Logan sighed in relief as he wandered into his room, stripping down to his wife-beater after a long day of running herd over scores of unruly kids. The fact that they were learning to control their mutant ‘gifts’ only made the days more harrowing, Logan concluded. He’d never been much for children, he thought, but somehow the little buggers had grown on him. At least they knew when not to bug him. Kids picked up on things like that pretty quickly, he had noticed.

After putting his shirts in the laundry, Logan moved over to the chair by the window, where he spent most of his time in his room. He had left the window open that morning, since the weather was nice, but there was a tantalizing waft of fragrance that came to him as he dropped into the comfort of the leather chair that did not belong in the outdoor scents coming through the window. Puzzled, he inhaled deeply, trying to place it.

It was Marie’s scent, he realized, mixed with the smell of the leather and his own scent. He felt something in his chest tighten as he came to understand that she had spent time here without telling him, as if she were trying to hide from him. As his frustration increased, it dawned on Logan that he had barely seen the young woman since before she had left to take the cure and the tragic events at Alcatraz.

He’d been caught up in his grief and figured she would be throwing herself into the physical aspects of her relationship with the Popsicle now that she could. He’d been giving her space, room to grow, but now he recognized that she had virtually removed herself from his life. Why, he wondered uncomfortably.

Because she thinks you’re grieving for the woman you loved and you didn’t want her hanging around anymore, a voice inside him taunted. And who could blame her after the way you brushed her off before she went for the cure?

Absently, Logan lit a cigar and propped his feet up on the windowsill, looking over the section of the grounds outside his window. He settled down to brood.

It had taken a while and some distance from the situation, but not long after burying Jean, Logan had come to comprehend that he hadn’t ever been in love with her, no matter what he might have thought at the time. He was far more introspective than people thought, but that wasn’t really so surprising if you really thought about it. At least, he didn’t think it was.

After all, when he had lived on the road, he had been alone ninety-five percent of the time and that wasn’t really conducive for much besides thinking, reading, watching television, listening to music or sleeping. Sex and fighting required at least one other person, since repeated masturbation got old really fast, and drinking or eating were just things he was rarely inclined to do alone.

Most of his introspection manifested as brooding, though, and he had been doing his fair share since Alcatraz, though not about the usual. Now, it dawned on Logan that his past had somehow lost much of its importance and been put on the back-burner, almost without conscious thought. Instead, he had tried to reconcile how he thought he had felt about Jean at the end, and how his grief for her end seemed to indicate certain emotional inconsistencies.

He’d thought he was well and truly in love with her, and that her return to the living and apparent falling out with Scott meant they finally had a chance. And though he hadn’t lied when he had told her he would die for her and that he loved her, the shape of his grief had seemed to indicate that it wasn’t for the reasons he had thought. When he had compared his reactions to Scott’s after Alkali Lake, it had become apparent that they weren’t quite right. Because when he thought about it, his feelings and reactions to her death seemed a lot more similar to Storm’s than Scott’s.

Logan was not a stupid man; far from it. As he had re-examined his relationship with Jean, it became clear why his grief had been less debilitating than he had expected. He loved her, yes, but he was never actually in love with her. Infatuated, absolutely; love her as a friend, definitely; enamored by what she represented, certainly; but in love? Not so much. He had certainly been attracted to her, especially when he had first arrived, and flirting with her had been great fun, with the added benefit of getting Scott’s panties in a knot. But a lot of what he had thought was romantic had been simple respect and liking, with a large dose of wanting what he could not have.

And Logan ‘Wolverine’ Pick-a-name had more than enough self-awareness to know most of the need to get whatever he wanted and in Scott’s face came from the feral aspects of his character. He instinctively thought of himself as the alpha male and went about proving it in his relationships with others, no matter what small ‘society’ he found himself in, whether on the fight circuit or at Xavier’s.

It was disconcerting to take in that he now was the alpha male, given Xavier and Scott’s deaths, not least because he wasn’t happy about it. He missed the verbal sparring matches he and Scott would get into, as well as the occasional danger room session together. He missed Xavier’s wisdom and refusal to judge others, even his dry-as-dust British sense of humor and willingness to believe the best in everyone, especially Logan’s past self and alter-ego. And he missed the blanket of caring Jean had seemed to wrap around every person she met, the way she was happy to listen to Logan if he ever needed a sounding board and her indulgent irritation at his and Scott’s continued clashes. He had been willing to die for her, yes; but only because he had instinctively understood his friend’s torment and wanted to end it.

He missed his friends, people whom he had unwittingly come to consider family.

The ache was there, right in the hollow of his heart where they had once resided, but it wasn’t debilitating and the feeling didn’t get any worse when he thought of one or the other.

Logan shifted in his chair, the scent of Marie twisting inside him again. The ache from his colleagues’ absence was nothing like the gut-wrenching feeling that came from knowing his friendship with Marie was unraveling. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but there was something about the notion of losing her that hurt him in the vicinity of his heart, along with his twisting gut. It was different than anything he had ever felt about Jean or even now felt about Storm. It hurt in a clawing way and he had a sneaking suspicion that fear lurked there as well.

Marie was the only person who knew as much about him as he did. There had been a kinship that first night in the bar and he had grudgingly started to respect her as she had manipulated her way into a ride without allowing him to intimidate her. You’ve got to respect a little bit of a girl who sasses her way through a whole conversation with a man she knows could snap her like a twig, he recalled with a smirk. No matter what, she had always cared about him and how he was, even when he made it nearly impossible.

He knew better than to consider only her physical age, but sometimes the knowledge in those eyes was too much for him and he avoided her. But she had never avoided him until now and it worried him. He didn’t like it either, but that seemed of secondary importance.

As her scent drifted up from the chair yet again, he remembered that that had been happening a lot lately. He would often enter a room and catch a whiff of Marie, but find no sign of her. And why would she come to his room without telling him or waiting for him to talk or something? She’s avoiding me, he grasped with a start. And that didn’t sit well with him for a whole host of reasons, most of which he refused to analyze right now.

He needed to go find his friend - the first and best one, he accepted - and start acting like a friend to her.