Sitting in the darkness of the calm night, she actually considered whether or not she was trespassing. A few hours free of Mystique’s presence and she was suddenly back to being a consciousness citizen again. Wrapping her leather jacket tighter around herself, Rogue huddled against the antique bench and stared ahead at the three stone markers, that stood strong and proud among a batch of Storm’s blooming roses.
Her misty eyes trailing from each name to the next and back again.
Summers, Xavier, Grey, until they became nothing but an endless blur.
Closing her eyes, she tried to remember, tried to recall their faces, any recollection that wasn’t tainted or bogged down by the politics of being an X-Men, of being caught in a war of raging philosophies.
Exhaling, she released some of the tension in her body and relaxed her grip on her jacket as she felt no longer numb but simply tired. And as she breathed in through her nose, the sweet scent of Storm’s fresh roses clung to her senses and blocked out her memory of the smell of the fresh dirt they had laid upon the three graves sometime ago.
One day they had all been there and the next they were gone.
And then it had been the end of the world.
And she’d left them all to go and make a choice of her own and ever since then her thirst for independence was stained with a selfishness she couldn’t hide even from herself and it was so much easier to be cocky and to be angry then to admit the pain and the mistake.
Cure or no cure. What she kept inside of her was the regret in knowing she hadn’t been there for her friends.
Even if she felt Logan had grown distant from her, even if his obsession with Jean had caused her pain before and after her death, in the end she’d let that overtake the nature of who she was. She wasn’t a coward, but she’d run all the same in the end.
Rolling her neck, she kept her eyes closed as Scott’s warm smile danced behind her eyelids, a brief snapshot of a moment when the stern set of his lips had twitched at some joke she couldn’t remember and their Fearless Leader had been unable to remain serious and she remembered as he smiled, how she noticed his dimples and the boyish charm that he hid away because he felt he always had to be strong and in control and she wished she could hear his laughter once again that wasn’t weighed down with such seriousness.
Breathing in again, to keep the tears at bay as she recalled Jean’s sisterly gaze and slight touch to her covered shoulder in the middle of the night, in the kitchen where she’d learn she wasn’t the only one who made late night ventures for ice cream after a bad nightmare. Moments with Jean, where she got to see a glimpse into a woman whose life wasn’t as perfect as she thought and whose gaze she found could be filled with a knowing pain, that she thought wasn’t possible.
And Xavier’s sympathy that had come to erupt a flame of resentment inside of her wasn’t as strong as it once was and as she opened her eyes again, her orbs clear and focused she glanced around the large darkened grounds of Xavier’s and towards the distant mansion with a few lights still on where students were sleeping safely and all she could think was how lucky they were to have a place like this in a world torn between prejudice.
She spotted the orange tip of his cigar in the distance and found herself relaxing further against the back of the bench as soft footsteps approached. The tips of his hair outlined his shadowed form and she waited, feeling the urge to run drained and the act of sitting up straighter and drawing her features together into an inferior look the last thing on her mind.
Her body felt tired but her soul was begging for a rest.
Silently, Logan sat down beside her, his arm resting on the back behind her as he reached up and pulled the cigar out of his mouth. Her eyes followed the animated smoke as it settled into the night and she noticed the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d been carrying in his hand.
It was dark but she could make out his features in the night and she couldn’t gauge his expression but as his legs stretched out she recognized the same tiredness in him. The fight going out in both of them.
“How long you been sitting here?” he asked quietly, but his voice was hoarse with his usual gruffness.
“I don’t know to be honest.”
His chin dipped slightly as he nodded.
“Saw you a half an hour ago, but wasn’t sure if you’d been here longer.”
“You been watching me?”
“I had the bike gassed and was gunna start with that mutant bar. Figured, maybe if I pushed Pyro around a bit he’d give me some clues.”
She smiled a little, picturing that confrontation in her head.
“Well, no need to pop the claws and draw blood, you’ve found me.”
He nodded again and dragged on the cigar again.
“Why are you here?” he asked and she sensed the hesitation in his voice.
She shrugged.
“I needed to think.”
“Couldn’t have picked a more up-beat place?”
The corners of her lips twitched and she smiled slowly.
“I needed to remember some things as well.”
“I thought that was part of the problem,” he replied, and although his voice didn’t rise, she caught the bitterness.
“I don’t hate you, Logan.”
He tilted his head and faced her with a raw seriousness she found oddly endearing.
“You sure?” he asked with a scowl and turned away.
She heard the bottle of whisky swish around in his hand.
“Maybe, I don’t want to have to say goodbye, Logan.”
The creased scowl on his face vanished and she felt the sensation of his fingers twitching in the air behind her back and she leant back and felt his fingers still as they clasped her shoulder.
“Want a drink?” he murmured after a moment and his voice sounded rough and unused.
“No, I think I need to be aware of how hard reality is right now, as I just got my ass handed to me by it.”
He snorted roughly and pushed the bottle away from them along the bench.
“Where’s Mystique?”
“Do you really want to know?”
He glanced at her again.
“I want to know why you’re here.”
She smirked.
“I was just thinking about possible designs on rebuilding the shed,” she remarked as she glanced in the far distance at the still ruined remains.
Logan didn’t even blink and she rolled her eyes as she felt an odd airiness fill her, a giddiness that made her head and her heart feel lighter even as the reality of her life settled in, but for once she had a moment, a moment to breath and be still, without trying to find the most destructive way to get things done and it seemed right that Logan was by her side.
“I don’t know where she is,” she whispered. “And I don’t care.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she asked in surprise and watched as he searched for the words.
“That it didn’t work out between you two.”
She couldn’t help it, she burst out laughing but the expression on his face remained sincere.
“What?” she gasped.
He shrugged. “Just because I hated her doesn’t mean I wanted you to suffer, Rogue. As much as I didn’t understand it, it looked like maybe there was something important there.”
She sobered up immediately, the laugh catching in her throat as her eyes grew wide in fascination.
She knew what he was getting at. Another betrayal to add to her long list of ruined relationships.
But Mystique showing her true colours had not been a total loss. She watched Logan, and lingered on his face and the strong line of his jaw and the stubble that lined it and she didn’t feel the loss as much as she thought she might.
“Logan, what if one day your past comes and finds you?”
“I’ll deal with the consequences,” he replied stiffly, but there was a resolve in his voice she couldn’t recall, the urge, the need to hunt for his past had been laid to rest. “But I won’t be running away from the future.”
She nodded and glanced down.
“This place gives you enough?”
“No,” he responded with intensity in his eyes as he faced her that caused her to remember how to breathe.
“Oh,” she muttered and her eyes drifted towards the graves.
“I only found this place because of you and I only ever came back for you.”
She waited for the old argument to peak up in her head, that Jean had been why he’d come back but she stared forward and realized that some things where gone and buried and there was no point in bringing up dead insecurities.
“I don’t know who you think I am, Logan.”
“I ain’t one for talking a lot, I know that,” he began and rubbed the back of his neck. “But with you...it’s always been – You make it okay for me to rage against the world. You make me feel things, both good and bad and you always showed me how to question things deeper, how to be more than just angry and considered an animal, but as a man, as someone who can take part in this world.”
“You made me want to be a part of this,” he continued as he glanced up at the mansion. “You made me learn how to be grateful, how to care more than about just myself and when you’d left – you made me learn what it was to feel regret and shame. You were and are the person who showed me I could be more than just an animal.”
His claws slowly slid out.
“More than a weapon and even more than just a hero, but a man, just a person,” he whispered low.
Reaching over, she laid her gloved hands on his wrists and tenderly grazed his skin and she watched quietly as the claws slid back in.
Nodding at Xavier’s grave she spoke up and couldn’t hide the crack in her voice, “He use to encourage my attachment to you, said I kept you grounded, I think he knew it was the same for me. Who better to watch over the girl with killer skin than her adamantium immortal knight?”
Quickly, she looked up at him, realizing the harsh sarcasm that had leaked out with her last words.
“That’s not what I meant, not really,” she stuttered and sighed. “It was the same for me, Logan. You were my best friend and.....” she trailed off and looked away. “And I loved you.”
Her chest ached for a moment, but she felt relieved to finally say it, knowing it wasn’t anything earth shattering, but that she’d never actually told him.
His fingers reached up behind her shoulder and his gloved hand trailed the back of her neck and she arched into his touch.
“I was an idiot,” he replied.
And she laughed lightly, as she felt her eyes sparkle as she acknowledged his open stare.
“I was too afraid to accept what was right in front of me, so I ran.”
Leaning towards him, his other hand linked with hers as his cigar dropped forgotten towards the ground.
“I think I know something about that,” she whispered and licked her lips out of habit as his eyes followed her motion.
Tenderly, he pulled the green scarf loose from her neck and swiftly he leaned down and captured her lips in a searing kiss between the delicate fabric. The warmth of his lips trailed along hers eagerly and she opened her mouth as she felt the restrained eagerness of his actions flow into her. The taste of his cigar lingering in his mouth only infused her want as she reached up and ran her hands over his neck and through his hair. He appeared unconcerned by the threat of her skin and she felt him breathe in deeply and growl low as she knew the scarf was saturated in her scent.
He pulled her leg up over his lap and she slipped a little, but his strong hands latched around her back as he drew her tightly against him and she surrendered herself to his solid support.
Her eyes fluttered closed as she was overwhelmed by the sensation of having Logan kiss her. It was such a strange thing to be finally faced with a truth she thought was never possible. Even though, she knew the life she had had most recently fallen apart, her mind was thankfully clear as Logan touched her and cradled her with such want that reflected what she’d seen in his eyes during the past few days, that made the decision to not think too hard, to not question all the more easier.
“Marie,” he whispered against her lips and hesitated suddenly, but she didn’t want him to worry about remaining proper with her and she kissed him again so hard, that she was the first to break apart as she gasped at both their combined intensity.
She slipped though, as her back came in contact with something hard digging into her and she sat up quickly.
She looked at him sheepishly, as his brow furrowed in an amusing mixture of questioning and annoyance.
Reaching around, she picked up the two diaries that she’d laid out beside her, her hand trailing along the hardcover of Graydon’s copy.
Logan’s hand came up and cupped her chin.
“Maybe that was too fast.”
“No,” she smiled wide.
His eyes focused on the diaries and he drew his hand back.
“What are you going to do?” he asked wearily.
Spotting, his still lit cigar on the ground she reached down and picked it up. Opening up the first book, she dangled the burning end above it.
“You were always so concerned about your past; I was so concerned about my future,” she spoke clearly and set the burning end of the cigar against the pages and watched as the thin and delicate old pages of inked words burned quickly and turned to ash. Dropping the crumbled burned mess on the ground she stepped on it and did the same with the other copy.
After she was done, she faced him and was amused by his wide eyes of shock.
Leaning in, she touched his cheek and smiled at him. “I can’t tell you how the world’s going to turn out, but I’m willing to try and make sure that we won’t be alone.”
Smiling he leaned in and buried his nose in the crook of her neck.
“That’s all I want,” he whispered back.
It was her promise to him.
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