Et Lux In Tenebris Lucet by Artemis2050
Logan got back to the Mansion near midnight one night in late October. He left the bike in front of the garage and wandered through the house until he heard voices in the kitchen. It was Scott and Jean, speaking in hushed tones and looking worried. Jean got up as soon as she saw him and ran to give him a hug. For once, it didn't seem to bother Scott.
“Thank god you're back.” Jean clung to him for a long moment. “It's good to see you.”
Scott was waiting when she finally stepped back, and held out a hand. Logan took it briefly. “You finished what you had to do?” He'd been gone almost six weeks. The military base had been easy enough to find again, and he never forgot a scent. He'd known exactly who he was looking for.
“Yeah.”
The younger man nodded once, abruptly. “Did you find out who they were?”
“Stryker's second in command and his crowd. One fuckin' psychopath and the rest believers in the cause.” They were all dead now, anyway. And he didn't feel the need to convey any information about that reptile-skinned bitch. Mystique hadn't been there any more, but he'd found her. Eventually.
He didn't want to discuss the details. “How is she?”
“Not good.” Jean answered that. “She still won't talk to anyone. Whatever happened, it's eating her up.” Her eyes were anguished. “We're really worried about her. All I can think of to do is to put her on a suicide watch, but I'm afraid that'll make things worse. She hasn't tried anything that I know of, and she's over eighteen--she can leave if she wants to, and I'm afraid she will if we push her.”
“I know. She promised she wouldn't--not till I got back, anyway.” Strictly speaking, that wasn't quite true, but Jeannie didn't need to know the details of that either. What he'd done was to inform Marie that he was leaving and that if she promised to be there when he got back, he'd have a headcount for her. It wasn't the kind of promise he wanted to be making to her, but he'd been reasonably sure it would keep her there, breathing, till he got back. Anyway, it was the best he'd been able to do. “And I know, I ain't a psychiatrist, and that was all wrong, but it worked, right?”
Jean gulped back whatever medical advice she'd been about to spout and nodded. “Are you staying?”
“Long as it takes.” He saw Scott's look of approval with wry surprise; so this was what it took to impress the Boy Wonder?
Funny thing, adversity.
“I'm going to find her.”
Jean nodded. “That'd be good. Whatever we can do--you know that.”
Logan could see the conflict in her eyes, the desire to do more, to ask more questions, to take action. He could understand the impulse. Jean was the doctor; why should she trust him to handle this? He didn't really trust himself.
He knew Jeannie also didn't understand why he wouldn't talk to her, tell her what Rogue wouldn't. He could have. He could have given far more than the brief, detached report he'd handed over, given them the information and let them all do their jobs. He'd been torn. It was probably the best thing he could have done for Marie.
There really hadn't been a choice to make. He wasn't sure of much, but this much he knew: if he took that away from her, revealed her secrets without her permission, that would be it, game over, no more discussion. He understood that in a way few others ever could. There were so many possible rationalizations, but what it came down to was that Marie would see it as a betrayal, and he couldn't face what would happen after that.
Marie had touched him, she'd seen his own nightmares, and she'd kept her mouth shut. What he was certain of was that she expected the same from him.
So he let Jean fuss over him for a few minutes, admiring her resolve not to pry, and then he went to deliver his message.
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Logan found her up on the roof, sitting on the parapet outside the attic doors, several beer bottles discarded beside her and a cigarette in her hand. She looked like she'd lost weight. She looked around when he stepped out the doors, then back out into the night. “So?”
So? Quite literally, the first syllable she'd spoken to him since they'd gotten onto the Blackbird. This from the girl who used to want to tell him everything, who would chatter for hours if he'd listen. Now, a single word. All he could do was answer the question he knew she was really asking. “Eighteen of them. The one with the voice lasted the longest.” He wasn't planning to tell her who it had really been either, not yet at least. He dropped into a crouch an arm's length or so away from her. “You mind getting back from the edge there, kid?” Her feet were dangling over the wall she was sitting on.
“Don't worry. I'm not going over. Tonight.” She took another slug of her current beer. “Congratulations.” She didn't look at him, but he could tell she was relieved, in a way.
“What's going on with you?”
She laughed. It wasn't a pretty sound. “Jeannie send you to check on me?”
“Nobody needed to send me. You know that.”
“Yeah. I know that.” She stubbed out her cigarette savagely and then lit another. “One of us needs to leave.”
He looked down. He'd figured that was coming, but still. “You mean the roof, right now, or the School?”
“Pick one,” she returned.
Logan sighed and held out a hand. “Can I have a beer, at least?” She turned, a little suspiciously, but she picked one up from a cooler beside her and held it out to him. He cracked it open and took a deep swig, wishing it was something stronger.
At least she was staying where she was. In the week he'd spent recuperating before setting off on his self-imposed mission, she'd instantly left any room he came into, the very few times she'd left her own. She hadn't spoken a single word to him, hardly more than that to anyone else as far as he'd known, and the only reason he'd been able to get her to hold still long enough to let her know what he was going to do was that he'd waited for four hours outside her room, and when she'd finally opened the door she'd barely let him get out the two or three sentences he needed.
She'd nodded--once--and closed the door in his face.
He watched as she drew deeply on her cigarette, breathed out the smoke in a long stream. He'd know for years that she snuck beer and cigarettes from time to time, but it had always been more of an act than anything else, a little mocking nod to the tastes she'd picked up from him, playing with rebelliousness. This was different. Deliberate. Destructive. He didn't know what it was that was making her act like this--anger? Shame? Disgust? Probably a combination of all three.
Unfortunately, it was behavior he understood all too well. He just didn't know how to keep it from being directed at him.
“I don't want to stay here, but it isn't really safe for me out there,” she said finally. “They--those people, other people like them--they know about me. And I can't really make a living, or be around normal people without putting them in danger. So it probably ought to be you.” She paused for another drag on her cigarette before she added with cold deliberation, “You were never going to hang around anyway.”
“Okay.” He rolled the neck of the bottle between his fingers. So this was how it happened. How it ended. Pretty goddamn ironic, the idea that he'd ever have to be told to leave anyplace. “First you gotta tell me why.”
She flung an impatient glance over her shoulder. “Don't go all 'we gotta talk about this' on me, sugar. It doesn't suit you.”
“You're still going to have to tell me why I should go. Think I'm going to leave you here to slit your wrists?”
“I won't do that.”
“Whatever. Convince me you'll be all right, I'll leave if you want me to.”
“It doesn't work that way,” she snapped. “I can't just be all right for you, even if it makes you feel better.”
“I know that.” He took another swallow. “Tell me how it works, then.” She didn't answer. “Wasn't so great for me either, you know.”
She flinched at that. “I know. I know. Jesus, you think I don't understand that?”
“Not really, no. Not if you still think this is your fault.” He stood up and came to stand behind her; he hated that he could feel her tension increase as he approached. “I can live with what happened to me. This is worse, seeing what it did to you.”
“Yeah, well, leave and you won't see it.”
“Can't do that.” He finished the beer and set down the bottle.
“Well, I can't keep seeing you around here. So where does that leave us?”
He shook his head. “Christ, kid.” She was hurting bad, he couldn't imagine what he could say that was going to help, and leaving wasn't an option either, not yet. Stalemate.
“I'm not a kid.” She'd said that to him before, but it had always been playful, teasing. Now her voice came out hard and clipped. “Never have been since you've known me, really, but I'm damn well not one any more.” She threw her bottle over the side of the building and it shattered somewhere below. “So you can just quit calling me that now.”
“Then quit acting like one. Sulking and throwing beer bottles around ain't exactly signs of maturity.” She was right, though--he didn't have the right to call her that any more, not after what had happened. He put a hand on her shoulder and she jerked away. “Marie! Watch it.” She was still on the edge of the roof.
“Rogue. If you have to talk to me, it's Rogue. And don't touch me.” He didn't know which instruction cut him worse, but she was pulling out all the stops, that much was certain.
“Turn around, then. You're makin' me nervous.” After a minute, she did, turning to bring her legs inside the roof, still avoiding his touch and his gaze.
He sat down next to her, not too close, and reached for another beer.
“Hey. Buy your own.” She swatted at his hand ineffectually.
“Later.” He opened it and took another drink. “You gotta talk to someone. I thought you might want it to be me.”
She snorted at that. “Why?”
“I was there too. I know what happened. You don't have to explain it to me. And I need to talk about it.” He felt, rather than saw, her start of surprise. Good. Might shake her out of this self-flagellation crap, or whatever it was that she was doing to herself. “The shit they made you do--that was nothing. You asked me to kill you, for chrissakes. They were using you to hurt me and it was killing you. That's what they wanted me to see. You think I can live with it if that worked?”
“Stop it,” she muttered. “It didn't. You got us out. You won.”
“Not yet.” He dared to hitch a little closer. “What if it had been you?”
She shifted nervously. “What?”
”The drug didn't work on me. So what? That's just a freak thing. If it had, they'd have had you on that table and--”
“Don't!” She clapped her hands over her ears. “Don't say that. They couldn't. I don't heal.”
He laughed grimly. “You ain't nearly creative enough. Think about it. They could've made me cut you. With my own claws. Then heal you.” He spaced the simple, blunt sentences out and let it sink in. “They could've made me rape you.” Her whole body went rigid when he said that. He reached towards her then, took her shoulders and made her turn to face him. “That it? You think that matters?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.” No, she wasn't in the least convincing as a liar. She twisted her shoulders uncomfortably and he let his hands fall away. All right. No touching. That hurt. She was so shy of any kind of physical contact, understandably, but she'd never been that way with him. He'd always thought of it as something he could do for her, something she needed.
He hadn't realized how much he needed it too.
“If it had been you--would you blame me? Would you hate me because I hurt you?”
“I don't think you hate me,” she said weakly.
“What is it then, baby?” Her eyes filled with tears. “Hey. Just tell me.”
“They knew,” she whispered.
“They knew what?” He didn't dare move; she seemed to be holding herself together by sheer force of will.
“Everything. They asked me questions for hours and I couldn't keep from answering. They knew I didn't want to hurt you. But the other stuff…” The tears started to trickle down her face. “That was--”
Yeah. He'd been sure that was the worst of it for her, having even the limited amount of contact she could have turned into something sick and twisted. Logan reached out to her automatically, but she turned away from him even as she dissolved in tears. “I'm sorry, baby.” There was every reason for her to want him to leave her alone, he knew that, but he just couldn't force himself to get up and leave. Even tears were better than that emotionless impassivity. She seemed to be trying to say something more, but finally she just shook her head helplessly. “It's okay. Take it easy.” Christ, it was hell watching this.
He just wished he'd been able to kill that shape-shifting cunt an inch at a time, over the course of a month. Maybe more. His knuckles itched with the desire to make someone suffer exactly as much as Marie was, but he knew he didn't have that power. That had been pure evil; evil didn't suffer like that. Not like her.
She dashed the back of one gloved hand across her face angrily and looked down. “What're you going to do?”
“Depends.” He sat back a little. “You said you wanted me to go. If all I'm doin' is making it harder on you, I can do that. Whatever you need.”
“I don't know what I need.” She twisted her hands together in front of her. “I just feel--dirty.”
“No. Baby--it wasn't like that.” He didn't know what to tell her. She'd never be able to look at him without seeing it all over again, her hands and mouth moving over him like that--but what was he going to tell her, that he'd liked it?
It was a perversion of his deepest fantasies, but he couldn't tell her that.
He looked at her, and the heartbreak was evident in her eyes. But jesus, she had to understand that what they'd forced her to do wasn't her fault. He'd tell her that a million times if he had to, but it didn't seem like she was going to believe it, and he didn't know why.
Then, suddenly, he got it. They knew, she'd said. Mystique had been even more inventive than he'd realized.
“What you told them--that's what they had you do.” Logan knew he was right the second he said it, just from her reaction. She bolted for the doors and he followed, seizing her arm and pulling her back out onto the roof. “Wait. Don't just leave, darlin'.” This was exactly the wrong thing to do, he knew it--he was only going to scare her this way. He let go of her arm quickly. “Sorry.”
“Don't touch me. Don't. Don't look at me.” It sounded like her words were being forced out over razor blades. “I didn't want to. I didn't. But they made me tell them and they made me…” She was staring down at her gloved hands as though they weren't part of her. Her voice had sunk to a whisper. “And you didn't want that.”
He had to make her listen. Somehow, this had to stop. “I didn't want it like that, darlin'. Don't ever think I didn't want you.” He saw her hands tighten on each other; she was shaking like a leaf. “I've thought about you touchin' me that way, believe me. But not like that, when it wasn't your choice. Not like that, and not outta some crush or being grateful because I saved your life, just because it was me. I thought you'd…”
Whatever he'd thought, it didn't matter any more. He could see that much. “They wrecked that, didn't they?” He reached out and stroked a lock of her long hair; surely that wasn't too threatening, and this time she didn't stop him. He'd never forget that silky texture, even if she did make him leave, even if tonight was the last time he ever felt it. He didn't see how she could possibly get past this, but he wanted that one last touch of her to remember. “I'm sorry for that, darlin'. More than anything.”
She looked dazed, and he realized she hadn't responded to anything he'd said. But at least she wasn't running away, and whatever else she needed to hear, he'd figure it out, if only she'd listen--
“Can you go now?” Her voice was gentle, but firm. Logan looked at her in shock. No. Not yet. Not this soon. “I don't mean for good. Just-I need to be alone for a while.”
“Okay.” That much he could manage. He stepped back, toward the French doors leading into the attic. He looked over his shoulder before he went in and saw that she'd returned to the parapet, drawn her feet back up onto it and lit another cigarette. He could see its glowing tip wavering; her hands were still shaking. She didn't turn around.
He went inside and left her there.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
"Some things get broke can't be fixed."