He felt out of place. So goddamned out of place, like a fucking bull in a shop full of china. He guessed he looked like one as well, sitting on a plush velvet couch, cradling a delicate porcelain cup in his hands, trying his best not to crush the damn thing. Finally he opted to place the cup down to a small table in front of him. For some reason his current company looked vastly relieved after he managed to bring the thin as a sheet of paper ceramic down without shattering it.

“So. As you can see from the paperwork, everything is in order. There’s a place for your daughter at Xavier’s, all costs taken care of, and you probably read the fliers Xavier sent for you in advance. Any questions?” He asked from the middle-aged couple sitting in front of him. They traded a quick glance, looking quite scared and hesitant. Then the woman cleared her throat. “I understood that one of the professor’s would be taking care of Marie during her journey to Westchester. I don’t mean to be rude, but… What is it that you’re professor at, Mr. Logan?” She asked with slightly trembling voice.

He just about choked to the cookie he had been chewing. Chewed thoughtfully the rest of it, remembering to swallow before answering. “Art. I teach art to those rugrats.” Two pairs of disbelieving eyes scanned him from head to toe. Unruly hair swept to devilish peaks, fuzzy muttonchops in dire need of trimming, battered leather jacket with white T-shirt underneath, jeans that had clearly seen better days and heavy biker boots. “This is of course my travel gear…” He explained hastily. “Xavier is going at great length at making sure that all the children trusted in his care receive top notch quality training.” “I see… Another biscuit, Mr. Logan?” The woman asked, handing out the tray. “Uh… No, thank you, Mrs. D’Ancanto. I’d really like to get going. I have a long drive ahead.” The tray disappeared with the woman in to the adjoining kitchen, and he was left in to the living room with Mr. D’Ancanto who leaned back on his armchair, his eyes never leaving Logan.

“Let’s cut the crap, ‘Professor Logan’, shall we?” The man asked. “If you as much as breathe the wrong way at my daughters company, there’s a world of hurt waiting for you.” “I can assure you that…” “I don’t give a damn about your assurances, Mr. Logan. We both know perfectly well how legit that professure of yours is. Frankly, I’m amazed that Professor Xavier saw it fit to trust our daughter to the hands of some drifter, but… You get her to Westchester unharmed, and I’ll let it slide,” Mr. D’Ancanto said with a cool voice. “Do you have any idea of what is waiting out there?” Logan asked, quite miffed that the suburban dipshit saw it fit to hand out warnings and threats to him. “There’s a world of hurt waiting for us muties. Xavier sent me, because I’m the one man that can actually haul your precious daughter alive and unharmed through this fucked up world. I know what’s out there, I know who wants to have a piece from us, and most importantly, I know how to stop them having that piece.”

Again evaluating glance swept over him. Mr. D’Ancanto nodded and straightened his stance a bit. “My apologies if I have insulted you. But I need you to understand, that Marie means a world to me and my wife. We… If it would be possible, we wouldn’t be sending her to another side of the country just to get proper schooling, but at current situation we couldn’t even imagine to send her to any of the communal colleges, let alone most of the universities. It just isn’t safe. And again I must apologize, but you don’t strike me as a teacher of any kind, and I’m having hard time in believing that you’d be the best company for my daughter.”

Logan rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was quickly developing a world-class headache which, considering his mutation should have been impossible.

“Mr. D’Ancanto… Truth to be told it means exactly jack shit to me if you’re sending your daughter to Xavier or not. If she stays home, I’ll go my way. No harm done. If she comes to Westchester we have to get going now. Which is it going to be?” He practically growled. “Oh, Thomas! Would you stop that. I’m sure that Mr. Logan will take good care of Marie,” Mrs. D’Ancanto scolded her husband from the doorway leading to the kitchen. “Marie! Your ride is here!” She shouted over her husband’s protests.

Finally. He was about to blurt it out loud, but one look from Mr. D’Ancanto made him change his mind. Instead he stood up and turned to look as his charge to be sprinted down the stairs leading to the second floor of the house, large duffle bag hanging from her shoulder, genuinely huge teddy bear stuffed under her left arm. And nearly swallowed his tongue.

Teddy bear did nothing in masking her true age. She was sixteen, and looked like every bit of it. Curvaceous body, long and sable hair cascading over her shoulders and down her back. Twinkling, chocolate brown eyes full of curiosity and excitement, lush lips slightly parted to reveal the miniscule gap between her pearly front teeth, her clothing unable to hide her luscious body.

He damn near whimpered before he got himself under control. Wouldn’t do to drool after a student. Especially in front of a concerned father who had most likely seen his initial reaction and was now regarding him with pure malice on his face.

“Mss. D’Ancanto,” he greeted her, taking her gloved hand to a quick shake. “Are you ready to go?” He asked, feeling the eyes of her father drilling holes at his back. The girl seemed to be completely unaware of the tension in the room. She smiled, relief shining radiating from her whole being. “As ready as I will ever be. Are we going?” She asked.

Logan turned to look at Mr. D’Ancanto who stood by his wife now and nodded. The girl skipped to where her parents stood and hugged them both, whispering her goodbyes.

Once safely outside, by his truck he had the first chance to really look at the girl. Every bit sixteen, except her eyes. Hurt lingered underneath her youthful bravado. Fetching, yes. Forbidden, very. Well, it really wasn’t even purpose of this little trip to get laid.

“I’m sorry about my father. He’s…” She started when they sat in the truck. “He can be quite difficult at times.” “I noticed. Buckle up, kid.”

It didn’t occur to him before few miles later to wonder how she knew about the conversation he had had with her father. “Were you eavesdropping?” He asked. The girl kept looking out through the side window, and her voice, a mere whisper nearly drowned to the noise of the engine of his truck.

“I acquired an upgrade to my mutie package just recently… Enhanced senses.” She sighed and turned to look at him. “I guess it wasn’t included to my file, it really happened just few days ago. I was on my way home from the library when another mutant attacked me. I don’t know why, but he tried to grab me. It felt like it was very important for him to get me to come with him. He wouldn’t let go and I kind of… drained him. This is the longest that anything from the person I touch has stayed with me.”

He thought about it. And more he thought about it, the less he liked about the outcome of his thoughts.

“Who was he?” He asked. The girl shook her head. “I didn’t get his name. He was so scared and angry when he found out that I can hurt him, that his thoughts scattered all over the place. I guess he wasn’t expecting trouble from a little girl like me. Though he seemed to know about my mutation…” Her whispered words got even quieter. “And wanted to use me.” “Use you?” Logan asked disgusted. “Oh, not like that!” The girl exclaimed hurriedly. “It just felt like he had a plan how to use my mutation to something. Or somebody at least had the plan, and the guy who grabbed me knew about that plan.”

“Okay. This certainly changes my plan…” Logan muttered fished out his cell phone from the breast pocket of his jacket. “I was going to just drive and sleep in motels, but now it sounds like it would be better if I call to Summers and ask him to pick us up… As soon as I can find a decent clearing…” She glanced around puzzled. Clearing? There really were no trees to speak of. And what did having a clearing really mattered? Her confusion wasn’t lost from Logan. He cleared his throat. “Xavier has a jet. Summers, the guy who’s probably going to teach you history has a pilot’s license. I think it would probably be safer for you to fly to Westchester since there are people after you.” “A jet? We’d be… Flying?” The girl asked with quivering voice. From moderately comfortable to deathly scared in a matter of seconds.

“Something wrong with that?” He asked. “I don’t know…” The girl muttered. “I’m afraid of flying…” She finally whispered. “Want to know a secret?” He whispered, slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I nearly wet myself when I flew with Summers the first time.” The girl gave him once-over, her left brow raised. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” “Well, considering that it was nearly two years and numerous flights ago, yeah. I hate flying, but Summers is actually pretty decent pilot. There’s nothing to worry about.” “If you say so…” The girl sighed. The tone of her voice told him completely another story. He’d be lucky if he managed to persuade her to the landing site, let alone in to the jet.

“Fine. We’ll drive…” He started pocketing the phone, and immediately her face lit up. “But from the first sign of trouble I’m calling the cavalry. Got it?” The smile on her face faded a bit. “I have absolutely no urges to get in to a brawl with your daddy dearest, and he made it perfectly clear that he would try to take my head off if anything happened to you.” The girl smirked. “That’s my dad. But somehow I find it hard to believe that you’d be scared of him,” she said. Logan harrumphed. “Not scared. But I have spent quite some time avoiding the officials. Wouldn’t do to get arrested for murder…” The girl paled a bit, then dragged her teddy bear from the backseat and plopped it firmly between them on to the front seat.

“I’m not going to hurt you or your parents, kid,” he blurted, slightly annoyed from the faint trace of her fear in the air of the cab and more than just annoyed at himself for his poor choice of words. And as if to bring his blundering to a magnificent point he reached over to where she sat and squeezed her shoulder gently, trying to reassure her of his good intentions and she all but launched off from the truck, squeezing herself against the door now in full blown panic.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” “Fine! I won’t!” He grunted. “Jeesh, you’re touchy. I meant no harm.” She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes scanning him from head to toe, once again. He felt like cringing. He hadn’t felt this… This dirty and cheap for long time, probably never.

“You’d be touchy too, if you had the power to drain dry the whole fucking world and no way to turn it off…” She finally whispered and relaxed a bit when he showed no signs of malicious intent. He leaned towards her carefully and popped open the glove compartment, his every move slow and deliberate. Picked out a box of cigars and lit one.

“Seriously, kid. You’re safe with me. I’m not afraid of your father or the cops either, but I do have healthy respect for the Professor. And I kind of owe him for this,” he gestured towards her. “I owe him enough to promise to you one thing. You’ll get safely to Westchester, no matter what it takes to bring you there.” “You lost at the poker table or something?” She asked slightly bitter tone in her voice. He shook his head. “I lost a life he trusted at my hands once. He’s decent enough of a man not to blame me, but nevertheless I still owe him for that.” “And this is… What? Atonement?” She asked. He shrugged his shoulders. Puffed his cigar.

“More of a penance than anything else, really…” He spoke with low, hushed tone.”But don’t take it personal, I’m just not… Comfortable with people.” She shifted on her seat, turning to look out from the window. “That’ll make the two of us, then…” He heard her whisper.

For a long while they drove in silence, the girl staring the passing scenery as if it held a great interest, some thrilling and staggering secret that only she could see.

That night he chose a slightly classier motel than his usual, flashing the plastic gold Xavier had given him to obtain two adjoining rooms with a shared bathroom. The girl undoubtedly would have balked at the idea of sharing the room with him, and considering his rather restless sleeping patterns it probably was the wisest decision anyway, but he needed clear and unrestricted access to her at all the times. If there really were people after her it wouldn’t do to get stopped by something as menial as a locked door at the wrong moment.

They stepped in. He watched her carefully as she went about, inspecting the room and the bathroom, as well as the second bedroom. “If I see even one cockroach they’re going to have to settle half of what you paid for this…” She hissed. He chuckled. “I kind of doubt that there are roaches in here.” She raised her brow questioningly. “It’s a myth. I have been visiting grimier places than this, haven’t seen a single roach in years. Besides, they’ll need food to survive, like the rest of us. Why would they crowd us, when there’s perfectly situated diner right across the parking lot?” He asked. She made a face at that, then frowned. “What?” He asked. She rubbed her tummy. “I’m kind of hungry. What do you think? Do they have anything else besides roasted roach with Ebola-marinade in there?” She asked. “I’m sure they have something for us to eat. Sorry, kid. I kind of forgot to feed you. Why the hell didn’t you say something sooner?” He asked. She shrugged her shoulders. “I was too nervous to eat…” “And now?” He asked. Another shrug and a wide yawn before she answered. “Right now I’m too tired to be nervous. Good time to eat.” He nodded. “That it is… Come on, let’s go and see if they have roach burgers.” “Oh, eww…”

There were no roaches on the menu, but they managed to find quite decent burgers. She opted for vanilla shake whereas he flushed his down with beer. The diner was nice, tidy and quiet, only couple of truckers aside them sat at the corner table, deep in hushed conversation about the weather condition and unfair regulations of their trade.

“You’re no teacher, that much I got earlier. But you work for Professor Xavier. What are you then? His gardener?” The girl asked. He was severely tempted to wipe the white vanilla moustache from her upper lip, but remembering her earlier reaction to touch, and her warning made him to cling to the bottle of beer instead as he pondered the suitable answer. “I guess you could say that I’m the janitor…” He ventured. “I fix things that need fixing. Make them work. And the stuff about teaching art, it’s not complete bullshit. I teach, occasionally, if one of the teachers is unavailable.” “So, you’re the regular Jack-Of-All-Trades,” she said, slurping her shake. He frowned, then shrugged. “Know all, master of none? No. Not really. I just said that I teach occasionally. Never said that I was any good at it. So far there has been one thing that I’m good at. But that’s enough about me,” he said taking a sip from his rapidly warming beer.”What about you? What are you going to be when you grow up?” He asked. She grimaced. “Grow up? I don’t know if I even want to. Mom and dad… They’re great. And they have really tried to make me feel good and secure and wanted, but I have seen things. Heard things. I know what the world is like. It’s not a nice place for a mutant. Not a nice place at all. And being just a kid…” She chortled the last remaining frothy drops of the shake. “Being just a kid gives me kind of an edge over lots of things. For example that jerk that attacked me. There were people coming to my aid even when they saw what was happening. Would they have done that if I had been all grown up and everything? I kind of doubt that. They probably would have stood and cheered for both of us for trying to kill each other.”

He emptied his beer with one big gulp, slamming the bottle against the table little too hard, his fingers grasping the cool glass just a little too hard. “Kid… It’s good to be realistic. Most of the time I’m downright pessimist when I look at things around me. But you need to lighten up a bit. You’re too young to be thinking like that…” He said, digging out his wallet and counting the appropriate amount of bills to cover their supper. “From now on the brooding and whining is reserved for me only.”

They made their way back in to the motel right in time to avoid the sudden downpour of water. It looked and sounded like a real storm was headed on their way.

“I want you to keep your front door locked. But leave the door of the bathroom open,” he instructed her. “Open. Closed but not locked,” he corrected hastily when she started to blush. She nodded and skipped through the bathroom to her room, closing the door. He waited for a moment, and when he couldn’t hear a peep from her started to undress. He felt wiped. Shower would have to wait until morning. He stared at the bed as he kept stripping off his clothes, letting them fall haphazardly to where he stood, not really caring if they got few extra wrinkles in the process. The pillow would probably be lumpy as hell. The mattress? Like a slab of fucking concrete. His skin was already crawling from the sight of the colorful blanket thrown on top of the bed. Then on the other hand, it was a bed and he was so fucking tired that it was a small wonder that he was able to function.

He was down to his jeans, actually his jeans were down at his ankles when the door of the bathroom opened and the girl peeked from the crack. “Good night, Professor Logan… Oops. Sorry.” The door slammed shut, and he could practically hear her blushing, the blood filling the veins at her face with sudden flush. “Good night, Mss. D’Ancanto!” He shouted through the door, biting his lip, trying not to laugh. Poor girl. She’d have hell of a time in adjusting to the unruly crowd of muties back at Xavier’s.

He stretched his back and cracked his neck, his eyes scanning the parking lot behind the window one last time before the siren’s call of the bed won and he crawled between the sheets that surprisingly smelled only slightly of detergent instead of anybody who had been sleeping at the bed earlier. He curled his arms around the pillow, rumpling it underneath him as comfortable as possible, curling slightly on his side and closed his eyes. Petty bickering and arguments through the day had drained him.

He woke up groggy and disoriented. The shower was running at the bathroom. Clock on the bedside table told him that it was half past three at the morning. He tried to bury his head under the pillow, but then his sharpened senses perked up. Scent of tears. Small hiccupping sobs, muffled but he could hear them anyway. He rose and patted to the door of the bathroom. Knocked. “You homesick or something, kid?” He asked. There was no answer. “Kid? Are you alright in there?” He asked. Again no answer, just more sobbing. “Shit. This is just great…” He muttered under his breath. “Marie? Are you alright?” He tried again. This time there was an answer. Sort of. She turned off the shower. He could hear the towel rustling and swishing over her skin. The doorknob turned and the door cracked open, just the slightest bit. She stood there, shoulders slumped, wet hair hanging limply, huge towel wrapped around her, gaze of her red-rimmed eyes cast to her toes like all the wonders of the universe were revealed on the shiny surface of the carefully applied nail polish. “Sorry. I… I didn’t mean to wake you up,” she whispered and hiccupped, trying her best to rein her quivering lower lip.

He pushed the door open and stepped in, reaching for the bathrobe hanging on the wall and draped it over her shoulders, steering her towards her room. “Missing home already?” He asked. She shook her head and let him guide her on to the bed. Sat on the edge of it and let out a sigh. “Just a bad dream…”

He took in her appearance. Trembling from head to toe, her eyes bleary and her whole posture just about screaming for help, a place to hide. “Must have been a hell of a nightmare.” She nodded. “I have had those for ages. They feel so real. And after I wake up, it takes some time to… To adjust…” She stuttered. It was his turn to nod. “Takes time to realize that it was just a dream, right?” He asked, even though he knew the answer already. “Yeah. I know, it’s silly. Most of my dreams are silly. Downright stupid. Giant marshmallows chasing me and that kind of stuff. But it feels so real…”

He sat on to the bed next to her and looped his arm over her shoulders. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do. Maybe she’d bolt up scared out of her wits, but he couldn’t just stand there and watch her sniffling and shivering. And this time she didn’t retreat, but burrowed closer at him instead.

“It really doesn’t matter if your dreams are silly. If they’re real and scary enough for you…” He squeezed her shoulder slightly. “You will get freaked out no matter if it is just a marshmallow chasing you or horde of scary monsters…” He paused for a moment. “You want to… Talk about it?” He added reluctantly. He really wasn’t equipped to deal with teenage traumas, but he figured that as long as the girl was under his wing he should at least make an effort. To his relief she shook her head. “What good would it do to talk? It doesn’t take away the dreams,” she huffed, shifting away from him. “And I really didn’t mean to wake you. Sorry about this. It’s just so hard to go back to sleep right after…” “Well, as long as we’re both up and running, we could get going. You can sleep in the truck if you’re still tired. How does that sound?” He asked. “Aren’t you tired?” The girl asked scrunching her forehead. He shrugged. “It usually helps me to forget my dreams when I keep moving. You want to try it?” He asked. The girl nodded. “But can we have breakfast at that diner first?” She asked. “Yeah. Roasted roaches it is.”

Once properly fed and back on the road the girl actually fell asleep again. She had been clinging to her teddy bear for support, but when the truck hit a pothole she slumped sideways, still holding the bear, her head ending up on his thigh. He expected her to wake up, but when she smacked her lips and burrowed closer at him he let her be. He wasn’t comfortable at all this close to her, he wouldn’t have been comfortable this close to anybody, but he was no stranger to nightmares and sleep deprivation. If cuddling up against somebody made her sleep better he could tolerate it for the remainder of their trip.

Half an hour later he found his hand from her shoulder, his fingers drawing reassuring patterns over her shoulder blade as he drove. He clasped his hand over the steering wheel. It wasn’t working very well. As soon as she muttered in her sleep or even breathed differently his traitorous limb crept back on her shoulder like a trained parakeet.

“Goddamned.”

It felt way too nice. It was way too easy to hold her, and it was difficult, damn near impossible to believe that the burn in his chest was just indigestion.