After a few days on the road Star was going stir crazy. They drove, they ate they fought. They slept, they drank they fought. They drove some more, they got more supplies, and then they fought. They re-upped on gas, did a little laundry and then…they fought. Again. Star and Wolverine were not a match made in heaven for a road trip duo, they constantly argued, never over anything important mostly just over the food the one ate or the way Logan never adhered to the laws of the road, whether it was breaking the speed limit or cutting people off or refusing to signal. He was an annoying bastard as far as Star was concerned and she could see why he spent so much time traveling, the man was not a people person.
She sighed idly running her fingers up and down the window, it was raining outside and the ground was a slushy mess.
“What’s eatin you?”
The words he spit at her carried the scent of his cigar, which was wafting through the enclosed cab.
She wanted to say she was sick of the road, sick of driving from place to place; she wanted to stay in one place for a period of time longer than 48 hours and wake up in a bed she knew she’d be sleeping in for more than one night at a time. Instead she just shrugged her shoulders and replied with a generic
“Nothin.”
Before returning her averted gaze to the window letting her thoughts whirl. They had one full day ahead of them before they reached Westchester. They’d stop for the night, their last night together on the road, they’d leave at dawn the next day. Logan had made it very clear they weren’t leaving at ten after or twenty after or even fifteen after, the minute the sun rose he was gone with or without her. She knew the logic behind his thinking, he wanted rid of her. Girl couldn’t say she blamed him; she hadn’t exactly made things easy for him. That just made it easier for her not to care though; she didn’t expect Logan to be in her life for more than a week, better to not make a friend of him. Logan knew if he drove the whole day then they would arrive at Xavier’s around six pm. She hoped going there was a good idea…
She sighed again.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Logan biting on the end of his cigar in agitation; he took it out balancing it between two fingers.
“Got something on yer mind?”
“Yeah,” she paused swallowing.
He looked surprised, they still hadn’t exchanged information beyond names and she refused to tell him her real name. He didn’t hate her, but he didn’t like her and he certainly wasn’t going to extend anymore of an olive branch than he already had. After all, the girl, if you could call her that, was still breathing. He had to get points for not turning her into mince meat. Maybe after their time on the road she was finally going to open up a little bit?
“You drive like shit.”
He growled, low and menacingly. Oh man did Xavier owe him for this one; he grumbled for another mile before returning the cigar to its perch between his teeth and went back to ignoring the irritating person in his front seat.
They parked in the lot of a respectable looking hotel, a much nicer place than the foul motels Logan usually frequented.
He’d changed his choice in venues for two reasons. The biggest one was to keep the girl he was traveling with from bitching, two nights of staying in places where hookers took their marks or where the drug dealers came to count their cash and Star wouldn’t step foot in another one. Wouldn’t shut the hell up about it either, Logan had almost killed her the way she carried on making his ears bleed. The second reason was because after he and her had passed an obvious drug deal, being conducted by men with guns he figured that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t exposed to that, she seemed too young to see such things- not that she had told Logan her age or…any other piece of information about her. Besides, if he got shot by unruly drug dealers he’d be back on his feet in a few minutes, she wouldn’t.
Logan had never been a particularly lucky man; you just didn’t wake up naked and bloody in the snow to have amnesia the only constant in your life just to call yourself lucky. Luck had never really entered his life one way or another good or bad he took care of himself and he never really gave it much thought. However after days of traveling with Star on the road he began to slowly realize that she was a magnet for bad luck. Point in case, standing in the lobby of a hotel that you don’t want to pay for, buying a room you only need because of the teenage mutant nuisance who invited herself into your life, as you’re being told by a man you’d like to seriously introduce to your claws that there aren’t any rooms in town due to some moronic conference or convention or something equally unappealing to Logan and to top it all of the only room that is available in this hotel is a room with a single bed.
Previously mentioned clerk also informed Logan that the room available had a bed that was standard size and unbeknownst to the clerk Logan had a big issue with that because where the hell was Star going to sleep? One room bed you can bet your sweet ass Logan was taking it, she could curl up on the floor for all he cared. Up until this point they had always gotten a room with two bed and if not two beds then one bed and at least a couch. Finally the clerk announced that all the standard rooms came with a couch. Hey the little urchin needed some place to sleep, the couch was good enough!
Originally, he wanted the bed. Star bitched and moaned until Logan conceded defeat and Star was allowed to sleep on the bed. His only condition for giving up the bed was that Star wasn’t allowed to speak for the rest of the night, not a peep. She kept her word and three hours later any onlooker would see Star wrapped up cozy in the blankets and Logan sleeping in an awkward position, feet dangling off the side of the couch, and head propped up uncomfortably.
Star was an extremely light sleeper and even though she was asleep, she could still hear them. It wasn’t the first night she’d woken up to Logan grunting in his sleep. The first time he’d woken himself up and gone back to sleep and Star assumed that he was having a wet dream or something along those lines. This night hadn’t been any different, she could hear him moaning and groaning and she could hear his mouth, slack and lazy with sleep trying to form the sound of someone’s name. Marine? Sounded like it to her sleep addled brain, and the moaning continued. Star burrowed her head into her pillow and tried to resist the urge to go over and hold his nose or something to get him to wake up.
Eventually the moans got worse and Star, who wasn’t asleep anymore now, was occupying herself by listening acutely to the sounds coming from the man on the couch. She realized that the sounds he had been making had changed, these new noises sounded harsh and gruffer, almost raw. Before the noises had been intense and almost breathy…well as breathy as a man like Logan could get. Now they sounded almost….frightening? He was nearly barking in his sleep, growling and flopping on the couch. Star sighed annoyed; leave it to a man like Logan who lived for the thrill of the fight to be dreaming about a good brawl right after a sex dream. She flipped over eagerly seeking the magical position that would lure her back into unconsciousness, but suddenly Logan let out a whimper and Star never knew what possessed her but she picked up one of her pillows and threw it at him. She figured this was the least aggressive way she could wake him, after all he’d sprung for this little venture to Westchester.
Shint
The sound of Logan’s claws coming out seconds before a feral growl ripped through the air alerted Star that something was wrong. For a minute she thought Logan had sensed someone coming and was preparing for a real fight because he never unleashed his claws unless something was up. Star sat up faster than she thought possible and stumbled with clumsy sleep affected lethargic limbs struggling to turn the lamp on the bedside on. As she fumbled for the switch on the lamp she heard the sound of the claws ripping through something and cranked on the lamp just in time to see Logan mercilessly butchering the pillow.
It occurred to her that the man sitting on the couch in front of her had most definitely NOT awoken from a sex dream. Sweat clung to him like grapes to the vine and his skin glittered in the thin yellow light of the lamp. His eyes were wild and unfocused, they sifted uneasily around like that of a predator, Star had never seen him like this and she called to him tentatively.
“Lo-logan?”
Her voice cracked and his eyes were on her with such velocity that she cursed her fear. She got the distinct impression that it would be very wise to not be giving off the scent of fear right now.
Logan’s eyes were on her but they were clouded and unclear, he stared right at her but didn’t see her and she wondered what images danced before his eyes at that moment. She spoke again and this time her voice was soothing and placating, nothing like her own voice. The voice one would use to coax a scared cat out of a tree or to assure a person on a suicide hotline not to jump.
“Logan, it’s okay, it’s me, Star, you okay?”
At the sound of her name his eyes cleared and she was grateful that her annoying presence in his life had packed enough of a punch to bring him to awareness at a time like this.
He breathed in, one, two and three deep breaths blowing them out nosily. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to calm himself and regain his composure if he was trying to sniff the air and gain his bearings-she’d seen him do it on more than one occasion. He looked at her at a loss for words, he looked down at the rug and she deemed it safe enough to approach him. She climbed out of the bed and walked over to him, taking a seat next to him at the couch, the sheet he was sleeping one was completely soaked with his sweat sitting on it brought memories to Star of sitting on a park bench after the rain. What the hell had he been dreaming about?
“Nightmare?”
Her voice still sounded croaky because it was thick with sleep, even if she did feel more alert.
He nodded.
“Want to sleep in the bed?”
He looked at her immediately, one eyebrow shooting up into his hairline.
“With you?”
She snorted by force of habit.
“You wish bub,” she smirked at him hoping he took it as a joke and not an insult, “no by yourself; if you let me change the sheets then I’ll switch with you.”
It was the first nice thing she’d ever-and Logan meant- EVER done for him since they’d started traveling together. He seriously felt his heart stop beating for a minute, purely out of shock.
“Nah, that’s okay kid, I just need a minute. Go back to bed.”
“I don’t know, you killed my pillow.”
“You threw it at me.”
“Well I heard you grunting I didn’t know what you were dreaming about..”
The way she let her voice trail off and dropped her gaze to the floor alerted Logan that she thought he was dreaming about something that wasn’t PG rated.
“Uh-huh and what did you think?”
He studied her; this was the closest they’d gotten to normal conversation.
He couldn’t imagine someone as young as her being on the road, she looked 16 at most. She had short brown hair which when Logan first seen it had appeared to be a dark mahogany color. Of course that later turned out to because she had been deprived of a shower for a good long while and when he’d taken her to their first motel room and she’d washed her hair, she turned out to have a very light colored hair almost brown with very light blond streaks running through it. Her eyes were hazel and actually similar to his own except instead of being more green like his were Star’s eyes had a great amount of gold coloring on them, and reminded him of wheat. He wondered if all the gold coloring in her hair and eyes came from her mutation but he never questioned it enough to think on it. To Logan Star looked like a really sweet girl- UNTIL she opened her mouth that of course shattered any illusions.
She finally answered him, but it was with another question, he guessed she was avoiding an embarrassing situation.
“Who’s Maurine?”
“Maurine?”
His tone was skeptical and questioning.
“Yeah, Maurine or Marine or just Marn- you don’t exactly annunciate in your sleep.
Logan wasn’t one for blushing but if not for the fact that this girl’s opinion meant next to nothing to him, be probably would have been doing just that. Marie is who she was thinking of. Maybe he had been having one those dreams, truth was he just didn’t remember and he told Star as much.
“Listen, these dreams I have these nightmares, I don’t know what the hell they’re off I don’t have memories of this, it’s just a nightmare.”
Star sort of smiled this slow and lazy looking smile that looked a little bit like sympathy. That really pissed Logan
“Listen kid don’t go givin me those wounded little girl looks, I ain’t lookin for any pity-“
At that moment she couldn’t have explained exactly what possessed her to do it and it would take her months before she pinpointed the exact reason was because she felt close to Logan in this brief instance and it was a good feeling, the last time she’d felt close to someone had been almost a year ago. The human connection never failed to bring out her stupid side and this moment in time, although she couldn’t know just then, would always serve for the rest of her life as a reminder of that lesson. Sharing with others wasn’t such a good idea but Logan’s wounded pride made her step forward and offer something that wasn’t’ her’s to give.
“It’s not pity! I just…I get it okay. I don’t have…. Ah fuck it never mind.”
Star got up to leave the couch and she felt a very sharp grasp lacing around her wrist-damn! She knew Logan was strong but she could honestly say she couldn’t have walked another inch if she truly wanted to.
She sat back down because she seemed to have his attention and that wasn’t such a bad thing now that she thought about it.
His eyes were searching her face and he seemed to nod his head a little giving her the green light, and when she still didn’t speak he vocalized his wishes.
“Go ahead.”
She began to talk in a little whisper hoping that this slight half truth wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass.
“I don’t know a whole lot about what happened to me, I gave myself the name Star, I don’t know who I am or where I’m from and I don’t know what happened to me or how I came to be, I woke up and I was in Canada and I discovered from there my mutation and then I was trying to get to Alaska.”
It occurred to her in those moments that she really didn’t know a whole lot about Logan and his life and she never dreamed in a 1,000 years that her telling him what she had just said would ever have the effect on him that it was having.
He put a gruff and callused hand over her’s, it covered her entire hand. He gave her a spotty smile and simply said:
“I know all about that.”
The surprise was clearly written on her face and Logan never elaborated or told her what he meant by that. She wasn’t confused though, she sensed it was something she wasn’t allowed to ask about and Logan merely slipped off the couch and went to the bathroom. She heard the water running, heard him splashing water on his face and chest. While he was in there she changed the sheets on the couch, glad that Logan had asked for extra sheets. She discarded of the sweat soaked sheet by rolling the offending fabric into a ball and tossing it into a corner. She took the sheet off her own bed and threw it haphazardly over the couch and tucked the corners in trying to make it as neat as possible.
She kept the fitted sheet on the bed and threw the extra pillow that had been on the couch over to the bed which only had one pillow due to Logan’s little slashing nightmare. She curled up the couch and threw the blanket over herself and turned out the light. Logan was still in the bathroom but she got the sense they were done talking for the evening.
Eventually he did come out, a good fifteen minutes later, and despite its lumps and rough spots Star was semi-asleep on the couch when he came out of the bathroom.
He grunted over her sleeping form and lightly kicked her with his foot.
“Kid, you don’t gotta sleep here, I said the couch was fine.”
A muffled
“Shut up before I change my mind” brought the first and only smile to Logan’s lips as a reaction to something coming out of Star’s mouth and that was the end of it. He shuffled off to bed and the next day they hit the road.
Star knew something was different from the moment she opened her eyes, because Logan acted nothing like himself the next day. He was kind and considerate towards her, he waited patiently for her to get ready and never even barked at her once when she dilly dallied, taking her time. He asked if she wanted breakfast-a first- and Star wondered if he’d been zapped by aliens while they slept. She analyzed his behavior all morning and noted his attentiveness when after being on the road for an hour he spotted her rubbing her hands and wordlessly put on the heater.
Maybe it was his dream? He felt vulnerable? Maybe it was because she had taken the couch and given him the bed? Maybe it was their talk the night before? “I know all about that” didn’t seem to Star as a breakthrough but she couldn’t guess at Logan’s behavior and just pondered to herself mostly until they arrived at the mansion.
Star had to bit her lips from gasping, she thought it would make her look entirely too naïve when they pulled up in front of Xavier’s. She couldn’t stop the wonder that crept up into her gaze though and she had to appreciate the fact that there were friendly people behind those white washed walls, people who wouldn’t judge her or abandon her…well not because she was a mutant anyhow.
The next series of events happened in a blur and Star found it hard to keep track of everything that was going on around her. Logan and her parked in an over sized garage and Star nearly tripped over herself several times.
They parked and it wasn’t like she thought it would be, with fireworks and a clamor at their arrival, the merely stopped the truck, hopped out and walked through the garage. Mustangs, Harley’s, Bentley’s and Cadillac’s greeted them and Star, who knew little to nothing about cars was still impressed with the sleek shiny newness of everything.
Star was in a daze from the first mutant she met to the time she came before the professor. The events of the day blurred into one long standing moment and Star did her best to keep up. She met several older adults, the famed telepath Jean Grey, who Star had only ever seen on TV before when she was being filmed walking into a meeting in Washington. She met a rather large blue man who quoted William Shakespeare upon meeting her, Dr. Grey’s husband Scott, who for all intense purposes was man meat personified, the man was hot! She met a charming woman with white hair which looked strikingly like spun silver hanging out of her head and dazzling blue eyes. Sometimes people’s mutations affected their outward appearance and Star made a mental note to ask that lady what her’s was.
There were many other people to meet after that and faces and voices and mutations blurred together in a dizzying whirl and she was shocked to cast a glance at the grandfather clock sitting in the hall which proudly proclaimed that it was 9pm. She hadn’t even so much as seen Logan since she’d arrived, where the hell had he gone? She met a bunch of students who referred to themselves as the jr. X-men, incidentally the same people who gave her the 411 on the real X-men and a few school rumors. The jr. X-men, as she was told, were students who still attended the school but who had trained for and participated in a few minor missions. It was hard to keep code names and regular names separate but she managed.
Ironically she still hadn’t met Professor Xavier at this point, and Star realized what made it ironic was that she didn’t think there was any other reason to be here other than to meet him, but upon arriving she had found plenty. Schooling, kids like her, a team of undercover mutants fighting bad guys- that could only be fun.
Eventually Dr. Grey told her that Professor Xavier was waiting for her in his office and Star almost fell down she was so nervous, he was not only powerful telepath but the* leading voice in mutant rights. Now that she was walking towards his office trying hard to keep up with the long legs of Dr. Grey, she had to admit she was kind of scared.
Dr. Grey opened two thick wooden doors to revel a richly decorated room. Plush royal blue carpet crunched lightly under her feet, and thick red drapes hanging from golden ornate rods decorated two large French windows. In the middle of the room there was a beautiful mahogany desk and behind it sat the one person that Star had ever come close to admiring.
Her first instinct of course was to introduce herself by her full name, and offer her hand but she blushed realizing that she couldn’t do that because she’d told Logan she had no memories, would the professor know if she were lying or not?
The professor broke the silence.
“Hello my name is Professor Xavier, welcome to my school. I understand you’ve already met Dr. Grey and of course you know Logan.”
He gestured to his left.
She looked up and noticed for the first time that Logan was standing in the left foremost corner of the room, where the hell had he come from?
She mumbled a very lame how do you do because she didn’t want to introduce herself to her idol by the name Star.
“Star, it seems you’ve given Logan quite the hard time.”
She looked down; she supposed car theft was probably frowned upon here.
It was awkward for her having to act polite in front of Logan; after all she’d shown him a couple of sides of herself but not that one.
“Yeah I didn’t make this trip easy for him, but he handled it well.”
“Logan tells me you’ve had some problems remembering your past?”
She shot Logan such a fuming gaze loaded with malice that not only would it have melted ice, but it would have taken the resulting water and boiled it. She thought she saw him react briefly but then he put his stoic face back into place and chewed on the end of an unlit cigar.
She licked dry lips before she replied.
“ Some trouble with my memories, yes.”
It wasn’t a total lie; it was just a far cry from the truth.
Xavier turned ancient eyes towards Logan and asked in a gentlemanly manner if he would excuse the two of them and extended his proposal to Dr. Grey who stood obediently in the corner. They both nodded before walking out of the room.
“Please sit.”
She sat on one of the lush chairs upholstered in leather and looked out across the desk.
For the next half hour Xavier spoke with her in a kind and almost loving manner explaining to her the way things worked at the school, how some parents knew their children were there and knew it was a school for mutants and how most parents assumed it to be a prep school for gifted youngsters. The rest of the student body was made up of mutants who had run away from troubled environments. Even though he never said so Star got the distinct feeling that the runaway category was the one in which Xavier was sorting her.
Logan sat in his nursing a beer, not his first since he’d returned, thinking over what the professor had said. He had yet to see Rogue because when he’d returned she’d been out shopping with that girl Jubilation Lee. According to the professor, they had been practicing her ability to control her mutation. Logan sighed forlornly he wanted her to be able to control her mutation, he was happy to hear she’d been having small break through’s, but if he was happy for her then why did he feel this way?
Logan had to admit that the idea of a touchable Marie created a tight swelling in his chest and Logan realized it was a mix of pride and desire that tied the knot there. That girl deserved a slice of normal in a life that hadn’t been very nice to her, but even as he thought that he realized he wasn’t considered normal because hell he wasn’t normal and he definitely wasn’t the best she could do.
Marie and Logan had undoubtedly grown closer and their friendship had blossomed into something that Logan never could have expected at this stage in his life. Logan first left the mansion after the statue of Liberty and he’d returned six months later, almost to the day. He’d reclaimed his dog tags and struck up his friendship with Rogue, who at the time had been one of the few people in the mansion to truly accept his way of wondering in and out of the mansion, no questions asked. Storm was always welcoming and Jean seemed refined, almost compassionate but withdrawn but Logan suspected that had more to do with her desire to roll in the hay than anything else, and Scott of course was…well…a dick.
Hey, that’s life.
He hadn’t stayed long after his first time being back, maybe three weeks or a month before he was gone again and chasing another lead. He found Marie that night, she had just turned eighteen and he’d given her a cup cake with a candle because…that was just about the extent of his party attitude. She’d blushed and Logan felt his lips tugging up into a smile at the memory. He’d left about a week after her birthday but not before giving her his tags, a wink and roughish grin that held a lot of promise. Mind you what he was promising he didn’t quite know himself, but he hoped it conveyed the message of “see you soon and then we can have some fun.” Only trouble was Logan and Marie probably had very different ideas of what fun was, he could think of a few things she probably didn’t even know existed that could be a LOT of fun.
Another eight months on the road and Logan came back again, pretty much to identical events as his first return. Jean was friendlier though and warmer somehow, the ring Scott had put on her finger was restriction enough to ever flare an attraction between them further and Logan had accepted that, much to his surprise, without issue. Of course that didn’t stop him from flirting shamelessly, if for no other reason than to piss Scott off.
A rough little laugh coming out of his mouth disturbed the silence of his room as he snaked through his memories.
The rest of the team had been more welcoming, they were getting used to him and he stayed that time for nearly five months before another lead presented itself. Marie turned nineteen, they drank beer together when no one was looking and he’d share his cigars with her because she loved the smell of them, which she confessed had come from him. Sometimes he’d walk by her room and smell the pungent odor and laugh ruefully to himself because he was one of the few people who knew she’d leave them burning just for the smell.
Two months later he had come back and to stay for good and found that even though Marie was still technically a teenager at nineteen, she was blossoming into a hell of a woman. She attended college classes, which he wouldn’t lie made him damn proud, and he watched her for a few months as her hips took on the sway that had nothing to do with being a kid and everything to do with growing up, he watched as she got less shy around the men, especially a Cajun who Logan had almost throttled twice for the way he suggestively brushed up again Marie in the hall, and Logan even had the distinct pleasure of watching Marie go on her first mission.
More missions followed after that and Marie went on them because she was part of the team, but Logan would be damned if her presence didn’t drive him to distraction every time. Her first mission hadn’t been a combative one, Logan, Scott and Rogue had gone to pick up a stranded mutant in Montana, a girl who was having trouble controlling her mutation of moving gravel and rocks. It was Rogue’s first mission and Logan had agreed to come just because it was Rogue’s first mission and they had asked Rogue to come just because it was a safe mission for her first time. The next missions that would include Wolverine and Rogue would turn out to be decidedly more dangerous and Wolverine had sustained injuries more than once protecting her.
He laughed again just a little because he realized most girls would have loved an extra pair of eyes watching their back in a combat situation, not Rogue. Not his Marie, she all but beat him up herself after the last time. They’d been heavily outnumbered and he was busy trying to kill a very large robotic enemy when he realized Rogue was cornered and on the verge of passing out, can’t absorb an enemies life source when you’re fighting a metal machine. Logan had forgotten about his enemy and rushed over to save her. He’d taken out her target no problem but his target struck him with a vengeance from behind and Logan went down for the count. For any other man this would be a problem but for Logan it simply meant that the Wolverine was unleashed. Wolverine was his code name and it was also the name of the beast which lurked inside of him, when Logan came to near death experiences the animal came out and this situation was no exception.
It wasn’t the first time it had happened and it wasn’t even the first time he felt shame over losing control, but it was the first time it had happened in front of Rogue and for some reason the idea of her knowing that about him, truly knowing that and seeing it for herself (because hearing and seeing it up close were two totally different things) really scared him. In the moments when the Wolverine took over Logan would lose his manhood as he succumbed to a berserker like rage which, granted, saved his life but temporarily robbed him of his civilities. Logan thought of himself as more man than animal but…sometimes even he had to wonder.
Others on the team didn’t judge him but they didn’t look at him as a regular guy they saw him for what he really was. A man who was holding a leash which was tight around the neck of a fierce and dangerous animal, and clearly the man sometimes dropped the leash. The other members of the team looked at him like he was a man who controlled a beast and sometimes allowed for that control to get turned around. He knew they didn’t realize that when Wolverine came out it wasn’t with Logan’s permission.
Some of the X-men who were nearly twice her age viewed him as a possible threat and tiptoed on egg shells around him, but Marie never did. Marie never did that, not even once in all the time he’d known her. Now that was saying something! The time when he saved her life and let out Wolverine in front of her, she would describe it to him later as knowing it wasn’t really her Logan , and she had used those words while she blushed furiously, but still feeling safe all the same. Logan knew it was right for her to feel safe because he would never hurt her and he knew Wolverine would only die trying to save her. It was a realization which comforted him and plagued him at the same time.
She was nearly twenty now, but that still seemed too young to Logan for her to know what you wanted out of life. To know who she wanted, Marie had gotten her own room when she’d turned eighteen and Logan’s wasn’t far from it. Due to the proximity of their rooms he knew she’d never had any other men in her room but wondered if she ever let anyone else in her heart. She’d dated Bobby and at times she even seemed interested in the Cajun, Logan wondered if anything had changed while he was gone this time getting Star out of Canada, not that that had been his original intent upon leaving.
This was a short trip, and he’d only been gone a month, high up in the boonies of Canada and skirting over the edge of the border into Alaska, to go get her that damned postcard because he knew how much Marie wanted to see the Northern Lights. Marie was his best friend, he knew that’s what she was even though he’d never had a best friend before, or one he could recall at least. They ate together, laughed together, drank together and lived together when Logan stayed in one place long enough. On missions they were team mates fighting side by side to protect one another. The various months on and off that Logan resided at the mansion were happy times between the two of them and he and Marie would fall into an easy routine. A routine that Logan found he missed more than he, or any other self respecting man, would be willing to admit. Life in the mansion with Marie was easy, she would smoke cigars with him and talk about life, and she’d curl up next to him without a second thought and watch, impressively for a girl, the roughest and most gruesome of hockey games. Marie would drink beer with him and grimace in a way that scrunched up her eyebrows and made her mouth dry up because Marie hated the taste of beer but craved it something fierce and Logan would laugh at that and the faces she made. On nights when the nightmares overtook her she’d creep into his bed, after he’d stabbed her once while he slept! Marie never turned him away and never regarded him with fear or distaste. He sighed, audibly and heavily, maybe things would be a lot simpler if she did.
Logan growled harshly to himself, he had to remind himself that just because she had touchable skin, it didn’t mean it was there for him to touch. Besides, he was being ridiculous, rogue had even learned to control her mutation yet, he still had time to clear his head.
A knock at the door made him jump.
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