The fact that it took him half an hour to figure out that she was even back there made him think that maybe he was slipping. Maybe old age was taking its toll on him and it was time to pack it in. Give up.

Maybe.

He decided to blame it on the fact that she barely smelled human with the thick layer of dirt coating her skin. Not to mention the fact that the inside of his trailer wasn’t gonna be on the cover of Beautiful Homes magazine anytime soon.

Once he did smell her though, it only took him a matter of seconds to find her. That soothed his ego, a little bit. At least he didn’t spend ten minutes overthrowing furniture and sifting through piles of clothes so dirty that they were stiff to find her. He wouldn’t ever be able to let himself live that down.

She was a tiny little slip of a thing. She couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. Her eyes were big and scared, but not scared in the way he would have expected her to be scared. She wasn’t scared of him, and that knocked his ego back down a few notches. Most of the women he met—and this one wasn’t even that, yet—had that edge of fear in their eyes when they looked at him. It didn’t stop them from letting him fuck them senseless, but that glint of fear in their eyes when he was on top of them gave it that little extra something. There was fear in her eyes, but it was not fear of him. It was the kind of fear he imagined would be in his own eyes if he didn’t have such a good poker face. It was the fear that came from knowing too much; seeing too much.

“…the hell?” he muttered. His lips pulled back in a tight grimace.

The girl was peering up at him with those same big, scared eyes. The purple smears underneath those dark eyes told a story of too little sleep and too much running. Her skin was papery pale and tinged gray.
“Sorry,” she muttered, struggling to stand up. Her legs were dead asleep, they’d been folded underneath of her for too long, they couldn’t support her weight. “Sorry,” she repeated, like a broken record. Logan wondered if she would keep repeating herself, over and over, until he stopped her. Took the needle out of the groove and let the record stop spinning.

“The hell are you doin’ back here, kid?” he demanded, taking a step closer to her. She backed up, her shoulder blades pressing against the back wall of the trailer and her eyes widening. He could smell fear on her now, the kind of fear that he was used to and he felt comfortable again. This was a situation that he could understand.

“I’m…” her voice cracked and faded out. “I’m cold,” she said finally.

Logan snorted. “Buy yerrself a jacket, then, Kid. But get the hell outta my truck.”

“I thought you… I thought you might help me,” she whispered, meeting his eyes again; it unnerved him. He couldn’t smell the fear on her like a jacket anymore, either. “I thought…” she trailed off and he watched her chew her lip, like she wanted to say something but she couldn’t force the unwilling words past her lips.

“What?” he barked. “What?! You thought what?!”

He was getting impatient; she shrank back until he wondered if she would press herself right through the thin aluminum wall of the camper and into the snow. He sighed, thick with irritation and she finally met his eyes.

“I thought…” she whispered, “I thought you were like me.”

Logan’s eyes flared wide and he gave the girl a quick once-over but she didn’t have any obvious mutations. She must have been in the bar though; she must have seen him pop the claws on that drunk. He was almost impressed; she’d seen him slide eight inches of adamantium out of his hands and she’d still crawled into the back of his camper.

His lips peeled back, teeth bared. "Ain't nothin' like you, kid," he sneered. He didn't know whether he meant it as an insult or a compliment though.

The girl sank back against the camper wall, her hands clasped and pressed tightly against her stomach. "Ok," she said softly, any of the fire that he thought he'd seen in her had died out. "Ok," she repeated. "I'm sorry. I'll go, I'm sorry."

He stood rigid and still while she hefted her duffel bag onto her thin shoulder and slipped past him and out into the snow. He ignored the niggling little voice in the back of his head, asking him what she would do out here, in the middle of a harsh Canadian winter. Logan shoved the thoughts into the back of his head and clenched his teeth around the butt of his cigar. Didn't matter what the girl did, out there on her own. She won't his problem; he didn't know her from a fuckin' hole in the wall.

He got less than three yards up the road before he stopped, cursing himself violently under his breath. The girl was a small, hunched dot in all of that white that stretched on for miles. He slammed the truck door open, his teeth tightening around the cigar; he was practically biting it into two pieces.

"Hey!!" he yelled. The girl stopped; her body hung rigid and immobile against all of that white for what felt like an eternity until she turned around.

"C'mon, kid," he barked. "I ain't gonna wait for you."

The girl broke into a smile and it lit up her whole face like the Las Vegas strip. She started back towards him in an awkward, loping run; her duffel bag slamming against the backs of her thighs. She tripped and fell forward onto her hands and knees half a yard away from him and Logan sighed, cursing himself under his breath; he closed the distance between them in a few long steps and hauled the girl up to her feet.

“Get in the truck,” he grunted, swinging her bulging army surplus bag into the camper and slamming the door.

She was shivering, hunched over in the passenger seat. And he begrudgingly flipped on the heater. It creaked and the air smelled musty, but it was warm. They spent the first three or four miles in silence and it was slowly starting to drive Logan insane. It gave him too much time to think about the stupidity of picking up a cold little girl and chauffeuring her around like fucking Driving Miss Daisy.

“What's your name, kid?” he asked finally, mostly just to have something to say to break the silence.

“R-rogue,” she answered softly, dipping her chin in until it touched her chest and letting her hair fall over her face in a thick sheet.

Logan snorted. “What kind of name is Rogue?”

A flash of those hazel eyes and she snapped, “Well, what kind of name is Wolverine?”

He had to concede that one to her; she had a point.

“M'names Logan,” she admitted finally. He was starting to wish that his old piece of shit car had a working radio in it. At least then maybe he wouldn't feel compelled to make small talk with the kid.

“Marie.” She said it so softly that he didn't think he would have heard her at all, if it weren't for his sensitive hearing. “I guess... I'm Marie.”

He took pity on her, for reasons he doesn't understand. “Marie's a nice name, kid.”

They don't speak again until they're just outside of Redcliff. The girl—Marie-- is scrunched up against the window, her nose practically pressed up against the glass.

“You hungry, kid?”

The only explanation he has for himself is that she reminds him of an old mutt he'd once owned, well, as much as you could own something like that. It had been kicked down and beaten up and it was so thin that it's ribs stuck out like sharp ridges. He'd been living out of a motel in Yellowknife and the dog was living off of scraps from the big brown dumpster behind it. Maybe the dog reminded him of himself, or something. He kept a big bag of dog food just inside of his door and a big, silver aluminum dish on the slab of concrete out front. The dog had been his, as much as anything had ever been his. And he could pretend that when it had stopped coming around he hadn't gone out looking for it, winding up and down the slippery, narrow roads in his truck-- but he'd be lying.

The girl nodded and the movement was so quick, he wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't been looking for it. He pulled the truck into the parking lot of Rita's Diner and killed the engine; it tinged and clicked as it cooled. The girl didn't move; not when he flung open the door of his truck or when his boots crunched on the gravel parking lot.

“Well?” he arched an eyebrow at her. “I ain't gonna bring ya out a doggie bag, so I suggest you get your ass in there if you want somethin' to eat.”

He left her, hunched over in the truck and after a few seconds he heard the passenger side door slowly creak open. Marie bolted across the parking lot like a scared deer and skidded to a stop by his side. She kept the hood of her cloak pulled tight around her face and Logan rolled his eyes. She was trying for inconspicuous but no one had ever told her that obvious disguises only made her that much more conspicuous.

He tugged the hood down around her shoulders; in the sunlight he could see the deep bruises mottling her face and her cracked and swollen mouth. Someone had worked the kid over good; Logan growled low in his throat and did his best to convince himself that the tight knot in his stomach was his hunger. The very last thing he needed to do was get attached to some little nothing of a girl who'd followed him home like a puppy.

Logan could hear Marie's stomach growl when they stepped inside of Rita's and she got her first whiff of real food in god knew how long. The waitress sat them in a corner booth, farther from the door than Logan liked but the kid was already pouring over the menu like it was the Holy Grail so he sat down.

She ordered a stack of pancakes, some scrambled eggs and some toast. She peeked at him over her menu the entire time with those big dark eyes like she thought that maybe she was asking for too much. He ordered the lumberjack breakfast, whatever the hell that was and they sat in silence after the waitress collected their menus and dropped their neatly wrapped silverware onto the table.

The kid looked worse under the florescent lights. Her skin was tinged gray where it wasn't bruised and there were deep purple bags under her eyes. Two locks of pale white hair hung limply around her face, a stark contrast to all of that brown.

“How old are you, kid?”

She looked up at him then, fiddling with her gloves. “None of yer business.” He hadn't noticed her thick Southern drawl before; she'd barely spoken over a whisper the entire ride.

Logan raised an eyebrow. “Ain't my business, huh?”

He was about to point out that he was haulin' her ass across the great white North, so the least she could do was answer a few of his questions when a shadow fell across the chipped yellow Formica tabletop. Logan's eyes flicked up and his muscles tensed; a tall, beefy cop loomed over their table with his mouth set in a deep scowl.

“Marie D'Ancanto?”

The girl's eyes widened and Logan could smell the fear rolling off of her in thick waves. Her heart was pounding like a steel drum in her chest and her fingers clenched the table top so tightly that bone shone through.

“Marie D'Ancanto,” the cop repeated. He flashed his badge at Logan once and turned his attention back to the kid. “You're wanted for the murder of Thomas P. Edmonton.”

The man wrapped one thick hand around Marie's upper arm, tugging her to her feet and securing her wrists behind her. Her terrified eyes flashed towards Logan and he felt something uncomfortable twist in his stomach. He had not signed on for this, he thought as he watched the girl being dragged out of the diner. She was still looking at him and it was making his skin itch. He hadn't wanted this. All he'd wanted was a warm place to sleep, something to eat and a cage to fight in. He hadn't asked for scared little girls hiding in the back of his truck w ho needed saving. So why did he feel so guilty, watching her being tucked into the back of a police car.

The diner's patrons were twisted around in their seats, staring at him and the empty booth where Marie had been sitting only a few minutes earlier.

“I'm gonna take that to go,” he muttered.