(0)

He's seen her a thousand different times, in a thousand different ways, but it's always the same that first time. She's looking at him sideways, her eyes wide and scared, but not of him.

---

(1)

He remembers the first time clearly:

He's just finished fighting, his blood's pounding high, but there's no one to take back to the hotel with him. He can feel her staring, and it agitates him. When he looks at her, she looks away.

But he knows he won't forget that face. He doesn't know, then, that several years from that moment, he'll be waking up to that face, and to a smaller one that has his eyes and her dark hair.

---

(2)

The second time had been a fluke, a mishap of Hank's that landed Logan and Scott in a world very different from their own.

Mutants were locked in ghettos, caged and abused and murdered. They'd wandered for a week before finding that world's Hank and having him help them home.

On the third day, Logan had caught her scent, and his stomach had clenched so tightly he'd thought he was going to throw up. He followed it to a small building where a group of young mutants huddled together.

She was off to the side, peering out from the edge of her hood, and Logan forgot for a moment that she wasn't his Marie. He'd started for her, her name on his lips, when Scott caught his arms and pulled him back, hissing about finding Hank and about this being a different world. Logan had let Scott pull him away.

When he looked back though, she had taken a few steps after them and was staring as if she recognized him.

---

(3)

The third time, he'd gotten lost again, this time by himself, and this time it took a lot longer than a week to find his way back. No matter where he went, he found Marie, sometimes through his own efforts, sometimes by chance.

---

(3.1)

He found her dead, killed by Magneto's machine, and a world where forced mutations had killed every human being on the planet.

---

(3.2)

He found her at home, living comfortably with her parents still, her mutation never having manifested.

---

(3.3)

He found her with himself, already deep in a passionate love affair with him.

---

(3.4)

He found her dead and frozen outside the bar where they'd met.

---

(3.5)

He found her on the streets, a junkie living in a homeless shelter, selling her body for the next hit, never having been found by Magneto or the X-Men.

---

(3.6)

He found her a part of Magneto's group, a ghost, her soul destroyed by a machine that had not worked.

---

(3.7)

He found her in a world several years ahead of his own, where she'd never met him and had fallen in love with another man and was pregnant with their first child.

---

(3.8)

He found a world where she'd never been born.

---

(3.9)

He found her days after leaving her parents and helped her, getting her to New York and depositing her in the hands of the X-Men, where he finally got the help he needed to go home, but not before making Marie promise to find the Logan of that world and save him as the Marie of his world had saved him.

---

(4)

All of the X-Men made the next trip, this one on purpose, with a purpose. Marie had been part of the X-Men; Logan hadn't. It wasn't until their last day there that she finally told him. She whispered to him, clutching his shirt and crying, that she'd killed him, taken everything out of him and locked it up inside herself, and that she hadn't meant to. Logan didn't know what to say, so he just held her and told her it was okay.

He wondered, occasionally, if she'd ever forgiven herself, and if she'd ever let him live through her.

---

(5)

Another Marie and her X-Men came to his world next. She'd never met him on the road, but they'd had dealings; he was the rogue this time, selling his services to the highest bidder. More often than not, he was selling his soul to the devil while he laughed at the X-Men's offer to join them. The other Marie had a hard time looking at him, keeping herself civil around him; he'd fucked her up good apparently. It had hurt even though she wasn't his Marie, even though his Marie still sat by him and laughed with him and touched his arm and looked in his eyes.

But his Marie saved the other Logan, pulling her counterpart aside and talking to her about him. Logan shouldn't have heard the conversation, but he did. He stood in the darkness of the hallway and listened as Marie told Marie about his life and about his past and about him. When she was done, the other Marie had been silent and then she'd whispered a promise to help him.

---

(6)

They were visited again, and this time Logan was a part of the X-Men. Logan watched his and Marie's counterparts interact and knew they were as connected as he and Marie were. Then the other Marie started talking about their children and how wild they were, how like their father they were. His Marie smiled and laughed and never flinched, and that night, Logan offered her that kind of life with him. She's smiled and laughed and asked if they could start right away.