck North. The bike would be too cold at this time of year, not to mention dangerous. He doesn't get cold but she does, despite the gloves, and she doesn't regenerate like he does, either. Within half an hour they're on the road with just a scribbled address and a maybe-name. His adrenal glands are on overdrive and he wishes for a minute that he'd let Marie take the wheel, but only a moment. She doesn't drive fast enough.

He crosses the border at Niagara Falls and keeps heading west. In the passenger seat Marie doesn't say a word but he knows that she's thinking it could be too late, she could be dead but it doesn't matter. He would have to go anyway.

It's thirty-six hours later when they pull up to the house from the dream. The numbers have changed and the shutters have been painted and there's some landscape changes but it's the same house. Logan slams the door to drown out the sound of the song in his head, louder now than it's ever been.

They both note the crooked For Sale sign on the lawn, but neither of them says anything.

When they get to the door it's Marie who's brave enough to knock. They exhale a shaky breath in tandem.

“The house shows by appointment only,” a man's voice says gruffly as the door opens. He's forty-five-ish, tall and broad with curly dark hair and brown eyes. Marie nearly tumbles backwards off the front step. “Can I help you folks?”

Logan swallows thickly, unable to look the man in the eye. The only words in his head are to the song he can't stop singing.

“We're looking for Jane,” Marie puts in, wringing her hands. “It's – does she still live here?” After a pause in which her question goes unanswered, she adds, “My mother would have wanted me to come. They were-” she hums a few bars under her breath- “They were in the choir together.”

The man looks at her with a new light in his eyes. “You Annaliesa's girl?” he asks as if already convinced of the answer. “Well, you're a few years late. Ma's in the home now-” Logan swallows - “Down on 2nd and Earl.”

“Thank you,” Marie says weakly. Logan feels both of her hands wrap around his arm. Before he can do anything she's dragging him away. “Thank you very much!”

They make it to the truck at last and Logan leans against the hood, gasping for breath. The house smells of old love and cigars and he can't get the scent out of his nose.

Marie sags beside him, gloved hands scrabbling for purchase on the cold metal. “Logan,” she says, “Logan was that-”

He doesn't know. He isn't sure if that makes him feel angry and defeated. Only one woman has the answers now.

“I'm driving,” Marie tells him, and for once he doesn't argue.

*

Marie thinks they should ask at the front desk where they'll find her but Logan points out that they don't even know her last name. He's already taking the hallways fast enough that she has to run to keep up, skidding around corners. If Jubilee were here she would make a comment about following his nose. Marie's just lucky she can follow his footsteps.

She knows the very second he catches her scent in the hallway. The music seems to swell around them, causing her knees to half-buckle beneath her. Logan stands completely still, face expressionless and arms akimbo.

The hair on Marie's neck stands straight up as an invisible hand caresses her face.

Then Logan is moving again, and she forces herself to do the same, nearly losing her balance on the first step and half-tripping up the stairs. She's not sure how she knows she has to run, but she does, taking the stairs two at a time now. Logan is so far ahead of her she can't see him but it doesn't matter. She knows where he's gone.

By the time she slides into the room after him he's completely still, no longer even breathing hard. He has his back to her, posture rigid and hands splayed like he's ready to claw something to shreds.

Marie can't see anything but him. For a minute she's ready to laugh. How can it be that she's followed him this far, over two countries, for a song that plays in her head while she's sleeping and a voice she's never heard? How can she have brought him this far to see a woman he still loves when she's never stopped loving him herself?

She takes a deep breath that turns into a choked sob when she catches the scent of medication and old age and bravely takes a step forward even though all she wants to do is keep running.

The woman who once was Jane is laying on the bed, staring silently at the ceiling. Her body is frail and thin, her skin spotted and creased with age. On her finger is a plain gold band. Marie thinks, she must be dead.

She's unprepared for the wave of sorrow that hits her then: Logan's, yes, but also her own. She knows this woman, has touched her and kissed her and made love to her, in another life. She's been her, and they've been looking for so long. They're too late.

Jane proves to be more resilient than the sickening smell of impending death allows for. She heaves a shuddery breath and turns milky eyes on Logan, who shakes to his knees beside the bed.

“John,” she whispers weakly, and Marie's legs give out too. She makes no attempt to move. “John, I knew you'd come back for me.”

She wonders if the strangled sob she hears is herself or Logan before she realizes it doesn't even matter. “I'm here now,” he says, and she knows he's taken her hand.

“They didn't believe me,” the old lady goes on. Marie knows without understanding that she's forgotten most of her own past. “They didn't believe me, the boys, that you were coming back, but I knew you'd get away from them, John.” The utter conviction in her voice is terrifying. She is holding Logan's hand now in both of her own. “I knew you'd get away from those men.”

The chill starts at the back of her neck and works its way down and across, over her fingertips and down her legs until she is paralyzed with the magnitude of the revelation. Marie claws at the tile floor, afraid the world might throw her off.

“I came for you,” he mumbles.

“John,” the old lady gasps. “John, do you still love me? Do you still?”

Marie wants to be anywhere else but here.

He says, “Yes.”

Maybe it's better for him this way, she thinks. Maybe it's better that he didn't have to watch her waste away, mind, body and soul, while he remained ever constant. Maybe it's better.

But her heart breaks anyway because it's so lonely. She's never realized that about him before, that he could have had a hundred lovers and watched them all pass, and maybe he's never got a chance to grieve for any of them. Maybe some left him because they feared him, feared his agelessness, maybe that's what left him so cold. And some of them he pushed away.

One of them, he killed himself.

This one he'll lose twice. Marie doesn't know what is worse.

“John,” Jane pleads to him. “Take me away. Take me away from the pain.”

And then Logan looks up and meets her eyes. His are red and watery, but Marie knows her own are just terrified. “I can't,” she whispers. “Logan, please. Please don't ask me. Don't ask me for that.”

Marie has intruded into this relationship enough already.

Logan looks away. In her head he's ashamed of himself for even looking at her. “I can't take another one,” he says.

She closes her eyes. “Me, neither.”

It takes Jane Elizabeth Logan five minutes to die. Her husband is finished mourning before her body is cold.

He gives Marie the keys.

*

She drives for thirty-seven hours, with breaks only to use the washroom and pick up food. Logan doesn't speak the whole way and she only barely notices. They've shared ten years of faded memories and a futile quest together. There isn't anything left to say.

When they get to the mansion Hank and Ororo have questions and there's a new guy in the front hallway who seems somehow familiar. Logan barely spares them a contemptuous glare before hiding in his room. Marie says, “Not tonight,” and falls asleep on top of her covers.

The not-stranger is waiting outside her door in the morning. She doesn't feel like Marie today for reasons she doesn't bother trying to account for. Something stops her from calling him “sugah” when she asks him why he's here.

Her answer comes without sound. Hello, Rogue.

It's funny. He sounds the same in her head as he did all those years ago but his new voice is different. “Professor?”

In shock she follows him to what she has come to know as Ororo's office. There are two desks here now, at square angles to each other, and Rogue sits on the couch. “How...?” she begins. She doesn't have the slightest idea how to continue.

“Ah, my dear. That is a story for another time. There are more troubling matters at hand, if I'm not mistaken.”

The part of her that is Logan growls an unmistakable warning. “Logan will be fine,” she tells him. “He needs some time to himself.” At the very least, that is what the Logan she knows most intimately wants. It's kind of ironic. “He heals fast.”

“That might be true,” acknowledges Charles Xavier from the mouth of another. Rogue is sincerely disconcerted. “I am more concerned about you.”

Her fists clench in her lap. “I can live with the memories,” she says. “I can live with him knowing that I have them. What else can I ask for?”

“Just be sure you don't allow yourself to live in them,” he advises sagely.

Rogue fades into Marie again and her expression sours. She thinks of poison skin and miracle cures. “I don't have a choice.”

*

There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout

'Cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out

And these mistakes you've made, you'll just make them again

If you only try turning around

Spirits are up a bit, if the smell's any indication, and the holiday concert is only two days away, but Logan hasn't seen Marie in a day and a half. He isn't looking for sympathy and in a mansion full of empaths, telepaths and a girl who shares his memories, that also means he's not looking for company.

So it surprises him when he finds himself outside the conservatory at one o'clock in the morning, listening to her play. She doesn't play their song anymore that he's heard and maybe that's a good thing. If he hasn't been watching he's at least been listening, and he hasn't heard that haunting melody since Jane died, except for in his sleep.

This time he doesn't go in, just slides down the wall and lights his cigar, waits for the music to start. He almost smiles when he recognizes the song but it's a lot more bittersweet and a good deal less adolescent than he originally gave her credit for. He keeps forgetting that Marie is a grown woman now. She still smells the same to him.

Marie plays a few more bars before she loses interest and struggles into something livelier, maybe Chopin, though he's no expert. The notes sound more than a little forced, as if she's banging on the keyboard harder than is necessary. Logan's not in the mood for that, either, so he stubs out his cigar in a potted fern.

Halfway back to his room he thinks he hears the faint strains of their leitmotif but they taper off again without any accompanying voice. Silently, he sits on his bed and strips himself to his jeans, burying his head in his hands. It's with rage and not self-pity that he wonders how many lovers he's lost, how many he's been taken from, how many have been taken from him and how many he's driven away himself. Not for the first time he wonders if it's not for the best that he seems to forget about them all.

Eventually the anger fades into resentment and Logan's mouth thins into a firm line. When he turns out the light he hears footsteps on the floor below and imagines Marie leaving the conservatory and discovering the distinctive smell of cigars. The footsteps pause for a moment before continuing.

Sleep comes like an angel of mercy.

*

On the twenty-fourth of December the children gather for the concert. As the last act Logan and Marie hide in the shadows, Marie seated uncomfortably on the hard piano bench. She feels vulnerable.

Logan isn't exactly at ease, either. Just looking at him she can tell the claws are just itching to break the surface, and he wants a cigar. She knows he can sense her anxiety; after all, she's wringing her hands. She has no idea how to broach the subject she needs to broach. They need to sing a different song; they've rehearsed O Holy Night but it isn't right for them. Desperate to think of something, she plays with the seams covering her fingers.

He catches her around the wrist to stop her fidgeting. “You play better without them.”

She looks down at her gloves. “If I touch you, you'll die.”

His eyes are haunted. “Do you promise?”

Taking a deep breath, Marie unclenches. Less than delicately, she begins pulling at her gloves. “Why are you letting them do this, Logan?” She's so angry she can hardly see. “This is your school as much as anyone's. They moved your desk out of the Professor's office. After everything you've done for them!”

From his body language she can tell he's just as angry as she is. “I didn't do it for those damn kids, Marie!”

“You think I don't know that?” Her lips thin into a line. “I have you in my head! Of course you did it for Jean. How could you not? But the repercussions were bigger than that.” She pokes him in the chest with one bare, dangerous finger. “You held this school together when everyone else wanted to quit. You didn't do that for her.”

His hands ball into fists at his sides. Marie knows it's time for the killing blow. “They should know that, Logan. They deserve to know.”

After a tense few moments he says, “Fine.” She's about to be relieved but he keeps speaking. “But you have to do something for me.”

She should have known. Her eyes fall closed. “When the time comes,” she whispers, “I'll take you with me.” That's the promise she makes to him: that he will never have to forget again.

Logan nods and just like that it's the closing act. He picks up her piano bench and carries it across the stage to the baby grand and waits for her to sit.

Closing her eyes, Marie plays the prelude to O Holy Night before Logan shakes his head. Then she stops, recenters, and slips into another key. Behind her she hears him inhale deeply. In her head she counts to four---

Ave, verum corpus
natum de Maria Virgine,
Vere passum immolatum
in Cruce pro homine,
Cujus latus perforatum
unda fluxit et sanguine,
Esto nobis praegustatum
in mortis examine.

Hail, true body
born of the Virgin Mary,
Who truly suffered, sacrificed
on the Cross for man,
From whose pierced side
flowed water and blood,
Be for us a foretaste
In the test of death.

*

Two am and I'm still awake writing a song

If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me

Threatening the life it belongs to.