“Shouldn’t you be sleeping,” Logan muttered without turning his back. His melancholy eyes were on the dark deserted parking lot in front of him. Without much movement he reached for the lit cigar in his mouth and flicked the ashes off it before wrapping his lips back around it.
“I had something on my mind,” Wanda whispered as she came to stand a few feet beside him.
Barely, moving his head Logan looked at her out of the corner of his eyes as he looked down at her.
“Thought of some fresh insults,” Logan muttered around the cigar. “I’m impressed.”
Wanda was quiet for a moment and Logan knew she was watching him but he didn’t care.
“I forgot to mention something back there,” Wanda spoke up. “Something that I think might be important...well maybe for you.”
Slowly, taking the cigar back out of his mouth Logan turned to look at her with a scowl.
“You lied about something?”
“Not really, I just neglected to tell you something at the time,” she remarked. “Didn’t think it would be appropriate in front of the others.”
“Even your brother?”
She laughed a little but it was empty. “Especially my brother.”
Logan’s head ticked to the side as his interest grew.
“What is it then?”
In move he wasn’t use to from her; she suddenly wouldn’t meet his eyes and cast them down towards the ground before gazing out at the parking lot.
“Rogue didn’t hold on to a lot of things,” she began softly. “And we were always moving from town to town but when I learned of her death, we searched her stuff.”
She stumbled slightly as she took a deep breath. “I was the first one to go through her things and well...” she fumbled for something inside her jacket pocket and pulled out a small crumpled envelope. “I found this.”
She held it out waiting for him to take it. She sighed and pushed it closer to him when he didn’t budge.
“Well go on,” she emphasized by shoving it at him again.
“It’s for you or at least I think it is.”
Tentatively, he reached out for the envelope and found his named scrawled across the front of it in Rogue’s familiar handwriting.
“Can’t tell you if its good or bad.”
He eyed her as he found himself holding the envelope tightly in his hand. “You didn’t read it?” he questioned in surprise.
“No. I knew for her to have written you something after all this time it must be personal and well, even if it did have any useful information, Rogue was a smart girl not to leave information like that lying around. Plus, I knew we’d be meeting you...”
“Why didn’t you give it me sooner?” he interrupted her with a glare.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if you’d even accept it.”
Logan continued to glare at her even as his focus was drawn back to the envelope.
“What changed?” he wondered.
When she didn’t immediately answer he looked back up at her and was unnerved by the sudden scrutiny her gaze held.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” he directed back but she ignored him.
“Why did you risk so much just save her dead body on the bridge today?”
His eye twitched as he turned his face towards the shadows.
“I didn’t risk anything,” he muttered darkly.
“You had bullets ripping through your body and I don’t care if you heal that must have still hurt. You almost went over that bridge with her.”
His dark gaze snapped at her but he was surprised to find her expression was truly genuine and open for once. The usual snappiness to her tone was gone.
“Tell me what went wrong with you two,” she whispered softly.
“No,” he hissed, his hand gripped the envelope tighter.
“Look, Wolver...Logan,” she started. “I know there’s no reason for you to tell and frankly I know you don’t want to feel like you need to prove anything to me but after today I...I just honestly want to know how it is that this is where you and Rogue ended up. You diving after her coffin after three years of no contact...after...”
“So you’re curious,” he hissed.
“Yes,” she answered honestly. “We both know I’ve judged you heavily and well I ain’t apologizing for the way I am but I’m at least willing to listen.”
Suddenly, reflective Logan slowly put his cigar out. “She never told you?” he questioned with a whisper.
“No.”
Logan appeared a bit surprised as he raised his head.
“In the past few days you’ve made it sound like Rogue was out there glorifying the way she supposedly ruined you like some conquest of hers.”
He snorted. “Well, wasn’t she?” he yelled slightly with a sense of despair and uncertainty.
Wanda stepped closer. “Not at all. In fact she never mentioned it.”
Doubt seeped into his tormented eyes as he focused on her. “But you knew details and...”
“I knew you had been together and I know a few things but it wasn’t because Rogue opened up about it. It wasn’t until we’d hooked up with a few other mutants down in New Orleans that any information came to light. Seemed a few of them recognized her and knew about her being an X-Men and being with you.”
Logan grunted.
“What do you think her response was?”
“To break open the champagne and celebrate.”
“Why do you think she got so much joy out of your pain?” Wanda yelled suddenly with a sense of desperation.
“Just minutes ago you asked me to tell you everything,” he snapped with a growl. “So don’t question me about things you don’t truly know about.”
Wanda was unaffected as she spoke more determinedly. “Rogue...well ever since I met Rogue she was all about having a good time and when...and when your name came up...I saw a different Rogue. She couldn’t hide it when a slip of sadness fell into her eyes and her smile faltered and then right there in that moment I knew a lot of it was a facade. Rogue wasn’t about having a good time. She was about trying to forget.”
Wanda paused as she watched him but his body seemed to disappear more into the shadows.
“Problem was,” she continued. “She could never seem to out run you and her past.”
Sighing, she smiled a little recalling a past memory.
“She dismissed the mutant’s interest easily and the mask slipped back on her face but there was one time, one time when I can’t explain it but I noticed a sudden stillness to her. She’d been sitting alone in the club we were in, oblivious to the party going around and it was as though she couldn’t pretend anymore. She confessed your past relationship to me in part.”
Logan was still quiet and it aggravated her. “Don’t you get it, Logan,” she yelled. “A good amount of time had passed and she still thought about you. She loved you...”
“SHUT UP!” Logan snapped viciously as he reached for her and pulled her closer.
“If she’d loved me she wouldn’t have...” he stumbled and Wanda could feel his hands trembling. His eyes were wild and glistened.
He let her go and turned his face away abruptly.
“She wouldn’t have what...?” Wanda pressed.
“Where did you met her?” he responded suddenly, his voice much thicker.
Taken back Wanda decided to answer him anyways. “A mutant club in Vegas.”
Logan scoffed as half his face was once again hidden in the shadows but she still caught his smirk.
“I’d heard she was on the fast track,” he muttered. “Living the mutant life like it was Rock n’ Roll. – I mean she had control of her skin...”
“Is that why things...?”
“But how did you two exactly meet?”
Wanda was annoyed that he kept responding with questions of his own but she took it in stride as he was at least talking back.
“She recognized me and Pietro.”
“Recognized?”
“She knew we were Magneto’s children. It was a bit disconcerting.”
Logan nodded. “She has his memories.”
“Yeah, I figured that out eventually.”
“And just like that you were friends?”
“Yeah,” she shrugged. “Rogue was a fun person and I mean we obviously enjoyed bitching about Magneto. She gave me a lot of insight into my father.”
“And I can see it’s made you much calmer towards him,” he remarked.
Wanda smiled. “Rogue didn’t sugar coat anything about him but she also didn’t hide anything, for talking about a man who almost killed her she was surprisingly neutral.”
“She knew a lot more about him then any of us really did, perhaps even things the Professor didn’t even know,” Logan muttered sadly.
Wanda nodded solemnly. “Besides how long was it after you had just met Rogue before you realized you wanted to be a part of her world.”
Logan was quiet and Wanda smiled more.
He no longer had any more questions for her it appeared and she was beginning to wonder if their conversation was over.
“I’m not really sure how to explain it,” he started softly. “I don’t fully understand it myself.”
Sighing, he continued. “We’d been together for almost two years as a couple and I actually thought everything was perfect. But I started to notice things...” he paused.
“Rogue and I we were always good at communicating on a lot of things but when it came to our relationship we weren’t very good at all. I mean it took us a while to finally get together and accept our feelings and I will admit that was more on my part. Still having such a serious deep bonding relationship was new to both of us, but we were happy and I was happy for the first time I could remember.”
“Of course we were both X-Men so that tended to interfere at times.”
“Interfere...?” Wanda started but was cut off.
“At Xavier’s everyone’s entitled a fresh start,” he began again as his eyes become a bit unfocused. “The Professor and the X-Men were all about helping people...” he hesitated and when he spoke again his voice was harder. “So of course when that little traitorous piece of shit-fire Pyro showed up at our door begging for forgiveness for running off and joining Magneto we were all suppose to welcome him back with understanding.”
His body began to tense. “We must show him the way, Logan’ the Professor would spout off at me. ‘Show him that he is accepted here again’. So of course part of the Prof’s plan was to get those who knew Pyro the most before he left to help get him back into things. The previous junior X-Men.”
“Rogue,” Wanda supplied and he nodded.
“I knew they had been friends before he had defected and I knew she had been saddened by it and saw it as a sense of betrayal but she never spoke of him much. I didn’t really bother to evaluate her relationship with both him and the Drake boy. When I had been with the three of them when we were on the run from Stryker I can’t lie and say I didn’t see the tension between the three of them, or more to the point that Bobby was pretty oblivious to the fact that his best friend had the hots for his girlfriend and Ma...and Rogue she knew it, or at least I know she had an idea of his feelings.”
“But it never came up again. She’d dumped Bobby a few months after the whole Stryker thing and few months after that I finally accepted my feelings for her and we got together and it was that simple. One day we weren’t and the next day we were lovers.”
He grew quiet again and she could see him closing up.
“So what happened then, when Pyro came back?”
“He was a downright arrogant prick,” Logan spat. “And of course in the beginning Rogue spent time with him under the Professor’s request but then her time with him started to grow and when I questioned her on it, well....all I got was...’He’s still adjusting, Logan and he needs people he’s comfortable with’ ‘Don’t you understand what it is to feel you’ve lost your way, I’m just giving him what he needs.’” He laughed suddenly but the sound caused Wanda to ache in concern.
“Apparently what Pyro needed was to be fucking my girlfriend,” he hissed and the cigar snapped unnoticed in his hand.
“And she...she,” he gasped and turned away. “She went on like nothing had changed. I knew and for some stupid reason I didn’t say anything at first, I wanted to believe I had made a mistake, I was suddenly so disillusioned. I’d made myself vulnerable to her. Then...” he paused to laugh again, the sound heartbreakingly hollow.
“Well you see around that time, we got a new recruit as well,” he continued. “His name was Gambit and he was tolerable compared to Pyro but he liked to hit on Rogue as much as possible. Rogue never took him seriously and would always tell me to relax but apparently she did enjoy the attention, she enjoyed it so much she figured she’d reciprocate it right back, to the fullest extent possible.”
“After Remy she just didn’t bother hiding it anymore and well I couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen, I couldn’t pretend I had somehow made a mistake and when...and when I confronted her...she didn’t even try to deny it...didn’t even give me a reason...she just sat there and.....and...she couldn’t have been more apathetic.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Wanda interjected.
His eyes were suddenly on her with such rage she took a step back. “You weren’t there,” he hissed and clenched his fists. “I no longer recognized the person I’d fallen in love with.”
Wanda remained quiet as suddenly the rage disappeared and his body sunk with despair. “She made a fool out of me and still she was the one who left first. She took off as soon as she could, no mind to the fact that the X-men as a team were suddenly extremely dysfunctional. It was a concern having me in the same house as the two men she’d slept with and they didn’t seem to care but it didn’t matter I couldn’t stay there, I couldn’t accept it.....so I left and never looked back.”
Wanda remained pensive for a moment before speaking again. “What about Jean Grey?”
Logan’s head whipped around so fast she gasped in surprise. “What about her?” he snapped angrily.
“Didn’t she come back from the dead sometime during that period,” she spoke knowingly.
“Yes,” he hissed through his clenched teeth. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“You loved her didn’t you?”
“No,” he grated through his clenched jaw.
“But...”
“No!”
“Did you sleep with her?”
His sudden pause gave her concern.
“No,” he answered more quietly.
“But it was a complication,” she persisted.
Glaring at her he sighed heavily. “Yes.”
Two streets across from them they both spotted the sudden headlights of oncoming car and tensed up. Silently, the two of them watched warily as the car turned away from their direction and disappeared.
The silence that surrounded was heavy as the night sky that blanketed around them.
Tilting her head Wanda eyed the stoic mutant before her and knew he was as weighed down as the humid air around them. His shoulders sagged forward even as he stared out at the night sky. He was a broken man and somehow, she couldn’t fault him for it but that didn’t mean she accepted the way he had become. He’d been legendry when he’d been with the X-Men and now he was but a ghost of the person, he had been holding onto a ghost of a woman who wouldn’t let him be.
Turning to head back inside she cast him one more glanced. “I can’t give you any answers and maybe you’ll never get them but perhaps...,” she paused and nodded towards the envelope. “That will give you something.”
She smirked a little, a part of her usual snippiness finding its way back into her demeanour. “That is if you accept it.”
He didn’t acknowledge her but she spoke anyways even as she drifted through the door. “Goodnight, Logan.”
It wasn’t until he heard the door click shut did Logan gaze down at the simple white envelope in his hand. It was light in his hands but suddenly it weighed heavily in his heart.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Okay, so this chapter is kind of heavy on the angst, Logan has some stuff to get off his chest but I promise it's not the end of the world.