Two days after we got back, we buried an empty box off in a quiet corner of the grounds. Later that afternoon I walked out and took another look, and it was like trying to see something that wasn't there. Everything was like that; already the mansion was nearly repaired. The only evidence that remained of the weekend was broken windows that had to have specially-cut glass, and a gaping hole where Jean should have been.
That morning I'd caught myself looking down in a hallway, to see if there were three marks where there should have been.
There weren't. Xavier was determined to get things back to normal. Nobody had the heart to tell him it wasn't gonna happen.
So when I got sick of the lies inside I went out, and even the grave was nowhere near as glaringly obvious as it should have been. Just a slight swell to the ground, covered with strips of fresh grass. The headstone wouldn't show up for another week – there were, apparently, some things that even Xavier couldn't make happen on his own schedule.
I stayed out there for a long time, until well after the sun went down. And then I took the long way back, circling the grounds to pass the lake, avoiding going back inside because it was something to do, something I could do, something I did well.
I almost missed her, tucked away in the darkness around the bend of the water's edge, just off the path that hooked up with the main drive. She was dressed in dark clothes, but the flash of white hair and pale skin caught my attention and I veered off to approach her. She didn't so much as move to acknowledge me, even after a point when I knew she must have noticed my presence. She had a beer open in her hand; I couldn’t tell how far gone it was, but I could smell it on her breath. I couldn't help but wonder where the hell she'd gotten it – and if she'd share. It occurred to me later that someone else might've been a responsible adult and taken it away from her, but – but I've never cared much for certain types of responsibility, and hell if I'd interfere with anyone's version of escapism.
Not that day, anyway, of all days. No more than I was already intruding, at least. When she refused – and I knew she was doing it on purpose; I'd known from the first words she ever spoke to me that she had a stubborn streak a mile wide – to look at me, I almost decided to just leave her alone.
Almost. "I had the impression that drinking was taboo around here," I said instead.
Nothing in the looking up department, but she did speak. "It is. I have my ways."
Her voice was dull and quiet, and there was no way I could walk away then. I sat next to her on the grass, close enough to feel the pocket of warmth radiating off her body. "You shouldn't wallow alone, you know," I told her.
I didn't have to see her face to know her eyes rolled at that. "You're one to talk?"
"*The* one to talk. Around here, at least. Got fifteen years of authority on the matter." I wasn't really sure what I was aiming for; I rarely did, with her. But pushing her a little, getting her to talk, had worked in the past – or would have, if Magneto had kept his psychotic nose out it.
She glanced at me, just barely. "Remind me of that when I'm more inclined to take advice on the matter," she muttered. "Or when I have much of a choice." She finished off her beer and flicked her eyes towards me again. "Go away."
No fucking way. "Hey," I said, and bumped her shoulder with mine. I thought maybe I could keep this relatively painless, get her to cheer up and stop sounding so dead inside. "No."
"Logan –"
"No."
And she finally looked at me, long and hard, frustration written all over her, and I could see her slowly accepting that I was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, that she *knew* that about me, that I wasn't going anywhere. Part of me expected her to growl; another part thought she might resort to sticking her tongue out at me.
All she did was harden her gaze and look away again. "No talking."
"Fine by me."
"Good."
I could go with that for awhile. She'd talk eventually, I knew – she'd had her time alone and if she was going to open up to anyone, it would damn well be me. I knew her name and her courage and how she looked when she was desperate, knew the smell of her tears and her regret and her death. But mostly, I knew that I was part of her, knew exactly how much of myself she'd ever pulled out, and I knew she'd cave before long.
Which she did, lying back and sighing lightly. "He was supposed to care."
I could see all of two possibilities for who she meant, and guessed she was talking about the one who'd gone off half-cocked and run out on everyone. "John?"
"Yeah."
To be honest, I couldn't blame the kid. Or, I could, but I didn't really feel like it. I should have seen it coming, actually; when I'd woken up and seen what he'd done at the Drake kid's house, it had been familiar. It had been destruction marked clearly with rage, and I should have realized it was also a huge warning sign that he would make a break for it. People don't stick around when they're angry enough to cause that much damage – I sure as hell hadn't, on more than one occasion in the past.
I didn't tell her any of that, because it was a can of worms if ever there was one. I just told her, "He probably did. Probably does."
"Not enough."
The bitterness and conviction in her words bothered me, sounded like being on the verge of giving up on something. On John, maybe, but maybe on something more. "Or maybe too much," I said, trying to explain it the right way. "He made a choice, kid. Don't assume you know the reasons behind it."
"I know that he was angry." I could hear her tearing bits of grass from the ground. "At me, and at Bobby, and at everyone."
"Hard to get mad if you don't give a damn." Another thing I knew all too well, how much easier it was to drift acceptingly through life if you just stayed indifferent. It wasn't something I'd ever excelled at, to say the least, but experiencing one end of a spectrum can teach you a lot about the other end.
"Maybe." She fell silent for a minute, and kept on pulling up grass. "I shouldn't have let him leave the jet," she finally said. "I knew what was going on in his head, some of it at least, and I – I should have realized. I should have stopped him somehow."
So it was a guilt thing. There was a lot of that going around lately, that was for sure, and if she was really thinking she should have known what he was going to do – we were all twisting should haves and could haves in our minds lately, but I had to wonder if she was making things even worse for herself. I looked back at her, and took a long time in figuring out what to say, what might get her to let go of some it. Not an easy thing to do, when you can't figure that out for yourself.
But then, it was no big surprise that I wanted better for her. Easier.
"Somehow," I finally said," I doubt you could have. Sometimes...sometimes people just do what they feel they have to do, and we all gotta live with the consequences."
She was too bright to miss the fact that I wasn't just talking about John anymore, and too perceptive to make the mistake of acknowledging that directly. She fished another couple of beers out of some bottomless bag she had next to her, and gave me one as she sat up. "You've got crap taste in beer, you know that?" she said lightly, throwing me for a loop.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means what it means. You've got my brain and my taste buds having a pretty nasty disagreement."
"You want me to beg forgiveness?"
"Nah. I like the cigars a lot. It's probably a wash."
She tossed me a small smile, and I couldn't help but laugh a little. "Christ. I created a monster."
And that blew it. She pulled on her beer and said, "Mm. Yeah, you sorta did," in that lifeless tone, and I watched her carefully. "Mad at me?" I asked her eventually. It was definitely a possibility, the way I figured it, and I sure as hell wouldn't have blamed her.
But she looked away and sighed, and said, "No. Mad, but not at you."
While that was something of a relief, a fact I didn't much want to explore in depth, I couldn't let it go so easily. "Then what is it that has you all riled up? Don't say John, either."
"But it is John," she said softly. "And Magneto and Stryker and everything and –" She broke off and looked at me, and she took a deep breath. "—I'm sorry about Dr. Grey."
*That* got me. Hearing the name, all folded up in that flood of the weekend's failures and regrets...I looked away from her, didn't want her seeing whatever it did to me. "What?"
I really thought she was just being...nice, or something. But she hesitated, and then: "I know how you felt about her and...I'm sorry. If I hadn't messed up the jet –"
Fuck, but she had the guilt thing down to an art form. "Then every one of us would be dead right now." I finished off my beer quickly, desperately, before glancing at her and seeing that she hadn't bought it. It was suddenly damned important that I convince her; I'd done so much wrong lately, and there had been too many consequences, and I was determined that she wouldn't be another one. "I mean it, kid. You did what you had to, to help, to get us out of there alive. Jean – Jean did the same thing. None of it was wrong, it was just –"
"It just hurts." I stared at her, absorbing the impact of that huge truth, and she gave me another beer. "It's a big bag. I intend to get good and drunk tonight."
Hell if I didn't understand that desire. "And here I'm crashing the party."
She shrugged. "Nah. I only need a few. Leaves plenty for you."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome." Hiss of air as she opened a fresh one for herself, and then a soft gust of breath, whistling from her mouth. "I'm still sorry, y'know, even if you don't think it's my fault."
That was definitely being nice. And I didn't want it. I didn't deserve it. "Be sorry for Summers," I told her roughly. "He loved her."
"But so did you." I flinched at that; a kid so young shouldn't be able to aim her words so accurately. "Least, you did when you left. I'd look at her and feel all these things, like that she was beautiful and strong and smelled good and looked at me like – like she was the first person who believed I was okay and made *me* believe it. That was how I knew...that last part couldn't be mine, couldn't be coming from me."
"No?"
"No. I mean, she made me -- *me* -- feel like that, too, but she wasn't the first. That was you."
And there she was, 2-for-2 with managing to hit me where it hurt the most. Something I would never put into words, and hoped she would understand if she picked up on it from absorbing me, was that sometimes I really hated the position I had in her life. Because she deserved a hell of a lot better than a guy more suited to smashing pedestals than standing on them, and I'd never meant to become her personal hero. And more than being uncomfortable with it, it always pissed me off that she'd had to resort to the likes of me to help fix her, to patch holes that no kid should have in her sense of self-worth.
I was mulling that over, and completely avoiding the Jean issue in my thoughts, when she went on. "I had a couple months to work it out, Logan. I was sorting through stuff, getting to know what some feelings might mean, and – and you loved her."
I really wanted out of this conversation. "I barely knew her, dammit."
"I think you knew enough," she said, relentless. "You knew what was important to you and – I'm sorry, I'm not saying any of this well. I'm just – I'm sorry. It's hurting you that she...I'm just sorry is all."
I looked over at her. I had an opening; I could tell her the truth right then – I knew that, and part of me wanted to. To just open my mouth and say *yes*, admit every single thing I'd ever felt for Jean. But there I was, looking at her and knowing other things, like how *she* felt and how much it must be costing her to have this conversation that I so desperately wanted to avoid.
I thought I knew, at least. Until I took a minute to watch her carefully – no hint of a flush in her skin, no wavering or pain in her steady gaze. Just calm and patience and something else, something I wasn't sure I'd ever seen directed at me before and was even less sure I was identifying properly.
She looked like she understood me. Full stop, nothing else. It wasn't the understanding-with-benevolence Xavier's so good at, or the understanding-what-a-prick-you-are-and-barely-tolerating-you shit I get – or used to get – from Cyke. It wasn't even the understanding mixed with compassion and amusement and a trace of pity that Jean served up – which to be honest I could do without the pity but the rest had been an alluring blend.
But Marie, she just looked like she understood, like she was at peace with it, and me, and Jean Grey's memory. Nothing less, nothing more, and something in me flinched away from that at the same time as something else knew I'd never get anything better, from anyone. And all I could think to say to everything she was offering through that simple insistence on truth, was "Thanks, kid." Which was pretty fucking pathetic on its own, and even worse when I had to keep going, had to know for sure. "None of that bothers you?"
Her brow wrinkled a little at that, as if she were honestly thinking it over. "Why would it bother me?" she finally asked, very simply. "It was...it was nice, feeling all that. It helped me adjust here, helped me trust her and talk to her when I couldn't go to the Professor."
It was easier to follow that track for a moment, and get some space to breathe. "Why couldn't you go to him?"
"Uh." And then she did flush, and cut her gaze away. "I had some problems, you know, from Magneto. It was...hard. Dr. Grey helped me a lot."
There's no way she could have realized everything she did with that admission. She made the grief slam forward yet again from where I'd locked it down, fresh and sharp, and she made the same thing happen with the guilt, the old conviction that Magneto never should have gotten his hands on her. But mostly, she made me realize just what I'd left her here to deal with, and how much she'd grown up. And I figured that at the very least I owed it to her not to avoid the hard questions. "Oh," I said, weighing possible words. "That's...that's good, I guess. So you were okay with it? 'Cause she had mentioned that you might be...towards me, that you might have a –"
I felt like a prick, seeing the way her body tensed and drew an almost imperceptible distance away. "I was fine, Logan," she said unsteadily. "Leave it at that, okay?"
Talking to her, I realized, was an exercise in dodging landmines, most of them my own creation. "Okay," I agreed, probably too quickly, and because I sure as hell felt like I needed it, I leaned across her to get another beer. From that close, I could hear her breath quicken slightly, her heartbeat thump a little faster, and if I moved back away with some amount of speed, it was because I was pretty damn uncomfortable with all of this. I can admit that.
There as a long lull there before she spoke up again. "Logan? Can I ask you something?"
"Shoot," I told her, and wondered if I was approaching another mine.
"Why'd you come back?"
And yes, apparently, I was. It was like for every question she asked, there were a dozen possible responses: I wanted answers, I wanted options, I wanted to see Jean, I wanted to be somewhere I felt welcome, I wanted to check on *her*. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted, and I hated every second of it because I was used to getting through the days on base needs alone.
So I put it in those terms. "Needed Xavier's help."
"Coulda done that over the phone."
Yeah, well. "It's more complicated than that."
"Okay. Why are you still here?"
The hesitation in her voice almost made me smile. "In a hurry to get rid of me?"
I felt bad, though, when she spit out, "No!" as if she were desperate for me to believe it and then turned bright red. "I just -- *are* you staying?"
No time like the present, I figured, and decided to march merrily along towards the next potential explosion. "I actually wanted to talk to you about that."
"Me?"
"Yeah, you. Look...I probably am going to take off."
And yeah, there, I'd done it. You don't really recognize the hope in someone's eyes when it's a constant thing, until suddenly it's gone. Her face fell in a way I'd never seen before – no, in a way I'd seen once before, in the moment before her hand touched my face, when she thought she was dying and was adding that touch to some huge pile of regrets in her mind. I'd fixed that look on the train, I thought, and I'd forgotten it until now. "You're leaving?" she asked, her voice as hesitant as when she told me she didn't want me to go, and it was a punch in the gut, realizing not for the first time that for reasons I didn't understand and generally forced myself to ignore, my presence gave her some kind of peace.
As much as I wanted to lie, I had to be honest. "For awhile, yeah." And because I wanted that look to go away, wanted her back to what I considered normal, I tried to reassure her. "Not for too long, and not too far. Can't tell how things are going to play out, so I'll stay close, where I can get back fast."
"Then why leave at all?"
Because it's what I do, I snapped at her in my head. And out loud: "I – It would be better, is all. Clear out for awhile...give Summers his space."
Her expression cleared a tiny bit. "You really coming back?"
"*Yes*. I don't have anything to leave with you this time, so you're just going to have to trust me. Think you can manage that?"
She said, "I guess," but she looked doubtful still, and I frowned. "Hey. I'll be back, okay? By May, at the latest."
"What's in May?"
What, indeed. I wondered if I should tell her what I was thinking, since I had no idea how Xavier would react, but decided to hell with it. "Well...you're determined to wear the uniform, aren't you?"
"I want to, yes. It's...it's important, Logan. I just, I feel like it's what I'm supposed to do."
I wished her answer had been anything but that. Any other reason and I might have tried to talk her out of it, tried to talk her into a safer life. But I understood what she was saying, and I couldn't argue with that. Not much, anyway. "I wish you wouldn't."
And no dice. "It's not up to you, though," she said softly, her voice firm.
"No," I admitted. "No, it's not. If you're going to do it – I was thinking of talking to Xavier, about being responsible for your training. He already mentioned he wants you to settle down and finish school – you'll be done in May. So I'll be back then."
"But Storm and Cyclops –"
"—Don't have the slightest fucking clue of what you'll need to know to keep safe." That came out kind of heated, and I tried to work out how to explain it better. "They're...they're different from you, okay? They can defend themselves from a distance, so they've never needed to learn some of the, uh, dirtier tactics. You can't do anything unless you're close and your skin – there are too many consequences to *you* of using it." And didn't I know it. "I'd rather you were able to get things done more...traditionally."
She watched me curiously. "You'd do that? Come back just to teach me to fight?"
I hadn't really thought of it in those terms. But when it came down to it, that was exactly it. I'd come back here for a lot of reasons, really, but the one weighing on my mind was really the only thing that could make me promise anything specific. "Well...yeah."
I wasn't sure what she was thinking as she mulled it over, but I was sure I didn't like the look on her face, getting unhappier by the second. "That’s...no. I – I don't think that'd be such a good idea."
Not quite what I'd expected, that's for damn sure. "Why the hell not?"
Her jaw tensed and she looked away. "I just don't want that, okay? I don't want you to."
"Rogue –" and I stopped, sick and tired of ridiculous names, of hiding behind carefully selected words. "*Marie*. You need to learn –"
"Not from you."
The stubborn set of her jaw would be kind of cute, I thought, if it weren't pissing me off. "Me? What's wrong with me?" Trying to figure out why her reaction had veered so far from what I'd expected, only one thing occurred to me as a possibility. "Look, if this is about Jea –"
"It's *not* about her," she snapped. "I just don't want –"
"Why the hell –"
The panic in her eyes stopped me short, even more than her words. "Because I can't!" She looked sick, and like she was having to force the words out. "Not with how I feel about you, okay?"
Jesus fucking Christ.
Here's the thing: not wanting to think about something isn't quite the same as being bothered by it. Not always, anyway. Sometimes it's just common sense, and it wasn't so much that I'd been denying Marie's feelings as it was that I was being practical. There wasn't anything for us then and I wasn't sure that I wanted anything ever, and just ignoring the matter made it a lot easier to fix her in the same position of fond, *friendly* favor in my head.
She was important to me; even I wasn't enough of an emotional brick wall to refute that. And with everything else – her age, the circumstances of our relationship, the thing with Jean and the thing with Jean's death, and my own personal heap of issues – I figured, maybe unconsciously, that things were best if we just stuck to the status quo. I'd pushed the boundaries of that earlier and she'd shut me down, so I was startled to suddenly have her push right back, lay it on the line.
"Look...kid..." I finally said, having absolutely no idea what to say to her.
And she snorted lightly and took a long sip of beer. "Kid. Nice, Logan." Her accent came out thicker than I'd ever heard it, strengthened by scorn. "Listen, you don't need to say anything. It's – I know it's messed up. I *am* a kid to you, and you never even got a chance to know me, other than my frequent need of life-saving heroics, and –"
And I couldn't take it anymore. "Stop. Just...stop, Marie, for a minute. Stop." I couldn't look at her and I couldn't listen to any more of her making light of things she didn't understand – things *I* didn't understand because I hadn't let myself think about them. I stared out at the lake, and at the bottle I was twisting in my hands, and I wondered if there would ever be a time when it would be easy to talk to her. I wanted that, I did; somehow she crawled under my skin and it wasn't her fault that I didn't have an easy time talking to anyone, and I kind of figured I owed her more than my usual antisocial routine.
"I'm sorry," I finally chose to tell her. For so much, actually, starting with nearly leaving her on the road and ending somewhere around the time she had to depend on someone else to keep her from falling to her death. I wasn't quite ready to go into all that, though, so I took the easier way out. "I shouldn't keep calling you a kid. You're not one, not anymore."
There, I thought. That was calm, and rational, and on relatively safe ground. But she just rolled her eyes and muttered, "Whatever," and went through a good half of a new beer. "Don't try to placate me, Logan," she finally got around to telling me, anger evident in her voice. "Don't...don't tell me I'm all grown-up if you're gonna treat me like a kid with a crush."
There was probably a time I would have gotten myself into deep trouble with some careless comment along the lines of "aren't you?" I was tempted to tell her that, see if I could get her to understand that I wouldn’t bother being so careful with her if I didn't think she was old enough to deserve it. Somehow, though, I doubted I could explain it in a way she'd appreciate, so I went with the tried and true method of avoidance by denial. "I just think – I think you're confusing something that isn't...you barely know *me*."
Make no mistake, I felt like an ass. It's one thing to want to treat her right, and something totally different to keep up with this kind of dangerous conversation. Far too easy to fall back on old habits: get rid of problems by pretending they don't really exist, instead of actually dealing with them.
She wasn't biting, though. "I know you better than I've ever known anyone in my life, in ways I've never known anyone. And I'm not confused. How do you think I put a word to your thing for Dr. Grey? It wasn't too hard, once I sorted through enough of your thoughts to get the whole picture. Just a matter of comparison."
"Marie –"
"Logan, *no*. It's okay. I'm not...I haven't got myself convinced that you, that we're meant to be or something." Thank God for that, at least. "I'm not running around hoping you'll feel the same. I *know* you never will. And I just...being that close to you, training and all – I don't think I can do it. Not with you, not while I'm still working through this."
I really, *really* didn't like any of that, and I won't pretend I didn't know why. I still didn't like her desperate denial of the significance of her feelings, and I didn't like her acting like it was something to "work through" like a bad mood, and I sure as hell didn't like her convincing herself of anything involving the word never. She'd had enough of that in her life – she could never touch, she could never go home, she could never think of herself as normal again. Too many things had been taken away from her for good, and I didn't want to be part of that.
But I didn't want to lie to her. So I delayed while I tried to work out something honest. "Why never?"
"What?" She blinked at me in confusion, and I could see the wheels in her mind whirling along towards something she couldn't believe I meant.
"Why did you say never?"
And her shoulders sagged in a way that damn near killed me. "Because...because I'm young, Logan, not delusional. I snuck my way into your life and you were too decent to leave me on the side of the road and that got you into mess after mess, and – and maybe you kind of got to like me, I mean, I hope you did, but I know that's all there will ever be. I know you'll always think of me as a kid, even if you don't say it out loud."
God. Fucking. Dammit. "You're pretty damn sure of all that."
"Well, sure," she says quietly. "I know you, Logan, better than you know me."
"Then you know I'm not going to back down. I'm gonna do this, got that? I'm not leaving your training to someone else."
"Logan –"
"Quiet. What I'm also gonna do is – it's not fair, you know." And that was the real bitch of it, I realized all of a sudden. Fair went out the window around the time she jumped into my life with a shouted warning and the balls to hide in my trailer, and everything since then had been a scramble to figure out how to work a friendship that was pretty much against all odds. "You got to leap forward in our...friendship," I explained, "and I'm still stuck at the point of wanting to learn more about you."
The startled look in her eyes, the wary rekindling of hope, told me I'd somehow managed to say something right. "You...you want that?"
"Yeah, I do." She didn't look quite convinced enough, so I bit the bullet and put it all on the line. "Look, had you been someone else, some intolerable brat, I still probably wouldn't have left you out on the road. But I wouldn't have worried about you once you were here, I wouldn't have gone chasing after you, and I sure as hell wouldn't have made you any promises."
She let out a little huff of breath, like she didn't know quite what to do with all that. "Oh."
"Yeah, *oh*." She was watching me curiously and I wondered what was going through her head, but nothing was forthcoming. Because I just felt like it, I pushed some hair away from her eyes, and was pleased when she didn't so much as flinch from my bare fingers being so close to her face. "Besides," I continued lightly, "none of that matters."
"Why not?"
"Because you're not going to like me much, once I start throwing you across rooms."
And she laughed, and it was the probably the best sound I'd heard in days. "It is pretty rude to beat girls up."
"Yeah, well. Must've forgotten my manners along with everything else."
I knew I'd screwed up even before I finished speaking. Her expression flattened and something like pain flashed through her eyes. "Logan...I've had dreams, about you. I think...I think I remember things that you don't, from before you – I just, I always wake up with the feeling that you didn't have the claws yet. It's just little things – places, faces, habits...I could tell you what I remember."
I didn't know what to do with that. I hated that she had anything at all of me in her head, hated that she had to deal with my shit along with her own. But I hadn't realized she might be able to remember things that I couldn't, and I wanted to know.
Just not right then. "Tell me something about you first."
She blinked at me and frowned. "Me?"
"Yes, you. You, before you came here. Marie, not Rogue."
She looked like a deer in the headlights. "I...what do you want to know?"
"Don't know. Something, anything." I thought for a moment; there was a lot I wanted to know about her, a lot of questions I wanted answers to. I decided to start at the beginning. "Tell me...Tell me why you weren't afraid to crawl into my trailer, after what you saw me do."
She didn't answer for several minutes, and I started to wonder if she was going to. But then she looked at me, and said, "Because I saw you do it." I didn't get that, so I waited. "You were like me and you – you looked so grim, when the bartender called you a freak. You looked so...angry, but resigned. Like you'd kinda convinced yourself you could hide, and then got reminded that you couldn't. You – you looked like you understood hating the things your body does, and hating the world for making you so full of hate. I figured taking a risk on you was better than taking a risk on anyone else in that bar."
God. I'd had no idea – I'd always kind of figured that she was flying blind, desperate to get out of there and then making the best of a bad situation when I caught her. I never thought she'd seen all that, never suspected her decision was so calculated and aware and yet stupid as all hell. "That was taking a lot of faith," I told her evenly.
"Yeah," she said, just as evenly. "I thought I'd forgotten how to do that, after so long on the road. I thought maybe all I had left was hate and fear. You changed that."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," and she smiled softly. "I mean...hell, Logan. You didn't leave me and you gave me my first food in two days. Add in the whole matter of saving my life a couple of times..."
"Doesn't take much to make you happy, does it?" I teased, kind of desperate to keep this from getting too serious.
"I'm easy." She turned bright red when she realized what she'd said, and her eyes flitted around and she actually swayed a little, and I knew the beer had to be hitting her hard. I couldn't help but be amused by it, but was also pleased in a different way at how real she seemed right then, how entirely *her* she was being with none of the bullshit tactics kids just kind of learn in their desperate scramble to be something they're not. Most of why I don't like kids much isn't really their fault – it's just them adapting when the world wants them to be a certain way. But it makes them seem fake, and it makes me uncertain of who or what I'm talking to. John struck me like that, like an angry mask over whatever was really inside him, like shades of myself.
"Your turn," Marie suddenly said. "You tell me something."
Hm. "Thought you already knew everything."
She sighed. "I know...I know the deeper stuff. The instincts and emotions and longings, and what you think is right and wrong. I keep figuring out specific things when they come up, which is hard sometimes. Like having an itch but not knowing where. Like...a few days after you left I started wanting something and I couldn't figure out what. I just *wanted* all the time. And the next week I went into town with Bobby and John and someone was smoking a cigar on the street and...I knew, right down to the brand."
"Huh. That's just weird."
She rolled he eyes at me. "Tell me about it. I made John go buy me a bunch, since he had a fake ID. He thought I was nuts. So...tell me something specific. Something I wouldn't know yet."
Like I was supposed to have any clue what she did or didn't know already. "Gimme an example."
"Okay. Tell me..." And she bit her lip and watched me for a moment, clearly weighing the wisdom of asking whatever was on her mind. "What did you think of me, when we first talked?" she asked hesitantly. "In your truck, I mean? When you touched me it was...all clouded over with worry and, and guilt, both times. I get curious, I wonder sometimes, what's underneath all that."
There was no way I could answer that right away. I'd thought a lot about her, right from the moment she looked at me in the bar: I'd thought she didn't belong there, and that she wouldn't last long in a place like that. And later, I'd thought (and not in a good way) that she had a lot of fucking nerve sneaking into my trailer. I'd thought her voice was a surprise, softer than I'd expected after her shouted warning, and I'd thought, not for the first time, that there was something pretty fucked up with the world if I was some kid's best chance for help. "Honestly?" I finally said, sorting through it all. "I thought you were such a walking contradiction that it made me nervous."
"What does that mean?"
"It means," I said, rougher than I intended, "that you somehow got it in your head that a guy with fucking *claws* would help you and you didn't want to hurt me, but you...there was something brittle and cynical about you. I thought I could see that you were a nice girl once, and that you were changing. You bothered me. You made me wonder if I'd been nice at some point in my life, and if you were going to wind up like me."
"You're nice now."
She said it like it was some ridiculously simple fact, something that anyone with half a brain would know. She said it like she would never question it, like it was the focal point of all the faith she put in me, and that came close to pissing me off. "You're biased," I muttered.
"No. I'm just lucky enough to understand you." She sighed a little. "You thought I was brittle?"
"I thought you were on your way to becoming mean, if only because you had to."
"Hmm. I think you were right."
"Usually am," I told her with a smile. She returned it, so easily it almost hurt to see. "You still have it, you know. There's an edge to you sometimes that doesn't seem quite natural. And you don't get to blame it on me, since you admitted it was already there."
She tipped her head in acknowledgement. "It was."
"So, your turn. What caused it? Was it – was it what made you leave home?" That was something I'd been curious about for a long time – what her family was like, how they could just put her out like so much trash. I sure as hell *was* biased, but I couldn't imagine anyone knowing her, even the slightest bit, and letting something as stupid as mutation cloud their view of her.
But apparently that was a big assumption, and a wrong one. "No," she said simply. "Nothing really happened there. I could just tell my parents didn't know what to do, how to cope with the whole thing...so I left. I ran away 'cause I figured that might be better for all of us."
"That doesn't sound like your brightest moment." But it did sound like her, like the girl who fled the first safe place she found because she thought she'd caused too much trouble.
And she just rolled her eyes at me. "I was feeling, Logan, not thinking. Makes you do stupid stuff sometimes, you know?"
Did I ever – it's what got her entrance to my truck, what got me to her side on the train, what saved her life nearly at the cost of my own. "Yeah, I know," I told her shortly. I reached and snagged her bag to put it between us, glass clinking loudly inside it. I opened a beer, but didn't drink yet. "So you left, and you were still a nice little free-spirited southern girl. Then?"
"Then..." She hesitated before throwing it out there. "I spent eight months on the road. What the hell do you think happens to nice little girls when they hitch rides, Logan?"
The rage that swept through me then was...it was unexpected but hardly surprising. I suddenly realized just how many things I'd never bothered to question about her, how many assumptions I'd made about the twig of a kid who showed up in the middle of a Canadian nowhere and *looked* intact. The thought that she may not have been, that she'd been through hurt I never could have done anything about, made my bones go cold and my temper flare. I fought to control it, though, because when I looked at her, trying to gauge if she was somehow different than I'd thought, she looked a little scared. But I had to know. "What the fuck happened to you, Marie?"
She held my gaze even though she was trembling slightly. "*Nothing*, Logan. Just...close calls. Some errors in judgment. I thought – I thought someone looked nice and he wasn't and then..."
"And then," I said tightly, determined to make her tell me.
She didn't resist. "Then I thought telling him about my skin would make him back off. Wrong again." She shrugged a little. "Screaming worked, though."
"Jesus fucking *Christ*, Marie." I was still pissed – at myself. Because even if she hadn't been – I felt like I'd belittled the risk she took on me, and what's more, the *reasons* she might have had for getting attached, for depending on me, for being so pigheadedly convinced that I was inherently good. The reasons she might have for loving me, which suddenly seemed like they had nothing to do with a silly crush and everything to do with a trust I'd never really comprehended.
She just shrugged again and went right on to confirm it all. "Nothing *happened, okay? I just – I didn't trust anyone after that. And the next time I got in a tight spot, I sure as hell didn't offer any safety tips. I managed okay after that. And then...then there was you, and we've already covered that topic."
The anger was slowly draining out of me. Not so much the feeling of being sucker-punched with things I wasn't at all sure I wanted to know. "You warned me about your skin," I said, aiming for a lighter tone that would hopefully help move us along.
She grinned at me, accepting the unspoken offer. "The jerky was good. I'd've felt bad."
"Pushover," I teased.
"Ingrate."
She didn't know the half of it. I hated myself right then for selling her so short, and had no idea what to do about it. So I avoided: it's what I’m good at. "Got your next question?"
"Yeah. What do you think of me *now*?"
Well, shit, I thought. "Loaded question."
"Loaded conversation," she shot back.
"Good point." I looked away, uncomfortable. "I think a lot of things."
"Don't dodge the question, Logan."
Her voice was what made me decide to answer – soft and determined and, just a little bit, pleading. "Hm. I think..." I took a deep breath and just told her. "I think I wish I could have known you years ago. I think you could have made me a better person."
I could hear a small hitch in her breath at that, but I still couldn't look at her. "Logan..." she started, and trailed off.
I took the opportunity. "Don't. Why did you touch me when I stabbed you? Did you know what would happen?"
"No."
I wanted more than that. The look in her eyes that night stuck with me, bothered me, flitted around my thoughts a lot when I would wake up drenched in sweat. "And?" I prompted.
"And I'm a terrible person." I glanced at her and she shrugged. "I thought, 'this is it, I'm gonna die,' and I just – I wanted inside your head right then. I wanted that to...to overwhelm me, and comfort me, and be the last thing I experienced. And I *knew* that I had no idea how it would affect you, but I did it anyway. I felt kind of odd and disconnected – maybe there was some kind of subconscious instinct kicking in, but all I really remember is wanting, and doing. Sorry about that, by the way."
It was the flippant apology that made me choke on what threatened to be a laugh. "You're sorry for something you did after I stabbed you through the chest – that's just great. You've got a real knack for beating yourself up, you know that?"
"I have many hidden talents," she said, and didn't sound amused. "Okay. What – what's the first thing you remember? From...you know."
That was easier than she probably suspected – I'd thought on it all countless times, and I didn't really mind telling her. "The first thing, huh? That would be...Ever felt lost in every sense of the word? I didn't know where I was or who I was or what to do. I was in the middle of the woods somewhere – probably near Alkali Lake, but I was too out of it to pay attention, and things, they didn't stick too well in my mind at first. Later, I couldn't remember the route I'd taken to get away from there."
"What did you do?"
"I walked a lot. Must've stolen some clothes, shoes, probably food. Went nuts for awhile the first time I got hurt and discovered the healing thing. Went even more nuts the first time the claws popped out. Did odd jobs for money, eventually started doing the fights. Wandered around and kept to myself." I shot a quick look at her and grinned. "That worked pretty well, until some uppity little brat crawled into my trailer."
"Must have been tragic for you," she said with a forced easiness I appreciated. She wasn't writing it off, but she wasn't going to push me. She was giving me an out that I was glad to take. "Horrendous," I agreed. "Just as well the truck blew up – I never would have gotten the smell out."
She twitched an eyebrow at me. "How fortunate. Next?"
I went for something I was curious about, and that I figured wouldn't bother her much. "What's with you and Bobby Drake?"
It was immediately clear I'd figured wrong. She tensed up and sounded completely unfeeling as she said, "Nothing. There's...there's nothing."
Something had clearly happened there, and I took a chance on pressing her for it. "Want to explain that?"
She didn't answer right away, but eventually gave in. "We kissed," she told me flatly. "At his house, before...um. The whole freezing things thing, that worked for a few seconds, but – I got a dose of him. Not much, but enough."
"Enough for what?"
"For getting a pretty good idea." Emotion finally crept into her voice, but I couldn't figure out what it was. "He...he likes me, he does. But he thought he understood and he didn't, really, not until then. And now he feels so *very* terrible about not being able to handle it."
I wanted to hurt the kid. "Want me to hurt him?"
She flashed a sad smile at me. "Sweet, Logan. But no. I'm upset right now, but I – I know it's not really his fault, I guess. I can't expect anyone to want...to be okay with the risk of me taking things, things I don't have any right to have and to know."
"You damn well can expect that," I snapped at her, angry again. "You can, and you better. He's still a dumb kid, Marie, and he just went through a lot himself." I couldn’t believe I was practically sticking up for the little shit. "Don't take it as meaning something about *you*."
She didn't really respond to that, just gave a muffled noise of some sort, and I let it go. "Yeah, well. Question?"
She sat up and went for another beer, and I considered stopping her but decided not to. I'd get her back to the house safely, and I figured she deserved whatever measure of release being drunk could give her. After a minute or so, she looked straight at me, and I knew I was in for a tough question. "Does it bother you, how I feel about you?"
Yes, I thought immediately, but not for the reasons you'd think. I held her gaze, but tried to buy myself some time in the most unfair way imaginable. "I'm not sure I know exactly how that is."
Her lips pressed into thin lines before she answered. "I love you," she said bluntly. "And don't pretend I mean that in some half-assed way. You do know exactly how it is, and I think you also know the last hour hasn't done much to cure me of it. I want to know if it bothers you. I want to know if I need to be embarrassed around you, if I should have a hard time looking right at you like this."
I hadn't quite meant for her to lay it all on the line like that, hadn't really meant to goad her into throwing down a gauntlet. But I was kind of glad she did, because it made it easy to answer. "Don't you ever," I told her, and it felt imperative to make sure it never happened. "Not after sitting there and getting me to be honest with you."
Which was really, in the end, what it came down to. I'd never lied to her but I'd been willing to play with various degrees of truth, and I was ready to be done with it. So when she started to say, "Logan –" I cut her off. "Wait. Listen to me. It does some, yes. Because the fact is – you're seventeen. You've got a lot to experience and learn, and I want that for you. I don't *want* to think of you as anything other than a kid right now...but I'm not gonna say that will always be the case."
She swallowed so hard I could hear it. "You telling me to keep hope alive, Logan?" she said unsteadily.
"I'm telling you to live your life instead of a set of assumptions. Finish up with school and play with your friends and have fun with people who deserve you."
She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it again, watching me for a long minute. "I'll be eighteen next month, Logan," she finally said, and I really wished she hadn't. "And deep down I am still Marie, I'm still young and naïve and all, but – keep in mind that I have layers of you and Magneto. Be fair enough to me to remember that there are a lot of ways that I'm *not* seventeen."
There was no way in hell I'd be able to forget that, not after this conversation. "That's exactly why you should make damn sure to enjoy life as much as you can. You got dealt a pretty shit hand in some ways, Marie. Don't give up more than already got taken away from you."
"I won't," she said, and I let myself breathe a sigh of relief.
"Promise?"
"Yeah." But then she fucking smiled at me, a smug, sly little grin with shades of warning in it, and hell if it didn't make me wonder what I was in for. "I promise if you don't come back, I'll hunt your ass down. I'm not letting you go, Logan. The rest of my cards may be crap, but I've got an ace and I'm gonna play it for all it's worth. How's that?"
"That" scared the fucking hell out of me, but it was the best thing she could have said. I suddenly knew she was going to be okay, and that she had it in her to help me be okay, and that it might actually be hard to stay away until summer. I reached for her and pulled her into a hug, and I didn't want to let her go after she settled easily against my side. "That's good," I told her, because there really wasn't anything else to say. "Good."
**end**
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Much, much, *much* love to Diebin for being so wonderful and encouraging.