Logan sighed as he felt the phone in his pocket buzz again. He had only reluctantly agreed to carry the damn thing, and that was before he had realized that Chuck had apparently taken to texting like a 12-year-old girl.

Have you made contact yet?

Logan took another long gulp of beer and surveyed the place from his table in the corner. The roadside bar had pretensions of being a restaurant, and was succeeding at neither. The fact that it was fairly crowded just underlined how little else there was going on out here in the boonies. A game played on a small t.v. high in the corner, and the late afternoon light streaming through dirty windows emphasized the dust motes hanging in the air over the bar that edged the back of the main room.

A muffled ruckus from the doorway next to the bar signaled that the group in the back room was becoming rowdier, their voices now drowning out the occasional crack of the billiard balls. Logan wasn’t surprised, he had assessed the number of pitchers of beer that had been carried back there relative to the small group of men he had already numbered by scent and sound without ever having to lay an eye on them. He squinted at the phone’s keyboard in the dirty light and laboriously pecked out a response.

Not yet.

He didn’t even bother putting the phone back in his pocket, and sure enough within moments there was another message from Xavier.

She is close. Eyes open.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Gee, thanks, Chuck. ‘Cause I was planning on takin’ a little nap here,” he grumbled under his breath, and then wondered if Xavier had been able to catch any of that. He was keeping tabs on Logan with Cerebro, but Logan knew the adamantium in his head made it hard for Chuck to get a good read on both his location and his thoughts.

Apparently the target had a similar issue, although they didn’t know why. Xavier had been trying to pin down the mutant for months and for all that time the information that had been gleaned was minimal. She was powerful. She was always on the move. And she was, for some reason, at least mostly shielded from Xavier’s powers. Logan had spent the last two weeks in a frustrating pattern of hurry-up-and-wait, going in whatever direction Xavier pointed him, maddening incremental steps trying to ensure that his path intersected with the target’s. At least now Xavier calculated she was within a mile of Logan’s position, and since this was the only damn place to be within a mile, she had to be here.

Logan had already assessed every woman in the joint, but he took another draw of his beer and methodically looked them over again. A few waitresses -- unlikely candidates, given how the target had stayed on the move. A middle-aged couple, eating chicken-fried steak in the comfortable silence of a lengthy marriage. A slim young girl, eating a burger by herself at the bar. Nice rack, Logan noted automatically. Pretty, but odd hair -- auburn with a white streak at her temples.

A family was at the table nearest him -- parents, a girl in her tweens, and a toddler cheerfully throwing french fries. The girl looked a little young to have manifested, but who knew -- it seemed like it was happening earlier and and earlier these days. Logan had even seen some seven- and eight-year-old brats around the mansion lately. A few other women were scattered among the tables nearby, but like the men who greatly outnumbered them most had exchanged enough conversation with their waitress to be designated by Logan as locals. Right now Logan’s money was on the target being the only other woman at the bar -- a weathered-looking middle-aged blonde who looked tough as nails. She was sitting at the bar, nursing a vodka, and periodically sending a hard stare around the room. No one was that edgy without reason. Once she left he would have Xavier confirm that the target was on the move again and then he would make his play.

The tween girl headed for the bathroom, brushing past the waitress bringing Logan his check. At least food was cheap out in the boonies -- two burgers and three beers and he had change to spare from a twenty. The game had ended, and a news announcement caught Logan’s attention. “The Mutant Registration Act has once again failed to pass the Senate despite considerable revisions to appease mutant rights activists...” Logan smothered a smile. Xavier, Jean, and ‘Ro would be celebrating tonight. And if he guessed right, their role in the defeat of the Registration Act had been considerable.

Logan felt his shoulders tense reflexively as the group of men staggered drunkenly out of the back room. Only five of them, but they were making enough noise for a football team. The voices had been boisterous but jovial when they were in the back, but now there was a different edge to them -- bitterness and bravado, always a bad combination. The television in the back room had apparently been tuned to the same announcement.

“Fucking muties...kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out...” one was saying, and Logan subtly slid his table away from his chair a little to give himself room to move if needed. He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. As much fun as it might be to school a few local bigots, he was on a mission and as close to the target as he had been in weeks. This wasn’t the time for a diversion.

“Goddamn freaks of nature...” one of the others was saying, and Logan’s eye caught a flurry of movement at the table where the family was eating. The mother was hurriedly packing up the toddler’s sippy cup and bib, and the father’s face was tense and pale as he pulled money from his wallet. Their plates were still mostly full.

Fuck, Logan thought, just as the tween bounced out of the bathroom, oblivious to the new tension in the room, her long sweater not pulled down enough this time to entirely conceal her tail.

Logan’s nostrils burned as the unfocused drunken hostility of the men sharpened into violent intent.

“Where do you think you’re going, mutie bitch...?” One of the men grabbed the girl roughly by her arm, forcing a shocked cry from her. The room was suddenly deathly silent. Logan made some rough calculations. The other four men and the girl’s parents were between him and the redneck holding the girl. The mother had her arms clenched around the toddler so tightly he was squealing and crying, the sound grating in the otherwise silent room. The father stepped forward, hands shaking. “We don’t want any trouble,” he said. Like that ever works, Logan thought cynically.

As Logan started to stand, the slim girl with the odd hair slipped off her barstool and casually walked over to the redneck holding the tween. Maybe she knows him and will talk some sense into him, Logan thought. “Hey,” she said to him, her voice warm and sociable, but Logan saw no recognition in the man’s eyes. She reached out and put her hand on his arm. The action looked almost reassuring, but the effect was instantaneous. His eyes wide, mouth pulled open in a silent scream, the man collapsed to his knees. The girl’s hand on his arm had changed to a firm grip on his wrist as he buckled, and now she let go, appearing unsurprised as the man sprawled at her feet, unconscious.

She gave the stunned tween a gentle shove towards her parents. “Go on,” she said. The father seemed to snap out of it first, grabbing the tween with an arm around her shoulders and pushing her and his wife towards the door. The motion seemed to rouse the other rednecks from their shock. “Fucking mutie freak...” One of them stepped forward, but the girl stood coolly between them and the escaping family.

Logan was moving stealthily, closing in on the group of men from behind. From that position he had a clear view of the girl, and he watched in fascination as her brown eyes flickered in a way he had never seen. Her eyes focused again, and she directed a razor-sharp gaze at the man who had spoken. “Carl,” she said, and the man’s face paled in shock. She looked at the other three in turn. “Rob. Jimmy. Duke. Which one of you wants to be the first to join Danny here on the floor?”

Logan saw Duke reach for his back pocket. He pulled a switchblade, snapping it open as he started towards the girl. Logan almost snorted at the four-inch blade. From the corner of his eye he saw the girl shift into a fighting stance as he grabbed Duke by the back of his collar and yanked, tossing him into two of his buddies. Logan stepped up next to the girl, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her, between the rednecks and the door. “Hey,” he said, giving her a nod of acknowledgement as he snapped his claws out.

“Hey,” she answered softly. She gave him a keen look and spared another for the claws before redirecting her attention to the rednecks. Logan registered and then dismissed the shocked noises and flurry of movement behind him as the rest of the patrons hurriedly cleared out of the place. He saw the blonde he had originally figured for the target easing out the back, just as the man the girl had called Rob made a pathetic attempt to whack him with a chair. A few moments later, having reduced the chair to kindling, Logan turned just in time to watch the girl take the one called Jimmy out of commission with a vicious kick to the gut. Duke had found both his courage and switchblade again and was moving in, but something else was nagging at the back of Logan’s mind. That’s three, he thought. Where’s the fourth?

Just as he thought it, he saw the fourth redneck come up from behind the bar with a shotgun pointed right at him. Goddammit, trust the locals to know where the bartender stashes the gun. He saw the man’s eyes narrow with malice as he suddenly shifted his aim to the girl. Fuck. Logan grabbed the girl, shoving her behind him and toward the door as the first round went off. The second round caught him squarely in the chest and face, slamming him into the girl.

Logan’s gaze dimmed, pain and blood and rage rendering everything a haze momentarily, until he suddenly felt cool air on his burning face. He realized the girl had pulled them both out the door. Her eyes were stretched wide, her face pale and drawn with shock. He figured he must look pretty bad. His arm feeling oddly heavy, Logan got his forearm up to wipe the blood and sweat out of his eyes as the girl slammed the door. She put her hand against it, and Logan squinted disbelievingly as a layer of frost and then ice spread from her hand, sealing the door in a thick frozen wall as the men ineffectually battered at it from the other side.

What is she?, he thought.

He could feel the chill of her hand through his flannel shirt as she grasped his arm, pulling him towards the only car left in the lot, parked a few spaces away from his motorcycle. “My bike...” he started.

She interrupted, her voice shrill with fear. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been shot! We have to get you to a hospital. I’ll bring you back for it.” His brain kicked into gear, and he realized he should be looking for any excuse to stay with her. He had wanted their paths to intersect, and now they had, albeit in a somewhat explosive way. He let her shove him into the passenger seat of her car. Her tires squealed as she peeled out of the lot.

The bleeding was slowing as Logan’s healing factor kicked in, and he wiped his face again, getting another clear look at her. The calm, competent fighter she had been in the bar had disappeared and she looked very young again, pale and shaking as she drove.

“Take it easy,” Logan said. She shot him a glare.

“Take it easy!?! You haven’t seen...” She choked back a sob. “Your eye...”

Logan flipped down the visor on his side and found a small mirror. Christ, no wonder the poor kid was rattled, half of his face looked like hamburger. As he watched, a piece of buckshot worked its way out of his right eye, and as he blinked it fell to the floor.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I heal.” She shook her head slightly, and he knew he wasn’t getting through to her. “Look,” he said more roughly, pulling his shirts up to show her his chest, where the wounds were already visibly closing. “I heal.”

She stared, almost running off the road, and he put a hand on the wheel to steady it. With visible effort she wrenched her eyes back to the road, taking a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “You heal. I’m still taking you to a hospital. You have to get checked out...what if you heal with that stuff inside you? Don’t worry, it’s not illegal to be a mutant yet...”

“No hospital,” he snapped. “Don’t worry, the shot’ll work its way out before the wounds close.” He realized his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. It took her a few seconds, but he saw the sudden stillness come over her.

“You’ve been shot before,” she said, and he could practically see her mind piecing it together. “And you don’t want to go to the authorities.” He saw that icy calmness creep back into her demeanor as her scent changed sharply. She was no longer afraid for him, now she was afraid of him. “Who do you work for? Did he send you to find me?”

Shit. Had she somehow sensed Xavier was trying to track her? Is that why she was keeping on the move?

Not much he could do now but flat-out lie. He had hoped to talk her around to meeting with the old man, but as edgy as she was now if he admitted Xavier sent him she would throw him out of the car right now and be long gone by the time he was able to get anywhere on foot.

“No one sent me,” he growled, resorting to surliness to hide the unease he felt lying to her. “It’s just that … I’m … “ He saw her brace herself as he groped for a possible explanation. A felon? A Christian Scientist? Well, there was always the truth. “...Canadian.”

He heard her surprised huff of laughter, and spared her a sidelong glance.

“Canadian?!?” she repeated.

“Canadian,” he said firmly, as if daring her to say more about it. He added grudgingly, “I didn’t exactly fill out a bunch of paperwork when I crossed the border. Hospitals want forms filled out and ID cards and social security numbers...”

He saw most of the tension go out of her. Her mouth quirked up at the corner. “Okay. So you heal. No hospital. What can I do? Do you need antibiotics or Neosporin or something?”

He smiled, and then winced as the expression pulled at his still-healing skin. “Nah, just some rest. Healing takes a lot out of me.” She had managed to get them to a major road. “Get some distance between us and those rednecks, and then maybe you could get us a hotel room. Somehow I don’t think anyone is going to let me in the door looking like this.” He had been trying to wipe up with his shirt, but it was so covered in blood it was just smearing everything around.

She snuck another glance at him. “There’s a bottle of water in the back, and probably a sweatshirt or something you can try to wipe up with.” He went through the complicated series of maneuvers required to recline the seat and retrieve the stuff from the backseat. She kept sneaking glances as his face slowly emerged from the blood and gore as he wiped, making him feel a little self-conscious.

“What?” he finally said.

She blushed a little. “Nothing. It’s just...you really are healing up. Does it still hurt the same as it would for anyone else?”

He could feel the tension in his jaw at the question, but he didn’t really know why.

“Yeah, it hurts.” A shadow crossed her face, and he found himself sorry he had told her. She was the target, he didn’t want her sympathy. “You get used to it, though,” he said, trying to reassure her. She shot him an unreadable look, and they drove in silence for awhile.

He leaned his head back against the headrest, feeling the drowsiness start to overcome him as the adrenaline wore off and the healing factor worked overtime to repair his wounds. He felt surprisingly comfortable in the girl’s presence, the humming of the car and the warm sunlight through the windows lulling him into a half-aware state.

He was almost on his way to sleep when she asked softly, “What’s your name?”

He pushed himself towards greater awareness. Jesus Christ, he should have been gathering as much information about her as possible, in case they did get separated. Why did he have to keep reminding himself that she was a mission?

“Logan,” he said.

She smiled. “Logan. I’m Marie.”

Marie, he thought. It suited her. He knew he should press her for more information now, while she was being open. Instead he leaned his head back against the headrest again. Marie, he thought again, as he let himself slide into sleep.

Marie looked at the man asleep in the passenger seat of her car. He was so big he made the usually roomy car feel almost cramped. Maybe it had just been so long since she had been in close quarters with anyone. She was acutely aware of every inch of her skin.

“Logan,” she said softly, and he stirred a little. “Logan,” she said more loudly, and he bolted upright, startling her. She drew back against the driver’s side door, watching curiously as he seemed to instantly assess his surroundings and then relax back into the seat. He acts like a soldier, she suddenly thought, and felt a return of the suspicion she had felt earlier. She suddenly wished she had gotten two rooms at the motel, but she had figured they would have wanted two IDs. At least she had gotten one with two beds.

He had been watching her watch him, but now he looked out at the motel parking lot, dim in the gathering dusk. “You got us a room?” he asked. She nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “I must have been really out.”

He stretched, and she watched in fascination as the action rippled through the muscles in his lean body. I’m going to go into a motel room with this man, she suddenly realized, and her mouth went dry. He had seemed to assume that they would be sharing one room. Maybe he did stuff like this all the time. Maybe he thought...

He stepped out of the car, and then ducked down to look at her through the open door. “You coming?” he asked, and she snapped out of her trance, getting out of the car. She grabbed her duffel bag from the trunk and headed for the room. If he had wanted to kill her, he would have let her be killed back at the bar. Instead he had saved her life, and if that didn’t earn at least a little trust she was pretty damn ungrateful. And if he wanted or expected something else...well, he would be disappointed. Maybe she was flattering herself anyway, he certainly hadn’t shown any signs of being attracted to her. For now, her instinct was to trust him, and she was going to go with that. She had been alone for so long...

She slid the key into the door, and suddenly felt him standing very close behind her. It shocked her for a minute that he wasn’t afraid to be that close. Of course he’s not afraid, you idiot, he doesn’t know yet, she scolded herself. She felt his hand brush her back, and she jumped, pushing open the motel room door and practically leaping in.

“They got you,” he said, an edge of anger in his voice. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He must have seen the confusion in her eyes. He pulled her toward a mirror mounted over the dresser, turning her around. She turned her head, and saw a few quarter-sized spots of blood staining her shirt over her right shoulder blade.

“I guess I didn’t realize...” she thought out loud. “It stung, and it’s a little sore, but I thought it was just a bruise or scrape or something.”

His hand tightened on her arm, and she looked up at him in alarm. “I shoulda checked to make sure you were okay,” he said. “Dammit, I shoulda smelled it...” She realized he was angry at himself, not her.

She smiled, remembering his words from before. “Take it easy,” she said. “I’ll heal.” He snorted, the tension leaving his body, his grip loosening.

“Yeah, well, not as quick as me. And we’ll have to get the shot out.” His eyes met hers in the mirror. “It’ll hurt.”

Ugh. He was right. “I guess I’ll have to make a run for Neosporin after all. Why don’t you clean up first, and I’ll go get you some clothes and things, and stuff to fix me up. Then first thing tomorrow we’ll double back and get you back to your bike.”

He nodded, and she headed for the door, suddenly anxious to get a little space and clear her head. "Marie," he said, and she jumped a little. She turned around, and then felt sheepish as he ripped the tag from the back of his jeans and handed it to her. "Shirts are extra large," he said, and that made her smile.

"That one I could have guessed," she said with a laugh, carefully taking the tag from his hand. She would have to tell him about her skin soon, but she let herself avoid that thought for now. She would tell him when she got back, she would have to, and then she would see it -- the aversion, the withdrawal. She sighed, and he gave her a questioning look. She smiled brightly. "Be right back."

He was still in the bathroom when she returned, but the shower wasn't running. She knocked gently, and he opened the door so quickly it startled her. She felt heat rise in her cheeks as the half-open door revealed a span of bare chest, a white towel knotted dangerously low around his hips. She handed the bag to him, and he grinned. “Thanks, darlin’.” He shut the door before she could respond.

Marie sat down on the bed. She was acting like a fool. She admitted to herself that she had liked shopping for a man. She had never even been over to the men’s side of a store, and she had let herself pretend for a moment that she was a regular girl, with a boyfriend or even a husband to shop for. You’re losing it, she told herself. The sooner you get distance from this, the better. Are you really so pathetic that an hour or two in a car with a guy and an offhand endearment sends you into fantasy-land?

She tried to force herself into a state of detachment. She was just rattled by her near-death experience, probably, and it was making her ever-present loneliness particularly acute, making her grasp for any connection to anyone. They would go their separate ways tomorrow, and in the meantime she would need his help getting the buckshot out. He might even be on his way sooner once he found out what she was. She unpacked the first aid supplies she had bought, giving a little extra slam to the box of latex gloves, hating them and everything they represented.

“They do sumthin’ to deserve that?” She jumped at the sound of his voice. He was leaning against the doorway of the bathroom, watching her. Christ, he was quiet when he wanted to be, she thought, and again that suspicion welled up. She welcomed it -- it would help her keep her detachment, make it easier for her to tell him what she knew she had to say. If he wasn’t really on her side, it wouldn’t matter so much when she saw the disgust and fear creep into his eyes, the way they always did when people found out what she was and what she could do.

She watched him come towards her, his hair rumpled as if he had just swiped it dry with a towel. His face was completely healed and he had apparently shaved using the razor and shaving cream she had bought him, revealing the stark beauty of his cheekbones, emphasizing the vibrant hazel of his eyes. The clothes fit his large frame well. Too well, her brain added unhelpfully. She took a deep breath. “I need to tell you something.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, and he sat on the bed opposite, so close their knees almost brushed. She fidgeted with her fingers, wondering where to start. She had taken off her gloves to eat her burger before all hell broke loose, and they had been left behind in the melee. She had more waiting in the bag from the store, but in the meantime she felt naked without them.

“You figured out I’m a mutant, right?”

He smiled, and she felt her heart lurch a little bit. “Darlin’, I think everyone in that bar figured out you were a mutant.”

She nodded, feeling silly. “My mutation is my skin. If my skin touches someone else’s, they get hurt. Maybe even killed if it’s for too long. It’s like I suck the life force right out of them, and into me.”

She couldn’t read anything on his face, he just looked at her steadily. She took another deep breath, and continued. “I’ve been working on control, but it’s really unpredictable. I have to be careful all the time.” She looked at him again, wanting to be sure he understood. “You have to be careful, all the time, for as long as you’re around me.”

“Fair enough.”

She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t seem inclined to do so. She was starting to get frustrated with how calmly he was taking it all. “When I touch someone -- I’m not sure how to explain it. I get a piece of them inside me. Sometimes just a little hint of what they’re thinking in that moment, if it was just a quick brush. If it was longer, I get more -- their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, even for their whole lifetimes. If they’re a mutant, I get their power. It used to be that it would happen uncontrollably, and just last for a little while. As I get better control, though, I’m figuring out how to call those mutations up when I need them so I can use them again.”

He looked at her intently. “That’s how you knew their names? Carl, and Danny, and the rest? By checking Danny’s memories after you touched him?”

She nodded. “That was easy, because it was right in his head when I touched him. If I have to go searching through memories it’s harder. I try to lock people away as soon as I touch them, otherwise...” She looked back down at her hands. “It’s going to sound crazy,” she said miserably.

She felt his hand on her knee, so close to her exposed hands she jerked them away in alarm. “Hey,” he said. “You can tell me.”

She nodded. As hard as this was, it was a relief to tell someone. She had had to figure so much of it out on her own. “At first the people I touched were just in my head, all the time. Talking to me, yelling at me, trying to take over sometimes, so loud I couldn’t think. I’ve figured out over time how to lock them away, so they don’t drive me crazy. The less I have of them, the easier it is. And now with new people I try to get them locked away as quick as I can. It’s not perfect...sometimes they get out anyway, and especially at night, I have their nightmares a lot, in addition to my own. But it’s a lot better than it used to be.”

He squeezed her knee a little, and the small gesture of kindness brought her closer to tears. “And the ice?,” he asked. “Was that from someone you touched?”

She had expected the question, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. “Yeah,” she said, trying to force a casual tone past the lump in her throat. She jumped up, turning her back to him, swiping at her eyes. “I’m going to go grab us some food, okay?”

She felt his hand on her uninjured shoulder. “You take a shower,” he said. “Get it as hot as you can stand and let it start to clean out the wounds and relax that muscle. I’ll get the food, and when I get back we’ll take care of that buckshot.”

She fought the urge to lean into his touch. She took a deep, shuddering breath and turned around to face him again. “I’ve told you what I can do -- you’ve seen it. Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

He looked down at her. His eyes were serious, but a hint of a sardonic smile quirked his lips. “I have giant metal claws. I’ve seen a lot in my time. Maybe I don’t scare so easy.”

Suddenly, that scared her more than anything...the idea that someone wouldn’t be afraid of her. Wouldn’t mind getting close to her. It scared her how badly she wanted to believe that could happen.

She ducked her head, hoping that the yearning she felt wasn’t written all over her face. “You should be,” she said to her feet. “You should be scared of me.”

She felt his hand brush back a lock of her hair, and she froze, holding her breath at the dangerous intimacy of the gesture. When his hand was safely away she couldn’t help looking up at him again. His eyes were intent on hers, the expression on his face almost grim. “Maybe you should be afraid of me too,” he said, his voice low and thick.

Before she could ask what he meant, he had turned away, taking the car keys off the dresser. He stopped at the door, but didn’t turn around. “Take your shower. I’ll be right back.”

_________________________________________________

[text message log:]

Logan to Xavier: Made contact. Physical description, white, female, early 20’s, 5’ 5”, 125 pounds, auburn hair with distinctive white streaks. Name on car registration is Marie Roberts. Surname probable alias. Target is cautious, but have established initial trust. Target’s mutation is lethal skin. Skin-to-skin contact can incapacitate or kill. Target temporarily absorbs mutations, personalities. Possiblity of permanent absorption.

Xavier to Logan: The power you describe is exceptional. Take all possible measures to gain target’s trust. Keep in contact.

Logan to Xavier: About that. Need someone from the mansion to take care of something. Not Scott...

“Be careful.”

“Dammit, Marie, how many times are you going to tell me that?” Logan clenched his jaw in aggravation. She was so damned skittish about her skin. She hadn’t even been willing to take her shirt off until he had threatened to cut it down the back to get to her wounds. She had finally reluctantly slipped out of it, holding a towel in front of her like a shield until she was lying on the bed face down. “I’m wearing the gloves, I buttoned my cuffs like you asked. ‘Sides, if I slip up and you hurt me I’ll just heal again.”

“You don’t know that! I can’t control it when I’m in pain, and you can’t be sure that you would heal from what I can do...”

“Darlin’, trust me, I can heal from anything and everything. Now do you want a demonstration or are you going to shut up and let me do this?”

Logan realized he was being a bit rough on her, but dammit he wasn’t looking forward to hurting her and it was making him edgy. Besides, he wasn’t scared of her, but he wasn’t stupid either. He saw what she had done to the guy in the bar, and this was probably more skin than she had ever shown in her life.

Now that she had stopped arguing, he could fully appreciate the beauty of it -- creamy smooth unmarked skin covering her slender but toned back, shoulderblades elegantly raised on either side of the gentle curve of her spine. He remembered checking out her rack in the bar, and thought she had probably been right to be so modest, even the lush curve of her breasts flattened against the bed was making his mouth go a little dry. He reached out to brush her hair back off her neck and she jumped. “Dammit, Marie!”

“I’m sorry!,” she snapped. “I’m not used to...” She cut herself off as if she regretted saying that much, and then turned her head so that the curtain of her hair obscured her face.

I’m an asshole, Logan thought. Of course she’s not used to being touched. He was such a physical man, for the first time he fully realized what it must have been like for her, avoiding even the simplest touch. He tried to gentle his tone. “It’s okay, I should have told you what to expect. I’m going to touch your shoulder now. It’ll be easier if you can try to relax the muscle, okay?” She nodded.

He poked and prodded at the wounds a bit. “Looks like only three of them have the shot still in ‘em. This is going to be a little cold.” He swabbed everything down with the antiseptic she had bought. He straddled her legs, and felt her tense and then consciously relax again. He moved the bedside lamp closer to avoid casting a shadow on the wounds. “I’m going to have to cut you a little, okay? I’m going to slide my claw out.” She nodded again, and he slid a claw out a few inches, and then wiped it with the antiseptic as well. That was a first, he had never really worried about giving an infection to anyone he was going to stick the claws in.

“You ready?” She nodded again, and held her breath. With three quick cuts he opened up the flesh over the buckshot fragments. She hadn’t made a sound. “You doing all right?” She made an indecipherable noise, which he took as a yes. “Breathe a little, this next part is going to be the hard part, okay?” He placed his hand on her lower back and rubbed, trying to reassure her a little as she took a few deep breaths. Nice ass too, he thought, and then cursed himself, wrenching his eyes back up.

He took the tweezers off the nightstand. “Here we go.” He tried to pull the shot out with a minimum of digging around, but they were in deep and several had fragmented. The scent of her pain burned in his nasal passages as he clenched his jaw and forced himself to keep digging until he was sure that every piece was removed. He wiped the wounds down again, and fastened the bandage. “All done. You did good, kid.”

She sat up shakily, and as the screen of her hair fell away he saw the streaks of tears on her cheeks. He instinctively reached a hand out to wipe them off, but stopped when he realized his gloves were bloody. By the time he had stripped them off she was in the bathroom, putting her shirt on again. He heard her rinsing her face, and she looked a little less pale when she came out. “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t know how I could have done that on my own. It’s good to have...a friend.”

Guilt twisted his stomach. “No problem, kid.”

_________________________________________

Logan’s blood was on fire, he was being burned alive from the inside. He clenched his teeth against the pain and flailed, but his limbs were weighted, useless. He tried to draw breath to scream and thick fluid burbled in his lungs. He knew what he would see before he even turned his head to the left -- the doctors, the general, all shaded a sickly green through the glass and fluid of the tank. Something was different this time, though. He heard muffled screams and turned his head to the right. Someone was in a tank beside his. Her wide panicked eyes stared helplessly into his, a nimbus of auburn and white hair floating around her terrified face. She convulsed, and he knew they were boiling her alive too, killing her in slow excruciating degrees. He tried to call out to her, reach her, the metal of his claws scraping the glass of the tank, but the thick fluid flooded his lungs and he was drowning, drowning...

_________________________________________

Logan came awake in a rush, bolting upright, the claws springing free reflexively. “Christ,” he mumbled, getting his bearings, smoothing a hand over his face and willing his heart to slow and his pulse to stop roaring in his ears. Suddenly he realized what had woken him...Marie was in the next bed, making muffled, choked noises. He felt a rush of panic, remembering his dream, and then felt foolish. It was just a nightmare, like his.

“Marie!” he called out gruffly, but she didn’t wake. He turned the lamp on. “Jesus!” Her skin was covered in a thin layer of frost, her lips blue, and the whimpered breaths she was choking out were thick with ice crystals. “Marie!” he barked, shaking her shoulder. She came awake with a gasp, scrabbling away from him, throwing an arm up defensively to fend him away.

He turned and went to the bathroom to get some towels, giving her time to compose herself. When he came back she was sitting on the edge of the bed, shaking. She kept her head turned away from him as he rubbed her hair down with one of the towels, wrapping another around her shoulders to try to warm her.

He rummaged through her duffel until he found a pair of sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and socks. He pushed them into her hands and pulled her to her feet. “Go change,” he said, and she walked as if on autopilot into the bathroom.

He was still buttoning his cuffs around the gloves when she came out, dressed but still shivering. She froze when she saw the gloves and shirt he had put on, and her eyes snapped to his, a flicker of panic in her gaze.

He made a noise of aggravation. “I’m not going to hurt you, kid.” He towed her toward his bed, flipping the covers back. “Get in.” She looked up at him again, and he just wanted to get the light off so he didn’t have to see that goddamn vulnerability in her eyes. “You’re frozen and your bed is wet. Now get in already, and scoot over.” He gave her a not-too-gentle shove, and she climbed into the bed, burrowing under the covers.

He slid in after her, and he felt her tense up. With an exasperated sigh, he gathered her in against his body, looping his arms around her, wrapping her in his heat. She shook both of their bodies with the force of her shivering, her teeth chattering loudly. Slowly the shivering abated, and he felt her start to relax against him. “You wanna talk about it?” he asked. He felt her shake her head against the flannel of his shirt.

He realized she hadn’t said a word since he had woken her. They lay there for awhile longer, Logan feeling her body slowly warming where it pressed against his. He found her scent strangely soothing to his nightmare-frazzled senses. She smelled fresh and warm, like rain and sunshine all at once. He felt a spreading wetness where her cheek pressed against his shirt, and only then smelled the salt of her tears. He hadn’t even realized she was crying. He smoothed a gloved hand over her hair. “Be careful,” she mumbled.

He pulled her in closer, absently enjoying the warm press of her slight weight of her against him, the way her curves seemed to fit into his side exactly right. “I’m always careful.” He lay there for awhile, listening to her breathing, gauging the moment when she slid into sleep. Then he lay there for hours more before he found sleep himself, wondering what had happened to her that she had learned to cry without making a sound.

Marie woke slowly, basking in an unaccustomed feeling of warmth and safety. Her sleep-hazed mind suddenly recalled the fat old tabby cat she used to have as a child, and how it would lie in a puddle of sunshine, looking absolutely content. She felt just like that old cat, so content she could purr as she wallowed in the puddle of sunshine that surrounded her...

Suddenly Marie realized she was feeling the warmth of a body pressed against hers, the safety of strong arms wrapped around her. She felt Logan’s breath, warm on the back of her neck, as he nuzzled his face into her hair. She tensed, uncertain, and instantly Logan let go of her, so quickly he had to have been already awake. He rolled to the side to sit heavily on the edge of the bed, his back to her, stripping off the gloves and running a hand through his hair. “I’ll get coffee,” he mumbled, and moments later he was gone.

What the hell was that? Marie thought.

She quickly showered, thinking back over the events of the night, angrily scrubbing at her lethal skin, racked with embarrassment at having shown such weakness to Logan. No wonder he’s taken to calling me “kid,” she thought, when I have to be put to bed after a nightmare like a frightened little girl.

She hurriedly dressed, but he seemed to be taking his time getting coffee. And why should it matter to me anyway what he thinks of me? We’re going our separate ways in a few hours. She refused to acknowledge the empty pit that seemed to open up in her stomach at the thought.

A quick tap at the door, and Logan was opening it, juggling two cups of coffee with the room key. “Mornin’,” he said, smiling at her, and against her will she felt her heart lurch again. Dammit. Stupid, stupid, Marie.

___

Marie took a gulp of her coffee as she drove, welcoming the bitter taste, feeling the lingering haze of her sleepiness dissipate as the caffeine roared through her system. From what she could remember of her panicked flight from the bar, it should be about an hour or two on the main road, and then a few minutes on the backroads. She hoped between the two of them they could retrace the path to find the place again.

“Do you really think it’s safe to go back there?” she asked.

Logan nodded. “We can park a little ways away and go on foot to be sure, but they didn’t serve breakfast so there shouldn’t be much going on this early. And drunk as those rednecks were, I don’t see them having the patience to stake out the lot waiting for us to come back. If they are, though, I’ll sniff ‘em out before they see us.”

She cast him a sidelong glance. “You said something like that before...that you should have smelled that I was hurt. You meant it literally? Is that part of your mutation?”

He looked a little uncomfortable. “Yeah. Feral, they call it. Better sense of smell, better hearing. Can see better at night, too. Not sure if all of that’s part of the healing, or a different thing.”

She wanted to ask him about the claws, but had the feeling that would be a little too personal. She tried to stifle her curiosity about him, but when he didn’t break the silence either she finally gave up. What did it matter, anyway, if he got mad at her for prying? They would be saying goodbye in a little while.

“What do you do? Like, for a job?”

He leaned back, stretching his long legs out as far as they could go in the footwell of her car. “I’ve done a lot of things in my time, but mostly these days it’s security stuff.”

“Security? Like being a bodyguard or something?”

“I have done stuff like that. Healing’s especially useful for that line of work, of course. Lately it’s mostly security systems, though. Looking over systems to see where the weaknesses are, recommending changes. In peoples’ home security system, or even in their daily routine -- points of vulnerability, stuff like that. Even training people to defend themselves sometimes.”

Marie thought it over. “These sure are unsafe times,” she mused. “You must be in demand.”

“I am. Thought I was due a vacation, though, so when I finished up a system in New Orleans I told my boss I’d take the long way back to New York. Figured I’d ride the bike around a little, get some fresh air before starting the next job.”

She felt a little of her suspicion towards him ease. His explanation of his job fit together with what she had sensed about him, and it explained why he knew so much about getting shot. As scruffy as he might dress, she had known he wasn’t just a drifter, she had seen that smartphone he never let out of his sight, and things like that and the fancy bike she had just caught a glimpse of weren’t cheap.

“How about you?,” he asked. “What do you do when you’re not rescuing little mutants from rednecks?”

She avoided his keen gaze. “Nothing too exciting. I came into some money a while back, and decided I’d travel around a bit. See if I could find a place that felt like home.” She took another gulp of her coffee, buying herself time to see if he would push her for more. He didn’t, and that suddenly made her want to talk.

“When I was a kid I had this big idea that I was going to be a travel writer. I was going to go all over the world and people would read about my adventures. Maybe I would even write a book. I had my first big adventure all mapped out on the wall of my bedroom in high school. I was going to go all the way up to Northern Canada, to see snow for the first time.”

She thought of the girl she had been then, so excited and sheltered and naive it stung just to think about it. She shook her head a little to clear the memory. “Now I just travel, I guess. I made a rule for myself to try to do something every day I’m on the road, just to keep it interesting. It keeps me off the highways and takes me onto the backroads, so I can really see the places I’m passing through.”

She flashed him a grin. “I’ve probably seen every roadside attraction from Seattle to Key West. If you have any questions about the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, or the Museum of Lunch Boxes, I’m your woman.” She suddenly felt a little embarrassed. “It’s silly, I know...”

“No,” he said. “It sounds...fun.” She shot him a skeptical glance. “I mean it,” he said. “I travel a lot, but I can’t remember the last time I just...stopped to check things out along the way.” There was a note of surprised realization in his voice that seemed sincere.

To her surprise, the rest of the drive passed quickly, in remarkably companionable conversation. She told him about some of her favorite stops and attractions, and although he wasn’t much of a talker he told her a little about some of the places he had visited. Before she realized it, they were close to the bar.

She saw the tension in his body increase as they got close. They parked a little ways away, and at a gesture from him she followed him into the woods that lined the road. He moved absolutely silently, keeping just inside the treeline parallel to the road, and Marie felt unbearably clumsy and clamorous as she stumbled in his wake, apparently snapping every twig and rustling every leaf that he deftly avoided. He turned around and raised an eyebrow at the racket she was making, and she stuck out her tongue at him.

With a quiet chuckle he took her gloved hand, and with his silent guidance she managed to move a little more softly through the woods. Suddenly he stopped, his grip tightening on hers. She watched as he sniffed the air.

“Stay here,” he murmured. “Something’s not right.”

She watched anxiously as he approached the lot, her view obscured by a small patch of trees and brush. Her heart beat rapidly in her ears as the silence drew on unbearably.

“Sonuvabitch!” She jumped at his loud exclamation. He didn’t sound like he was under attack, just -- pissed off?

She cautiously made her way through the trees. She was able to see the parking lot now, and it looked deserted. Logan was standing by his bike...no, wait. Logan was standing by what used to be his bike.

“Oh, no,” she said to herself. “Oh, no.” A twisted, charred, hulk of metal teetered where the beautiful, sleek motorcycle had been parked.

“Goddamn sons of bitches!” Logan said, as she watched him circle the wreckage. He kicked the heap and it fell over with a crash, charred metal parts skittering over the gravel of the parking lot. As she watched he clenched his fists, taking deep breaths to rein in his temper.

“It’s my fault,” Marie said miserably. “You wanted to take the bike, and I forced you into my car. I got you into this mess in the first place. I’m so sorry -- your beautiful bike, and all your stuff...”

With a visible effort, Logan let some of the tension out of his body, rolling his massive shoulders and cracking his neck. He came over to her and put his arm around her. “It’s not your fault, darlin’.”

She ducked her head against his side, reluctant to meet his eyes. “It is.” She pulled away from him. “I have some money,” she said. “I’ll pay you for your bike. I know it won’t replace it, but at least...”

He interrupted her with a snort. “I’m not takin’ your money, Marie.” He took one last look at the wreckage, and shrugged. “It was insured, anyway. It’ll just take some time to get things sorted out.”

He sighed and started back into the woods, a remorseful Marie close behind him. “At least let me get you a plane ticket to New York...”

He laughed. “I’m not much one for flying, Marie, and airlines don’t take kindly to people with giant knives in their arms.” He shook his head. “No, I’ll make my way up to New York by road. I’m not takin’ any of your money, though, so quit offerin’.” He took her gloved hand to help her over a fallen log. “The only thing I really need right now is a ride,” he said absently. He suddenly stopped and looked down at her. “Wanna go to New York?,” he asked.

She stared at him. “What? You want to ride with me? All the way to New York?”

He looked a little sheepish. “Never mind, it’s a lot to ask. I just figured if you didn’t have any particular place you were headed...” He trailed off. “But don’t worry about it. If you can just give me a ride to a rental car place...”

“No, I didn’t mean...it’s not too much to ask, I just...” She stopped, flustered. “Do you want to? I mean, why would you want to travel all that way with me?”

“Why not?” he asked. “I’ll split the gas and motels with you. I travel alone all the time, it might be nice to have some company for a change. ‘Sides, it sounds like I’ve been missing out. All this time I’ve been traveling and I still haven’t seen the World’s Largest Ball of Twine...”

They walked silently for awhile, as Marie tried to get her thoughts in order. Why would he suggest that? He had money, he could get his own car. Maybe it’s as simple as he says, she thought. He wants to stay with me a little longer. Something warmed inside her at the thought, joy and excitement and...something else...at the thought of traveling with him some more. Did she really want to let him drive off and never see him again? She admitted to herself that she had been dreading that moment. Take a chance, she thought.

“Logan?” she said, and he stopped walking and turned to look at her. She felt the grin spreading on her face, and watched the answering smile spread across his face. “Do you want to see the largest ball of twine ever, or the largest ball of twine rolled by one man? Because one’s in Kansas, and the other one’s in Minnesota...”

_______

[text message log:]

Logan to Xavier: Traveling with the target to New York. After I establish more trust I will approach her about the mansion.

Xavier to Logan: Excellent. Gather any information you can to help us establish her identity, in the event that she refuses our offer.

Logan to Xavier: My compliments to ‘Ro, she sure did a number on that bike. I’ll let her explain to Scooter what happened to his Harley.

Xavier to Logan: That might be best. Be well. Keep in contact.

Logan lay in the dark motel room, listening to Marie's deep, even breaths as she slept, his mind sorting through the bits and pieces of information he had gathered about her over the last few days. She was definitely on the run from something or someone. He saw her checking her mirrors to see if she was being followed when she thought he wasn’t looking. He knew she had IDs and credit cards in several different last names. And although the roadside attractions were a reason to take the occasional backroad, they didn’t require the circuitous routes she planned, avoiding all the major highways and stops. Yet he didn't smell fear or panic on her. The measures she was taking to stay hidden seemed more like long-standing habits.

Regardless of who or what she was hiding from, Logan was determined to stay close to her so that he would be on hand if it did happen to catch up with her. He had insisted on paying for the motel that next night, arguing that she had paid the first night and counting on her to be too polite to ask for two rooms if he were paying. He had been right about that, and although she had seemed a bit jumpy at first, he did his best to treat her like a sister -- or like he thought someone would treat their sister, at least -- and she had settled down. Since then, each night they had gotten a single room with two beds without discussion.

Ironically, the more time Logan spent with Marie, the more his thoughts wandered in a distinctly unbrotherly direction. Logan had always been a fairly isolated and antisocial man, but to his surprise he actually enjoyed traveling with Marie. She was smart and interesting to talk to, but she didn't feel the need to chatter all the time. A lot of their time was spent in companionable silence. She had a youthful enthusiasm that was engaging without being grating. Worst of all, as much as he tried to ignore it, there was an unconscious sensuality about her that was making their time in close quarters increasingly uncomfortable for him.

Logan took a deep frustrated breath, but doing so only filled his lungs with that sunshine-and-rain scent of Marie. He punched his pillow and flopped over in aggravation. The slender-but-luscious shape of her that he had barely registered at first was now burned into his brain in every detail. The close confines of the car seemed to accentuate every tempting feature -- the lush swell of her breast, the lean line of her leg, the deep curve of her lower back. The light of laughter in her dark eyes, the scrumptious fullness of her lower lip, how the clear creamy skin of her cheeks flushed with color when she caught him watching her.

He had realized how much it meant to her that he was not afraid to touch her clothed skin casually, and at first his brief touches were simply meant to reassure her of that. Now, though, he was finding it increasingly hard to limit his hands to brief, platonic touches. That guiding hand he placed on her shoulder longed to slide down to explore that delicious curve at the base of her spine. The quick squeeze of his arm around her shoulders took all his restraint to prevent himself from pulling her flush against his body. He thought of the way she brushed her long hair back from her neck when she was concentrating on her maps and guidebooks, and the urge to place sucking bites on that creamy exposed skin overwhelmed him.

He turned over again, kicking in irritation at the sheets as they tangled around his legs. You’re just horny, he told himself. First penned up at the mansion and now traveling with Marie. It’s been too long since the Wolverine has come out to play. He knew it wasn’t that simple, though. The thought of going to some random bar for an easy lay gave him no comfort. It was Marie he wanted. It was Marie he was starting to care for.

He remembered what Marie had said the night he pulled the buckshot from her shoulder. “It’s good to have a friend.” Is that what she was to him? He had female friends. ‘Ro, and Jeannie. He liked to work with them. He sought out their opinions at times. He was even friendly with some of the junior team members -- the firecracker, that quiet Kitty girl. He didn’t feel about them the way he was starting to feel about Marie, though. He didn’t want to spend hours in their company. They didn’t make him laugh like she did. And as much as he liked to flirt with Jeannie to rile Scooter, he didn’t feel this overwhelming compulsion to touch her every time he was near her like he did with Marie.

Goddamn it, he thought. This is getting messy. He was built for stealth, not subterfuge. Xavier was insistent that they establish Marie’s identity before Logan told her about the mansion, in case she ran. And he was right, she was too powerful to be a loose cannon. They needed intel, and maybe even leverage. And yet the longer he put it off, the worse it was going to be. It was very important to Logan now that she agree to come back to the mansion with him. He wanted her close to him. To protect her, he told himself, knowing on some level that wasn’t the whole truth. Dammit he was lying to her, and he was lying to himself. If Logan felt Xavier’s stratagems were putting Marie in danger, it was only a matter of time until he started lying to him too.

Messy, he thought again. Goddamn messy.
________________

Logan lay stretched out in the driver’s seat, soaking up the sun. After an eventful trip to the World’s Largest Ball of Twine (Ever) they had decided to just pick up sandwiches and stretch out in the car for lunch. They had pulled down a sun-dappled side road to park, and both of them had reclined their seats a little. Marie was polishing off the last of the peaches they had bought at a roadside stand while she consulted a map and her trusty guidebook of roadside attractions to choose tomorrow’s adventure.

“What do you think?,” she asked. “We’ll be in Missouri tomorrow. World’s Largest ...ugh, Ball of Human Hair...no thanks. The Grave of Pete Kibble’s Foot..."

“Whazzat?,” Logan asked drowsily. “Just his foot?”

“Apparently so. Says here he lost his foot in a railroad accident and had it buried, intending to join it someday. But then he changed his mind and hopped out West, and never came back. So the foot has its own headstone. Or footstone, I guess.”

Logan snorted. “Keep lookin’.”

“Boathenge. That could be interesting...Stubby Stonehenge...Hilltop Stonehenge Replica...they seem to have a thing for Stonehenge around these parts, huh? Let’s see, Giant Morel Mushroom, Oldest Waterbed Store in the World...”

“You’re scraping the bottom there, darlin’...”

“Oh wait! I think we have a winner!” She bounced a little in her seat, making Logan smile. “World’s Largest Pecan!”

“Why that? You know it’s just going to be some awful thing made out of concrete and chicken wire. Or have you forgotten the World’s Largest Groundhog?”

She made a moue of distaste. “That one was disappointing, I’ll admit. But the World’s Largest Pecan is on an actual pecan farm. Which means pecan pralines, chocolate-covered pecans, maybe even pecan pie!”

He smiled at the excitement in her voice. “Big fan, are you?”

She shot him a sidelong glance through her eyelashes. “Of course! I was born and raised in Mississippi -- I could eat pecan pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and never get tired of it.”

She took a big bite of peach and lay back in her seat, eyes distant, apparently contemplating pecan pies she had known and loved. Logan chuckled.

She turned sideways and looked at him, trying to smother a smile. "Don't laugh. Pecan pie is serious business to Southern girls."

He turned to face her too. "You don't sound like a Southern girl."

"Ah can when Ah want tah," she drawled, making him chuckle again.

"That sounds fake."

She pretended to be grievously offended. "Ev'ry true Suthunah sounds fake!" She switched to her more typical generic American accent. "Nowadays it only really comes out when I'm angry, so you better hope you never hear it."

"I'll keep it in mind." He watched her a moment, the dappled sunlight casting a luminous glow to her auburn and white hair. He reached out and stroked a finger down the lock of white, playing idly with the end of it while she watched him, her eyes deep and unreadable. "Did you always have these?"

She studied him for a moment, as if deciding whether to answer. Finally she shook her head slowly. "Happened about five years ago. Someone tried to hurt me, real bad. Almost killed me, but I got away. Next time I looked in the mirror, the streaks were there. I've tried to dye them, but it won't take."

Something in his chest twisted at the idea of someone hurting her like that. Anger, yes, but also...tenderness? The wish that he had been there to stop it, to protect her. "You must have been so young."

She shrugged. "Seventeen."

The sadness in her eyes pulled at something in him. His hand drifted through her hair again. "Who would want to hurt you," he said, hardly realizing that he was speaking his thoughts aloud.

He leaned forward, barely registering her shocked intake of breath, and then he was kissing her, her lips soft and warm and sweet beneath his. She tasted like peaches and sunshine and sweet grass, and he was greedy for it, licking and nipping at her lips, coaxing her mouth until she opened beneath him. Then he kissed her soft and deep, reveling in the feeling of her relaxing into him, the first tentative slick of her tongue against his, the soft noises she made as he drew her response from her with the gentle slow seduction of his tongue and teeth.

When they were both breathless, he drew back with a final nip, lying back on his seat to gaze at her. Her eyes were wide, color high in her cheeks as she reached up to touch her lips wonderingly. "Why did you do that?"

He took a deep breath, and answered her honestly. "I don't know. I just...wanted to. Been wantin’ to for awhile."

She seemed stunned. "I could have hurt you. My control..."

He smiled. "Felt fine to me."

"But the risk...you shouldn't be so reckless..."

"Look, it was a mistake, okay?" He smothered a smile at her look of disappointment. "Next time I'll ask first."

"Next time?..." she repeated, dazedly.

He levered his seatback upright and started the car. "I already told you I was a careful man," he said, shooting her a sidelong glance as he started the car. He smiled. "But some things are worth the risk."

__________

[text message log:]

Logan to Xavier: I need to tell her.

Xavier to Logan: It is vital that you wait until we have established her identity. We must know more about her in the event that she refuses our offer.

Logan to Xavier: Marie was born and raised in Mississippi, 1989 or 1990. White streaks not present until age 17. Photo attached.

Xavier to Logan: I will have Kitty search birth and school records. This should be very helpful to establish the target's true identity. Good work.

Logan to Xavier: Her name is Marie.

Xavier to Logan: Yes. Of course. Marie. My apologies. Keep in contact.

Logan’s blood was liquid fire, he was being burned alive from the inside. He flailed his limbs, claws scritching uselessly against the glass of the tank. Thick fluid flooded his lungs as he tried to draw breath to scream. Suddenly, the restraints were released. He surfaced with a roar, the viscous fluid blurring his vision. He saw a shape looming in front of him, and dug his claws in with predatory satisfaction, feeling them part flesh and bone until the knuckles of his hand were pressed up against a heaving chest. He blinked his eyes and his vision cleared. With shock, he realized it was Marie in front of him, his claws piercing her chest, her eyes staring at him in stunned anguish. He shook his head in denial, but it was too late. As he watched, her eyes dimmed, her body slumped backwards, sliding off his claws to the ground. He stared into her vacant dead eyes in disbelief. “Logan,” her dead mouth said. “Logan!”

__________

“Logan!”

Logan came awake with a roar. Claws out, heart pounding, chest heaving, he peered into the darkness. “Marie?”

She was standing a good distance away, waiting for him to become fully aware. “Here,” she said.

“Christ.” He could still feel his blood thrumming through his veins at double speed, a cold sweat prickling all over his body. “I’m okay,” he said, sheathing the claws and turning on the bedside lamp. “Sorry I woke you.”

She seemed to be making her mind up about something. Finally, she took his shirt from where it was hanging on the back of a chair. “Put this on,” she said.

“We goin’ somewhere?” He pulled the shirt on anyway.

“Scoot over.”

“Marie...”

Her eyes were serious. “It helps. You showed me that. Now scoot over.”

He swallowed any further protests. It was a big deal for her to choose to be close to someone, he realized. She rarely initiated any kind of touch. He moved over.

He finished buttoning up the shirt and lay back, and after a moment of hesitation Marie turned off the lamp and nestled close against his side, ultimately settling with her head on his chest and her arm wrapped around him.

He held her close and found to his surprise that it did help. Feeling her warm and alive in his arms, breathing her soothing scent, hearing the gentle thump of her heart against his side -- he slowly felt himself relaxing as the last of the nightmare’s effects dispersed.

“Is it the same one every time?”

“Yeah.”

They lay in silence for awhile.

“Do you want to tell me?”

He thought about it. Everyone at the mansion knew he had nightmares, but he had never really talked about them with anyone. Feeling the soft, trusting weight of Marie against his body, he suddenly did want to tell her. Maybe it would help her. Maybe it would help him.

“I’ve had the healing for a long time, I think, and the claws, but they were made out of bone. Now there’s metal in me...not just on the claws, but all over. All my bones are lined with metal, making me damn near indestructible. I used to not remember anything before I had that, but I’ve been finding out more about what happened to me. The government did that to me. I let them do that to me.”

“And that’s what you dream about? When they did that to you?”

He nodded, knowing she could feel the movement against her hair. He felt the hitch in her breathing as the realization hit her. She pulled back to look at him, her eyes glowing in the dim light. “You were awake? When they did that to you, you felt it?”

“Yeah.”

She put her head on his chest again, and squeezed him tightly. He smelled that hint of salt again. “Dammit, don’t cry, Marie,” he said thickly. She shook her head against his chest, although in denial or answer, he didn’t know.

He lay there for awhile longer, listening to the steady thump of her heart and the soft susurration of her breath, feeling the rise and fall of her chest nestled against his side.

“So it’s not just a nightmare, it’s a memory,” she finally said softly. “Like mine.”

“Yours are memories too?”

He felt her nod against his chest.

He smoothed his hand over her hair. “Wanna talk about it?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ve never told anyone what happened.”

“You don’t have to...”

“I want to. I’m just not sure how.”

He smoothed her hair again, waiting.

“I was sixteen when my mutation activated. I was kissing a neighbor boy. My first kiss, and I put him in a coma for three weeks.” He heard the hitch in her breathing, but she continued with only a slight tremor to her voice. “Things got pretty crazy at home. My mama thought it was God’s punishment on me, for being...well, she called me a lot of things. ‘Whore’ was her favorite. My daddy just kind of disappeared. I only lasted a few weeks before I ran.”

He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I hitched as far as Atlanta, and then just kind of lived on the streets for awhile. I was staying in a youth shelter when I met another mutant. His name was Bobby. He could make things cold -- create frost or snow, even turn his body into ice.”

Something nudged at the back of Logan’s mind. Bobby...hadn’t he heard something about a kid named Bobby? Something about ice? Before he could pin it down, though, Marie continued.

“He told me he knew about this guy who would help mutants like us. He was going to meet up with him, and he asked me to come with him. So we both went to find Erik Lehnsherr.”

Logan’s breath caught in his chest. She sensed it, and looked up at him. “You’ve heard of him?”

Logan was thinking furiously, acutely aware that the wrong word could expose everything. “I think so...he’s the guy who started the Brotherhood, right? The one who does stuff with magnetic fields?” In fact, Logan knew every detail of Erik Lehnsherr’s life, he had studied his file exhaustively in planning missions against the Brotherhood. The only thing he didn’t know was his scent -- Xavier had been obsessive in ensuring that Logan was never on the team for missions where Magneto might be present, knowing his metal skeleton would make him an instant liability.

“The Brotherhood,” Marie repeated bitterly. “Back then it was nothing so organized, just Lehnsherr and a couple of his thugs.”

“Is he the one you told me about? The one who hurt you?”

She nodded. “He wanted to use my mutation. Give me his power, and then use me up. He had found out about me, and tracked me to Atlanta. And then he sent Bobby, to meet me by ‘accident’ and bring me to him. He told Bobby I would be ‘useful to the cause,’ but he didn’t tell him what he really intended.”

Fuck. This was sounding all too familiar for Logan’s comfort. “Sonuvabitch,” he said out loud.

“I was just so stupid. Bobby was the first other mutant I had met, and he was so nice to me. I never thought...it just never occurred to me to be suspicious. And then we got to Lehnsherr, and instead of some mutant hero, he was just...just an evil old man. He and his shapeshifter friend -- Mystique -- they didn’t even really look at me or talk to me, they just locked me away, like I was a piece of equipment or something. Like they could just put me in storage and pull me out when they needed me. When Bobby realized they were going to kill me, he tried to get help. He was going to contact some old teacher of his...”

Logan’s heart skipped a beat.

“...but they found out about it. And then Lehnsherr decided that Bobby would make a good...’test case,’ he called it. He wanted to see how long it took my mutation to kill Bobby, so he could know how much of his power he could give me and still be okay.”

“Jesus, Marie.”

“That was when I realized I could control it. They made me touch Bobby, and I just...I don’t know, pushed with my mind, and I was able to not absorb him.” He saw a bitter smile cross her face in the dim light. “We thought for a minute we would be okay. We were so stupid.” She took a deep breath. “Lehnsherr was furious when he realized I was resisting...he smacked me as hard as he could. And when he did, my mutation started.”

He could feel her tears falling now, wetting the flannel of his shirt. “That was all it took. Lehnsherr figured out that I couldn’t control it when I was in pain. He stripped me and Bobby down to our underwear.” She laughed bitterly. “At the time I think I was more embarrassed about that than I was scared. No one but my mama had ever seen me in my underwear. He strapped us together so that every inch of our skin was touching, and then he told us what he was going to do. He was going to hurt me until I absorbed the rest of Bobby. And then he did.”

He felt her breath coming in short sobs now, even though she still didn’t make a sound.

“Marie...baby, don’t cry. It wasn’t your fault. There’s nothing you could have done.”

She shook her head. “That’s the thing. There wasn’t anything I could have done. But Bobby...he could have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bobby...he could have turned his skin to ice. My power doesn’t work unless it’s skin-to-skin contact. If he turned to ice I couldn’t hurt him, and we all knew it. I begged him to do it, but Lehnsherr told him...” Her words were choked out between sobs, now, and Logan squeezed her tight, trying to give her the strength to continue. “Lehnsherr said that no matter what, they would never unstrap us. If Bobby turned to ice they would let me freeze to death. If Bobby wanted to stay alive, he would have to kill me. And he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.”

She took a few more deep, shuddering breaths, gaining control now that the worst of it was out. “Even having him in my head afterwards, I still don’t know exactly why he didn’t do it. Part of it was that he felt guilty for bringing me to Lehnsherr. Part of it was that he just wanted to be a good guy. But I think the biggest part was that he just didn’t really understand until it was too late. He had never been out on the streets, like I had. He was just so sweet. To him it was...like a game of cops and robbers or something. I don’t think he really understood until it was too late that they were actually going to kill us. And then when he did realize it, right at the end -- he wanted to live, so badly, but even then he wouldn’t turn to ice. He just kept thinking about this boy he loved, John, and how he never told him and now he’d never see him again...”

She stopped, nuzzling her face into Logan’s chest as if that would wipe the memories away. John, Logan thought. Fuck...Pyro. He had heard something about a friend of Pyro’s running off to join the Brotherhood. Bobby...Iceman...it was years ago, before Logan had come to the mansion. Logan had always dismissed Pyro more or less as a self-absorbed brat, but for the first time Logan wondered if Pyro’s habitually insolent attitude was a facade.

“A lot of times I wish that Bobby had been the one to live. At least he had friends...a home to go to, people he loved. I don’t know that I’ve done enough with the life he gave me to justify what he did. To make his sacrifice worth it.”

“Don’t say that shit, Marie.” He rocked her against him. “Don’t say that. You got the harder part. It’s harder to be the one who lives.”

Her breathing was calming down now as he smoothed her hair, although her voice was still thick with tears when she spoke. “Anyway, that’s what I dream about. Sometimes I’m Bobby, wanting to turn to ice so badly, wanting to live so badly, but holding out for just one more second. Sometimes I’m myself, trying to make it stop even though the pain was so bad, feeling Bobby rush into my head no matter what I did. And then sometimes...sometimes I’m Lehnsherr, calmly looking me over to decide where to hurt me next, just watching us scream and struggle.”

“Sometimes you’re...is he in your head too?”

She nodded again. “Lehnsherr didn’t really understand my mutation. He thought he could just transfer his power to me, like...I don’t know, a vessel or something. Use me up like a battery and throw me away when he was done with me. He didn’t understand that along with the power, I also got the knowledge, and the memories. And that when I learned to push, to keep from absorbing Bobby, I also learned to pull, to make it go faster when Lehnsherr touched me.”

“That’s how you got out?”

“Yeah. I pulled him into me as fast as I could, and it knocked him out cold. He was so arrogant...everything in the place was metal, and he had given me the power and the knowledge to manipulate it. It was almost easy after that. I used the metal to bash Mystique and this other toad-looking guy who was there, and then I took a little of Mystique too.”

“Of the shifter? Why?”

“Hrrrmmmm....” She made an indistinct noise. He peered down at her. She looked almost...mischievous?

“Marie...” Logan said, his amusement clear in his voice. “Just what exactly did you do?” He had the feeling that Lehnsherr had underestimated Marie in more ways than just her mutation.

She seemed to be smothering a smile. “Well, Lehnsherr was a paranoid man. He had a lot of different accounts in a lot of different banks. And now I knew about them all...account numbers, passwords, everything. He didn’t trust anyone, so he kept all that information in his head...”

“You didn’t!”

She smiled. “Only the four closest banks. I didn’t want to press my luck. I just used Mystique’s power to look like Lehnsherr, and walked right out with the cash.”

He chuckled and gave her another squeeze. “That’s my girl.”

She snorted. “That’s not the usual response when someone confesses to felony, but I had a feeling you wouldn’t turn me in.”

“Turn you in? I think you deserve a medal.”

All the laughter faded from her eyes. “I don’t know...I don’t know what I deserve. Maybe what I got. The life I have now. Always looking over my shoulder, always being alone...”

“Hey,” he interrupted. “You’re not alone.”

“No?”

“No.” He kissed the top of her head. “Not anymore.”

Marie. That sunshine-and-rain smell of her, the taste of peaches and sweet grass as he delved into her mouth. The soft feel of her against him, curves filling his hand as he pressed into her, scraping his teeth against her neck, rubbing his scent on her, claiming her...
__________________

Logan lurched into consciousness. He held his breath as the soft weight of Marie stirred on top of him. He was lying on his back, Marie draped over his chest, her luscious breasts pressed close against his side, a slender firm thigh thrown over his. And he was excruciatingly, painfully hard.

Marie stirred again, and Logan felt the rumble start in his chest, stifling it with concentration as his hands clenched and unclenched, grabbing fistfuls of sheet to keep from touching her. He was so acutely attuned to her that he felt the shift in her breathing, the slight irregularity to her pulse, the fraction of a degree drop in her body temperature as she woke.

Sleep-hazed dark eyes gazed into his as a slow smile spread across her face. “Hi,” she said.

She reached out a soft gloved hand, tracing it slowly down his cheek, and something in him snapped. He turned his head, teeth closing firmly on the fleshy pad of her palm through the silk, as his eyes closed in the ecstasy of feeling her flesh firm between his teeth, marking her...

He felt and heard her sharp intake of breath, but when he opened his eyes her eyes were wide not with shock, but with pure heated lust. This time he could not suppress the growl, and he saw her pupils dilate at the sound an instant before her mouth met his in a hungry, clinging kiss.

God, she was so good, her kiss unpracticed but so hot and sweet and wet, and he wanted to devour her. He could feel the muscles in his shoulders bunching from the tension of restraint as he let her explore, her small gloved hands burrowing under his shirt to glide across the planes of his chest. He shuddered as her hand brushed his nipple, and he felt her smile against his mouth in response.

He wrapped his arms around her, hauling her up until she was fully over him and her thighs automatically parted, straddling him as he deepened the kiss, his tongue gliding slick against hers. He grasped her hips in his hands and pushed her down hard onto the bulge in his jeans, drinking in her shocked moan as the honey-sweet smell of her arousal thickened in the air.

She drew back to look at him, and the mixture of lust and wonder in her eyes was as erotic to him as the feel and smell and taste of her. He pressed her down again as he arched up, pushing into her softness, watching with fascination her intake of breath, the dark flicker in her eyes, the color rising in her cheeks at the sensation.

He ran a thumb across her lips. “So goddamn beautiful...”

Her eyes fluttered closed, and now she was moving against him, tentatively, experimentally, and it was driving him mad. His hands closed on her hips again, guiding her, helping her find a rhythm as he pulled the long-sleeved t-shirt over her head.

He closed his eyes again, trying to restrain himself, but the image of her auburn and white hair falling down around her lush, perfect breasts was burned indelibly in his mind. His left hand still at the small of her back to direct and deepen the press of her body into his, he brought his right hand up to cup her breast, feeling the nipple pebble under his palm, flicking it with his thumb before bringing his mouth up to taste it, firm and berry-sweet on his tongue.

Their breath rasped in the quiet room, small soft cries and whimpers escaping her, rough wet growls low in his own throat as they ground into each other with abandon. The bed squeaked rhythmically and her small hands clenched on his shoulders as he licked and nipped at her breasts, her lips, her neck.

He could feel the tension in her building, and her eyes opened to meet his. “Please,” she whispered. “Please.” His mouth claimed hers again in a blazing, bruising kiss as he rolled her underneath him, his hand sliding over her taut belly as she made a soft noise -- anticipation or protest, he didn’t know. He grazed her neck with his stubbled jaw before taking the tender skin of her earlobe gently between his teeth, tugging. He breathed into her ear, feeling her shudder. “Hush...let me touch you, darlin’.”

She shook her head even as her body bucked reflexively up into the warmth of his hand. “My control...” she gasped.

“You let me know if you’re slipping, baby. It’ll be okay.”

Any further protests were lost as his mouth claimed hers, his hand sliding into her pajama pants to circle and stroke, soothe and arouse. One finger and then two delved deep, and Logan clenched his jaw against the feel of her, so tight and hot and wet around his hand.

Her head was thrown back, exposing the slender line of her neck, and he was drawn irresistibly to place sucking bites there, feeling her soft cries vibrating through the skin of her throat where it pressed against his mouth, working his fingers in her to push her closer and closer to the edge.

“Logan...” she entreated, and the sound of his name on her lips sent a jolt of lust rocketing through him.

He lowered his head to suckle her breast again, teeth grazing her tender skin as his thumb circled and pressed, making her cry out beneath him. “That’s it, baby...c’mon, darlin’...this is for you..take it...”

He smelled her arousal crest, and he growled in primal satisfaction as her whole body arched, spine taut as a bowstring, heels pressed hard against the bed as she shuddered and spasmed around his fingers. He kept her at the peak for endless moments, his hand pressing and stroking and circling. As the last shudder passed through her, he eased her down gently, lapping soothingly at her breast, pulling his hand away from her slick skin to rub gentle circles on her belly.

He pulled her in close to him, cuddling and soothing her as her body twitched with aftershocks, her muscles as lax as his were rock-hard with hard-won restraint. Her breathing evened out and she looked up at him, her eyes glowing lambently in the morning light. He couldn’t help himself from running a hand down her bare back, and she shivered and sighed against him. God, she was so damn responsive. He took deep heavy breaths, feeling the Wolverine scrabbling and howling at the back of his mind.

“Logan...?” she said, as confusion, and then understanding, and finally determination crossed her face. She slid her hand firmly over the taut muscles of his abdomen and he practically howled. He grabbed her wrist.

“Marie...you don’t have to...”

The sharp nip of her teeth on his earlobe interrupted him as she popped the buttons on his fly one by one, the relief almost unbearable as she released him from the constraint of his tight rough jeans into her silken gloved hand.

“I want to,” she breathed into his ear. “Show me.”

He was lost, his body aflame, the tension in him ratcheted to the breaking point as his hand came down almost roughly over hers. He showed her what to do, helplessly bucking and shaking against her as he succumbed to the exquisite pleasure of her hand on his body. He breathed in her enticing scent mixed with his, nuzzling his face fiercely into the curve of her neck, until finally he came hard, spilling into her hand, shivering and pulsing as he ground out her name against her soft skin.

He pulled her hard against him, squeezing her tight. What have I done?

__________________


Logan sat in the car, listening to the stunned silence on the other end of the line as Xavier processed what he had been told. I should enjoy this, it’s not often someone can knock Chuck for a loop. Telling himself that didn’t help the sour feeling in his gut. Marie’s soft voice rang in his memory, gnawing at his conscience. “I’ve never told anyone what happened...”

“My God. Not only the power to take on any mutation, to overcome any mutation, but...”

“Yeah. Magneto in her head. Access not just to all he knows, but the way he thinks.”

“It is no wonder he is pursuing her. Such a liability...he would not be able to tolerate it.”

“She’s damn lucky to have made it this far.”

“This removes all doubt. She must join us. I cannot think how she would be safe otherwise. And she would be a formidable asset to the team. Insight into the very workings of Magneto’s mind...”

Logan felt an unbearable pressure building in his chest.

“Charles...”

Another stunned silence, and Logan realized he had never before used Xavier’s given name.

“Logan?”

Logan put his head down on the steering wheel, breathing heavily. “I think I fucked this up,” he ground out.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“It’s gotten...complicated.”

Logan could almost see Xavier reaching out with his mind, trying to grasp his meaning. Goddamn, he almost wished Xavier could read his mind, so he wouldn’t have to say the words.

“Logan, are you trying to say...” A delicate pause. “Is there something going on between the two of you?”

“No. Yeah. Fuck, I don’t know. We’re not...I haven’t...” Christ, Logan felt like he was having to explain his intentions to a girl’s father. “We just...there’s some sort of connection. And she hasn’t trusted anyone, ever, since Magneto. She already got reeled in once by Bobby. How can I tell her it happened again? That I’ve been after her this whole time? What is that going to do to her?”

A thoughtful silence on the other end.

“I must admit, I never expected this, Logan...for you...”

“You don’t have to tell me. I know.” The idea was almost absurd -- the Wolverine, professional badass, getting all emotional on a mission. Getting entangled with a slip of a girl. Fuck, he could hardly believe it himself.

“This will take consideration. Although, if she has Erik’s knowledge, she must already know of me. Know that we have a fundamental disagreement in our approach...”

“I don’t know. She said she locked him up tighter than any of ‘em. That he scared her most of all -- trying to take over, his nightmares of concentration camps keeping her up for weeks before she got him put away. I don’t think she would access him again without a damn good reason.”

“I see.” Another thoughtful pause. “Where will you be tonight?”

Logan thought about it. “Tennessee, probably.”

“Keep your GPS on. I’ll bring the jet and meet you. It may be wiser for me to approach her myself.”

“That’s a fuckin’ cowardly way for me to do it.”

Xavier sighed. “Her assent is all that matters, and we will do this in whatever way we must to ensure that she grants it. I can at least show her my thoughts, if it helps to convince her of our sincerity. And at worst, if she refuses, at least we know now that she will not flee to the Brotherhood...”

“Goddamn it, Chuck, that’s not good enough. She has to come with us. She has to. I can’t leave her alone out there.”

“We shall do our best.”

________________


Logan lounged on the motel bed, pretending to watch the hockey game as dark thoughts roiled in his head. He had been on edge all day, and he knew Marie had noticed. He had told her it was a headache from the whiskey-and-charcoal smell of the Jack Daniel Distillery they had toured earlier, but he could tell from her nervous gestures and sidelong glances that she didn’t quite believe him.

He took a pull from the commemorative bottle of whiskey in his hand, ironically the only alcohol sold in the damn dry county Lynchburg was in. Marie came out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, her skin flushed warm from her shower. She smelled sweet and soft and enticing, and he took another pull on the whiskey to try to drown her scent.

She approached him somewhat cautiously, finally sitting beside him and nudging in under his arm. He sighed and pulled her in close, still pretending to watch the game. His arm tightened reflexively as she turned her head into his shoulder and breathed in his scent.

“Can I have some?” she asked, and he handed over the bottle without a word. She took a hearty slug and handed it back. “Thanks.”

He grunted, the whiskey already to his mouth, his body reacting involuntarily to the taste of her on the bottle.

She lay her head back on his shoulder, watching the game. He could practically hear the thoughts ticking through her brain. Finally, she asked it.

“Are you mad at me? Sorry that we...”

She stopped, blushing, and he felt every bit like the bastard he was.

“‘Course not, darlin’,” he said, but the denial in his voice rang hollow even to his own ears.

She sat up suddenly, turning her back to him.

“Dammit, Marie...” He grabbed her chin, wiping the tears away with his thumb. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said urgently. “I’m just an asshole sometimes.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

He pulled her close, feeling her tears gather in the hollow of his neck. “I know. I’m sorry, darlin’.”

She lifted her head, running a gloved thumb over his lower lip. “I wish you would kiss me again,” she said, her vulnerability naked in her eyes, and he was lost. His mouth came down hard on hers as he kissed her almost brutally, the delicious taste of her mingling with the smoky-sweet taste of whiskey in his mouth. Her response was equally fierce, as her teeth clashed against his, their tongues tangling.

He tumbled her underneath him, his mouth frantically seeking, hands restlessly moving over her body. He ground down into her and she clung to him desperately, both of them scrabbling as if to hold on to something that was already slipping from their grasp. He couldn’t get close enough. With a frustrated roar he lifted her, pushing her back against the headboard, kneeling between her spread thighs.

He pushed the full weight of his body into her, pressing against her as if he could make her part of him, as if he could imprint her body with the feel of his so deeply that she would never forget it. He felt the growl rumbling up from his chest, and against his will it formed a word. “Mine,” he said, as he grasped the headboard with both hands, pressing his teeth into the curve of her neck, marking her, his claws snapping out with the savagery of his need.

She threw her head back, exposing even more of her neck to him, submitting to him entirely. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yours.”

He froze, looking down at her, his mark already blooming red on the tender creamy skin of her neck. Slowly he pulled away, sheathing the claws, letting her slide down his body to the bed. What am I doing? he thought again. What have I done?

He turned his back to her, gulping in deep breaths, steeling his body against the urge to claim her entirely. He stood up, snagging the bottle of whiskey on the way out the door. “I’ll be back,” he mumbled, refusing to meet her eyes as he slammed the door shut behind him.

______________________

Logan walked blindly, taking pulls from the bottle as he went. Christ, what the fuck was he doing? Xavier was coming tonight, and he was getting in deeper and deeper. He stopped suddenly. He had to tell her himself. He couldn’t let Xavier do it. It would be bad enough coming from him, he couldn’t stand by and let someone else tell her. He reached for his phone to call Xavier, to stall him...

The phone wasn’t in his pocket, and he cursed in irritation. Then the realization hit him, as the bottle of whiskey fell from his nerveless fingers. He turned and started back to the motel, breaking into a run. He couldn’t catch his breath, blood was roaring in his ears. Kitty had told him a dozen times how to password-protect his phone, and he just hadn’t taken the time to figure it out...

______________________

The smell of her fear and confusion hit him the moment he opened the motel room door.

She sat on the bed, her face pale, thumb still automatically paging through the texts. She didn’t even look at him. “You got a text,” she said softly. “I was going to bring you your phone and then I saw my name...”

Finally, she looked up at him numbly. “The target? This whole thing was a set-up?”

“Marie, no...”

“You had someone destroy your own bike so you’d have an excuse to ride with me? This whole time you’ve just been playin’ me?” He watched helplessly as the confusion in her eyes turned to anguished betrayal, and then finally anger.

He opened his mouth to protest, to explain, but abruptly his jaw clamped shut. He suddenly felt his body being lifted, the room spinning crazily as he was pinned to the opposite wall. Marie was watching him, eyes blazing, hand held up in front of her. As he watched she spread her fingers and his arms splayed, claws snapping out against his will. He tried to struggle against the force, but he couldn’t move an inch.

“You can tell Lehnsherr that white hair isn’t the only souvenir he left me with,” she hissed at him, the drawl coming out in her voice. “Ah can taste the metal in your bones.” She stepped closer, and he saw the cold fury in her eyes. “Ah hate you,” she said, and he felt the words like a knife to his gut. “Ah hate you for what you did to me, and Ah hate you for what you’re makin’ me do to you.” A flick of her fingers, and his body flew forward a few inches, only to slam back into the wall, knocking the breath from his lungs.

“You must have thought Ah was pathetic.” She took on a mocking tone. “Sad little Marie, beggin’ for your kiss. So desperate that a few crumbs of affection would win her trust.” He tried to speak his denial, but he couldn’t force a word past his clenched jaw. Her voice was low and raspy now, thick with unshed tears. “Lonely untouchable Marie, give her a kiss and a squeeze and she’ll follow you anywhere.” Her voice broke. “And Ah would have.”

Suddenly the mask of anger dropped, and all he could see was anguish. Frozen in place, he looked into her stricken eyes and realized that there was some part of herself she had managed to protect through whatever she had endured before she met him, and now it was broken, irrevocably. He had broken it.

“You’re the only man I ever wanted to touch, Logan,” she said softly, her voice the barest whisper, raw with pain. She pulled her glove off. The force holding his body to the wall was released, and he slumped to the floor on his knees. “It looks like I get my wish.” Before he could react she reached out and brushed his cheek. He realized he had never before felt her bare hand on his skin. At first the touch of her warm hand was soft -- a tender caress, a benediction. He had the insane thought that she had forgiven him. It was the last thought he had before the agonizing pain overtook him, and then the darkness.

__________

[text message log:]

Xavier to Logan: We have established her identity. Anna Marie D’Ancanto, also known as Rogue. I will be in Tennessee within the hour.

. . .

Logan to Xavier: You’ll be just in time to pick up your errand boy, then. He’s unconscious in room 362 of the Daylight Motel off Route 55. Stay the hell away from me, Wheels. Next time I won’t be so kind. -- Rogue.

[THREE DAYS LATER]

Marie sat huddled in the dark motel room, her knees hugged to her chest. The remains of a six-pack of Molson’s lay scattered around her, and she moved the bottle of whiskey into the crook of her arm as she popped the top on the first bottle of another six-pack.

She knew she was a sitting duck. She had barely gotten an hour away before Logan and Wolverine -- now that they were in her head she fully appreciated the difference between them -- became unmanageable. She had been holed up in this motel room ever since, and it was a matter of time until someone found her. Every moment that went by made her care less and less about that.

Marie...

“Shut up!” she said out loud. She knew she was acting like a crazy person, talking to herself. She was too tired to care.

Darlin’, just listen to me...

“Don’t call me that,” she whispered. “Just shut up!”

Just go look...look at my memories...my emotions. You have them. They’ll tell you I wasn’t lying...not about us...

“You’re a goddamn liar. All I want is for you to go away.”

The Wolverine snarled. You can’t just box us up, Marie. Goddamn it...

The sudden burst of rage overwhelmed her, the pressure in her forearms unbearable. She felt claws that weren’t there slicing through the skin of her hands, and she whimpered.

She took a slug from the whiskey bottle, alternating it with the Molson’s.

Drink all you want, darlin’, until my healing fades it’s not going to do you any good. Logan again.

“I just want to sleep,” she whispered, hating the pathetic sniveling tone of her own voice. “I’m so tired. I just want to sleep without the dreams.”

Silence, for once. And then she felt his guilt, his shame, as acutely as if it were her own. I know. I’m sorry, darlin’.

She rested her head back against the headboard, feeling the tears leak out.

“Don’t be nice to me. That’s worse. You’re making it worse.”

A sigh from him. You’re not safe here, Marie. You know he’s gonna find you if you stay in one place. You need to find me. Find the Professor. We only want to help you...

“Just leave me alone. I just want to be left alone.”

You know that’s a lie, Marie. I promised you, you’re not alone anymore...

The memory washed over her, his lips soft on the top of her head, his strong arms around her, his low voice rumbling in her ear as he said it. How easily she had believed it -- believed him. It hurt her unbearably, remembering it, and it hurt him. Their combined pain racked her body, and she slammed her head against the headboard to try to stop it.

A moment of silence from him -- from them -- and she took a deep shuddering breath, and another slug of whiskey.

Marie...

_____________________________

Logan surfaced slowly, struggling towards consciousness. He opened sticky eyelids with difficulty. He felt like every muscle in his body was torn, like every bone had been smashed. It took an immense effort to lift his head even a little.

Goddamn, the medbay. They knew he hated this place. He pulled the electrodes from his chest, wincing as the shrill alarm started. It was only a matter of moments before Hank came bustling in, Xavier close behind him, but Logan had already managed to sit up by then.

“Where is she?”

Xavier just regarded him calmly. “She is safe...for now.”

“Just what the fuck does that mean?”

“Logan, I understand you are upset...”

He couldn’t suppress his snarl at that.

“Cyclops and Storm are on their way to retrieve her as we speak.”

“You need me...you need me to track her...”

“She’s not running, Logan.”

Logan had been trying to stand, but now he froze. “What the hell do you mean? She’s always running.”

A long-suffering sigh from Xavier that made Logan’s claws itch to spring free. “She only traveled an hour away from where we found you before she stopped. She’s been in one place ever since.”

Logan’s unease deepened. She wouldn’t do that. She was too smart. Five years she had been on the run... “Goddamn it. Is she giving up?”

Xavier’s blue eyes regarded Logan cautiously. “I do not know for certain. She has always been incredibly difficult to read. My impression, however, is that she is having difficulty assimilating the results of her last absorption.”

“Her last...” His breath choked off as the realization hit him. “You mean me. She’s having trouble handling me.”

The claws sprang free, scraping against the metal edge of the examination bed. “Goddamn it!” Two shaky steps, and Logan sunk the claws into a wall, plaster crumbling under the pressure of claws and fist. “Now I’m in her head, hurting her? I’ve hurt her every goddamn step of the way.”

He shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the wall, trying to breathe past the pressure in his chest, the dust from the plaster choking his lungs. He sheathed the claws and leaned back unsteadily against the wall. He opened his eyes. Xavier sat calmly in his chair. Hank fluttered in the background, as much as it was possible for the massive feral to flutter.

“He’s going to find her.”

“He already has.”

Logan felt his grip on the Wolverine slipping as the claws sprang free again. “What the hell do you mean?”

“The information you gave me allowed me to identify the shifter, Mystique, using Cerebro. She and several other mutants are on their way to Marie’s position. But we will get there first. I promise you that.”

“I need to be there...”

Xavier’s gaze was pitying. “I am sorry Logan. But you must know that your presence would only dissuade her from coming. Cyclops and Storm will convince her. We can only wait.”

____________

Marie heard the wind pick up outside. It sounded like a doozy of a storm now, the rain splattering so hard against the motel room windows she wondered if they would shatter. Storm inside my head, storm outside my head, she thought hazily. Whether she was finally getting enough whiskey in her to overcome the healing, or the sleep deprivation and exhaustion were just taking their toll, she was feeling almost giddy now, her thoughts straying in every direction. Maybe there would be a tornado. Was Tennessee tornado country? She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate, but she couldn’t remember. If so, maybe she could just step outside and let it take her to Oz. “There’s no place like home,” she said to herself, and giggled.

She didn’t even hear the door crashing open over the sound of the storm, the rain on her face was her first indication that she had company. She opened her eyes and looked over the tall, brown-haired man who stood in the doorway. A red visor covered half his face. So much for looking dramatically into the eyes of my killer, she thought muzzily.

“C’mon in out of the storm, sugar,” she drawled. Her mama would be proud. “Southern hospitality to the very end!” she said with glee, waving the whiskey bottle in his direction. He plucked the bottle out of her hand and put it on the side table.

“Hey!” she said, making a grab for it. The spinning in her head forced her to sit back without it. “Fine, y’all keep it.” She giggled again. “Ah think Ah've had enough, anyway."

“Marie?” the man said.

She managed to giggle and snort at the same time. “Sorry, sugar. Too late for that. Marie’s already dead. All that’s left is Rogue. You’re welcome to have her, though. What is it people are supposed ta say at times like these? ‘Just kill me quick’?"

The mouth under the visor flattened into a severe line. “I’m not here to kill you, Mar -- Rogue."

She sighed, sticking out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout. "Too bad. I was kinda lookin' forward to that part. Not sure how you’d manage it, though. Y’see I got this healin’ now...”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. "Rogue. I know you're hurting right now, but Magneto is on his way. You need to come with us."

She watched as he carefully rested his hand over her gloved fingers. She snorted again. "Sorry, sugar, you're cute 'n all, but 'parently Ah only fall for that seduction game once -- nah, make that twice -- in a lifetime." With difficulty she managed to locate the beer with her other hand, and she toasted him with it cheerily. "Fool me once, shame on me...no...wait, that’s not it. Hold on, Ah'll get it..."

His mouth twisted. "Rogue -- I was told..." He took a deep breath. "Can you ask Bobby about me?"

The giddiness faded instantly, and she felt the tears spring to her eyes. "Low blow, mister," she whispered. "That's a low fuckin' blow."

He squared his shoulders in determination. "Please, just...ask him."

Marie leaned her head back against the headboard. "What the hell, it's open season in mah head anyways." She closed her eyes. "Bobby, sugar, you wanna come on out an' tell me if you know this guy?"

A flood of images rushed through her head. The man, in red sunglasses this time, standing at a chalkboard. Leaning over Bobby’s shoulder as he fixed something on the motorcycle. A wave of guilt and regret washed over her, Bobby’s thoughts echoing in her head as if they were her own. They’ll keep you safe, Marie. Go with them. I never should have left. I miss them so much...John...

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, grappling with Bobby’s pain. When he was somewhat contained again she looked back at the man. “Professor Summers.”

He nodded. “Call me Scott.”

She took one more gulp of the beer. “Okay. I’ll go. But Ah’m bringin’ the whiskey.”

__________________

They flew in relative silence to New York, the weather miraculously clearing in front of them.

‘Ro can control the weather, her inner Logan supplied, and Marie realized he was referring to the calm, white-haired woman who was flying the plane.

Hypocrites, Lehnsherr hissed. Traitors to the cause.

The Wolverine snarled.

“Boys...y’all play nice.” She didn’t realize she had spoken aloud again until Scott shot her a puzzled glance. She closed her eyes in exhaustion, giving up on walling up Logan and Wolverine for the moment and concentrating on getting Lehnsherr fully contained again.

She smelled Logan before she saw him, waiting just outside the hangar. The scent of him filled her with longing, and she cursed herself for it. She ignored him, looking instead into the vivid blue eyes of the man in the wheelchair next to him.

Charles? Professor? Wheels? She had a sudden dizzying impression of this man from three different viewpoints -- Lehnsherr’s image of a young, active Xavier with a full head of hair blending with Bobby’s view of being called to the headmaster’s office for a silly stunt he had pulled, blending with Logan’s view of Xavier helping him recover his memories...

She swayed and Professor Summers -- Scott -- put a steadying hand on her shoulder. Logan growled instantly in reaction.

In the cold stark light of the metal room, she was suddenly aware of her unwashed body, her greasy hair, the dark smudges under each eye that a healing factor seemed unwilling to fix. She looked at the impeccably dressed Professor, the man who had been pulling all the strings, and let an icy tendril of fury brace her.

She shook Scott’s hand off her shoulder and lifted her chin. “Ah’m here, and Ah’ll stay here for now. But Ah’m not interested in helpin’ you right now.” For the first time she looked at Logan, his hazel eyes staring intently into hers, his expression unreadable. She looked back into Xavier’s eyes. “And he stays the hell away from me.”

She heard his growl, smelled his anger and...pain?...and ignored it, staring steadily at Xavier. His eyes were kind and sympathetic, and she hated him more for it. “Understood.”

She walked on, pride propelling her forward, knowing she had no idea which way she was going. A brief commotion behind her, and rapid footsteps brought the beautiful white-haired woman to her side. “My name is Ororo Munroe. They also call me Storm.” She smiled, and Marie felt some of her fury fade at the gentle sincere warmth of her expression. “Let me show you to your room.”

It took three days before he went to Xavier -- three days of torment. He didn’t know if ‘Ro had been trying to help or torture him by giving Marie the room upstairs, in the hall unoccupied except by Logan’s room at the other end. Four empty rooms between them, and yet Logan found himself constantly listening for the slightest sound from her end of the hall.

Her muffled voice, sometimes angry, sometimes tearful as she spoke back to the voices in her head. The mumbled pleas and whimpers and sometimes even screams when the dreams consumed her. Occasionally the sound of her breaking things, or a solid thump against the wall. Her fist? Her head? Logan sat in the darkness of his room for endless hours, every muscle in his body tense as his ears strained towards her every sound, unwilling to break his futile vigil for even a moment.

Sometimes he would stand outside her room, tasting the air, deliberately tormenting himself. He became a connoisseur of her misery, measuring with exactness the relative proportions of despair and pain and anger and exhaustion in her scent as it seeped out from under her door. Aside from a few brief words to ‘Ro, who brought her meals, she spoke to no one.
______

“You have to do something.” He glared at Xavier, his hands clenched at his sides.

“I have promised her privacy, and solitude. I do not believe that she would welcome interference from either of us right now.”

“I don’t give a fuck what she wants. Healing factor or not, she can’t keep going like this. It’s killing her.” Logan felt an unfamiliar bubble of panic welling up in his throat, squeezing the breath from his lungs. “I’m killing her.”

Xavier looked taken aback. “Logan...” he began.

“Just talk to her,” Logan interrupted gruffly. He looked out the window, hunching his shoulders, unable to meet Xavier’s eyes anymore. “Please.”

A pause that seemed endless. “I will.”

_________

Logan prowled the confines of his room, ears straining to make out the muffled voices of Xavier and Marie. He hadn’t been sure that Marie would even let Xavier in, and he kept expecting any moment to hear her voice raised in anger. Instead, all he heard was the ever-calm drone of the Professor’s voice, interspersed with a subdued mumble from Marie. Eventually, both voices fell silent. Logan heard the hum of Xavier’s wheelchair and yanked his door open without waiting for the knock.

Xavier navigated inside, closing the door carefully behind him. He looked a bit shaken, and Logan’s guts twisted further.

“She is asleep now. She will sleep without dreaming.”

Logan felt something in his chest unclench. He sat down heavily on his bed, the springs groaning from the strain of his weight. They both sat in silence for a moment.

Finally, Xavier spoke. “I have misjudged this situation every step of the way.”

Logan looked up in surprise. “Chuck...”

“No,” Xavier interrupted angrily. “Do not deny it. I was wrong to delay you from telling her our purpose. I was so concerned that she might be connected with the Brotherhood that I was blind to anything else. Even now in my own house...” he broke off, taking a deep breath in an attempt to lessen his agitation. “I did not recognize the severity of the situation.”

“We both fucked up, Chuck. And she’s the one paying the price.”

“I have caused you both untold pain.” Xavier rubbed his forehead and sighed. “I do not know how to fix this.”

“Why can’t she get me out of her head? Lock me away like the others?”

“She is trying. I suspect that the…intensity of her feelings regarding you are creating a considerable obstacle. She is unwilling to access your memories and emotions during your time together, and that may ultimately prove to be a necessary step.”

“You can’t tell me there’s nothing we can do. We’ve got to help her, whether she wants anything to do with us or not.”

“She has agreed to meet with me after she rests. If she will trust me to do it, I may perhaps be able to help her establish and strengthen her mental barriers. In the meantime, I can help her sleep without dreaming. Otherwise...” Xavier gave Logan a keen glance. “I think that you are the one who would know best what she requires.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Fight it as she will, you are still very much present in her mind. Your needs, and those of the Wolverine, are hers for the moment. So what will help her?”

Logan ran a hand through his hair, unsettled. “Jesus Christ, I didn’t...I never thought of it like that.” He thought for a minute. “She needs to get outside. Being penned up in that room the whole time...it would drive me crazy. With Magneto still after her it’d be too dangerous for her to go into the woods, but maybe the garden with ‘Ro? She likes her. She...” he stopped, embarrassed, but then continued. “She smells happier when ‘Ro comes by.”

“Consider it done.”

“The Wolverine...he needs to fight.” And fuck, he thought to himself, but he was pretty sure there was no solution for that one forthcoming. “We could program something for her in the Danger Room.”

“Perhaps Scott...” Xavier started, and Logan clenched his fists, the claws snicking out a few inches involuntarily at the thought before he was able to pull them back.

“Ah. Perhaps not.”

Logan cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. “No, it’s a good idea. She needs to trust us, and for that she needs to get to know us. All of us. I’ll deal.”

_____________

Rogue paused, her spade half-buried in the dirt. She closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of wind and sun on her face, breathing in the crisp morning air.

When Xavier had first suggested that she leave the confines of her room she had been reluctant. She still found herself speaking aloud to the voices in her head at times, and the idea of an audience for her insanity was not attractive. The increased senses she had absorbed from Logan made the chaotic student environment of the mansion an overwhelmingly noisy, smelly tumult. To add to the disastrous recipe, Bobby -- formerly the most cooperative member of her mental gallery -- was slipping free more often in the familiar environment of the mansion.

To her surprise, however, her time in the garden with Ororo had helped her state of mind considerably. She had not realized the degree of restlessness the new inhabitants of her head had been experiencing until she got outside. Logan had been somewhat quieter since she agreed to come back to the mansion, but Wolverine’s anger had only increased with the proximity to Scott and the subsequent self-imposed confinement to her room.

Now, with the wind in her ears and the sun on her face, all the voices were finally quiet. She dug her fingers deep into the crumbly dirt, enjoying the sensation of coolness on her knuckles where the skin still stung from illusory claws. There was something about Ororo’s presence that was very calming. Rogue had been determined to maintain her shell of anger, keeping the mansion residents at a distance. Something about Ororo’s calm, gentle demeanor, however, made that impossible. She seemed to enjoy silence, but also seemed to intuitively sense when Rogue needed conversation to distract from the chaos in her head.

Rogue opened her eyes and started digging again. She used to love to play around in the garden as a kid, but she was finding out that there was a whole lot that she didn’t know about plants that grew in the less temperate Northern climates. Until she got better at telling the carefully-tended sprouts from the weeds, Ororo had been giving her the grunt work to do -- digging, tilling, mulching. She enjoyed the mindless work, the stretch of long-unused muscles. She thought about Xavier’s offer to let her use their fancy fight simulator, even train with Scott if she was willing. She felt the Wolverine in her head purr in anticipation of a fight, and shook her head to clear it.

Ororo’s gentle voice interrupted her thoughts. “I’m thinking of putting peonies there. What do you think, Rogue?”

Rogue carefully considered the patch of soil. “It looks sunny enough.”

Ororo smiled. “They bloom for such a short time, but they are so beautiful I can’t resist.”

Rogue found herself smiling in return. A memory slipped into her mind, Ororo sitting next to Bobby in the library, her kind voice painstakingly explaining boundary layer meteorology for the third time.

A well of shame rushed over her, tears prickling in her eyes as she ducked her head and started digging again.

“Rogue?”

Rogue stabbed the earth in frustration. “How can you be so nice to me?,” she finally said, miserably. “Didn’t they tell you what I did?”

Through the blur of tears, she saw Ororo’s hand, protected by gardening gloves, grasp hers. Ororo gently took the spade away and put it on the ground. “They told me what was done to you. You cannot blame yourself for it, Rogue.”

Rogue used the back of her hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks, knowing she was leaving muddy streaks behind. “But you knew Bobby. And I killed him.”

Ororo seemed to consider her words carefully. “Only you can come to peace with what happened to you. What Magneto did to you both was...monstrous. To take your gifts -- and that is what they are, gifts -- and turn them against each other. Forcing you to hurt each other. It was an atrocity.” She took a deep breath. “But Bobby’s choice was his to make, and you must know that he would not have wanted you to suffer because if it. Just as you know that if he had chosen differently, you would both have died. They never would have let him live. Never.”

Marie looked down at the tilled dirt. “Lo --.” She stopped and started again, unwilling to say his name. “Someone told me once that it’s harder to be the one who lives.”

Ororo handed the spade back and picked up a plant in a plastic pot. “Did you know that my parents died when I was six?”

Rogue looked up, shocked. “Ororo...I’m so sorry.”

Ororo lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “It’s all right. It was a long time ago. We were in Egypt, and there was an aircraft attack. The building we were in crumbled. My parents protected me from the rubble with their own bodies. I was buried for days before I was found.” She raised her face to the sun, breathing deeply. “I think that’s why I feel the need to be outdoors so often...I cannot stand to be enclosed for long.” She pushed the plant out of the pot, breaking up the roots to spread them.

“They sacrificed themselves to save me. At the time, the guilt was intolerable. I was angry, and ashamed that I couldn’t have done more -- saved us all somehow. But over time, I have come to recognize what an act of love it was for them. I have come to terms with the bad memories, and I can look back now and remember the good memories.”

She placed the plant in the ground, and tenderly patted the soil firm around it. “Harder to be the one who lives,” she mused. “I think maybe...someone...was right about that,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. She looked up at Rogue, her eyes warm and kind. “But sometimes we make it harder on ourselves than it has to be.”

The hair on the back of Rogue’s neck prickled. He was watching her again. She refocused her attention on Scott, determined not to look up at the Danger Room’s observation area.

“You have to protect your left side,” Scott was saying. “It’s a natural inclination to turn your attention to your dominant side, which means you have to concentrate all the more on threats coming from your left.” His right leg swept towards hers, and she instinctively jumped, landing solidly on her feet, using her forearm to block the jab aimed at her head from the left.

“Good,” he said. “Enhanced senses can be a distraction, but when you are focused they can be your biggest asset in a fight. Listen for the shift in my breathing to know when I’m setting up for a punch. Focus on the interruptions in the wind to know when people are approaching. Use their scents to know which ones will be more likely to attack and which ones will be more likely to run.”

Rogue pulled back, narrowing her eyes. “That’s not coming from you,” she said darkly. Again she felt Logan’s gaze on her back, as the muscles between her shoulderblades tensed in reaction. “That’s coming from him.”

The visor masked Scott’s expression, but she smelled his hesitation. “It’s information,” he finally said. “Use it.”

Anger flooded over Rogue. “I don’t want his goddamn advice,” she spat. “And I don’t appreciate his goddamn surveillance,” she said loudly, looking pointedly at the darkened observation room. “We’re done for today.”

He was waiting for her as she left the Danger Room, standing squarely between her and the elevator.

“Move.” She felt the rage welling up, her blood roaring in her ears. Control, she told herself, forcing herself to take deep breaths, tamping down hard on the urge to use Magneto again.

Logan crossed his arms in front of his chest, biceps bulging within the confines of his flannel shirt, his face set in determination.

“Ah’ll take the stairs,” she said, wheeling around. Damn him, but he was fast, appearing in her path once again before she had taken even a few steps.

“We have to talk,” he said stonily.

She clenched her jaw. “Ah don’t have to do anythin’ you say. And Ah’m not gonna. Now quit it. Quit watchin’ me in the garden. Quit spyin’ on me in the Danger Room. Quit standin’ outside my door at night.” She smiled bitterly at the flicker of surprise in his eyes. “Ah may not have had these damn overdrive senses as long as you have, but Ah got ‘em now, and Ah know when you’re playin’ at being my fuckin’ shadow. So jus’ quit it.”

“I wouldn’t have to shadow you if you’d just fuckin’ talk to me. I never figured you for a coward.”

“A...” she was so angry she was close to sputtering.

“Yeah. A coward,” he growled. “If you wanted to, it would take you ten seconds to find out the truth. You could know exactly what went on between us. You could know that I wasn’t lyin’ about how I felt about you. You have everything you need to know in your head, if you would just face up to it, but you’re too damn scared. It’s easier to believe that I was just messin’ with you. Easier to be angry at me than to admit that I actually cared for you.”

She had heard enough. She tried to shove past him, and again he put his body right in front of her.

His nostrils flared, and she was suddenly acutely aware of what he was smelling. Her sweat, her anger, the smell of Scott on her. His fists clenched and she saw the glimmer of silver before he was able to pull the claws back. In a flash, he had her shoved up against the wall, his face so close to hers she drew her head back to avoid contact with his skin, hitting her head against the wall with a solid thunk.

He pulled back a little bit, at the same time bringing his arms up on either side of her, hemming her in. His massive shoulders filled her vision, the muscles bunched with tension under the flannel. He was so close she could see his pulse pounding under the tanned skin of his neck, could practically taste the saltiness of his skin. The heated scent of him washed over her and she felt her body react involuntarily, longing and arousal threatening to swamp the anger. She turned her head to the side and closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “Just leave me alone.”

He stood silent for a minute, but she could still feel his gaze on her. She felt the warm inrush of air as he inhaled her scent, and the gentle huff of his breath on her neck as he exhaled. She couldn’t entirely suppress the shiver that ran through her body. Finally she felt him drop his arms. When she opened her eyes he was leaning against the opposite wall, hands in his back pockets. She could tell his anger had faded as quickly as it had flared. His eyes held nothing but regret and concern.

“Is your head okay?”

She couldn’t help a surprised snort of laughter. Her head was anything but okay. She knew what he meant, though, and touched the spot where she had hit it. “Yeah. It’s slowin’ down, but I still got the healin’.”

He sighed, looking almost dejected. “I’m not your enemy, Marie.”

Her anger was gone too, leaving her feeling cold and empty inside. “Maybe not. But you’re not my friend either. Not like you pretended to be.” She turned toward the elevator, and this time he made no move to stop her. She stopped, but didn’t turn to look at him. “And the name is Rogue.”

________________

Marie lay in bed, Logan’s words running through her mind in an endless loop. He hadn’t said anything the Logan in her head hadn’t been saying for the past three weeks, but somehow she couldn’t shake it off as easily. You have everything you need to know in your head, if you would just face up to it...

“Face up to it,” she grumbled into her pillow. “More like rub my face in it.” She huffed in a deep breath and flopped over.

Easier to be angry at me than to admit that I actually cared for you...

God, she was tempted to ask Xavier to give her that dreamless sleep again for the first time in over a week. Why was he so insistent that she look at his memories of their time together? What could it possibly accomplish?

She closed her eyes tight, taking a deep breath. Xavier had been helping her to refine her mental barriers. She pictured in her mind’s eye the ragtag, rudimentary patchwork walls she had created on her own, interspersed with the smooth, flawless sections Xavier had help her craft. She sought out within her mind the amorphous form of Logan and Wolverine, only partly contained by the walls in progress.

She held her breath and opened her mind, just a little...

He lay in the warm car, watching her as she talked about the man who had hurt her. She was so beautiful, so vibrant. Something in his chest twisted at the idea of someone hurting her like that. He wished he had been there to protect her. Without premeditation, he leaned forward, and then he was kissing her, her lips soft and warm and sweet beneath his. She tasted like peaches and sunshine and sweet grass, and he was greedy for it...

She sat up with a gasp, throwing up whatever blocks she could in the way of his memories.

I told ya, darlin’, I never lied about the way I felt about you...

“Shut up!” She covered her ears futilely with shaking hands. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

A long silence from him, and she thought that maybe she had finally shut him up. And then...

Doesn’t it?

_____________

Rogue placed the peony root carefully into the hole she had dug, and pushed the soil in around it. The wind suddenly shifted, and she caught his scent. Her head snapped up, eyes searching until she found him in the distance, leaning against the wall of the mansion, watching her. She turned her attention back to the peony.

“He’s a good man, you know,” Ororo said calmly.

Rogue patted the soil down carefully. “No, I’m not sure that I do know that.”

Ororo smiled. “Well, I do. It’s not like he ever really gets close to anyone, but I know him about as well as any of us do.” Her expression grew serious. “Enough to see how much he’s hurting right now.”

“How much he’s hurting...” Rogue repeated incredulously.

“He doesn’t leave the mansion. That’s not easy for a restless man like him, you should know that. He doesn’t sleep. He’s always tense. The way he watches you...”

“That’s not my problem.”

“Isn’t it?”

Rogue threw the spade down, aggravated. “Why are you taking his side?”

Ororo stood, dusting the soil off the knees of her jeans. “Maybe his side is your side also. Maybe I want both of my friends to stop suffering for the mistakes that were made.”

“So I’m supposed to -- what? Just forget it all? That he lied to me from the moment he met me? That it was all an elaborate manipulation to get me here?”

Ororo sighed and picked up the next peony, carefully exposing the small buds above the root cluster. “No. I don’t suppose you could forget something like that,” she said. She picked up Rogue’s spade, and started digging the next hole. “But maybe in time you could forgive it.”

________

Marie lay in her bed, kicking at the sheets in agitation. She tried to punch her pillow into a more comfortable shape, perhaps a tad too aggressively. Don’t do it, she told herself. Just go to sleep. Don’t do it.

She shut her eyes, but against her will she felt her mind turning inwards, seeking, skimming through the walls and personalities to find him...

“Don’t do it,” she said out loud to herself, clenching her fists until her fingernails dug into her palms. “Don’t...”

And then she was dipping in, her own secret shameful addiction, the razor-sharp pleasure-pain of Logan’s memories.

She drew back to look at him, and the mixture of lust and wonder in her eyes was as erotic to him as the feel and smell and taste of her. He pressed her down again as he arched up, pushing into her softness, watching with fascination her intake of breath, the dark flicker in her eyes, the color rising in her cheeks at the sensation. He ran a thumb across her lips. “So goddamn beautiful...”

The bittersweet rush of joy and grief overwhelmed her as she sampled the memory, eroding her concentration. Her mind slipped sideways...

He pulled her hard against him, squeezing her tight. What have I done?

He put his head down on the steering wheel, breathing heavily, his chest tight with pressure. “I think I fucked this up,” he ground out to Xavier.

Marie’s eyes snapped open, grounding herself in the reality of the darkened room, her body flooded with Logan’s feelings of guilt and shame. She sat up, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Dammit, dammit, dammit...”

She didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to understand his actions, didn’t want to sympathize with the impossible position he had found himself in.

She unwillingly thought of the weeks after she had absorbed Lehnsherr. His memories of the Holocaust had terrified her, not just because of the horrors themselves, but because it had made her understand him. With those atrocities fresh in her mind, Lehnsherr’s talk of sacrifice and acceptable losses for the sake of mutantkind had actually rung true, his logic no longer seeming twisted and perverse. When his voice in her head had castigated her for ruining his plans, she had almost agreed with him. She was just one person -- alone, unloved. Maybe she should have let herself be used if it would protect other mutants from the genocide Lehnsherr was convinced was imminent. Only her rage at what Lehnsherr had done to Bobby helped her keep enough distance to rein Lehnsherr’s thoughts in, eventually walling him tightly away.

Easier to be angry at me than to admit that I actually cared for you, Logan had said. He had been right. It was easier to hold onto that anger, and dammit she wasn’t entirely ready to let it go yet. She craved the black-and-white, needed some degree of certainty in the midst of all the other chaos in her head. Because if Logan hadn’t been entirely in the wrong, if he really had cared for her...what should she do now?

Well, she certainly wasn’t getting to sleep tonight. She was already wearing pajama pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. She pulled on some socks and a hoodie, closing her door softly and padding across the hall and down the stairs. Midnight snack? She wasn’t hungry. Late-night t.v.? She wasn’t in the mood. The Logan and Wolverine in her head were suspiciously silent, leaving her to her thoughts.

She found herself out on the terrace, looking out over the darkened lawn. Her residual night vision picked out details she never would have seen before, the predatory instincts of the Wolverine twitching to life as a small animal rustled in the forest. She sat cross-legged on the low wall, trying to calm her jumbled thoughts, breathing in the night air, the scents of the mansion muted and diluted by the cool breeze.

It wasn’t until she caught his scent at her back that she realized she had been waiting for him. She closed her eyes, turning her enhanced senses towards him. The smell of him, rich and warm, woods and smoke and spice. The thump of his heart and the flexing of his joints. She could see him in her mind’s eye as clearly as if she had turned around to gaze at him. Hell, she could practically feel him, as if he held a piece of her somewhere inside him, instead of the other way around. She knew he was standing at the doorway to the terrace, unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. She mapped the changes in his scent as he watched her. Uncertainty, arousal, frustration...

She uncoiled her legs and silently moved over, making space for him next to her. She felt the momentary suspension of his breathing, and then he was moving towards her. He swung up on the wall next to her with a gracefulness that belied the crushing weight that she knew he carried on his skeleton. At times she had felt the illusory drag of the metal on her own bones, sapping her strength.

She breathed in his scent and heat, willing her heart to stop skipping beats, trying to keep her breaths deep and even despite the tightness in her chest. Finally, she opened her eyes and looked at him. He looked exactly as she had imagined, and yet still the sight of him felt like a punch to the gut. His rumpled hair, the scruff of his beard, the stretch of his white t-shirt over corded muscles. His eyes were cautious as he regarded her. She couldn’t blame him, she felt the volatility under her own skin, rage and sadness and longing and lust, the emotions roiling together, exaggerated and amplified by his proximity.

She closed her eyes again and breathed in the night air, trying to let the emotions go with every exhale.

“You finally looked,” he said.

It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway.

“I fucked up. I know it. If I could take it back, I would. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything.”

She nodded again. She knew that too, now. All of it, but it was still good to hear him say it. She felt a thickening at the back of her throat, and willed the tears away. That damned weakness of hers, welling up when she most wanted to be strong.

He looked out across the lawn, a muscle ticking in his jaw, his hands clenching on the stone wall so hard she thought it might crumble. “So where does that leave us?”

Damn his directness. That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? But she didn’t know the answer. She didn’t feel like she knew anything right now. The earth seemed to be constantly shifting under her feet. She shook her head helplessly. She knew she was scaring him with her continued silence, but she didn’t know what would happen if she opened her mouth, if she would cry, or scream at him, or -- worst of all -- beg him to just fucking hold her again...

“Marie...” he said, the single word thick with longing and regret, and the rough edge of his voice scraped against her soul. She bowed her head and gulped in a deep breath, the tears prickling at her eyes now. It felt like it took all the strength she had, but she reached out slowly until she was able to put her bare hand over his where it grasped the wall. With a wordless sound of anguish low in his throat he turned his hand, desperately grasping hers so tightly that her fingers immediately went numb.

They sat for awhile in silence. Finally, Marie gave his hand a squeeze, and he reluctantly loosened his grasp. She went inside, and this time he did not follow.

Logan sprang awake, the thought already fully-formed in his head. She touched me. He had gone to sleep thinking it. She touched me. He vaulted out of bed, forgoing a shower to pull on last night’s rumpled jeans and a fresh t-shirt. Because last night, for the first time, he had seen her again. Not angry, bitter, distant Rogue, but Marie, his Marie. She had touched him with her bare hand, and touch to Marie meant everything.

Give her space, he told himself. She needs space, and time to work through it. He was still telling himself that as he barrelled down the stairs, skidding to a stop in front of Scott. “Where’s Marie? Have you seen her?”

Scott stepped back in surprise, looking Logan over appraisingly. His mouth quirked in a knowing smile.

“Stuff it, Slim, I’ll find her myself.”

He heard the smothered laugh in Scott’s voice. “Try the cafeteria. Last I saw ‘Ro and Jeannie were trying to convince her to go to breakfast with them.”

The cafeteria. The idea kindled something warm in Logan’s chest. Marie was no longer hiding out, isolating herself. She could have a life here, at the mansion. Make a home here. Make a life and a home here...with me, his mind added.

He was still yards away from the cafeteria when he realized something was wrong. The cafeteria at breakfast time was always barely-controlled chaos. Right now the place was deathly silent.

He hit the door at a run, instantly finding her because all eyes in the room were locked on the tableau. Marie, but somehow not Marie, her voice with a different cadence, her eyes now an icy blue. “Don’t you know me, Johnny?” she was saying, as ‘Ro and Jeannie hovered uncertainly behind her.

Fuck, Logan thought, moving stealthily closer, trying not to startle them.

Pyro stood insolently in her way, flicking his lighter, the flame flaring and extinguishing, lighting twin flames in his dark eyes with every snap of his thumb. “Yeah, I know you,” he finally sneered. “You’re the bitch who killed Bobby.”

“Johnny, it’s me...” Marie was saying earnestly, in a clipped New England accent. She reached out a gloved hand towards Pyro and a blossom of ice bloomed in her palm.

Logan’s nose burned with the sulfurous smell as Pyro’s animosity flared into violent intent. “No!,” he roared, still too far away to stop it as Pyro narrowed his eyes and with the next flick of his thumb threw a fireball at Marie.

Kids screamed and scattered, Logan lunging forward as Marie stumbled back into Jeannie and ‘Ro. With heart-stopping clarity, he saw Jeannie’s hand reflexively come out to grasp Marie’s wrist, trying to steady her but inadvertently landing on the strip of skin above her glove. He reached for Jeannie’s other arm and yanked her away just as she started to slump to her knees.

Kids were running everywhere, but Logan’s eyes were on Marie as she blinked and shuddered, her eyes brown again. She took a stumbling step backwards, and as she placed a hand on a nearby table to steady herself it froze solid. She put her hands over her ears, her eyes wildly darting around the room.

“Christ,” Logan breathed as the tables and chairs started to shake.

“Rogue, honey, calm down,” ‘Ro was saying, a tremor in her usually calm voice. “It’ll be okay.”

Marie’s eyes snapped to ‘Ro as she backed away. A chair flew, and Logan ducked. By the time he straightened up Marie was running from the room.

Piotr had Pyro in an in iron grip. Logan realized he was still holding Jeannie’s arm. She was struggling to her feet. “M’okay,” she slurred. “Go.”

“Take care of Jeannie,” he said to ‘Ro, and then he was running after Marie, his heart pounding in his ears.

__________

Marie ran in a blind panic, across the lawn and into the bordering woods. She felt branches whip at her face, thick underbrush snagging her jeans, but she was helpless to stop her frantic flight. She skidded down the slope of a creekbed, stumbling, sharp rocks cutting into the palms of her hands through her gloves as she scrabbled to her feet again, the mud turning to ice beneath her hands.

The voices -- no, the thoughts, of the mansion’s residents were still ringing in her ears.

Murderous bitch. Make you pay for what you did.

That was Pyro’s voice. The others overlapped, mostly unidentifiable.

She killed Bobby...
What did she do to Dr. Grey?...
Get away from her...
Sucks your life away...
She’s going to kill us...

Even Ororo’s thoughts, choked with fear -- Goddess, what has she done?...

Marie finally dropped to her knees, her legs trembling with exhaustion, her lungs burning, her heart pounding as if it were trying to burst out of her chest. She crawled through the rustling leaves until her back was up against a tree trunk, curling herself up, trying to hide from the world.

Hold on, darlin’, I’ll be coming for you...

She felt a sob escape her as her inner Logan tried to reassure her.

She was far enough from the mansion that she could no longer hear the residents’ thoughts. She hugged her knees, gulping in shuddering breaths, trying to figure out what had happened. She had been going to breakfast with Jeannie and ‘Ro, and then all of a sudden she had been watching like a spectator as Bobby tried to speak to Pyro. But it wasn’t Bobby, it was her -- wasn’t it?

She felt so confused, so out of control. And then there had been the flood of thoughts, and the way everything had shaken, and somehow she had known it was her fault. She saw again the shock in Logan’s eyes as he pulled Jean away from her. Jean...she tried to calm herself and think. She closed her eyes, looking in her head. Just a trace...there it was...of Jean Grey, fading already.

“Oh God,” she mumbled miserably, her forehead pressed against the muddy knees of her jeans. “What have I done?”

I’m sorry, Marie. I didn’t mean to. Bobby’s voice, tearful and sheepish.

She sniffled, wiping her face with her forearm. “It’s okay, sugar. I didn’t realize how hard it would be for you, being back there. Seeing Johnny again. I know how you felt about him, and I stole that from you. I stole your chance for a life with him.”

Silence. She skimmed through her head, but Bobby had voluntarily gone back inside his walls. She touched a branch next to her -- no ice. She put her head down again, exhausted. She hadn’t been able to sleep after seeing Logan last night.

As if the thought had conjured him, she caught his scent. She lifted her head and he was there before her, emerging silently from the trees. She smothered another sob, hiding her head in her crossed arms. “Just go away. I’ll hurt you.”

She could feel him moving inexorably closer. “I already told you once, I’m not afraid of you Marie.”

Please, baby, be okay, let me help you...

She jerked back in shock. That wasn’t the Logan in her head. That was him, the thoughts of the man standing before her, pushed into her head by his proximity to her.

She sprang to her feet, stumbling back from him, and he stopped in confusion.

“Don’t come any closer! When you do...I -- I can hear what you’re thinking,” she stammered.

She saw surprise flicker across his face, and then a steady resolve.

“Okay,” he said, taking another determined step towards her.

She backed away again. “Okay?!”

“I got nothin’ to hide from you.”

“Logan!” She uselessly clamped her hands over her ears, the tears making her voice thick and raspy. “I can’t stand to hear it. I already heard everyone at the mansion -- they hate me for what I did to Bobby. They’re all scared of me...even Ororo, and she’s my friend.” She swallowed hard, trying to choke back the sobs, but it was no use. “I can’t hear it from you -- I can’t.”

She thought the tenderness in his eyes might break her. “You won’t, darlin’.” And then he was there, swiftly taking her into his arms, pressing her head close into the curve of his neck, the touch of his skin sending his thoughts even more clearly to her.

Not scared of you...never will be...let me do this, darlin’...just want to hold you...let me take care of you...let me love you...

She pulled back, looking up at him in shock. His clear hazel eyes looked back at her, open and vulnerable. “I told you, darlin’...I got nothin’ to hide.”

His hands smoothed away the tracks of the tears from her cheeks, and then he pulled her close again. She closed her eyes, letting the comfort of him wash over her. The warmth and tenderness of his thoughts flooded through her, driving away the fear and desolation of her own. She drank in his familiar scent, the feel of his skin warm against hers, the safety of his strong arms around her.

He sank to the ground, bringing her with him, gathering her into his lap and pressing her even more tightly to him.

So good to hold you again...this is where you belong...never should have let you go...

She felt her breathing slow, her heart thumping now in a steady rhythm to match his. All her panic and exhaustion had evaporated like fog in the sunshine under the warm steady glow of his feelings for her. A sense of peace and safety settled over her like a blanket. She exhaled into his shirt, breathing in his warmth and scent, basking in his affection, nuzzling as close as she could get to his heated skin.

His hands were running over her soothingly, smoothing her hair, rubbing her back, flexing into the muscles of her shoulders to release the knots there. One hand absently ran down her side. Her shirt had ridden up, and his fingers tightened reflexively as he felt the bare skin at the dip of her waist, a bolt of lust arcing like a live current from his mind to hers.

Want to be inside you...want to make you mine...

“Logan!” She drew back, looking into his eyes.

He huffed a soft laugh. “Sorry, darlin’. Can’t help it. Should I try to think of baseball or somethin’?”

She turned to face him, drinking in the stark beauty of his familiar features, marveling at the flecks of green and gold in the warm depths of his hazel eyes. She slowly pulled off her muddy, torn gloves, and then ran her bare palm over his stubbled cheek. They both shivered at the contact, his arousal rocketing through her body, combining with her own.

She felt the smile slowly spreading across her face. “I’ve never been a fan of baseball.”

She leaned forward, her breath mingling with his for a moment, and then she was kissing him, feeling his lips open beneath hers, his mouth warm and soft and delicious. She could feel his fingers tightening on her body with the force of his restraint as he let her explore. With fascination, she felt the joy and lust that her kiss kindled within him as it spread through her own body.

Have to take it easy...have to be gentle with you...don’t want to scare you...sweet Marie...God you taste so good...feel so good...

She smiled against his mouth -- he was trying so hard to hold back, but she sensed the Wolverine growling with animalistic desire in his mind, and a primal wildness thrummed through her own veins in response. She deepened the kiss, nipping at his lips, sucking on his tongue, breaking through the bounds of his restraint.

“Don’t hold back,” she whispered in his ear, nipping at his earlobe and then his neck, feeling the the Wolverine slip free a little more. “I can feel how much you want this...I want it too.”

He shuddered at her words and she felt his restraint slip a bit more as he deepened the kiss, his tongue invading her mouth, slick and wet and ravenous. She wound her arms around his neck, straddling his lap fully, and they both cried out as she sank down onto him.

With a growl he tumbled her underneath him, leaves rustling under the combined weight of their bodies as he ground himself hard into her softness. He tugged on the sides of her shirt and her buttons sprang free. The barest snick of a claw and her bra fell aside as well, and his mouth was there, laving her breasts, drawing the tension in her body excruciatingly higher.

So beautiful...God...want to devour you...need you so much...have to be inside you...have to make you mine...

She almost sobbed with the force of it, his feelings alone were so intense, and combined with her own the rush of lust and emotion was ungovernable. She threw her head back as his stubbled cheek traveled down her belly, his rough tongue licking at the tender skin there. She frantically pulled at his shirt, and as he lifted up to cast it aside her hands were already fumbling with his belt buckle.

His hands, unsteady with the force of his emotion, came over hers to still them and she felt his sudden concern.

Not like this...can’t take you on the ground like an animal...you deserve better...my beautiful Marie...

“No!” She felt like she was going to cry with frustration at his unspoken thoughts. She wrapped her legs around his lean hips, pulling him fiercely against her body again. She boldly ground up into him, stroking her body against the hard length of him pressed against the rough fabric of his jeans, making them both groan. She dug her fingernails into the corded muscles of his back, licking and nipping at his chest. “Now, goddammit.”

She felt the snap within his mind as the Wolverine broke free, and then his hands were everywhere, stripping her clothes and his, laying her down again on the pile of fabric to map every inch of her body with his hands and mouth. His thoughts were wordless now -- pure emotion -- love and desire and possessiveness and primal satisfaction.

She tugged impatiently at his thick dark hair, her lips seeking his again, her body arching up against his in a frantic wordless request. She felt his momentary hesitation. “Marie...you’re sure?” he rasped, his breath hot in her ear.

“Yes,” she growled in frustration, feeling his amusement at her eagerness and then his intense, joyous satisfaction as he pressed into her. He surged deep, and any pain she might have experienced was swamped by the exquisite pleasure and completion they both felt as his body finally joined with hers.

Marie...beautiful Marie...ah God...so good...so soft...mine...MINE...

He moved deeply within her, rocking her gently at first as her body adjusted to his, and then increasing the delicious friction as she melted around him. She felt his teeth against her neck as he alternated wordless mumbles pressed into her soft skin with tender sucking bites. His hands were everywhere -- soothing, arousing, stroking, positioning her so that every luscious glide of his body into hers caused the pleasure to wind tighter and tighter.

She heard her own voice, breathless gasps of pleasure and incoherent pleas, and he seemed to understand every one, answering her need with every heated thrust of his body. The rush of sensation echoed from his mind to hers, thick and sweet as honey, driving them both onwards.

“Yes...more...” Her hands clenched on his hips as she pulled him into her harder, bucking and straining up against him. He looked down at her, his eyes darkening, and she felt the animal inside him surge forward again. “Yes.” She wanted it all from him -- his total abandon, everything that he had. Everything that he was. Without thought, she brought his hand up to her mouth as he continued to stroke deeply inside her. He watched transfixed, eyes intent on her mouth as she licked the soft pad at the base of his thumb and then bit hard, her teeth sinking firmly into his flesh.

A strangled groan from him as her action stripped away the last of his restraint. He threw his head back, closing his eyes in ecstasy, corded tendons standing out in his throat as sweat dripped down his neck. With a ferocious growl he pinned her wrists above her as his claws snapped out, and then he was wild, uncontrolled, pounding into her, claiming her, marking her as his. She was equally wild, her blood on fire, her body trembling with every raw shock of sensation as he pushed her relentlessly on.

She looked up at him, his dark eyes watching her face intently as he wrung every sensation from her, fucking her like she was everything in the world to him, like he could never have enough of her. She felt him reaching the edge as his mouth came down to devour hers, and suddenly everything coalesced -- the sensation of his body moving thickly in hers, his breath hot against her throat, the taste of his salty skin on her tongue, his rough growls rumbling in her ear. She felt her eyes widen in shock at the almost unbearable intensity of it all, and then she was coming hard, shuddering and spasming around him as wave after wave of pleasure rushed over her and his answering rush of triumph surged through her body.

That’s it baby...ah God...come for me darlin’...so beautiful...mine...

She was still trembling with aftershocks as he thrust erratically into her, his fierce pleasure thrumming through her veins, and then suddenly the blinding ecstasy of his orgasm flooded his mind and hers. She clasped him tightly as he roared his release into the skin of her neck, shaking with the sensation, his body pulsing into hers as his thoughts radiated overwhelming joy and primal satisfaction.

He pressed his damp forehead to hers as they both gasped for breath. Her world spun as he rolled them, leaves crunching under the weight of his metal-laced body as he settled her atop him. She pressed even more closely against him, wanting to prolong the breathtaking intimacy of their telepathic connection even as she felt the Jean’s power fading further.

His hands were still roaming, sliding over her body as if he could not get enough of touching her. As his pleasure and satisfaction receded to a steady hum, she felt concern and a hint of shame coming to the forefront of his mind.

He nuzzled his face against her hair. “Marie, baby...I’m so sorry...I didn’t mean to lose control like that...”

Silly man. She had a sudden thought. She reached for the trace of Jean’s power again, but this time she concentrated, and pushed...everything she had felt, everything she had wanted from him, all the joy of knowing that he had been truly himself with her, holding nothing back. She felt him suck in a surprised breath, his heart thumping a rapid double beat before resuming its steady rhythm.

“Damn,” he said, wonder palpable in his voice, and she giggled.

He squeezed her tight in relief. “I didn’t hurt you?”

She braced herself up against his solid chest on her elbows, gazing into his worried eyes, running her fingers tenderly across his brow to smooth out the furrows. “You would never hurt me,” she said, feeling the truth of it to the marrow of her bones. He understood what she was saying as well -- the past truly behind them now, absolution granted for all the mistakes that had been made.

“Marie...” he said, his voice thick with emotion, and then he was kissing her and kissing her, until she was breathless and giddy and laughing with sheer exultation.

He pulled her tight into the warmth of his body, a satisfied rumble reverberating through his chest and making her giggle again. They lay tumbled together in a contented haze, until finally Logan stirred, feeling Marie’s skin grow chilly in the autumn air.

He pulled her shirt over her bare skin, hands lingering against her soft skin as he tenderly buttoned her up. “We’d better get back before they come looking for us.”

They dressed themselves and each other, their roving hands obstructing as much as helping, stopping to trade kisses every time the need became too compelling.

Logan pulled on Marie’s hand, feeling the growing tension in her body as her mood darkened with every step they took towards the mansion.

“I don’t know how to face them after what happened.”

He tugged her close up against his side. “They don’t all understand yet, but they will. And if they don’t -- screw ‘em. We’ll go wherever you’ll be happy.”

She stopped walking in surprise. “Logan -- it’s your home.”

He brushed aside an errant lock of white hair the autumn breeze was blowing across her face, looking seriously into her eyes. “My home is with you now.”

She felt the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. He lifted his head suddenly, and she saw his focus shift. A moment later she heard the rustling too. His mouth twitched. “Looks like they came looking for us after all. Lucky for us they didn’t find us earlier...”

He suddenly froze with a predatory alertness, pushing her behind him, his claws snicking out with a vicious snap. Marie opened her mouth to ask, but gasped instead at the sudden sting at her neck. Her vision grew dim at the edges as she took a stumbling step forward. Her head swam as she saw through clouded vision Logan struggling forward, dart after dart piercing his skin. As she watched, his movements grew increasingly discoordinated before he also fell to his knees with an angry roar, struggling to stand before falling again.

Marie felt another sting on her shoulder. She slumped forward, hands out to brace herself against the ground as the world spun around her. She saw a boot appear at the edge of her vision, and looked up into the face of Erik Lehnsherr.

“My dear Rogue,” he intoned, the crisp European enunciation only accentuating the malice in his voice. “How lovely to see you again.”

Logan struggled towards consciousness, his throat dry and his head throbbing. He felt cold concrete under his back. As his awareness increased, the thread of Magneto’s cold voice emerged from the confusing jumble of sounds.

“The girl must stay unconscious, but I would like to talk to the Wolverine...”

Marie. He could smell her close by. With enormous effort, he managed to open his eyes, squinting against the harsh lights overhead.

Magneto was gazing down at him, his keen eyes appraising.

“The Wolverine. Charles’s metal man. We meet at last.”

Logan growled, snapping the claws out, struggling to rise.

“Where’s Marie, you bastard?” he ground out, trying to brace himself up.

Magneto raised an arm, palm out, and Logan was suddenly paralyzed. He strained every muscle against the force, but it was useless -- Magneto’s power controlled every metal-laced bone in his body. He tried to tamp down the rush of panic as his breath was squeezed out of him by the involuntary contraction of his ribcage.

Magneto smiled, loosening the pressure on Logan’s chest now that he had demonstrated his complete control. He twitched his finger, and Logan’s head swiveled like a puppet’s. He could see Marie now, lying on the concrete floor a few yards away. Magneto swiveled Logan’s head back, chuckling malevolently.

“It has cost me a fortune in tranquilizers to keep you two under control for even this long. That was anticipated for you, but tell me Wolverine...why does she have a healing factor?” Magneto crouched down, his face inches from Logan’s as he looked keenly into Logan’s eyes. “Naughty boy...have you been touching her?”

Logan felt the roar of rage and frustration trapped in his chest. He strained to bring the claws up, itching to pierce Magneto’s chest, but it was futile. Seeing the attempt Magneto spread his fingers in retaliation, and Logan’s claws spread apart painfully, tearing at the intricate musculature of his hands, sending bolts of pain shooting up his forearms.

“That is not polite, Wolverine. I would like to speak with you, as friends. I am astounded by my good fortune, and I must share my joy.” Magneto straightened up, looking superciliously down at Logan. “You -- Charles’s most loyal attack dog -- have been a thorn in the side of the Brotherhood for years. And yet, what could we do? How could we kill someone who cannot die?”

Magneto’s gaze shifted to Marie, and Logan felt his heart clench with fear.

“And dear Rogue. Who would ever have thought that one lonely, sniveling teenager could cause me so much trouble? For five years I have sought her, the last piece of the puzzle, the key to all my plans. Oh, I have searched for another, but it is no use -- she is unique.”

A triumphant smile spread slowly across Magneto’s face. “You cannot deny that this is destiny, Wolverine. When Rogue escaped me five years ago, I missed my chance at the summit of world leaders. I will never have such an opportunity again, and that has been the one flaw in my plan. The best I can do now is to choose one city. Only one city, its entire population converted to mutantcy by my brilliant machine. How to choose -- New York? Paris? Beijing? But now...now thanks to you, I may no longer have to choose.”

Magneto’s voice was shrill now, and he was exerting unconscious force on Logan in his excitement, making every molecule of metal in his body vibrate. “Do you see the beautiful symmetry of it all? The Wolverine, in my hands, together with the only weapon that can truly kill him.” He looked at Marie again, and Logan’s guts twisted as he put it together. Magneto was going to force Marie to kill him, just as he had forced her to kill Bobby.

“And then...with a healing factor in full force...who knows? Perhaps she might survive, to be used again and again.” His cold eyes looked into Logan’s. “Or perhaps not.” He shrugged carelessly. “No matter. I will start with the most important city first, and we shall see.”

Logan struggled to speak, but could not. Magneto chuckled and released the pressure on his jaw and ribcage, keeping the rest of his skeleton pinned. “Something to say, my friend?”

“You sick sonuvabitch -- you’re going to torture an innocent girl -- again -- for what? For nothing!”

Magneto narrowed his eyes, and with a twitch of his hand pulled Logan fully into the air until he was dangling like a puppet. Another quick gesture and he went rocketing backward, crashing against the brick wall behind him.

“It is my curse that I have the brilliance to see what others cannot, Wolverine. And I see the inevitability of what is to come. Genocide, on a worldwide scale, for all our kind,” he hissed. He shoved up the sleeve of his jacket, exposing the faded blue numbers on his forearm. “I have lived it once, and I will do anything -- anything -- to stop it this time.”

Magneto stepped back, regaining his composure, smoothing down his sleeve. “It is no matter to me if you believe or not, Wolverine. One girl -- she is nothing. And I will even let you say goodbye.”

Magneto moved toward the door, and Logan realized for the first time that the front of the cell was walled off in plastic. Magneto touched the door contemplatively. “Plastic. I despise the stuff, but dear Rogue still has my power over metal, does she not? I prepared this cell especially for her, but mere plastic cannot contain the Wolverine, can it? I’ll have to find some other way.”

Logan’s body was suddenly racked with excruciating, blinding pain. His muscles screamed and his tendons snapped as Magneto twisted the metal of his skeleton, fusing together his joints and spine, bones cracking under the torsion. He collapsed against the back wall as Magneto abruptly dropped the magnetic field that had been holding him.

Logan heard Magneto’s voice through the haze of pain. “Watch them,” he said to someone Logan could not see. He closed the cell door, his voice now muffled but still discernible through the plastic. “I’ll be back when the machine is ready for transport.”

Logan took in shallow gasping breaths, trying to control the raw jagged blaze of pain. Slowly his muscles and tendons knit together around the new warped metal of his skeleton. His arms were locked straight, his spine fused in a twisted posture. He strained, trying to bend his knees or elbows, but the adamantium was as unyielding as ever.

He grunted, throwing his weight forward, managing to topple over.

“Hey -- stop it.” A nervous voice. A familiar voice.

Logan lifted his head. “John -- what the fuck?”

Pyro stood beyond the plastic barrier, nervously fiddling with his lighter. He looked away, unable to meet Logan’s eyes.

Logan managed to use his locked arms to drag his dead weight along the concrete floor, inching closer to where Marie lay unconscious.

“Professor Logan, just stop it. I don’t want to have to get Mr. Lehnsherr.” A quaver in Pyro’s voice now. Logan spared him another glance. The kid looked a little green.

“You do what you gotta do kid,” Logan ground out, painstakingly crawling forward another few inches.

Pyro started pacing nervously, the lighter flicking open and closed in double time. “You weren’t supposed to be there -- it was just supposed to be her.” His voice gained strength and venom on the last word.

Logan didn’t waste his breath, using all his strength to propel himself onwards. Another lurch forward, and another, and he was almost to Marie.

“You can’t do anything for her. Just stop it, okay?” Pyro sounded like he was on the verge of tears now.

Logan dragged himself up even with Marie’s face. She was collapsed on her back as well, her breathing abnormally shallow, her pulse alarmingly slow. She had said the healing factor she had gotten from him had been slowing down...how much tranquilizer had they given her?

He thought furiously, nuzzling his face against her skin, breathing in her scent. There was no way he was getting out of here, but Marie...she could find a way. He didn’t know how, but he had to try. That sick bastard was not going to torture her again. A sudden memory came to him. I can’t control it when I’m in pain...

“Sorry, darlin’,” he muttered. He took her earlobe between his teeth, making sure that his lips were in contact with her skin, and then bit down firmly.

He felt the jerk go through her as her body processed the shock of pain, snapping her mutation on. He held on grimly against the pain that flooded his own body as he felt his strength and healing being slowly sucked away.

Marie’s eyes snapped open, and she shoved him away. Her eyes searched his, and then he saw the flicker as she accessed his memories. “Logan -- oh my God, no!”

Logan slumped back, barely holding onto consciousness. He had done what he could. He could hear Pyro babbling now. “Professor Logan -- what did you do? Christ, what did you do!?”

Marie stood up in a swift movement. She exhaled, and Logan saw the frost in the air. As Logan watched, her eyes swirled with color for a moment, and then turned a clear icy blue.

Pyro was scrambling for the door.

“Johnny, don’t do it. It’s me -- it’s Bobby.”

Pyro stilled, his hand on the door handle. His face flushed red with fury. “Stop saying that -- you’re not him! You killed him!” He stalked toward the cell door, lighter at the ready.

Marie shook her head slowly. Her vowels broadened with Bobby’s distinctive New England accent. “You’ve got it all wrong, Johnny. Marie tried to save me. Magneto killed me. And now you’re helping him. He used us both, and now he’s using you.”

Pyro slammed his hand against the plastic wall. “Shut up! You’re lying! It’s a trick!”

Marie’s lips quirked up in a mischievous smile. “What can I say to convince you that you don’t mind Professor Logan hearing? Remember when we were up late after everyone had gone to bed, watching Star Trek, and I told you I had a thing for Wesley Crusher?” Pyro made an inarticulate noise of shock.

“Or the first time we kissed,” Marie continued, “when we took that vodka Kitty stole from the liquor cabinet to the boathouse, and you told me about how your mom cheated on your dad and you had never told anyone about it before...”

Pyro’s face was pallid now, eyes stretched wide. “Bobby?” he breathed. He reached out his hand now, pressing his fingertips up against the plastic wall. Marie matched her fingers to his on her side of the wall, and a sob escaped Pyro.

“I’m not going to stay long, Johnny. It’s not fair of me to use Marie like this. But you have to know -- Magneto is the one who killed me. Marie tried to stop it, but he was using us both. Don’t let him do it to you too.”

Pyro pressed his palm flat against the plastic, shocked speechless.

Marie smiled gently. “I have to tell you though, before I go...I’m sorry I left, Johnny. I freaked out about us, and I ran. The Brotherhood was just an excuse. I knew it was a mistake, but by then it was too late. I should have stayed with you, and worked it out, but I was a coward.” She gulped in a deep breath, pressing her forehead against the plastic. “I love you, man,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry I never told you.”

Pyro clenched his jaw, blinking back tears. “Bobby -- just...stay. Please.”

Marie shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes also. She ducked her head and swiped her face with a gesture Logan recognized as not being her own. “That’s all I had to say, Johnny. I know you’ll do what’s right.” She stepped back from the plastic, but reached out her palm to where Pyro’s hand was still flattened against the wall. “Goodbye, Johnny.” Marie stumbled back, her eyes shifting to brown, leaving a frozen handprint behind on the plastic wall.

Pyro pressed his hands up against the plastic frantically. “Bobby! Bobby -- come back!”

Marie closed her eyes tight, and then opened them again. She shook her head helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

Pyro took a step back, and then another. He wrapped his arms over his head. “Fuck!” he screamed.

Marie came back to Logan, dragging him until she could hold his head on her lap. “Logan,” she said, helplessly.

“It’s okay, baby.” He turned his eyes to Pyro. “Isn’t it, John?”

Pyro looked down at the ground. “Goddammit.” He seemed to make up his mind. “I don’t know the code,” he mumbled. “How do I get you guys out of there?”

Logan growled. “Think. You must have seen him enter it. You’ve got to get Marie out of here.” He looked at Marie. “You’ve got to go with him. Come back for me.”

Her eyes snapped to his, stunned. “I’m not leaving you!”

“Of course not.” Magneto’s voice made them all jump. “I’m sorry,” he mocked, stepping into the room. “Did I interrupt a moment?”

Magneto swept into the room, appearing to enjoy his dramatic entrance exceedingly. A woman covered only in blue scales strolled sinuously in his wake. Mystique, Logan realized. The woman shot Logan a lascivious glance and licked her lips, giving him an insolent wink. A squat green-skinned man entered last, closing the door and standing with his back against it.

Logan watched helplessly as Pyro’s lighter flew from his hand to hover before Magneto. Magneto plucked it from the air and examined the shark’s head painted on the metal for a moment before sliding it in his pocket. He tut-tutted, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “Mr. Allerdyce. I should have known that one of Charles’s whelps would not have the fortitude to join our cause.”

Mystique had slid around behind Pyro, and at Magneto’s nod she knocked his feet out from under him with one swift kick. Pyro crumpled, staying where he fell, his head in his hands.

Logan looked up at Marie. “Darlin’...get away from me, quick as you can.” Marie looked back at him uncomprehendingly, still hugging him to her lap.

“Enough of this,” Magneto said crisply. With a curt gesture, he lifted Logan so he was dangling upright.

“Let him go!” Marie said furiously, and Logan felt the tug on his bones double as Marie tried to use her magnetic control to overcome Magneto’s hold. Logan watched in horror as against his will his hand came up and then struck out, brutally smacking Marie across the face. She stumbled back, eyes shocked and dazed as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

Magneto smirked. “You may have stolen my mutation, little girl, but your control over it will never exceed mine. The Wolverine is my plaything, not yours.”

Logan watched as the shock faded and the realization entered Marie’s eyes. “Marie...run!” he rasped urgently.

Marie backed away, but it was no use. The cell was small, and in no time Magneto had pinned her into a corner with the massive bulk of Logan’s body.

Logan strained against the force uselessly as he watched his own right hand come up, fingers clenching on the bare skin of Marie’s throat to hold her in place.

His mind screamed in denial, but there was no way out of this. His left hand came up, clenched in a fist, knuckles a scant few inches from Marie’s chest.

Logan closed his eyes in frustration. “No...” He opened his eyes again, looking into Marie’s beautiful eyes for the last time. He didn’t care that he was going to die, but knowing what was in store for Marie -- the guilt she would feel for having been the mechanism of his death, the torment Magneto had planned for her, using her to power his machine -- it was destroying him.

She gazed back at him, eyes bright with tears. “There’s only one way,” she whispered brokenly. “Please forgive me.”

He felt the claws of his left hand start to slide forward. He struggled to retract them, but it was futile. “I know darlin’...just do it. I’m so sorry.” He grappled to get the words out as despair and failure choked his throat. “You’re going to have to be the one who lives.”

Marie held her hand out, touching his cheek tenderly. “No, sugar. There’s only one way...that we both live.”

He could only watch, powerless, as his claws started to pierce her skin, but before her mutation could kick in he felt the skin of her throat turn icy beneath his hand. She looked over his shoulder to where Magneto stood, and then squinted her eyes shut tight. “Jean...please...just one more time...” she muttered to herself.

She opened her eyes with a snap, and Logan heard a thud and a muffled curse from Magneto behind him. Logan dropped to the floor with a clatter as his breath slammed from his body. He realized that Marie had used Jean’s telekinesis to knock Magneto over, breaking his concentration, but it would only last a moment.

He had barely hit the ground before he felt a blaze of unbearable pain traveling through him, his whole body convulsing uncontrollably. He screamed against the agony through clenched teeth. His blood was on fire, he felt like he was being burned alive from the inside. The pain ran in white-hot waves down from his head and up from his feet, coalescing in the center of his chest like a supernova, and then traveling down his forearms. He looked down in shock as a stream of molten liquid metal sluiced down each claw, pooling at his sides.

He struggled against the blaze of pain, trying to make sense of what was happening. He managed to lift his head, looking up at Marie to find her gaze narrowed on him, her face pale, jaw set in determination. The realization hit him like a hammer blow. She’s doing this, not Magneto. She’s stripping the metal from my body.

He felt the pain fading already as the last of the metal drained from him, exposing the naked bone of his claws for the first time in his memory. He shuddered and shook as his healing factor kicked in, his muscles and tendons repairing and re-attaching to his now metal-free bones.

He watched Marie’s gaze shift as the pooled metal lifted from the floor to form a molten ball in the air, and then fractured into a thousand tiny spheres. An icy blast of air spread outward from her outflung hand as the now-solid metal projectiles shredded the plastic wall of the prison, hurtling towards Magneto who was only now struggling to his feet.

“No!” Magneto roared, holding his hand out. Most of the projectiles froze in space and fell harmlessly to the floor, but a few zinged free of his hasty magnetic field. Logan heard with satisfaction a howl of pain from the green-skinned man as one of the projectiles apparently found its mark in his reptilian skin.

Marie had dropped to her knees by his side. “Logan...I’m sorry...”

Logan felt a rush of energy. His healing factor seemed to be working immeasurably faster than usual. He sprang to his feet. He felt -- amazing. He took a step, adjusting to his new balance. He felt unbelievably powerful, unencumbered by the crushing weight of the metal on his body. He looked down at Marie, still kneeling. He snicked the bone claws in and out experimentally, and then grinned, offering her a hand. “Let’s go, baby.”

Her smile of relief was incandescent. “Sure thing, sugar.”

Logan hurtled through the shredded plastic wall, the Wolverine coming to the surface, focused on Magneto. He felt a thud as Mystique attacked him from the side, knocking him off course. With a snarl he turned to face her, swiping with the claws. She bent bonelessly backwards and his claws found only air as she put her hands to the ground behind her and flipped, her feet kicking him in the face with a double thud as she completed the acrobatic maneuver.

From the corner of his eye he saw Magneto using his power to gather up the shreds of adamantium, preparing to strike.

“Johnny!” Marie yelled, from where she was fending off blows from the green man’s disgustingly prehensile tongue. Logan’s eyes flicked to where Pyro was standing, mouth agape. Pyro’s eyes suddenly lit with purpose and then narrowed with concentration as Marie used Magneto’s power to lift the forgotten lighter from his pocket and flip it open. The lighter flickered, and that was all Pyro needed -- he expanded the flicker into a violent burst of flame that encompassed Magneto’s body.

Magneto screamed in pain, stumbling around, his clothes alight like a torch, Pyro sustaining and guiding the flame. Logan turned his attention back to Mystique just as she kicked towards his head again. He grabbed her ankle, jerking her to the side, and she shrieked as her shoulder hit the floor.

She managed to twine herself around him, pulling his legs out from under him. Dammit, new center of gravity, he told himself grimly. Gotta adjust.

Mystique took advantage of his fall by jumping on his back, winding her legs around his waist, her unnaturally strong arms forming an iron-clad chokehold around his neck. Logan tried to reach over his head to grasp her, but she ducked, clinging tightly to him, pressing her body close against his back to stay out of his reach.

Logan felt his vision start to dim at the edges. Fuck this, he thought. He pressed his fists up against his own chest, knuckles down. With a roar, he snapped the claws, feeling them tear through his shoulders and lungs, piercing Mystique’s chest where it was pressed tight to his back.

He retracted the claws and she fell with a thump. She lay on the ground, choking and spitting up blood, as his body healed almost instantly.

He looked around and saw Marie. Her face was smeared with blood but she looked otherwise unharmed. She was standing in front of Magneto, watching him as he rolled on the ground, trying to put out the flames. Logan came up to stand behind her, his hand on her shoulder. As they watched, Magneto collapsed limply, flames still flickering at his clothing. “I should let the sonuvabitch burn for what he did to you,” Marie remarked, her voice icy with rage.

Logan grunted. “No arguments here.”

Marie sighed. She held a hand up, sending a blast of frost to extinguish the flames.

“Where’s the green guy?,” Logan asked.

“Toad? He ran...once I got his tongue.” Marie replied with a shudder, gesturing at the frozen appendage lying grotesquely on the ground. “Guess Magneto doesn’t inspire as much loyalty as he thinks.”

Logan smelled Pyro coming up behind him. A snarl escaped him as he snicked out the claws. “You little rat...”

Marie placed a restraining hand on his arm. “Enough.” She held out a hand and Pyro’s lighter flew to it. “It was a mistake. It’s over.” She handed the lighter to Pyro. He looked at the ground, swiping his eyes with his forearm.

“Marie...” Logan growled.

Marie pressed herself back against Logan’s chest, pulling his arms tight around her. She nuzzled her face into his neck. “As far as anyone in the mansion is concerned, when Lehnsherr approached Pyro, he decided to go undercover. Impulsive, but I think he’s learned his lesson.”

He felt the rumble start in his chest involuntarily, and she turned to look him in the eye. “We all deserve a second chance, Logan.” She watched his eyes carefully until he finally nodded. She ducked her head into his neck again, sighing with relief. “Now let’s call the clean-up crew.”

_______________________

“Come in.”

Marie smiled to herself, pushing open the door to the study. “You should really wait for people to knock, you know.”

Xavier looked taken aback for a moment, and then smiled warmly in return. “I do forget sometimes.” He gestured to the chair in front of his desk, and Marie sat down.

She fidgeted for a moment with her hands, unsure how to start.

“Rogue...is something wrong?”

Marie sighed. “I’m just worried that...it’s just that...” She bit her lip uncertainly, and then started over. “Erik was your friend. Your best friend, for decades. I’ve tried not to pry, but I have all those memories.” She looked up from her fidgeting hands finally to meet his eyes. “Are you okay with what I did?”

Xavier’s regarded her calmly as ever, sincerity shining from his vivid blue eyes. “You are correct. Many years ago, Erik was my friend, and a very good friend. But I do not recognize that person in the man he has now become.”

Sorrow drew his mouth down at the corners. “We have been at odds for years now, and I have tried to convince myself that it was simply a difference in philosophies -- a disagreement as to what means are necessary to secure safety and peace for mutants everywhere. But knowing what Erik did to you...what he did to Bobby, and to Logan...it has convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt that the man I knew is no more. He has been twisted, distorted into the man you captured. You saved his life, when you could easily have let him die for what he did. I can only be grateful for that, and glad that he will not hurt anyone else.”

Marie let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she had been holding. They sat in silence for a moment.

“Do you think that plastic prison will really hold him?” she finally asked.

Xavier’s eyes grew distant as he contemplated. “I do not know. He is a brilliant man, with considerable resources.” His eyes focused keenly on hers once more, and he smiled. “But so am I.”

___________________________

Marie looked into Logan’s hazel eyes. “You sure?”

His mouth quirked up at the corner. “Sure. Now quit askin’. And do it quick, I hate this place.”

Marie smiled in sympathy. She had almost fully assimilated the Wolverine and Logan personalities in her head, and she felt the echo of their distaste for the sterile medical environment speeding her pulse and turning her stomach.

She looked to Jean, who had insisted on them doing this in the medlab, with her present to monitor what she referred to as “the procedure.” Jean nodded her assent as well.

“Okay, sugar, let’s see ‘em,” Marie said. Logan snapped out the claws. Marie ran the tip of a slender finger down the blunt edge of one of the elegant bone structures, smiling inwardly as Logan’s eyes darkened with desire at her gesture. “Here we go.”

Her eyes grew distant as she lifted the chunk of adamantium Xavier’s team had retrieved from Magneto’s hideout. Although still cool, the metal appeared to turn molten underneath her hands. She scooped up a handful, the metal clinging thickly to her fingers, and then ran her palm down one claw from Logan’s knuckle to his fingertip. She heard Jean gasp as the metal smoothly coated the bone, Marie manipulating the molecules of metal into a flawlessly smooth blade with a merciless razor-sharp edge.

“Good?,” she asked.

Logan snicked the claws in and out again experimentally, and then nodded, as they all breathed a sigh of relief. One by one, Marie coated the other five claws with adamantium.

“Want me to engrave something on them?,” she teased. “Maybe, ‘If you’re close enough to read this, you’re screwed’?’” Logan growled in mock anger. “No?,” she said, finishing up the last claw. “How about, ‘Property of Anna Marie Rogue D’Ancanto’?”

Logan snicked the claws in, and fast as lightning pulled her in close, smothering her startled gasp with a blazing kiss.

“Better,” he said.

_________________

Marie stood, gazing up at Logan, the autumn breeze brushing a lock of platinum hair across her face as leaves rustled against her bare feet.

“You really want to do this?,” she said, hesitantly unbuttoning the top few buttons of her shirt.

He pulled his t-shirt over his head in one swift movement and grinned wolfishly. “Absolutely.”

She shifted her weight uncertainly. “You’ve really never done this before?”

He reached for his belt, the taut muscles of his abdomen rippling as he pulled it free, making her mouth go dry.

He leaned in for a kiss, helping her pull her shirt off. “Not that I remember.”

“Then how do you know it’ll be okay?”

He shucked his jeans and stepped closer to her, his hands impatiently unbuttoning her jeans. “I’ve heard it’s like riding a bicycle...you just let your instincts take over.”

She smiled against his kiss, stepping out of her jeans, her body pressed against his. He rumbled his approval of the lacy bra and panties she was wearing, the reverberations tickling her belly where it was pressed against his, and she giggled.

She took a step back. “Well then, what are you waiting for? It’s freezing out here!”

He watched her lithe form with appreciation as she ran the last few feet down the dock and dove cleanly into the water of the lake.

He ambled to the edge of the dock as she surfaced, treading water. “Did ya figure out yet that it’s colder in there?”

She grinned, her hair drifting around her shoulders. “That’s what you think.”

Logan noticed for the first time the fine tendrils of steam rising from the water and chuckled. “Marie -- how on earth did you manage that?”

She laughed in delight at having managed to surprise him. “I fed Johnny about five burgers and told him he owed us one. Now get in already, I don’t know how long the heat’ll last.”

“Heads up!” Logan cannonballed into the lake, making a giant splash.

The surface of the water rippled, and then stilled.

“Logan?” A few more seconds, and still he didn’t surface. “Logan!”

She shrieked in surprise as he emerged right in front of her, shaking the water from his hair like a dog. “You don’t need to yell.”

She shoved him under in irritation, and he surfaced again, pulling her closer, laughing.

He kissed her, both of them treading water, his mouth warm and soft and slick against hers. She pulled back to look in his eyes.

“You’ve really never been swimming before?“

He shook his head, spraying droplets of water from his thick wet hair. “All that metal in my body, I used to just sink like a stone.”

“How does it feel?”

He kicked back and floated on his back for a minute, before flipping back to swim to her, smiling. “Feels great.”

His expression grew serious. “I never realized how much the metal was hurting me until it was gone. Sapping at my healing factor, weighing me down every moment, chilling me to the bone in winter...” He kissed her again, tenderly. “With it gone...” He shrugged. “I feel free.”

She ran a hand down the side of his face, enjoying the feel of his warm wet skin and bristly stubble. “You’re not worried about being more...vulnerable?”

He held her tight against him, towing her backwards until he found a spot shallow enough that he could stand. She looped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck as he kissed her, soft and deep, his hands roving over her body. “I already told you once, darlin’.” The corner of his mouth quirked in a smile. “Some things are worth the risk.”

Then he was kissing her again, making her head spin, his hands roaming restlessly over every inch of her wet skin. She pressed into him tighter, remembering the day he had first said that. The day that he had kissed her for the first time, the only person to ever be unafraid of her skin.

He suddenly pulled back, his eyes serious as they searched hers. “There’s something I’ve been meanin’ to ask you.”

She looked back at him in confusion. “You can ask me anything, sugar.”

“Remember that day, when you said you were travelin’ until you found a place that felt like home?”

“Sure,” she answered, still puzzled. At the time she had thought it was a lie of convenience to hide the fact that she was on the run, but now she knew that it had been her secret hope all along -- that she would finally find a place where she felt like she belonged.

“Well...” He seemed suddenly nervous, ducking his head into the curve of her neck to avoid her eyes, mumbling his words against her skin. “Do you think you’ve found it?”

She suddenly understood. He was asking if she would stay. Silly man, she thought with a smile. Like there was ever any doubt.

“I found it,” she said, kissing him again, hearing the conviction in her own words. She had found the place where she belonged -- not the mansion but here, in his arms, his heart thumping in rhythm with hers. “It was you.”