After Logan went, after he pushed those silver dogtags into her gloved hand, after he promised to come back to her, she used to sit and wait. Not by the window or the door or anything so obvious. No, Marie preferred the quiet solitude of the library with its high ceiling and beaten leather chairs.
In that particular room the air was always cool and settled, and it seemed to invite her in. The other students at the school had gotten used to seeing her in there late at night, curled up with a book and a cup of hot chocolate, her skin covered in sleeves and scarves and turtleneck sweaters. They knew that when she sat in there, that it was 'alone' time and that they didn't disturb her. To begin with her friends would tentatively venture in to ask her to listen to music with them or maybe sneak out after curfew, but Marie would simply smile softly at them, her lips turning up slowly and her hazel eyes friendly and tell them no thanks.
During the day she went to classes and gossiped with the other girls, laughed at stories of their always disastrous dates, eat dinner watch TV and gossip some more. But when the time drew on and the others drifted upstairs to their rooms, Marie would slip quietly through the dark corridors along to the library to wait.
Marie was no fool. She didn't entertain notions that when Logan did return he would declare undying love or anything. Anything above a monosyllabic grunt or growl would be nothing short of a miracle. She had seen inside him that night she woke him from his nightmare and he stabbed her right through with his long metallic claws, and again on top of the Statue of Liberty. He was still inside her head. He had faded over time, like David and Magneto. He no longer forced her to scream out expletives at Mr. Summers in class, or drool as Dr Grey went past.
Instead, she felt the strangest presence lurking inside her, and she knew all about the fifteen years that he had spent fighting in bars and roaming through the Canadian wilderness. She knew that he was as much an animal as a man. She knew that for all his posturing in front of Cyclops, that he was a loyal and a man of honor. He was a man of his word, but also of his instincts. He had promised to protect her, to return to her and he would. Not only because he had promised, but because he felt something for the girl he had picked up at the side of a snow covered road that he had not felt for anyone in the fifteen years he could remember, and that he didn't quite understand what that feeling was.
Marie knew it wasn't attraction, but to her it was something that was maybe more important. It was need. A need to be trusted implicitly, to be believed beyond doubt, to be able to protect something so young and innocent and pure from the unclean world in which he lived. He had been transient for over a decade, fighting for money, never making a connection with anyone, no matter how many bartenders tried to talk to him over yet another beer, no matter how many women he met in bars and then took back to his room. He had been closed off until he met her, and then suddenly there it was - that connection he had never before found, hadn't even looked for. It just appeared in the slight figure of Marie, the girl with the untouchable skin. She figured that was one of the reasons he had taken to her. He was shut of from the world by his past and an urge to protect himself, she by her present and an urge to protect others. There must have been a little poet in the rugged Wolverine to realize the irony that bound them inexplicably together.
And so he had saved her life. Twice. Almost dying himself in his efforts to allow her to live. He had to. She realized now that he couldn't very well have let her die any more than he could have abandoned her back up North on that frozen highway.
So Marie waited for him to come home. Not as the lover she wished he could be, but as a part of her, as something that would always be linked to her without tangible reason. That was just the way it was. She knew he felt it too. That they belonged to each other now somehow. She knew it in her head, felt it in her heart, saw it in the scribbled postcards that Logan sent from Canada that never had a return address and in the dogtags that hung from the post of her bed.
So she waited.
And two years later he returned, none the wiser and just a little older than when he had first left Charles Xavier's School for the Gifted.
It was late one October evening and the air was filled with the scent of fallen autumn leaves that littered the school grounds. Marie had been lying across one of the tan leather couches in the library with a worn copy of 'Gone With the Wind' and a mug of warm cocoa when she heard the low hum of a motorcycle approach the school. She held her breath as the engine cut out abruptly and listened to the footsteps echoing down the hall as the others went to see who their visitor was, but she didn't have to. It was like she could sense he was near. The past week as she sat waiting, Marie had felt a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach, a sort of nervous anticipation, and she thought she knew why. Logan was finally coming home.
Over the past two years she had had a lot of time to think about that very moment. Their reunion. If only she were a character in one of her novels, then Logan would sweep into the library, growling softly and exuding an animalistic sexiness, gathering her into his arms and profess his love. Realistically though, that wasn't going to happen and she wasn't going to embarrass herself by throwing her nubile young body at the man like a lovesick teen with a crush. She might, at nineteen, still be technically a teenager, but she had three other people in her head, each with lives of their own. She had the memories of life in the concentration camp, of pain and torture at the hands of scientists, of places she had never been, of places she never wished to go, and of things no young woman should ever have had the horror of knowing.
What she felt for Logan was no crush, it was love, but love she knew that could never be reciprocated - not the way she wanted it to be. It was the dream that was too painful for her to even dare to dream. It was something ultimately unattainable, and that was why when Logan appeared minutes later silhouetted in the doorframe of the library, reeking of cigars and the lingering scent of bourbon clinging to him, his dark eyes staring straight into her, wearing just dark jeans and a flannel shirt that was left unbuttoned at the top allowing her to catch a glimpse of his perfect chest, Marie only looked up and smiled that soft smile she showed everyone. She lied when she told him that she didn't know he was back in Westchester in a friendly voice that betrayed none of the turbulent emotions rising inside her. And he had cracked a smile and she discreetly wondered the way in which his stubble was so damned sexual, and he called her 'kid' and talked with her about the little evidence of his past he had found on his journey, about school and whether the 'geeks' were treating her right. They talked until Storm poked her head into the room to tell Logan the Professor would like to see him.
As he left he told her he'd see her around and that he was glad to see her. For Logan that was the equivalent of anyone normal screaming and hugging and crying as they embraced an old friend without whom they feel lost and alone. So she's said 'sure' and given him the type of smile that says 'yea, sure I'm glad to have you back Logan, but life here is pretty near perfect for me, so you don't have to worry'. What she didn't tell him was that without him she felt incomplete and scared that she would never be whole again. Instead she waited until he closed the paneled door behind him, and the sound of his footsteps disappeared down the hall did Marie allow a choked sob of happiness to escape her.
After two years of waiting, of sitting alone and straining to hear the sounds of Scott's bike come roaring up the drive, of being alone with the voices in her head, he had come home.
Shaking, she picked up the book and mug that she had set down beside her on a short wooden table and made her way out of the library and up to he room. She needed to lie down for a little while, to sleep and dream of a different life where Logan was hers and her kiss couldn't hurt him and he loved her the way she loved him. She would dream the dream she shouldn't allow herself to dream. The wait for him to come home was over. It had been long and difficult, but bearable because she knew he would return to her. He had promised. But the wait that was beginning would never end. Its object was ultimately unattainable. It was the day Logan would turn around and tell her he wanted her, not like a friend or a sister or a daughter, but as a woman.
As Marie closed her eyes, wrapped in the soft yellow quilt in her silent room, she caught a glimpse of the clock beside her bed. Time, she thought drowsily, all she had was time stretched out in front of her. Maybe one day her dream might come true and the wait would be over. Maybe one day…
She drifted off into sleep, and was unaware of the dark figure of a man who had entered her room just to watch her sleep. Her window was wide open, and the cooling night breeze carried starlight into her hair as Logan knelt beside the still figure on the bed. Reaching out to touch her auburn hair, a shaft of moonlight reflected off his metal dogtags that hung beside her head as she slept and he smiled tenderly at the reminder of himself that Marie had kept so close to her those past few years. He stood slowly, a soft smile on his face, his usual gruffness gone.
He had spent two years away from her, yet she was so familiar. He wondered if she felt the same connection as he did. The same need. He had written to her while he was gone. Just hasty messages on the back of cheap postcards, but he had felt the urge to write to her, to stay connected while he sought out his past. He hadn't phoned, not because he didn't want to, but because he knew that if he had heard her slow southern drawl over the line, he would have packed his bag and rushed back down to New York State without a second thought. He realized it more and more as the time went on. When he first left he thought all he felt for the kid was some kind of brotherly affection, but six months later in a small bar in Alberta the tough Wolverine had an epiphany, and he felt with a jolt that he loved her. He had tried to stay away after that, but only succeeded for a year and a half. He had to return to her. She was like a siren calling to him through the crisp Canadian air to come back to her.
So here he was. He had waited so long to see her again. When he saw her in the library, engrossed in her book, so serene and perfect, all he could do was stare. She was beautiful. And she had had grown up. And when he spoke to her, he made sure to call her kid to keep reminding himself that he couldn't have her that way, that she would never want him like that. Sure, Jean had told him before he left that Marie had a little crush on him, and he had hoped against hope there was more to it than an adolescent fancy. When he did speak to her however, she welcomed him back as an old friend, not as the object of her affection.
Watching her sleep for just a moment more, Logan stepped back out of the room. She was the dream he shouldn't allow himself to dream. It hurt him to love her and know that she could never feel the same way about him. All he could do was hope that some day, things might change. Until then, all he could do was wait. He had waited two years for her to grow up, to be able to be in a position to reciprocate his feelings. Now she was old enough, but she was still not in love with him. He glanced at the clock by Marie's bed. Time, he thought sadly, all he had was time stretched out in front of him. Maybe one day his dream might come true and the wait would be over. Maybe one day…
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