Logan was asleep on the single lounge chair Scott had managed to squeeze on out on our balcony, the butt of a cigar on the ground below his dangling hand. A book lay open on his chest. The Things They Carried, judging by the color of the cover. So very fitting.
Turning over so I my feet were dangling toward the ground, I slowed my decent and landed beside his chair. Studying his face, I wondered if I should wake him up. He was exhaustion personified, but he didn’t look terribly comfortable, stiff as he was, his features drawn up in an immobile scowl. No rapid eye movement, so he wasn’t having a nightmare. I laughed soundlessly. Only Logan could be dead to the world and still look plenty pissed off by it.
Slowly, I leaned down to brush my lips against his forehead, trying hard not to remember that touch was equal parts joy and agony.
Reflex kicked in before I had time to intellectually register the hand clamping around mine or the other shooting toward my throat. I caught his wrist, yelping, “Easy!”
The tips of Logan’s claws pushed against the skin between his knuckles but didn’t slice through. In the span of three accelerated heartbeats, his disquietingly vicious expression flattened.
“Marie,” he stated, as if to remind himself.
He released my hand. I let go of his wrist. We watched each other’s finger marks fade.
“Didn’t mean to do that,” he apologized, turning away.
I forced my tone casual. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m a lot stronger than I used to be.”
Rubbing his wrist as he glanced back me, he said in all seriousness, “I’m glad.”
“That’s not the only thing different about me. You missed my grand entrance.” Drawing up my body like Kurt used to when he stood before an audience at the Munich Circus, I leaped into a series of flips that would make him proud. When I touched down on the edge of the balcony, Logan had both eyebrows raised.
Grinning, I struck a Wonder Woman pose. Also fitting, because if there was anything Logan and I needed it was a Lasso of Truth – we’d finally get everything we needed to say out in the open and then we’d still have time for some light bondage play afterward. “Duh-duh-daa-daaaa! Be impressed.”
Logan feigned non-interest. He looked up at the cloudless sky. “Nice weather we’re having.”
“Spoilsport,” I laughed, plopping my butt down gracelessly on the rail. Logan winced at that, so I teetered on the edge of falling just to give him a hard time.
He shook his head. “You worry me, kid.”
“Same to you, bub. But fear not. I inherited a lot of things from you,” I admitted. “Your Molson addiction, your inexplicable penchant for giant belt buckles – I kicked your death wish a long time ago.” That last part I said seriously. If we were going to talk, we weren’t going to do it halfway. I wanted to start with the only thing about Logan’s nature that truly frightened me: his lack of self-regard.
Logan closed his book as he sat forward, his legs going to either side of the long chair. He looked at me expectantly, his expression asking me if I really wanted to get into this. I committed by sliding off the balcony and sitting cross-legged at the end of the lounge. No running this time.
“Marie, you remember – In Canada when I about left you cold out in the middle of nowhere. You remember what you said to me?”
The corner of my mouth tugged up. “Of course I do. I said, ‘I saved your life,’ and you said, ‘No you didn’t’ like a big, ungrateful jerk.”
“Right,” he replied wryly. “But you didn’t save my life in the bar. First time you touched me, that’s when you did it.”
“You mean the first time I almost killed you.” So I’d scared him out of wanting to die. Great.
“The first time you let me save your life,” Logan countered. “I should’ve killed you. About anybody else would’ve died, and I would’ve been…You were just some girl, world-weary but charming as hell, with one of those big, bright futures ahead of you. For the worst second of my life, I thought I stole that from you. Then you took it back. You gave me a second chance. Then you gave me a third chance, when I thought I was too late. You’ve given me nothin’ but chances, and I won’t ever be able to pay you back for ’em.”
I looked at him quizzically. “You made me a promise when I didn’t have a single person in the whole, wide world. If it weren’t for you, I never would’ve trusted Professor Xavier. I’d be alone. I’d be dead, or I’d be alone.”
“That promise – I’ve let you down more than once.”
“Just the once.” I poked at the chair’s canvas covering. “I told myself a million times that I understood why you left – but two years?”
Logan let out a weary sigh through his nose. “Two years to do what? Locate the base? That took three months. The rest of it…We started a war. Takes a bit of doing.”
“War?” My brain could hardly process the word. “Mutants against humans?”
“Civilian against military. Mutants on both sides. Some against their will.”
“I don’t understand. How can there be a war nobody’s even heard of? It’s 2014. A bomb goes off in Burundi and CNN’s got full coverage within the hour.”
“You think if something’s not televised it’s not happening? It’s been nearly a decade since anybody’s had eyes on the ground in ’Nam.” Logan shrugged. “But I get your point. Nothing stays internal forever. Get major cities involved, somebody’s bound to notice. That’s why we had to get out of there. How would it look?”
“Okay…” I thought about taking the high road, but forced myself to say what I really wanted to. “But you were in contact with the Professor. I didn’t hear a word from you. Not a phone call, not one letter. A message the Professor could give me – ‘Miss you, kid.’ ‘Wish you were here, you’d like the food,’ ‘Met a local girl the other day. Needed repeated saving, reminded me of you.’ Nothing. Two years. Why?”
“Because – ” Logan scrubbed both hands over his face. “Because I knew, every time I talked to you, you’d ask me to come home, and I would want to. Every time I thought about you, I wanted to. I couldn’t have that. I needed to be soldier.”
He reached behind him to pull out his wallet. He dumped out a stack of ripped, glossy scraps and dropped them between us. One of them had part of my face on it.
The eight pieces the picture of us had been torn into were all accounted for. I fit them together like a puzzle. I gave him that picture before he left. I wanted him to remember me – remember us – by it.
“Why’d you tear it up?” I asked as neutrally as possible.
“I didn’t. Dragon did.”
I hadn’t expected that answer. “Why?”
“To teach me a lesson.”
“About being a soldier?”
“Yeah.” He scooped the pieces back up and placed them back in his wallet. “I would’ve fixed it, but I didn’t have any tape.”
“I’ll get you a new picture.”
“I don’t want a new picture.”
“I’ll get you some tape, then.” My eyes were stinging, and for once it wasn’t out of self-pity. “I’m not sorry I kept you from being the perfect soldier, whatever that means. We’re supposed to be the good guys. No one should ask you to give up yourself like that. I don’t care what the cause is.”
Logan shook his head. “I’m a soldier. That’s who I am. Civil War to Vietnam and more – That’s my past. That’s all I ever was. Soldier.”
“What? No –”
“A hundred and fifty plus years. It’s in the file. Vietnam is when I started working with Stryker. His special project.”
“He indoctrinated you.”
“What the hell did he have to indoctrinate? All that blood – ” Logan stopped himself. Closed his eyes, held his breath.
It was agony to watch his face. I wanted to look away, but I didn’t dare in case he opened his eyes and caught me.
“I – I don’t believe that. You can’t believe that. One hundred and fifty years is a long time. No one can go that long without loving someone. No one. You had a family once. You had a name.”
“James Howlett,” he gritted out, almost like it was one word. Then he looked at me.
I was astonished. I instantly had a million questions. The one that came out was, “And ‘Logan’?”
“I used it as my alias even before I started working with Stryker. It doesn’t say why.” He paused. “And I don’t know how I remembered it, when I’ve forgotten everything else.” He shrugged. “But I thought it could be mine, so I kept it.”
“Logan is yours. You made it yours, just like you made yourself so much more than a soldier. You are more. You’ve got to know that.”
He reached over still my hands. I froze, not realizing how badly I’d twisted my gloves. He drew one off by the tip. The other one he left for me to take off myself.
“I do know that,” he said after a moment. “Like I said before, I owe you.”
I rested my bare hand on his forearm.
He’d given me touch. I wanted to use it to comfort him. Lightly, I trailed my fingertips down the raised vein in his arm.
Eyes on our skin, he said, “It’s good that you can still do that.”
A terrible sort of hope against hope swelled inside of me. Before, he’d apologized for being the one who could touch me. But that had been two years ago. To me, it sounded like he’d changed his mind. Could be that he’d changed his mind about other things between us, too.
A sigh, almost a groan, escaped his throat. “You can’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” Shyly, I caught my lower lip.
This time it was definitely a groan. “C’mere.” Impelling me by my elbows, he turned me around and pulled me toward him so my back rested against his chest.
As I tried to settle into one of our old, friendly cuddles, the thump of my heart was embarrassingly loud. His arms enveloped mine, skin touching skin all the way up. I was self-consciously rigid for a long few minutes, before I let myself suddenly relax into him. Logan surrounded me so fully, I could feel our connection open once more. Whatever he was thinking was warm and tucked me in better and safer than any cocoon ever could.
Nuzzling my face under his chin, I asked, “Do you think the reason you were so willing to believe the solider explanation is because it’s easier? I mean, easier than knowing that there’s still a lot about your past you don’t know. Like, I know going back to Vietnam was supposed to be the end of your search, but now you just have more questions.”
“Yeah,” he agreed succinctly.
“That’s sort of how I felt when I read my file this morning. I was expecting...a lot more. But it’s just a version of what happened. A really clean, really nonjudgmental version. You’d think I’d be happy, right? But I’m like you. Good or bad, I just want the truth. I’ll never have that. I can’t even remember it right, and I was there.”
He didn’t have to ask what “it” was. He knew. And he didn’t have to ask me to talk to him, because I started telling him my side of it immediately. To the best of my ability, I took responsibility for what I’d done – me, not Warbird. She was merely an influence. I should’ve been stronger than her.
I hadn’t been, and because of that I’d hurt people. Not only John, but others as well. I didn’t have names to match with a lot of the faces. An older man, the landlord of the building the Brotherhood had decided to use. I could still hear the sickening pop his index finger had made as I twisted it into snapping. The landlord had given in quickly after that, which had been disappointing to me. But his agreement to forgo the issue of rend indefinitely went a long way in securing the Brotherhood’s trust in me. I’d done more than that. A lot of worse things, some better. I’d said horrible things, too. Especially to Jubilee. Warbird had had a vendetta against her since Jubilee had nearly bested her in the fight in the metro rail.
Reliving the whole godawful experience was cathartic in a way. I got it all out. I didn’t cry, which surprised me. My eyes were actually painfully dry. I talked until I didn’t have anything more to say. It took a long silence before either of us realized that I was through. Letting out a shaky sigh of release, I sat forward so I could look at Logan. His expression conveyed his open, unspoken fury.
“I didn’t tell you that so you’d feel angry or sorry for me. I wanted to make it right between us. No secrets. We don’t need to pretend to be perfect for each other. We’re better the way we are.”
His scowl turned helpless. “I should’ve been there. I would’ve found you.”
“I didn’t want to be found. Besides, you’re here now. When I actually have the ability to appreciate your help. That’s good enough for me.”
All harshness in his features softened. “You deserve more.”
“Logan, what does that even mean?”
“It means – I don’t know. Good stuff. Stuff you can count on.”
“Well, sure. Everybody wants that. Don’t you?” He didn’t respond, so I said, “I want that for you.”
“Thanks.” There was a hint of derisiveness in his voice.
“Just so you know, being able to count on something and being trapped by it aren’t the same.”
“Yeah?” Doubtlessly, he wasn’t thrilled with the way this conversation was going, but he was willing to humor me.
“One’s usually a positive connotation, the other’s always negative.”
“The positive one’s worse. You count on something because you want it. If you want something, you’re trapping yourself.”
“You get what you want. So what if you’re trapped?”
“Then you can’t get out.”
“Why would you want to?”
“Maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you have to.”
“But why?”
“’Cause maybe it’s not healthy, loving anything that much.”
My breath caught, inaudibly. His hazel eyes were so compelling I had a hard time forming a reply. Finally, I said, “Not healthy or too scary?”
Logan clenched his jaw. “Not healthy.”
My eyes fell to my bare hands, which were clasped in my lap. “If you don’t wanna talk about this, I’ll shut up right now. I’ll – I’ll back off.”
He cursed lowly.
“What?” Was he mad at me now? I thought I was doing him a favor.
“Marie…” He said my name like it was painful.
“No, no. I don’t mean back off like I did before. Not from our friendship. I just mean – Well, you know.” I feigned a shrug. “Wanting more.”
He still looked like he wanted to stand up and flip over the chair.
“Logan. What?”
Gesturing decisively with one hand, he stated, “Either way you look at it, I end up a selfish bastard.”
“Not following.”
“Forget it. Forget everything, all right? Can’t we…Let’s just see what happens.”
How noncommittal of him. I leaned back against him, hiding my stunned expression. Logan was willing to try. He was willing to give me what little he thought he had piece by piece, trusting me not to screw him over again.
“We’ll see what happens,” I echoed.
Logan answered by wrapping his arms around me again and burying his face into my neck. I concentrated on trying to make sure he felt the same comforting warmth I did.