Chapter 5: The Shift Inside
“What did he offer you, Logan?”
It was a question he didn’t even want to think about, much less answer. In less than twenty-four hours, Logan had lost all but everything…his reward, his dream of retiring in peace, even his Wrangler, which he was forced to dispose of in the wake of their latest disaster. His trusty friend and only companion on the road now sat in a mass of twisted aluminum and chrome on the canyon floor hundreds of feet below them.
You have no idea.
Logan’s eyes remained fixed on the dancing flames and thick plumes of gray smoke emanating from the jeep’s rocky grave. It was not like it mattered at this point, anyhow. Any hopes that Logan may have harbored about somehow outwitting Magneto and finding some alternate means of earning his reward had officially gone the way of his gas-guzzling buddy.
There was only one reason that ol’ Buckethead had sent his men to retrieve Marie not a day after Logan had found her…the son of a bitch meant to screw Logan out of the rest of his compensation. And just as the dense billows of smoke beneath them rose and dissipated into the night, so had any hopes of reversing the current situation they were in. Logan and Marie’s fates were sealed the moment he removed those dogtags and took her on the run.
“Come on, you may as well tell me now,” she said from behind him, sounding as hopeless as he imagined he must have appeared to her. “What’s the going rate on my head? Five million? Ten?”
Logan clenched his jaw. “Three.”
“Oh…is that all I’m worth?” Marie snorted. This time, Logan did turn to look at the young woman seated on the stony earth of the canyon rim, her knees hugged to her chest as the flickering light from the campfire’s dying flames danced across her delicate features. Again, it was a question he didn’t want to answer. Because the more Marie pushed, the closer Logan came to abandoning altogether his idea of playing the martyr. He turned away again without replying.
“What are we gonna do?” she asked him after a long silence. That question was what finally snapped Logan out of his reverie.
“We?” he asked incredulously as he spun on his heels to face her once more. “WE?!” Marie shrank back a bit at the sharpness in his tone. “I’ll tell you what WE are gonna do,” he continued, walking toward where she was seated.
“When the sun comes up in a coupla hours, WE are gonna go our separate ways. WE are gonna hike over the hills in different directions toward somethin’ resemblin’ civil-FUCKIN’-ization, and then WE are never gonna lay eyes on one another EVER AGAIN!”
His words echoing and bouncing off of the canyon walls, Logan noted the surprise and hurt in the Marie’s eyes at the harshness of his tone and felt suddenly remorseful for the abrasive way in which his words came out. He hadn’t meant to scare her so much as he’d meant to warn her of his increasingly waffling resolve where sparing her from Magneto’s clutches was concerned. The incentive to do right by her was slowly dissolving within him…it was best that she simply beat it out of his sight. And soon.
Marie cautiously rose from where she was sitting and inched her way to the blanket that Logan had removed from the jeep and spread on the ground. Logan watched as she lay down on top of it, bunching his duffel bag up under her head to make a pillow and turning her back angrily toward him.
Logan stood there for a few moments, at a complete loss for words. He wanted to say that he was sorry for the harshness of his outburst…wanted to somehow make her understand that things were just best this way, for both of them. He couldn’t find the right words to say, however, so he quietly retreated to the large rock jutting out from the ground near their campsite. Once there, he took a seat and waited for the sun to roll its way up over the mountain range.
~*~*~
Marie awoke from a fitful sleep to the unmistakable coo of the mourning dove, the only sound piercing the silence of the new day. Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes and took a glance at her watch. 7:15 am. The first rays of sunlight were piercing through the mountains to the east.
The ground where she lay was hard and uncomfortable in spite of the thick blanket set down over it, and as a result her sleep had been shallow and uneasy. Her mind still hazy from slumber, she looked around for a moment before catching sight of Logan sitting on a large rock facing away from her, and quickly remembered the other reason for her turbulent rest.
She stood silently, pushing her hair out of her face, recalling the unnecessarily sharp jab of his words in the very early hours of the morning before she went to sleep. For a few moments, she stood there, tugging at the hem of his shirt, which she still wore, and watched him watch the sunrise. She knew that he had heard the crunch of her sandals on the pebbly ground, but he didn’t turn to face her. Deciding that she’d had enough of this brooding, silent behavior, Marie turned to leave.
“You runnin’ again, kid?”
Marie halted mid-step at the soft, gravelly words coming from Logan. She spun around to face him, her eyes narrowing in anger at the nerve of him. He was standing now, facing her, his arms folded solemnly across his bare chest.
“What did you expect?” she spat back at him. “You think I’m gonna stick around and deal with your moods? Think again.” Once more she turned to leave, and was a few steps away before he spoke again.
“Where you gonna go?” he asked, his voice remaining suspiciously calm in the face of her ire.
“As far the hell away from YOU as I can get!” she yelled as she continued to walk away from him.
“It’s a long walk back to civilization, kid…even longer if you don’t know where you’re goin’.”
“Oh, puh-lease!! I’d rather throw myself to the coyotes than spend another night with your PSYCHOTIC ASS!”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
“FINE!”
"..."
“Marie?”
“What?!”
“I want my shirt back.”
That remark stopped her dead in her tracks. Certain that he must have been out of his mind, she circled around to face him, only to find that the look in his eyes was dead serious. And burning holes right through her.
“I beg your pardon?” she huffed, on the verge of throwing a tantrum of her own.
“You heard me,” he said, nodding his chin toward her. “Take it off.”
“You’ve got to be joking,” she said.
“Not one bit, darlin’," he said. "Strip.” Marie just continued to glare at him in disbelief.
“Look, go where you want, kid,” he continued, his voice still frighteningly tranquil. “But you’re not goin’ anywhere till I get my shirt.”
It appeared he truly wasn’t going to let her go until she removed one of the very few garments that she was wearing, so she decided to appease him…
…by removing her sandal and hurling it right at him.
Logan’s hand went up to shield his face from the projectile headed toward it. The sandal fell to the dirt at his feet, and he calmly bent down to pick it up.
“C’mere,” he said softly, crooking a finger in her direction. Marie stood her ground for a few moments before cautiously hobbling toward him. She came to stand in front of him, arms folded in hostility against her chest.
“Siddown,” He said, pointing to the large rock beside him. Marie eyed him suspiciously. “SIT,” he repeated, almost growling this time, and Marie finally lowered herself onto the rock. Logan stooped down in front of her, sandal in fist, and gently took her bare foot into his hand.
“Listen kid, like it or not you’re stuck with me,” he said gingerly, brushing the dust from the bottom of her foot with unexpected tenderness before unbuckling the sandal and slipping it on. “At least for the time being.” Logan looked up at her as his hand lingered for awhile, his thumb gently brushing the hollow of her ankle.
"Last night you said –"
“Forget what I said last night, alright?” He stumbled a bit before finding his next words. “I...I can be an asshole sometimes, y’know? Sometimes things don’t come out right. I didn’t mean for you to get the brunt end of it.”
“Is that your ass-backward way of saying you’re sorry?” she asked, the anger starting to leave her at his confession.
“Yeah..." he said, then looking up at her, "Yeah, I guess it is.”
At any other time, Marie may have taken his response as flippant, but there was a deeply earnest look in his eyes, one that she hadn’t yet seen. She’d seen him on the prowl, and she’d seen him on the attack, but the look in his eyes now was one of pure humility…and utter defenselessness. He looked like a man broken, and it was then that Marie came to a very important realization.
“It wasn’t just about the money, was it?” she asked him softly. Thinking to his behavior the previous night, it was becoming apparent to Marie that there had been much more at stake. And right now, Logan was clutching her ankle like it was the only thing left in his world.
“What did he offer you, Logan?”
Logan looked at her for a few moments before answering, and Marie knew instinctively that something had shifted inside of him over the night as he sat awake on that very rock. She also knew that whatever it was he’d so desperately been after, he had resolved to let it go. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally answered the question that he hadn’t wanted to answer before.
“The truth about my past.”
~*~
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