“Logan...” He was trying his best to untangle Marie’s grasping arms from around him. Resistance was futile. Marie was a headstrong girl when she was sober, a feature that got only more pronounced when she got drunk. He had no choice but to lay down with her to a thin mattress that served as their bed in the control booth that Logan had jokingly named as their watchtower.
“Logan, Logan, Logan...” Marie breathed out his name several times, then fell in to silence and just stared at him. For a long while they just laid there, on their sides, facing each other. It started to dawn on him that Marie was deadly serious, and not even close as drunk as she had first appeared to be.
“We need to talk,” she said. At that he stood up. Those words bode never well.
“Logan, we really need to talk,” Marie repeated sternly.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. But it was easier to talk about big things while standing.
“I seem to recall that you promised to explain something to me few days back...” Marie said and swallowed. He could smell how nervous she suddenly became.
“It was something about you and me, and... And babies,” she stuttered, but held her gaze locked together with his.
“Yeah...” He grunted and shifted his feet, turning to look at the scenery outside the wide windows rather than faced her questioning eyes. He didn’t know where to begin. He didn’t know how to phrase his thoughts without sounding like a complete asshole. Minutes ticked by.
“Logan?”
“It’s...” He tried, then drew a deep breath and turned to look at Marie. The girl who at some point of their merry trek had become something akin to a soul mate to him.
“Shit... I just don’t think it’s a good idea, or even right to start popping out babies in to this world. Not now. Maybe not ever. We don’t even know if it’s safe for us to breathe this air, let alone what would happen to a baby. I don’t want to risk losing anybody to Legacy anymore.” Finally he spoke out what had lain as a ton of lead over his chest for the past days. Now Marie knew where they stood. He could only hope that she understood his point of view on the subject. Many times in the past he had bent to her will, but this would be the one time he’d keep his mind. Anything else was negotiable, but when it came to his possible offspring... That was the one thing he couldn’t afford to lose so he’d rather skip the whole father-business altogether.
He waited for Marie to process what he had just said. He could hear Scott and Jean, talking with each other. Their “bedroom”, a room that had served as a small kitchen for the workers when the sawmill was still operational was located right under the watchtower, but the floorboards were thick enough to filter out everything else but all the highest noises, so he was unable to decipher what their conversation was about. And that really didn’t even matter. They could have been talking about pink elephants screwing over green rats for all he cared. Right now the only thing he was interested was Marie’s opinion about his thoughts, and her reaction to the revelation that if she stayed with him she most likely never would experience motherhood.
“That’s... That’s an interesting point of view...” Marie started. Cold sweat rose over Logan’s forehead. An interesting point of view? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“For the whole time I have been worried that you’re going to think that I’m selfish if I tell you that I don’t want to have children. At least not yet,” she continued, new kind of surety bleeding in to her voice.
“Of course I often thought about it, but that was before the war. Before the Legacy. Even then I had my doubts. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make a mutant baby in to a world that wanted all the mutants to be gone. I guess...” She paused for a while, waiting until Logan was looking at her rather than admiring the setting sun behind the window.
“I guess I decided back then already that I wouldn’t even want to have a baby if the world didn’t suddenly somehow turned to a place where we are tolerated.”
Logan didn’t know what to say.
“I think it would be okay to start breathing again. Your lips are starting to turn blue,” Marie said. He let out the breath he had been holding, not even knowing how long he had stood there not breathing and drew in a ragged breath of air, like a man who had been just saved from drowning.
“So... We’re okay now?” He asked, not only wanting, but needing the confirmation.
“We’re okay. I’m glad that we got this over with. I was... I was really worried... I... I was afraid that you’d think of me as some sort of freak...” Marie really tried, tried to speak, but her voice broke down to give way to relieved sobs.
“I don’t think you’re a freak, kid...” Logan huffed and sat down next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and urging her to lean on to him.
“I may be drunk now, just a little...” She cried and buried her face against his side.
“But I think I’d like a lot if we took our clothes off and you’d hold me...”
“Just hold you?” He asked. She nodded, wiping her tear and make-up stained face with her palms.
“I can do that. But first we have to get out of these clothes,” he promised and started undressing her gently.
He laid light kisses to every exposed area of her skin until she lay completely nude in front of him. He then proceeded to take off his own clothes and lay next to her, pulling her flush against his frame.
“We restocked contraceptives with Jean. There weren’t that many packages in that drugstore and I’m not sure if the brand I got was right, but Jean said it doesn’t really matter what brand it is as long as I’m not getting any side-effects,” Marie sniffled.
“Uh-huh...”
“What if there are side-effects? What if I get all fat and angry and moody? Jean said that bleeding in the brain is possible if my body doesn’t like these new pills, but that she doesn’t believe that it’ll happen...”
“You could stop taking the pills. Condom is not 100% sure, but almost as good as the pills and with no side-effects,” Logan said. He wasn’t completely at ease talking about these things, but they had to be discussed.
“In fact, we shouldn’t count on anything that we can’t make for ourselves. One morning we’re going to wake up to a world where there are no big factories, no malls or even little grocery stores. And everything that comes out of them is gone as well.”
“But... But condoms?”
“You can make those from the animal gut. It just has to be treated with certain herbs and...”
“Can we stop talking? I think I’m going to be sick and I know I’m going to be sick soon if I start thinking why it is exactly that you know how to make condoms from animal guts...”
“I was bored one day. Looked it up from the internet.”
“Good night, Logan.”
Somewhere beneath them Jean suddenly screamed. Marie sat up. Logan grasped her elbow and pulled her back in to his embrace.
“Get back here.”
“But Jean...”
“Is obviously busy with Scott.”
“Oh...”
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