Scott had actually been the one to find them.
The visored leader of the X-Men himself had led a small group that went out foraging from abandoned town to abandoned town for the past five days, rooting through the forgotten debris for anything useful: canned goods, batteries, clothes, paper, things they couldn't make themselves, things that might not have been absolutely necessary, but made life just a little more comfortable underground. The runs were dangerous, a constant sneaking about and making as little noise as possible the whole way, constantly having to stop, constantly having to look over your shoulder. Holding your breath whenever the truck spluttered just a little bit, threatening to maybe strand you out a hundred miles from the remnants of the Institute. That had happened once before, the team forced to hoof it all the way back.
And not all of them had made it back, then.
But this time, the group returned without a single hitch, and they were met warmly, thankfully, when they crept back in to the safety of what had once been merely the lower levels of a grand mansion, a grander campus, but now served as home. Marie had been among the ones there to welcome them back, and to help unload the truck and ferry supplies to different cubby holes and storage spots. Scott peeled himself out of the driver's seat with an air of business, that certain way about him that a lot of people -the ones that didn't know him well- felt was standoffish, aloof, and then approached her with just a flicker of a smile that didn't stick for long.
"Bet you can find somebody who might appreciate these," he said, pulling a small, wooden box out from under the heavy, sheepskin-lined jacket he wore and handing it over.
Marie regarded it with just a little curiosity and a spicing of confusion, accepting it while she tipped her look up to ask him, "What is it?"
He gave an offside shrug, his expression beneath the ruby quartz just a little bit unreadable as he said, "Just something I picked up on the way back."
And then he was back to the truck, doling out orders, encouraging people to work with that blunted edge of leadership he managed to produce on demand, without any amount of conjuring or difficulty. Rogue watched him for a moment, one brow lifting upwards at the man as he absently scratched at an itch along his jaw -the beard, she knew, the man hated that beard, but good razors were hard to come by- and either didn't notice her or else ignored her.
Inside the box, neatly lined up and packed together, protected from any kind of rot or drying out by the satin liner, was a set of twelve cigars.
She couldn't help the smile that grew into place after the initial surprise, slowly unfolding like a blossom coaxed by a breath of sun. Marie looked back up to Scott, busy playing foreman, down to the treasure she held again, up once more at him, snapped the box shut, and walked off quickly to hunt down that somebody he had mentioned.
And the smile, apparently infectious, spread right on to the Cyclops and tweaked the corner of his mouth just so while he watched her go from the corner of his eye.
******
It's funny, the way you learn to live without certain things when you can't get them. Things that you had once felt were integral to your person, solidified and defined you, made you you, but that suddenly became so trivial and unimportant when life stopped being about living and started being about surviving.
The sixty-two people, mutant and non alike, who called the underground chambers of what had once been Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters home had learned to live without a lot in the five years of surviving that had been going on since They arrived. Things that had once been taken for granted:
Television sitcoms. Morning radio shows. The Internet. Cell phones. Watching movies in a theater. Drive-thru fast-food. Starbucks. Honey-baked ham. Swimming pools. Going to the beach in the summer. The smell of pine sol after cleaning. Shopping at the grocery store every week. Trick-or-Treating on Halloween.
For Logan, he had learned to live without cigars.
The last one he smoked had been on Christmas Day, a full year ago. Marie remembered it well, the way he had lounged there in the space that had been converted into a sort of rec room, his hands tucked behind his head as he puffed in silence on the couch. He had sat that way for the better part of two hours, with his eyes closed, ignoring everything else that went around him; just a man enjoying a fine cigar, all of his worries, his thoughts, his worldly and otherworldly concerns set aside for a small pocket of, not quite heaven, but something that certainly wasn't hell. Something fine, and meant to be savored.
Nobody had griped at him for smoking inside. It had been as if they knew, just as well as he did, that it would probably be his last. It had been as if they knew, just as well as he did, that, at any given moment, it could be the last one for any of them.
After that, Logan hadn't said a word about it. He hadn't complained at all about his lack of tobacco for that whole year, neither good-naturedly or grumpily, something some people found to be a minor miracle. But there had been something sad about that, too, like he had been a jigsaw puzzle missing that last piece that brought the picture to life.
Marie was just about fit to burst to be able to replace that piece and make the man whole again, at least for a little while.
She found him in a leisurely lean against the door frame of the Danger Room, watching as Jubilee instructed some of the younger refugees in the art of self-defense.
Unable to hide a spark of mischief, her features always an open book for everyone to read, she snuck up to him with the box held behind her back.
"Hi, Logan," she announced, though she knew the man probably already knew she was there; he always did.
The Wolverine straightened up and turned to her, a lopsided expression that was meant to be a smile showing up as he said, "Hey, kid."
After all of these years, he still called her kid, a pet name that had stuck and never went away. It might have been insulting to some people, but she was just as fond of it as she was fond of him. It fit. Maybe not her, maybe not him, but it fit them.
"I got a surprise for you," she said, with a creeping sort of smile that sparked in her eyes, showed a glimpse of her teeth, hanging back a few steps from him.
One of his brows went upwards at that, bent at that sharp angle as his head turned just a fraction to eye her a bit in question. "Oh?"
"Yeah, but you're gonna hafta come get it," she teased then, smile transforming into a grin she couldn't help.
The other brow quirked upwards then to join its partner, sustain a higher roof line over his eyes as his head dipped down a little, and his scruffy face produced a bit of a smirk with just a hint of cockiness. The what? look. Marie held in the laugh that wanted to bubble up as he sauntered over to her with that look, the one that, more than any other, defined him. When he got close enough to her, his hands, those strong, those deadly, those firm but surprisingly gentle at times hands settled at her hips, and gave her a tug. With a bit of a yelp, and then a quiet giggle, she was forced to take a step towards him, bringing them close together.
"What?" he finally asked as she drew in, demanding an end to his curiosity, his eyes threatening a hundred little things that would all turn her to silly putty in those hands.
No, "kid" was no longer an apt name, hadn't been for a while, almost two years now, but it was a quiet, smoldering coal of hope that warmed Marie's soul to the idea of life, belonging, joy. A steady glow that burned inside.
She laughed then, light and free at his order, and handed over the small, wooden box with the explanation, "The group that went out at the start of the week just got back in. Scott found it."
Logan considered the box with a little trepidation, mostly an act, she was sure, when she mentioned the finder of the item, letting go of her with first one hand, and then the other to take hold of it while he examined it.
Without lifting his head, instead raising his brows to allow his eyes to look at her, he asked, "It won't blow up or anything, will it?"
Marie delivered a swat to his shoulder with another laugh, and said, "Just open it!"
His head moved a fraction one way, and then the other with a slight pursing of his mouth, as if assessing the potential risk the box posed him. Then he opened it up to find the twelve cigars, settled snugly within the satin liner, their gold foil labels catching dully in the overhead lighting.
Logan stood for a long while there, just looking down at the cigars, his expression showing nothing, though Marie knew the man was touched. He would never admit it, this feral man that she dared to think she loved, this man that solved his problems more often than not with a menacing growl and a flash of claws, but he was touched just the same.
"Cyke, huh?" was the first thing he asked, his voice gruffed up more than usual to hide any true feeling.
"Yeah, sug, Cyke," was her reply, laughter shining in her eyes, though it never sounded out.
And he grunted, grumbled out something unintelligible, closed the box as carefully as if it had contained something fragile, something priceless.
"Well, shit," he said with a false flatness. "Now I'm gonna have to thank him or something."
The laughter finally escaped Marie then, and she had just been about to tease him for that, a light admonishment, when a loud and blaring noise interrupted them. As she tilted her head one way, and Logan tilted his head the other and squinted an eye upwards at the ceiling, they both frowned to the steady, pulsing siren.
Logan was the one to voice it, though they both knew what it was, "Perimeter alarm."
And, even as the kids started to pour out of the Danger Room, Jubilee herding, the pair hurried their way down the hallway, to the nerve center of the underground complex to find out what the hell was going on.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Apparently, I like cliffhangers.