Marie watched as the normal after-school rush flooded into the small coffee shop and café a few blocks from the Northern Arizona University campus. She smiled at the regulars, called out a few greetings, and began serving up lattes, cappuccinos and the occasional hot chocolate. Occasionally a customer wanted a sandwich or a bowl of soup, which she dished out with sympathy for frozen fingers and wind-blown cheeks. It felt good to settle into the daily pattern of small talk, flirting and laughing.

Eventually the rush died down, and Marie turned from handing a customer her mocha to find her best friend and coworker, Amanda Danvers, walking through the door. The two grinned at each other as Amanda stepped behind the counter.

“Slow day, huh?” Amanda joked as she scanned the room full of lounging students and teacher’s aides.

Marie laughed. “I swear Ms. Jamison was a genius to open this place up so near the university campus. Lots of cold students stopping in to warm up,” she said as she glanced around at the cozy chairs and couches artfully arranged around a central fireplace that flickered cheerfully in the waning light of the evening.

Amanda nodded, looking around herself. Seeing that there were no customers needing their immediate attention, she pulled Marie further away from the counter and asked quietly, “And how was last night, Ms. D'Ancanto?” Her green eyes sparkled.

Marie winked. “Great. I had Marcus eating out of the palm of my hand. Did you doubt me?” she asked.

“Let’s see. A nice, scary movie where you could pretend to be so frightened you just had to cling to him like a second skin and then a chilly walk to a sweet little French bistro a few blocks away? No, he didn’t stand a chance,” Amanda told her friend. They laughed together.

“I’m seeing him again tomorrow night,” Marie said as she began to wipe up a few spills from the counter.

Amanda smirked. “You had better be quicker about telling me all the juicy details, Marie. I nearly died last night wondering how things went.”

Shrugging, Marie stepped around her friend to fiddle with the display offering baked goods fresh from the small kitchen in the back. “Well, I could hardly call you in the middle of everything, sugar, and by the time I got home…well, you probably would have been upset to get a call or text at 3 am!”

“Oh, do tell! Well, not right now, but you are so going to spill everything later,” Amanda said as a small group entered the shop and she sauntered over to take their orders.

With the onset of a small snow storm, which by Flagstaff terms meant about half an inch, Marie and Amanda were too busy serving up hot drinks to their half-frozen customers to get much chance to talk for the rest of the evening. They regretfully had to shoo out the few who lingered inside until closing so that they could clean up. They had just finished and were bundling into their coats when they heard a knock at the front door.

Marie sighed, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Really, can’t people read?” she asked sarcastically as they glanced towards the glass door.

Amanda’s eyes lit as her smile grew. “No, Marie, that’s my sister! She said she was coming for a visit soon, but I haven’t been able to get any details out of her!” she told her friend over her shoulder as she hurried to the door and unlocked it.

A tall woman stepped in and enveloped Amanda in a fierce hug that seemed oddly careful to Marie. She kept a small smile on her lips as Amanda’s sister looked up and caught her gaze. Eyes even greener than her friend’s met Marie’s, and the other woman detached herself from her shorter sister and straightened. Amanda turned and smiled at Marie.

“Carol, I want you to meet my best friend. Marie moved here last September, so I’ve been showing her the ropes here in Flagstaff,” Amanda said happily. “Marie, this is Carol. She’s been traveling around doing all sorts of mysterious stuff recently, and now she’s home just in time for Thanksgiving!”

Carol stripped her hat and gloves off, revealing gleaming blond hair and smooth tanned skin that contrasted sharply with the black wool coat she wore. “It’s great to meet the friend Mandy’s been emailing about,” she said with a cautious smile. She held out her hand.

Marie had gotten so used to casual skin-to-skin touch that she thought nothing of reaching out as she replied, “It’s good to meet you, too, Carol. We were just about to get a late dinner if you want—“

Marie's breath cut off as Carol’s hand folded around hers, Marie felt a familiar pull with horror. She tried to rip her hand out of Carol’s, but the other woman’s grip unexpectedly strengthened even as the veins trailing up her hand and into her sleeve blackened and her eyes widened with pain.

“Let go! Please let go!” Marie screamed as she tugged her hand uselessly, feeling a grip of iron crushing her fingers even as energy and strength began pouring into her.

“I can’t!” Carol’s scream matched her own. “What are you?!”

Marie couldn’t answer as sobs tore through both throats momentarily. Then she was the only one crying, silently begging the other hand to release her but unable to speak through the pain of absorbing another’s mind and, surprisingly, power. Her wild brown eyes met Amanda’s terrified stare as her friend stood helplessly frozen a foot away.

“Please pull her away, Amanda. Please,” Marie whispered through the haze of pain that engulfed her.

Amanda reached out and grabbed her sister’s arm, yanking as hard as she could. For several minutes as both younger women struggled there was no reaction, but Carol’s grip eventually weakened and her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

Marie stared in disbelief at the woman now lying on the floor, her dark blond hair spilling over her sister’s lap. Amanda glared back up at her. “Marie, what did you do?” she yelled, an unconscious echo of Marie’s mother years before, the first time her mutation manifested.

Marie shook her head in denial even as Carol’s voice screamed in her mind, railing against the prison she found herself in. She couldn’t answer her friend, couldn’t bring herself to admit out loud what must have happened. Panic and tears thickened her throat and tongue anyway, making it impossible to speak at first.

“Marie!” Amanda shouted again, the hand smoothing Carol’s hair contradicting the harsh tone. “Answer me! What the fuck just happened?”

Somehow Marie managed to get a few words past the lump in her throat. “I…I got the cure. I used to…but this shouldn’t have…There’s someone I can call to help,” she promised urgently.

Amanda’s eyes hardened. “You’d better,” was all she said as she turned to look down at Carol, obviously dismissing Marie from her mind.

Marie backed into the café’s store room and pulled her cell phone out of her purse with shaking hands. His number was the only one she kept in her contact list from her previous life. She took a deep breath to help her block out Carol’s mental screaming and hit the little call icon next to his name. The ringing in her ear as the call dialed out matched the ringing in her mind as she tried to process what had just happened without breaking down.

“What?” The gruff voice on the other line became her anchor, but at the same time it was the trigger for tears to well up in her eyes and her throat to close again.

“Logan,” she whispered around the lump in her throat. “The cure…it’s back. My mutation is back. Someone’s hurt. I need help. She’s a mutant.” The scattered thoughts in her head barely managed to make a coherent story, and she knew he would want more details. Marie didn’t know where the sudden sure knowledge that Carol was a mutant came from, but it was there nonetheless, a crystal clear fact in the swirling miasma of memories and cries to be set free.

To her surprise, all he said was, “You still in Flagstaff, Marie?” That’s right, she’d called to let him know when she arrived in Arizona. She had almost forgotten about that.

Marie nodded and then felt stupid because he couldn’t see that. “Yeah. The woman…she’s alive, but I think she’s going to need help. We’re at Bean There, Done That, a coffee shop on South Leroux St,” she said, thankful that the need to form sentences seemed to be easing the pounding in her head a little.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Thanks, Logan.”

Marie curled into a ball on the store room floor, not caring about the cold seeping into her from the concrete floor despite the protection of her jeans and thin white sweater. It was what she deserved. The voice in her mind—Carol’s voice—screamed at her that she deserved no less than death for what she’d done even. Hands uselessly covering her ears, Marie was unable to block out either that internal voice or the sound of Amanda sobbing and begging her sister to wake up and talk to her from the next room.

Time had no meaning for her as she endured the mental and aural abuse. It distracted her so much that the feel of a large hand on her shoulder made her jump. She hadn’t noticed the arrival of the X-Men, but she knew whose worried hazel eyes she would see when she looked up.

“They said it was permanent!” she wailed, throwing herself at Logan and actually knocking him to the ground. To his credit he caught her, not once flinching away from her despite the renewed danger, and they landed in a heap on the floor.

“Marie…” Logan sighed, squeezing her in a comforting hug. “We’ll get you through this, okay?”

Marie shook her head with her face still buried in the soft leather of his uniform. “I can’t go back, Logan. I’ve got to figure this out by myself.”

His arms tightened painfully. “You don’t need to.”

She lifted her head, aching from her own crying and the screaming in her mind. “Yes, I do. I let the idea of the X-Men consume me once, as if that was my only salvation. When my mutation was gone and I could no longer be part of it, I was totally lost. I have to figure out how to live as a mutant on my own before I can even think of going back.”

“Do you think that’s the best idea, after…?” Logan apparently knew better than to put the previous hours into words.

“It’s the only thing I can do to keep my sanity and my dignity.” Marie knew that would be the best way to silence Logan, making him think that the idea was for her own good.

He snorted but let her get away with it, maybe because he detected the kernel of truth in her words. She was nowhere near ready to return to a place with so many memories, especially not after her “gift” returned in such a dramatic and painful way. Instead, he glanced around the small storage room and sighed.

“The others are loading Ms. Danvers and her sister in the Blackbird. We’re gonna take them back with us for a while, see if there’s anything we can do for her. Then we’ll bring her sister back when she’s ready. Do you—uh, would you like to say good-bye to them?”

Marie shook her head in short, jerky motions. “No. No way. Amanda hates me now, and I don’t blame her. I just—I don’t think I’m staying here, either. I still have plenty of money saved up. I think it’s time I headed north, now that I’m gonna need to layer up no matter what the season again.”

She stared down at her bare hand where it rested on his leather-clad chest. She was lost in thought for a few minutes, and he just held her. Finally she pulled back and away from him, although not without wrapping her arms around his waist again for a quick hug.

“Thank you. I guess you probably need to get going with the rest,” she muttered.

“Yeah. Just, you know, call me when you get wherever you decide to go. I want to know you’re okay.” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end even more than usual.

Marie snorted. “Okay? I don’t think I will be for a long time, but I’ll call you when I get where I’m going.”

He shook his head and reached out as if he were going to tousle her hair, then thought better of it. Instead, he pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and sighed. “Bye, Marie,” he said quietly before slipping back out.

Marie waited until she heard the sound of the outer door closing behind him. She gathered up her purse once more and turned off the lights in the storage room and main room of the shop. She flipped the lock so that the door would secure behind her and then stepped out into the chilly air, resigned to having to start her life over once again.