Life is a lot like a wall.
If Logan were poetical, he could pretend that meant life was one long obstacle race, or a desperate scramble to the top like a bad military movie. But for the Wolverine, life was a wall of shit that continuously fell on top of him. And it seemed that he had finally had enough of one particular shit brick.
He didn’t lie to himself much. Sure, it was tough watching her disappear into the distance, standing in a fog of steam and grime at the steps of the train station, and it killed him a little bit to think that it felt all too familiar, all too much like Laughlin. With a different outcome.
He actually released his claws once he was back on the freeway. Was pretty sure he scared the shit right outta that Chinese take-out guy in the sedan next to him. But even though he knew he was doing the right thing for every party involved, letting Rogue go wasn’t easy. If he was completely honest, it was the hardest fuckin’ thing he’d ever done. Harder than the gut wrenching disappointments about his past, even fuckin’ harder than skewering the woman of his dreams to save the world.
Or maybe it was hard to let go the idea of Rogue. No, the idea of Marie. Marie. The poor, sweet, delicate little runaway that fashioned a protector out of him when he was just Jack Nobody in the boons of Upper Canada Nowhere.
Letting his claws unsheathe brought on the physical pain he needed to ignore the chest ache of letting Marie go. Letting go of the first person to give him a purpose. Letting go of that old, fucked up, glorious promise that they were two of a’ unsound kind and he’d always look out for her. He sure had done a crap job, judging by what he came home to.
He hated what she had become. Not sweet, not young anymore, and definitely not frail. Her sharp glares and thin smiles, that awful white streak she refused to hide, all ravaged her old familiar, fawn-like face. He detested her sarcastic quips and her ever present PMS. He hated that she had broken up with the harmless icy twerp and taken up with Gumbo, that Cajun dick, then fucked that up too. He absolutely loathed that she’d grown more comfortable wearing touchable attire, while her scent remained tinged with lingering anxiety over the actual act.
Logan growled deeply, wanting to kick her out of his head the way he’d kicked her out of his truck, out of his life. And she deserved it.
It all went downhill after the Phoenix stand-off, after she took the cure. That was enough to make her enemy to most people in the mansion. But she was Marie, and he was Logan. They still had a connection, even if it had been chipping away for some time, by her boyfriend, by Jean, by responsibilities to the younger mutants, by the War, by the cure…
Logan shifted uneasily, felt the seatbelt was suddenly a little too constricting. He kept waiting for her to pull herself out of the sinky sand. Give her space, and time, that’s what Storm had told them all after Alcatraz. Not that she needed to request it, since she and Hank seemed to spend all their spare time in the lab with the mysterious Patient X, while Bobby and Piotr were too wrapped up in that Kitty critter, and most of the mansion still had a hate on for the non-mutant. And, okay, maybe he had been a little distant. He liked to mope in solitude. And after killing the woman he truly believed was the love of his life, he was entitled to a little brooding peace, wasn’t he? Besides, all Rogue had to do was tell him she needed him and he woulda dropped everythin’ running. With or without Jean, he was there for her. He asked her if she was sure about the cure, asked if she needed a ride. She said no. At least he tried. Didn’t he?
Logan shoved a hand gruffly through his thick hair, felt the prickling of ripping knuckle flesh against freed claws, and swallowed down the twinge of guilt in exchange for pain. He knew better than to step in without her asking for it, but his absence seemed to be what spurred her on. Still, all the shit that went down wasn’t his doing. She was a grown ass woman now, despite him still calling her ‘the kid’. Everyone makes choices, and usually he’d be the last one to step up to that soap box and preach leaving your neighbor the fuck alone, but she was so much better than all the things he’d done. Things she’d now done too. Tainted.
It felt like every fuck up, great or small, was aimed at tearing down the neatly packaged ideal he had of her. Nearly killing Ace had been the final straw to tweak the beast’s nose. Or something like that.
He just couldn’t forgive her. Not for keeping her renewed powers a secret. Not for going AWOL for a month and joining up with the fuckin’ Brotherhood for Christ’s sake, the damned force behind Chuck and Scooter and Jean’s deaths. And definitely not for pulling half the life out of his ex-partner like a demonic leech, then scurrying back under Hank’s skirts when things turned sour.
Big Bad Blue said she didn’t know what she was doing. He said the cure had an adverse effect, stimulated when the forsaken skin roared back to life. Temporary insanity, basically. Didn’t really matter. Still took Logan three weeks to even be able to walk past her and not want to throw her through a glass window. Probably because she didn’t even seem repentant.
Pulling into the drive of Xavier’s School brought him abruptly to the conclusion that he did what he had to do. What was best for everybody. Let her run for it. Let her go rogue. That was her name now, anyway.
He took three strides inside, the slam of the door a distant noise, bent on storming up to his quarters and slicing up all that irreplaceable antique furniture. And then he’d get drunk, maybe stumble into a particularly nasty dive, and fuck some brunette chick savagely until he couldn’t see white streaks anymore. Yeah… that’d make him feel better.
“Logan!”
FUCK!
The feral snort that erupted from him before he could mask it made the white witch jump. He reeled himself in a bit. Not much. Just enough to look as though he wasn’t about to forgo the furniture and slash up Ro instead.
“What?” He snapped grouchily. He didn’t even acknowledge the ghostly Pride girl or Drake, who stood just on the periphery looking sullen. Storm blinked at him a few times, her long delicate fingers clutching a manila envelope hard enough to turn her knuckles white.
“Have…have you seen Rogue?” Fuck, sure he has. On the inside of his eyeballs for the last hour long drive.
“She decided to take a hike. Better for everyone, you ask me.” He worked his shoulders to hear the tell tale crack of metal, smirked inwardly at Kitty’s wince before he turned toward the winding staircase.
“Oh, no.”
It was said in a small, Kenyan lilted voice. It had him spinning, hurtling into fury.
“Oh no? Oh, no?! I thought you wanted her outta here! We all want her outta here, and now it’s ‘oh no’? Jesus Christ, Storm, her takin’ off is for the best, right?!” Her words thrown back at her made her flinch and Drake’s face darken. Made him pause, grappling with the churning in his bones. He was in a very agitated state, and the Wolverine didn’t play well with others when that happened. He clenched his jaw, and shook his head. “Un-fuckin’-believable. What now? Some other tin-head tryin’ to kidnap her? I think after an hour hearin’ the kid talk, he’ll ship her bac-”
“Logan.” Her voice was firm, but she shifted eerily, uneasily, not at all like herself, “I think…Mother Goddess, forgive me, I think I made a huge mistake about Rogue.” His eyebrow rose. She was a proud weather witch, more so now that she ran the place, and he couldn’t remember the last time she admitted to being wrong. The fury paced inside his skull.
“What are you talkin-“
“This,” she finally held up the brown envelope, “is a… it tells a different story…” Logan eyed it like a caged predator while Storm offered up the splendiferous mystery alibi that exonerated the kid. When he didn’t immediately snatch it from her hand, Ororo’s forehead creased further. “If you’ve left her corner, then she’s lost for good.” The guilty twinge returned full force and he emitted an uncensored growl before seizing it roughly.
He nearly tore the pages when he saw the familiar hand written scrawl on documented paper. Half the damn thing was obscured by strokes from felt tipped pens. Luckily, he’d worked for Nick Fury. He could read between the bastard’s ill-disguised lines.
Mission objectives… “Brotherhood” infiltration... Decommission Avengers project... operative disengaged by partner… He could have gone on with fragmented sentences. But his feral eyes, already fueled by wrath, zeroed in on the only tidbit he needed to deduce why Ororo was suddenly so shaken. Rogue Agent.
To any government official, it would appear one of the Avengers had gone haywire, or deserted. But Fury had a sick fascination with codes and double-speak. And it was no coincidence he used the term ‘Rogue’.
It took him all of forty seconds to reel through the scenario the black marks did little to hide. Rogue had been recruited by the Avengers Team. She and Ace were partners. Something had gone wrong.
Logan’s heart stopped. Honest to God, screeched to a halt. In this moment, he thought breathlessly, he was as close to death as he’d ever been. That was sayin’ something.
Life is a lot like a cup.
When it finally runneth over, you feel like an idiot for not watching her more carefully.
“I assume you’ve come to the conclusion we have.” The inner beast snapped to attention and snarled at the heaviness in Bobby’s tone. “We’ve got to get her back here. Pronto. Make her tell us what really happened that night...” Logan shook his hanging head.
“Yeah, well that ain’t gonna happen. I just turfed her out at the train station. She’s half way to fuck knows where by now…”
“Shit.” Kitty whispered.
“She had to have told you where she was going!” Ororo cried graspingly. “You must have some idea-“
“Well I don’t. Too busy giving her that space you prescribed her!”
“Hey, it’s not our fault!” Drake yelled back, finally stepping up to Storm’s side defensively, trying to match the glare Logan had fixed them with. “She could have told us the truth any time!”
“See that’s where you’re wrong, Iceman,” Logan barked, “when you work for the Feds you keep your trap shut unless otherwise told.” The lies she told weren’t the ones he thought. It must have eaten her alive, like Ace had been gobbled up after her first mission, except worse. Jesus, Ace and Rogue. One in the same.
That sparked an idea. Logan wheeled around toward the door.
“Where are you going?!”
“She’s headin’ north.” He called over his shoulder. Before he reached the door handle, it froze over, extending up the crease of the doorframe.
“How can you know that? You just said-“
“Listen limpdick,” Bobby didn’t have time to even block when Logan deked back and wrapped his steely grip around the man-boy’s throat, “we fucked up, and I got a hunch. I got 86 hours to find the girl before she becomes damn near impossible to track, an’ I ain’t stickin’ round here with you assholes while she gets away!” Before the frost could inch up his hand, he threw the reedy twerp back a few steps toward his girlfriend and fixed him with his most intimidating stare.
“North’s an awfully vague hunch!” Kitty spat as she rubbed Bobby’s back soothingly. Logan sniffed.
“I got connections enough, I know she’s in Canada-“
“The second largest country in the world!"
“-only a few places she knows ‘nough about to hide-“
“-it’s fucking winter, it’s Siberia up there-“
“-and I got some ideas on findin’ things that don’t want to be found-”
“-and you don’t even know if she really IS heading north-“
“Shut the fuck up, kiddo, unless you’re lookin’ for a steel rod up your rectum-“
“Wolverine.” Although the commanding boom in Storm’s voice silenced the three, their eyes remained fixed and glaring, and Logan still favored the idea of impaling the little squirt. “Go if you’re going. We’ll stay and try to track her down from here.” As if aware of Bobby’s protest bubbling up, she grabbed the young man’s arm and in an unusually graceless move, yanked him from Logan’s path. The larger man didn’t hesitate to dart out of the foyer, sending ice crystals flying from the door as it was wrenched open. He bolted for his truck, barely allowing time to hoist and chain his bike to the flatbed before veering off into the night.
He knew she was heading for Canada. The call would be too strong. Carol always said if she were lookin’ to lie low, she’d go deep into Northern Ontario or maybe even Quebec. And Marie… well, Canada’s where he found her the first time.
It was cold, but he could feel the humid sweat and guilt rolling off his usually impermeable skin in waves. He felt the sting of salt roll into his eyes, but he refused to blink, couldn’t stand the thought of shutting his eyes a nanosecond until he got to that border.
He needed to shove those dog tags back in her hands, ‘cause like it or not, she still needed saving, good and thorough, and he was the only one who had experience with the job.
Life’s a fuckin’ gauntlet. It’s been thrown and taken up over and over again. It surprised him though, that he was still bending to pick it back up.
Pick her back up.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
A chapter in which things are explained and Logan is just continuously pissed off. Written to the tune of "To Build a Home" by the Cinematic Orchestra.