Marie walked into the med-lab. Its cold, sleek features went unnoticed as she kept that steady gaze on his unmoving form, resting like a big, sleeping wolf on the lean gurney.

She approached his side, browns taking in every detail.

He was shirtless, bandaged, hooked up to machines. The pace of the heart monitor laced her ears and her own heart with trepidation.She'd put him here.

Lips parted in an attempt to breathe again.

The professor was well, so why couldn't Logan wake up?

Why had he done this to himself... and for her, no less?

She tore her eyes from the sight, looking around the room, warm tears crept up and everything went blurry at the bottom of her vision.

She blinked back, feeling that sweeping confusion and worry slither through her efforts of retaining some sense of control.

She couldn't keep away, glancing back to him... She laid a gloved hand to the side of his arm on the metal surface, not daring or allowing herself to touch him, yet, even though it was safe.

Safe?

She could have choked out a laugh if she made the effort, but it snagged in her throat and she felt what discipline she had left waver, swaying in its last, feeble stand.

She raised her forearm to her eyes weakly, hiding them, feeling the salt water seep through the soft fabric, tears she wouldn't let herself cry even though they were already there.

She'd cried too many times in her life. She lowered her arm.

But wasn't Logan worth it?

Logan was worth it... but she wasn't.

It would be self pity if she gave in... and she did... " Why did you do it?"... her voice shivered in its quiet tones, disappearing into the sterile, unforgiving expanse of the room.

Tears trained in glistening tracks down her cheeks, dropped silently until one hit the metal below... a plunk .

The sound made her knees melt and her stomach wither. And her hand went to his face impulsively as she leaned in; she couldn't stop herself... Moving covered fingertips over the side of his face, "I'm not worth it," she whispered... Stepping over just enough to rest her cheek on the mass of hair near his brow...

"Marie," a voice came ragged in her ear as if the sound itself rose from the dead.

She jerked, nearly tripping sideways. Her glistening eyes were wide, her mouth working to say something -- though what the hell could she say? Had she even heard it?

He just laid there, like he had all along -- still, unmoving... the heart monitor beeping regularly as it always had.

She covered her mouth with her hand as if in a dream, feeling sick, feeling things she didn't want to feel, especially the fact that Logan was still in her head... and especially the strange notion that she might finally be going insane.

She fled the room, her pulse pounding through her body as she swallowed the sobs and half-wobbled, half-ran down the corridor.

Why did he do it? She wasn't worth it.

Beep... beep... beep... beep... And all was as it had been before she'd come.

"Marie," another whisper... and the blackness swept over him with its ebbing tide, washing him away from images of a girl he could barely hold on to...