Professor Xavier once told me that what we have inside is what matters the most. That it isn’t our race, abilities or anything in our outer appearance for that matter, but our minds that made us what we were.


Logan laughed out loud upon hearing that. Sprung his claws and just stared at those for a long moment. If I hadn’t been so worried over him at the moment I probably would have been able to appreciate how the light of the sun was dancing over the gleaming surface, but as it was, I was more concerned about his mental state than anything else.

“What we have inside…” He murmured, twisting his wrist, reflecting the sunlight over the patio from his claws. “Well… In a fight it certainly matters whether I’m the one breaking bones or if I’m the one screaming after lost arm…” He mused, then got all serious. “But I’m guessing you didn’t mean it like that.”

I sat and waited. He opened a can of beer with his left hand. Took a big gulp, his eyes still on the claws protruding from his right.

“What’s inside matters. Chuck was right. It does,” he said, then crushed the empty can and chucked it to the trash bin underneath the ashtray. Muscles on his forearm twitched and claws were back in. just like that. First you see them, then you don’t. He turned to look at me, nodded, stood up and left.

He didn’t go far, just to the edge of the lawn, and picked up the bolt cutter he had been using earlier. Started working on the fence once more. After everything that happened he had taken up the task of upgrading the security. First to go was the old, rusted fence guarding the perimeter. He was going to replace it with something more effective.

I couldn’t help admiring the way the sun shimmered on his bare shoulders and back. The way his biceps knotted up. How the small beads of sweat pooled slowly together.
It would have been much easier for him to just whip out the claws and be done with the fence, once and for all. Yet he preferred old, blunt and rusted bolt cutter. I once actually asked him about it.

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We were in the garage, pretending to straighten up the place a bit when in reality we were both trying to avoid Ororo. She would have found us something useful and productive to do, but it was the perfect day for slacking off.

Logan was twiddling with tangled bunch of wires, trying to salvage enough spares for his bike. He was using the wire cutter. It looked clumsy as hell. He was swearing like a sailor, and it was quite obvious that the tool of his choice wasn’t cooperating.

“Why don’t you just… You know?” I asked, curling my fingers to something that reminded vaguely claws. Logan just shook his head.

“That would be like going after a fly with nukes. Besides, they’re not for this kind of work, anyway…” He said, pausing for a while and then smirked. “And it hurts like a bitch every time when they tear out.”

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He’s not afraid of the pain. I know… I know him well enough to know that sometimes he prefers it. Especially in battle. He says that it keeps him alert, makes his responses faster. Keeps his senses sharper. Easier to tell the difference between friend and foe in the middle of ruckus when you can smell, hear and feel everything.


“Shit… It’s hot as in oven out here. Do you think Ororo could do something about it?” Logan huffed, startling me out from my thoughts. He was standing right beside me, reaching for another beer. Sun was behind his back now and when I looked up I couldn’t see his face, just his figure surrounded with bright aura.

“She’d probably just tell you to stop whining and get back to work. The weather is as it should be,” I said, fighting the sudden urge to reach where he stood and brush off grass clippings that clung to his bare calves. He moved to where he had been sitting earlier and held the beer can against his forehead.

“I’ll move in to fucking fridge if the weather doesn’t start cooling soon… Start taxing anybody who comes looking for snacks outside dinner time…” He grumbled.

“Even me? Come on…”

“Everybody snacks, but you’re the worst of them. I guess I would have to develop special tax just for you…”

I hate it when that smirk of his makes me forget everything. I hate it because he knows full well what one raised eyebrow and quirk at the corner of his mouth does to unsuspecting female and it’s so wrong from him to use that kind of heavy artillery especially when it’s so hot already and…

Hmph. Didn’t even bother to check if I was still breathing. Before I got my head back in working order he was already fiddling with the fence. Giving me the perfect opportunity to ogle his backside some more. I was surely going to die to dehydration soon.


What’s inside matters the most. It was a tedious task, but finally I was able to look deeper.

There he was, looking every bit as Greek God… No. Scratch that. No God would have been caught looking as scruffy. Hair all sticky and pointy, faded jeans cut high from his thighs, smudges and smears of grease and foliage marring the perfect tan of his skin. Definitely no God. Or… Perhaps Pan?

I shook my head.

My fixation to bare flesh, especially bare man flesh that was currently trotting right in front of me was rapidly corrupting my thought process. I decided to take my ponderings elsewhere.


Garage was cool. It was also a place where I shouldn’t be alone, one of those areas reserved for the X-Men and Scott’s mechanics class, but at this time of the day nobody was going to notice if I snuck in. Nobody except Logan who sauntered in, grumbling about no-good tools and cheapskates, only stopping when he noticed me.

“Hello.” As in ‘what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-in-here-girlie’.

“Hello. I… Uhm… I came to cool off?” As in ‘please-don’t-tell-to-Scott-who’d-ground-me-for-the-rest-of-my-life-if-he-knew-that-I’m-in-here’.

Logan huffed, then shook his head and clunked what was left of the bolt cutters down to trash bin, then sat next to me on to the workbench. Reached for his secret stash of cigars underneath it and lit one.

“Scott doesn’t like it when you smoke in here.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

“Okay.”

To me it was okay. Sure, there were flammable chemicals around, rags soaked to oil and only god knew what, but it was okay to Logan, so it was okay to me. That brought me to my original thought that had popped up when I was ogling Logan’s struggle with those bolt cutters.

What’s inside matters the most.

On the outside Logan was the ultimate rebel, personification of bad-ass attitude. Inside… Bad-ass. Definitely. But there was more. He cared a lot. He cared of professor. He cared of Jean. He cared of Ororo. He even cared of Scott, perhaps even more than he cared of professor.

“But what about me?” Didn’t really mean to speak out loud. But there it was. Cat was on the table. Under sharp scrutiny of Wolverine.

“What about you, kid?”

“Nothing…”

“Bullshit. Spit it out.”

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I had scraped my knee. Bobby, being the usual prankster had scared me at the wrong moment and I tumbled down a set of stairs. Logan tried to make me to spill the name of the perpetrator. I wasn’t stupid. Had it been few months later, my knight in shining armor would have probably told me to suck it up, but it was only couple of weeks after the Liberty incident. I almost died in Magneto’s machine. Logan did die. As it was, his protective instincts were on overdrive. He’d have skewered Bobby for what the boy did.

“Nobody, I’m just clumsy…”

“Yeah, right. Lie to me some more, kid.”

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Back that day I managed to rescue Bobby from Wolverine’s wrath. But now it looked like nothing would save me from Logan’s curiosity.

“Come on, kid. Talk to me.”

“Do I have to?”

“Well… Yeah.”

Oh, what the heck… We only live once, right?

“Do you… Do you care about me?”

Oh, how I hate long, meaningful silences. Logan just kept staring at me. Long enough for the stump of the cigar to burn his fingers. Even then his eyes never left mine, he just hissed silently and dropped the cigar, grinding it to a pulp under his boot.

It wasn’t until I was ready to bolt out screaming when he spoke.

“Yeah.”

“Huh?”

“I care about you. A lot. I lo… I care about you, Marie.”

Not exactly the answer I was expecting. Hoping? Yes. But I never expected Logan to be this forthcoming. He never usually was. I guess this was one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ –occasions. And it was my turn to play mute.

“I care about you. Probably more than I should…” He spoke with casual tone, but the look on his face challenged me, challenged the world to argue. I wasn’t going to, so it was up to world to do the battle he was expecting.

When it looked like that was the extent of his confession there was only one question that I needed an answer to.

“Then… Why? Why haven’t you told me before?”

“Too much work to do. Too many loose ends. There was no room in me for anybody else than me.”

“Oh. Um… Wasn't? And now?”

“I think there might be a vacant spot for you… If… If you…”

He never did finish that sentence. Just looked at me.

“Vacant spot? And where it might be?”

My mouth was dry. My heart was racing when he grasped my arm and brought my palm on his chest, over his heart.

It lasted only a fraction of a second, not long enough for my skin to kick in, but long enough for me to feel the warmth of his skin, and one beat of Logan’s heart.