I slipped into his life the way I climbed into his camper, so quietly that he barely noticed me till later. When he gave me a ride, I fascinated him, just for being such a change from the people he usually met. In a world that seemed jaded to him, beyond repair, I was childlike in my innocence. I know this only from the memories I've absorbed: never had I felt less innocent, less of a child, than I did then.

Now he turns towards me, livid, and grabs my shoulders. I raise my eyebrow defiantly, in vague but accurate imitation of him. We're in his apartment, miles from Westchester and two years from my high school graduation, but here we are, with him yelling at me like I'm still some stupid student. "Goddamn it, Marie, what were you thinking?"

"I was thinking: I'm nineteen years old and I'm able to make my own decisions," I reply, coldly. Most of everyone at Xavier's thinks we fight because of me finally shrugging off his promise, and him unable to handle me growing up. It's not true.

That night, on a mission, I risked my life to save his. He was angry with me for two reasons: I could've been hurt and because of guilt. He knew why I did it. The air between us was thick with the knowledge, crackling with familiar desire. I was sick of never saying it, of holding back. It's not in my nature.
"Really? I thought you were thinking you were in the mood to kill yourself." His voice has lost its anger, he's let go of my shoulders and he leans against his wall, eyes averted. Sardonic and closed-off. Safe.

He turns, goes into the bathroom and I hear water running. Then a thump on the ground, like someone falling. "You okay?" I call.

"Fine!" he answers angrily and I hide my smile. Then he's back and even though his eyes are clouded and he's still angry, I feel a wave of tenderness for him.

"I'm in love with you." My voice is soft, edged with something I don't want to think about. I feel his shock. I wait.

---

For me, it wasn't gradual. I remember entering the bar, seeing him there in the cage, and I felt as though every punch he took was echoed in my stomach. For no reason at all, I felt an immediate reaction to his presence. I watched his anger unfold in his fighting and even though he knocked his opponent out with a few clear hits, I still saw how reined-in he was, how little this was of the fury that raged inside him.

That, I could relate to. Having to restrict my movements, restrain my true nature by keeping my head bowed, only speaking to ask for a ride or some money… and when he approached the bar, later where I sat staring at a glass of lukewarm water (in Canada, you'd think water could be cold) waiting for him, I could recognize the sheer ache of exhaustion. My own feeling. It was beyond the tiredness of moving too much, running too fast, going too hard. The tiredness he felt was in his bones. He was tired of the world.

But beyond finding a kindred soul, whatever the hell that means, there was something else. Something more powerful. My whole life I'd been planning and waiting for a life I didn't have; an exciting life, a real adventure. Seeing him was being struck by lightning only worse: it was the knowledge that everything that had ever been said or done, everything I'd experienced, it all meant nothing. My only purpose was to arrive there, in Laughlin, to be with him.

Never having believed in destiny, and the last few months hadn't helped matters along, this was a revelation I wasn't quite ready to accept. But by the time I screamed when the man took out his knife and I was still paralyzed after he walked out-not sure what was scarier, the fact that he'd just nearly died or that he might leave this godforsaken place without me-I knew. There was no one for me but him.

I can't say the feeling was mutual.


But if he didn't love me instantly, he did have a quick, instinctive reaction to me. His first thoughts as he opened his mouth and tasted snow, felt that pain weaving through his skull and healing already, was of me. Where was I? Was I all right? I'm leaving out a lot of cussing, of course.

The skin on his forehead was still healing when he stood opposite me and called, "You all right?" I have the memory from two perspectives, like so many between me and him. Mine's not so surprising: I was in awe, struggling to regain my focus in his blinding hazel eyes.

But his, his is different. It was the first time in his life that he ever felt a rising, unexpected panic in case someone else was hurt. He'd lived his life miserably; standing up and being beaten back down at every turn, then fighting to get back up again. He hated everything and until a little while ago, at the bar, he'd hated me too, for my big awed eyes and curious glances.

But now, for one split-second, the fate of the world depended on whether or not I was all right. While I still stared at his skin as it closed neatly around his head's bloody wound, he asked again, impatience lining his tone, "Kid, are you all right?"

"I'm stuck!" I'd called back, and then…well, you know what happened. For the next couple of days, I only caught glimpses of him, often distracted by sweet but too damn determined Bobby. You know what? I still think that part of the reason we never got close then, was Xavier. That man wasted no time in deciding that whatever it was between us, was not to be indulged. The next time I could look into Logan's eyes and see him look back into mine was when he stabbed me in the chest.

One of my first conclusions when it came to him had been that he would never hurt me. That was my first, agonized thought: how could he have done this to me? And then, any indignation or hurt melted in the face of how cold I was becoming, the way it didn't hurt that much anymore.

Dimly, I knew these weren't good signs. In that vague, almost sleepy state I'd thought to myself-I'll never know him. I'll never know my great adventure, my love. I reached out to touch him, to feel him inside me like with David, the idea much too appealing to resist. All I wanted was a little taste of what I could've had, to have him inside.

I held on too long. I couldn't seem to help it. He was addictive. Though his existence had been nothing if not awful, I took unhealthy pleasure in remembering things he'd thought, seen, wanted. It was not relishing his failures, his pain, but the fact that I could share in it with him. The hope brimmed in my mind, that maybe I was taking a little of that weight off his shoulders, even as I felt the shock and horror of what I was doing to him sink into me.

When I could breathe and felt my sanity (if I was sane then) return I let go and watched, horrified, as he fell, twitching and gasping. Jean rushed forward, asking for a pillow and I remember stumbling backward and feeling unaccustomed to such self-loathing. Logan's brooding psyche helped me digest it pretty fast, though.
I turned, faced with Ororo's uncomprehending face and said, helplessly, uselessly, "It was an accident." My mutation has no benefit if not perfecting the art of self-absorption and I still don't know what I meant. Was it me, speaking? Or Logan? I've traveled backwards to that moment with the professor, and to the moments leading up to it: but my mind was so full of him, that it's hard to sort through. Maybe that's a good thing. Sometimes I think I'd be happier if I didn't know quite so much about myself.

You have to anchor yourself to what you are at the core, when three other psyches eclipse your own.

Then I walked out, unable to take the sound of him behind me, maybe dying, and Jean's soft doctor's voice, maybe making him better again. I was gone, actually smelling the student's fear as they quickly got out of my way.

When I ran away from the school, Bobby's words still ringing in my ears like sirens, I honestly didn't think anyone would come after me. Least of all him. When Bobby leaned forward with his ice cold eyes and said that I should go, I thought: that's what Logan must think. He must think I was stealing his power, trying to kill him and punish him for stabbing me.

God, how he must hate me.

With him floating in my head, running away seemed the only option. I paid some kid to buy my ticket and boarded the train, feeling lost but relieved to be going. He really believes that saying: out of sight, out of mind. After a million dead-end leads, he'd just about made it into a religion. I swore by it, with my head against the cool window, only to lift it up again and watch a mother tenderly stroke her son's cheek, across the aisle form me.

Only there was one thing I'd never escape.

"Hey, kid." God! I looked up, a hundred different emotions running through me but really, I was just so happy to see him. Even with shame in the backdrop, I was happy to look into those eyes. Then, pained by whatever had brought him there (pity?) I averted my eyes and felt myself, as if it were a natural process, inhale and take in every clue: the smell of cologne mixed with deep shame, hurt, but most of all, ruling his scent: confusion. I confused him.

Not a surprise, really, in retrospect: he hardly knew himself and I was just like him, so why should he understand me? But it still made my heart sink down into my shoes. Even as his voice inside told me different, I called myself a fool for thinking we were the same or meant to be.

But when he put his arm around me and said, "That doesn't happen very often…for people like us," I knew that he had to know we were the same, on some level at least. I looked up at him and he looked back at me with all this intensity-
I know what he was thinking. I know that suddenly, I was beautiful in his eyes.

But then the train jerked and I was a child again. "So what do you say, kid? You want to give these geeks one last shot?"

There was a pause, and I thought: no, I want to be with you. That's all I want.

"C'mon…I'll take care of you."

Take care of me? I felt a smile slip onto my face, wondering what he meant by that. But at the same time, it didn't really matter. He was speaking to me, smiling at me, leaning towards me and I wanted him so much that I was sure some of it must have been reflected in my scent. "You promise?" I murmured. It was more playful than anything else.

But the seriousness in his eyes killed any flirtatiousness. His eyes went dark with something foreign to me, and he when he said it, it was a pledge. "Yeah. Yeah, I promise."

---

When the seconds stretch by, I finally look up to see his reaction. He reaches out; hand gloved as always, and slips a finger from my forehead, down to the tip of my nose and to my lips. No one would believe me if I told them how suddenly tender he can be, for no apparent reason.

I wonder how he'll break it to me, as he wraps his arm around my waist, the trailing hand leaving my lips to gently tuck my white streak behind my ear. I know him: I love him: this is rejection. He's just killing time.

"You know I love you," he tells me, as he brings me closer and I don't resist. I never do.

"Just not like that," I amend with no particular emotion staining my voice.

"Just not like that," he echoes and kisses me, right on the lips, and I relish the slide of his teeth and his tongue in my mouth. I bit his lower lip-not too gently- and he only continues to kiss me like that, like he loves me more than life itself, that way. Like the world is ending. Like I'm his. He doesn't stop when I taste his blood trickle into my mouth-even his blood tastes metallic.

Which I am. Undeniably. Even if he'll never be mine, I will always be his, until the day I die. It hurts more than I thought I would, so much that after years of never crying (not when Momma died, not after my first terrible mission, not since the Statue of Liberty) I feel tears slipping down, touching his face as he kisses me, as my pulse races.

---

The night on the Statue of Liberty is blurred to me. I allowed other points of view, Logan's and Magneto's, to drown mine. I discussed it with the professor and he didn't fight me on it. Only smiled in that enigmatic way of his, telling me that you can't bury things like that, they always come back. I smiled back and told him I'd cross that bridge when I got there. I was Logan then, for the most part, but it was still me speaking. Me with a cigar, but still.

But what I do remember is Logan seeing me there, slumped backward, on my knees, dead. He felt what he did after we hit the tree-panic for me, a strong need for me to be okay-but it was stronger this time, and something else, something that made him nearly collapse there, in front of me.

It was what made him touch me. What made him cry as he cradled me, what made him kiss me-twice-as he despised himself, despised the team. He hated the world for not having me in it. When I woke and he felt that familiar tearing away, he was amazed, then later -I realized as I helplessly sorted through his conflicted emotions- grateful, relieved.

The earliest memory since the Statue that wasn't muddled from the touch is the conversation I overheard in the medlab. I'd been going to see him every day, ignoring Jean's coy looks as I rubbed a tentative gloved hand over his unresponsive one. I prayed for him, even though I thought I'd left any religion behind in Meridian, I wished and I bit my lips to shreds in worry.

Every hope I had was shattered when I heard this:

"I think she's a little taken with you." Her voice is amused and I hate her for it.

"My heart belongs to someone else."

Someone else was Jean, obviously. I listened hard to the moment between them, fraught with tension. I dragged my nails down my wrist haphazardly, just to see the red marks running across it. To kill the pain inside. It didn't work.

"You know you and I…"

But I'm gone, I'm running. It's what he taught me: it's what I'm best at.

---

We could have sex now. He thinks I understand him, understanding this. Even after all this time, he continues to labor under a misapprehension I never bothered to correct, and yes, I regret it now: he thinks what I call love lack of options, desperation.

But we won't do it again, not even when I know, suddenly and bracingly that it would be the last time. Somewhere I'd made my mind up about what I'd do if he rejected me.

"I have to go to the bathroom," I murmur, semi-apologetic.

He grins, winks at me. "I'll be waiting, kid." Kid…our little joke.

I return the grin, turn my back and head to his bathroom, with its Spartan lack of design. My hands itch as I slip off my gloves and leave them on the bathroom floor: a last present, a reminder. The mirror's still fogged up from the shower and I write: goodbye on it with my middle finger, angry maybe, but it's hard to tell with Erik in the background.

I open the window. I climb through and out, onto the fire escape and I hear his hurried, suspicious footsteps. The last steps I take in a jump, I rub my knees, then walk fast but no fast enough to get looks from passerby. Of course I'm running. I learned from the best.

And if I know him, he'll see the irony in that.

---

Mystique isn't surprised as she leans against the frame of the open bathroom window. "Goodbye, Rogue…or should I say Marie?" Then she turns away, to go to the bathroom and retrieve the unconscious Logan.