It was Tuesday in June, and this time she was sure.

They had been living together for ten months now, and condoms had been forgotten after the initial weeks of newness. They sat unused and drying in a drawer that was never opened- next to the bed, convenient, they had said, but those logical resolutions die when passion or passionate routine becomes a part of the picture. She took a small white pill every morning, out of habit instead of faith, and prayed every night, out of faith instead of habit.

Rogue kept a calendar, hidden from him, marked in a language of circles and arrows and stars. In that margin of April she had drawn a compass rose. Above 'north' she had written 'god' in a small neat script.

Logan had asked, "How can you still believe in God, kid? After all he's allowed to happen?"

Marie slowly put the cap back onto her pen and turned around to face him, arms instinctively lacing his shoulders, pulling her body taut with his. "It's easy to believe in something that doesn't require so much explanation." She said matter of fact. Bringing her lips closer to his ear, warm breath tickling the tiny, sensitive hairs on his neck, "He's there. I'm here. It's simple faith."

It had been this way in May. The same April and March and the five months before. Sharing a bed, a space, a life with him had made her body and her dreams foreign. She dreamed about weddings and forgiveness. She cried less and was angry more. For a week every month, the week before she started to bleed, she thought she knew something. This time, she would say to herself, this time it is real. I know I am not empty. And a week later, every month, she would dream of blood and small dead children and sadness, waking up in the morning with wet thighs. Those days of knowing, though- the knowing always seemed to be the strongest, biggest thing she could have ever imagined.

It was the same trick every month, and she always fell.

This time it was real. She had been cold all week. Logan piled blankets on the bed for her at night, but they slept far apart. She was moving with hesitance, as if somehow, the certainty of her own self had been compromised by this idea. A bean-sized idea of blood and tissue, a ball in her stomach, so small—

'I am shaken.' She wrote on the notepad next to the phone. He didn't ask what she meant, and left the note there, flipping the page back to fill the others underneath.

---

She is like a deer, he thought, I have to be careful.

Fifteen years ago he had nothing to his name. It was by sheer luck or kindness that an older couple from a diner had offered him work as a dishwasher. Jim and Martha treated him well, and were the closest things to parents he'd had to this day.

He remembered Jim taking him hunting for the first time, hunting as the man instead of the beast, and the only thing he had learned was that the deer moved like Martha when something was on her mind. He didn't tell anyone, choosing instead to keep this secret to himself, a naïve understanding that this was somehow important to always know. In his small blue notepad, a Christmas present from her, he drew a picture of the deer on one page, and Martha on the other. This was enough to remind him.

Later, more experienced, he learned that some women were not like this, that some were like lions, that others ran away. The girl he loved, though, was like Martha. He had always known that, from the day they met. Marie walked as if walking meant something more than travel. He accepted her into his camper with him because she seemed to understand him. How, he didn't know. The understanding would come much later—after her death, his running, and both of their love.

Especially the love.

Sixteen months ago, he told himself. That is a long time to love someone.

Wednesday passed, and they went to bed at the same time. She turned away from him, her body curling into itself, and he wanted to touch her. A deer, he repeated to himself. She is delicate. I have to be careful. A deer, a deer. He repeated those two words until they took him to sleep, and he did not dream.

---

In the womb that she had made of blankets and her own skin, though, the Rogue was dreaming. There was a woman, heavy and pregnant and smiling. She lay on a bed, legs spread. The girl moved forward, holding a palette of paints, and using her fingers, painted a town on the insides of the woman's thighs. The roofs were all a warm red, the sky a sweet blue, and the townspeople were there, faces tan thumb-smears. The child would be born directly into the village.

Waking, she whispered, "they want him to know where home is." Him, she thought. It was a boy.

On Thursday, she worked late with Ororo on preparing history quizzes for the younger students. He was asleep by the time she came home; lying in bed, she cried for the conversations they hadn't had in the past three days. He slept through her tears, and when she thought he might be pretending, she was angry. The emotion made more sense than sadness, and she shoved him.

He woke up and put his arms around her, then went back to sleep. This was the reassurance she needed.

Friday, she had to tell him.

Saturday at the latest.

Sunday was never a day for drastic measure.

She didn't dream that night, and the next morning, her vagina was smeared with red. She cried again, in the shower, and it seemed less awkward than the night before. She sat on the bottom of the bathtub and let the water fall down. She closed her eyes and pretended it was rain, and thought about the babies she would have someday.

---

It was the smell of blood that woke him up.

At first there was a moment of panic, a stretched hand to feel the cool, barren area of mattress next to him, and then the tickling of claws under thick skin as his sleep fogged brain rushes to focus on the situation.

Blood. Tears. Marie.

In a dash he is out of the bed and in a moment more he is pacing the room.

None of this is new. Three times in the last five months and he's still no better at handling the aftermath of Marie's mutation not allowing her body to keep a child. It's something she hasn't brought up in discussion with him, and he doesn't want to broach out of fear of saying all of the wrong things to her. How can he express that having a child doesn't mean anything to him as long as he has her? So, he chooses to ignore all of the signs. Including the one right now of her crying inside the bathroom.

When she's ready she'll come to him. Until then he'll do the only thing he knows how to do right: love her.

A mental alert from Xavier tells him that he's needed down in the hanger immediately.

Logan is dressed and ready to go, hand on the door knob, when he whirls around to rummage through his closet for a tiny blue notebook.

Five minutes later he's out the door.

---

I am lonely, she thought. I am lonely, she knew- and the knowing was stronger, bigger than anything she had imagined. When she got out of the shower, he had left on a mission. There was a note on the nightstand. A small torn sheet of lined paper saying, `I love you'.

"He is a wonderful man," she said out loud. "He is wonderful to me."

---

Logan came home that afternoon, beaten and tired; she was lying on the couch, smiling in a way she hadn't for days.

"Come lay with me. Come lay on top of me."

He walked over, looking at her as he slipped off his shoes. Gently he spread his body over hers, his chest against her back, legs against legs. They were both quiet. His weight calming her beating heart.

"I am lonely," she whispered. Afraid he didn't hear, she spoke louder, "I am lonely."

Instead of the words that wouldn't have fit, he took her hand and in the middle of a breath, she saw everything more clearly.

She had him. He had her. And that was enough.

For now.

"I love you," she spoke, and turned her face in time to watch the loneliness slip away, a small doe into the forest.