Disclaimer: This fan-fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Still unbetaed, mistakes are still all mine

CHAPTER FIVE

Marie cleared her throat awkwardly and tapped quietly on Logan’s door. Outside she could hear the dawn chorus twittering against the powder-blue sky, the clouds already beginning to streak copper and gold with daylight’s coming.

Looked like it was gonna be a beautiful day, she thought. For some people at least.

There was no movement from his room so he knocked again. “Logan,” she called softly, trying to keep her voice down, “Hank asked me to come get you.” Still nothing. “He said mah results are in, and you should be there.” She didn’t add that she wanted him to be there, that she wasn’t sure how she’d handle her news if he weren’t. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. On the other side of the door she heard a slight scuffling, like he was dragging himself out of bed, and then footfalls across the floor.

He’d been sleeping, she realised. Lucky man.

He opened the door, already pulling on one of his giant navy hoodies as he stepped over the threshold. Growled something that might have been “Morning,” but she wasn’t sure. He was wearing sweats and nothing else, his feet bare, his claws retracted. That trademark hairstyle Storm was always teasing him about clearly in evidence. He had bleary eyes and a seven-in-the-morning shadow; Nobody but Sabretooth would have messed with him when he looked like this.

Nobody ‘cept her.

She pushed the thought away.

“Let’s go if we’re going, Marie,” he muttered tersely. “Hank don’t have all day.” She just caught sight of tangled bed sheets and a row of liquor bottles, an old record player sitting by the window. Cigar smoke curling through dawn’s light before the door snapped shut. He took off quickly, his long legs easily outpacing her so that she had to hurry to keep up, all the time facing straight ahead. Looking neither left nor right. Certainly not looking at her.

Hadn’t looked at her since they made the jump with Kurt.

The amiable Wagner had appeared precisely ten minutes after Logan made his call, dressed in a Spiderman Tee, raggedy-looking boxers (with a hole for his tail out back) and a pair of Storm’s pink slippers. He said that teleportation to the mansion wouldn’t be a problem, that alls she’d have to do was hang onto him. But at the thought of touching someone else after three days in isolation, whatever semblance of calm she’d been hanging onto for Logan’s sake had dissolved. She began to hyperventilate; Her face had twisted, a sudden wave of fear gripping her. She’d tried to cover it but both men had seen it. Logan had just been more effected than she’d thought. Without a word of warning or apology he’d pulled up her hood, wrapped both arms around her and pulled her to his chest, as matter-of-fact as if he did it every day.

The remembrance made her smile unconsciously now, warming her skin like sunlight. After all their arguments, for one moment she’d felt at peace.

Logan said nothing, just glowered and quickened his pace.

With her ear against his chest Marie had been able to hear his heart beating, smell his aftershave and cigar smoke through the fabric of his shirt. The moment his arms went around her the fear went away as if by magic. All she could feel was a sense of peace and harmony, a sense that everything was going to be just fine. Behind her eyes an image of mountains and forest blossomed, a beautiful place Marie knew she’d never seen. She could smell fresh grass and pines, clear sharp air. It was so calming, she’d sighed in his arms as they winked into existence in Sickbay. Held him more closely-

And he’d pushed her away.

The moment they arrived he’d yanked himself clear, withdrawing to a safe distance as if she could burn him though her gloves. Refusing to meet her eye and glowering so hard she was surprised paint hadn’t peeled from the walls. She’d sneaked a peek at his massive frame, as he turned his back to her. His expression looked carved in granite. Marie had tried to thank him but he’d just stalked out of the room without a backward glance, not even acknowledging Hank or Kurt. It reminded her of those last weeks in the mansion before her wedding, when everything she did seemed to annoy him for no good reason.

“Let him go,” Hank had warned her, when she tried to follow. “There’s nobody he wants to chat with right now except Jack, Johnny and Jose. And we don’t have any time to lose.”

Instantly she was back in the present. She thought of the bottles in his room as she pushed open the door to Sickbay.

Apparently Jack, Johnny and Jose had felt like talking back.

The room was just the same now as when she arrived, still the cold white-and-chrome chamber she recalled from Warren Worthington’s last hours. Jubilee’s too. Inwardly she shuddered. “Nice of you to join us,” Hank said brightly as she entered, “I was beginning to think you’d had decided not to come.” And he winked at her, every inch the kindly gentleman he remembered from her last year in the mansion. Unlike the sombre Moira McTaggert McCoy’s cheeriness seemed impenetrable; not even Logan’s brooding could crack it.

Just isn’t goddamn natural, she groused, at this time in the morning.

Logan grunted something which might have been hello. Hank’s smile grew wider.

“I see the sleep did you some good, Wolverine,” he remarked. Logan shot him a look which could have curdled butter. “And how about you, Rogue? Feeling better?”

Marie felt her inner smart-ass kick in. Something about being back in the mansion made her feel like a teenager again. “Doc,” she drawled, “D’ya reckon Ah’m feeling better?”

His smile faltered slightly. “No,” he said, “I suppose not.”

“There’s your answer then.” From the corner of here eye she thought she caught the ghost of Logan’s smile. But when she looked right at him he was sober as a priest on Sunday. Still not making eye-contact.

“Well how about we cut to the chase then?” Hank asked, trying to be all business. This time he didn’t look cheerful, and his expression was sombre. “It’s best-”

“T’get it over with, Ah know.” She nodded to him, then to Logan. Willing herself to keep it together, and not repeat that ridiculous performance when Kurt had tried to hold her. Or when she’d first called Logan up. She was beginning to be embarrassed by the whole calling-Papa-Logan-thing. She screwed her courage to the sticking place, taking a deep breath, and did the most grown-up thing she could imagine. “Hit me with it, Doc,” she said bluntly. “What’ve Ah got?”

“Well, so far you don’t have anything. Not anything new at least.” She winced; hearing it said out loud somehow made it more real. But if that was the worst of it then she was lucky. A re-emerging mutation often proved lethal, as Warren and thousands of others could attest. “We’re going to run a few more tests, obviously, but you don’t appear to have developed a secondary mutation. Nor does the re-emergence of your primary seem to be causing problems.”

“Besides the obvious,” she muttered. But she knew she was lucky. She’d had a ringside seat for Emma Frost’s secondary mutation: she’d watched the telepath literally petrify, her skin becoming diamond-like whenever she was stressed. Three months after it had first manifested Frost was dead, unable to regain her flesh and blood form after a job went south. Primary or secondary, a post-cure mutation could kill you.

The thought chilled Marie.

“So aside from Old Reliable, Ah’m okay?” she asked, deliberately keeping her voice flip. She didn’t want to sound upset, not now. Not in this room where she’d watched Jubilee die. “It’s same old same old? No skin on skin contact, and I can go about mah business?”

“That sounds about right.”

“Then can Ah head home?” she asked, her voice still light. She asked it more out of politeness than anything else: they couldn’t keep her here. She was also pretty sure she could handle Kurt’s touching her now she knew that he would be safe: The fear of a secondary mutation must’ve scared her more than she’d wanted to admit.

Logan looked up at that, opening his mouth to protest. “Marie,” he began warningly. She held her hand up in placation, trying to ward it off. “It’s for the best, Logan,” she repled softly. “If Ah’m fine-”

“But you’re not fine,” he argued. And to think five minutes ago Ah wanted him to talk. “Your mutation is back, you can’t be all alone in that house-”

“Ah think you’ll find Ah can,” she retorted, her temper rising again. Why did he have to push her buttons? “It’s mah home-”

“Not any more.”

“Yes anymore.” Marie forced her voice calm, unwilling to argue. She put her hand on his arm, trying to silence him. She didn’t want to have to explain Remy‘s absence right now, nor did she want to argue about returning to her house. She tugged lightly at the hoodie sleeve, the cotton soft beneath her fingers. She tried to sound reasonable. “Logan, you know that Ah can’t stay here…”

And suddenly her voice trailed off.

Just like the moment when he’d held her for teleportation an image bloomed behind her eyes, a picture of somewhere she’d never seen. A graveyard- Three tomb-stones- She frowned, trying to read the names, not sure why but knowing they were important- From far away she thought she could hear Hank, but she couldn’t be certain- The names on the gravestones illegible through tears. Wind was picking up, knifing across her skin, she felt chilled to the bone- And sad, so unbearably sad, the grief like a massive stone sitting on her chest-It wasn’t her time, she thought, not her time- He didn’t have to lose her like that-

Marie felt dizzy, the world swooping and swaying away from her. Suddenly gravity seemed non-existent, oxygen as heavy as mercury. She might have reached for Logan but she wasn’t sure…

Then there was only darkness.