Marie felt the familiar quickening of her step as she approached the woods. Her heart fluttered with the strangely guilty feeling that always preceded her ritual. Someone watching might think she was sneaking away to meet a lover -- the way she was rushing, the furtive movements.
She felt the sudden coolness as she passed beyond the treeline, and the hot sunlight became a dappled glow. As always, she stopped to take a deep breath of the woods before beginning. She loved it out here, and tried to smother the thought that maybe it was the part of Logan in her that drew her here, and not her own preference.
Then, she started -- pulling the silk scarf around her neck, unwinding it and stowing it in the backpack. Next she pulled the ponytail holder from her hair, shaking it loose. At the school she always kept it tied back, wary of anything affecting her peripheral vision, unwilling to let a wayward lock of hair cause a potential disaster.
Next came the gauzy shirt she wore over her camisole, even that thin layer pressing against her skin in this heat had felt like an intolerable burden. She then unwrapped the skirt, revealing the shorts she wore underneath. Finally, the gloves were peeled off her arms, joining the rest of her clothes in the backpack.
She lay down for a moment on the soft ground, letting the grass tickle the edge of her neck, the sides of her knee, between her shoulder blades, places that were rarely unburdened from the shroud of clothing she had to wear regardless of the weather.
As always, she felt as if a weight had been lifted. She was absolutely alone -- she didn’t have to be careful, she could finally relax her guard. She could walk through the woods and pretend for awhile that she was just a normal person.
Giddy with the sudden freedom, she sprang up and ran a few steps before tumbling into a judo roll, taking the force of the ground along her arm and diagonally across her back before ending up back up on the balls of her feet. Logan had taught her that soon after she graduated, and had made her practice until it was second nature. Not that she was thinking about him.
With that sobering thought, she slung the backpack over one shoulder and headed deeper into the forest. The rough grass and low branches scraped her skin from time to time, but she didn’t mind the occasional scratches to her arms and legs. She liked to feel it all.
In an hour’s time she had reached the small clearing. She pulled the blanket from the backpack, and spread it out. She had brought a book, but in a few moments it was resting beside her as she stretched out on the ground. She closed her eyes and let the sunlight wash over her skin.
Again her thoughts were drawn to Logan, and this time she didn’t even try to tell herself that it was useless to think of him again. She had worried over every aspect of his behavior, picking it apart, trying to figure out what she had done. In her heart, though, she knew it was nothing she had done. It was what she was that repelled people, and Logan had just taken longer to realize it than everybody else.
He was tied to the school by the increasingly tenuous thread of a promise he had made to her years ago, when she was just a girl. He had promised to take care of her, and he had. But now she was grown up, graduated and starting to teach classes of her own. It was a matter of time until his wanderlust and growing distaste for her overwhelmed whatever obligation he felt he had, and this time when he rode out he would not be coming back.
That image set a tendril of fear and despair unfurling in her stomach, and she tried to wrench her thoughts onto other subjects. She could leave also, if she wanted. She wasn’t tied to this school any more than Logan was. Her friends had mostly graduated and moved on.
Only Bobby and Kitty came back on weekends, to flaunt their perfect relationship in her face. No, that was just being bitter. She was happy for them, really she was. Bobby had never been much more to her than another attempt to try to pretend that she was a normal girl who could have normal things like a boyfriend. She had dated the first guy to show any interest in her, and if Pyro’s desk was any closer to hers it probably would have been him instead. They should have called it quits long before they did, and Bobby and Kitty were a good couple. She just wished she didn’t have to see all the kissing, and cuddling, and hugging. They were always touching.
So, anyway, back to travel, she thought, again trying to force her mind down a different path. She could go south this time, but the thought of even more heat and humidity, and all her clothes...no, it would have to be north.
And unbidden, the memory came to her, her younger self tracing a route on the map before she sucked most of the life out of David. And later that night her father, shoving clothes into her duffel bag and money into her hand. Telling her he’d take her as far as the bus station, and her mother hanging back, crying but not saying a word to stop him.
“Don’t tell anyone your real name,” he had said. “I don’t care what kind of trouble you get into, don’t think that you’ll get out of it by calling here. We won’t claim you.”
That was the moment when Rogue was born. And the trip that had seemed so exciting when it was a route traced on her wall was nothing like she had imagined. It was cold and hunger and grimy rides with grimier men who licked their lips when they saw her and lashed out when they found that they could not touch her.
It would be different this time, she tried to tell herself. She was not that starving, incompetent child anymore. She would have money, and skills. But traveling really only counts if you have a home to go back to. Otherwise it’s just wandering, and as much as she had never really felt at home at the school, she was afraid of what she would become without it.
She sighed, and picked up the book again. In a few pages, though, she realized she had not been paying attention to a word, and put it back down again.
She closed her eyes again, and tried to center herself as Xavier had taught her, with a little echo of Logan’s tai chi chiming in. Breathe in, breathe out. Empty your mind, find your center.
She focused on the feel of the sun on her skin, and the warm breeze ruffling her hair. If she concentrated, she could almost imagine that it was a gentle hand, brushing against her temple.
She remembered the time that Logan had traced the line of her white streak, the warmth of his hand just a hair’s breadth from her skin. The sun was warm on her face, and she imagined that hand brushing down her cheek, spreading out to cradle her neck.
She tilted her head back, and imagined the hand traveling further down, brushing along her body. Logan had big hands, he could probably encircle most of her waist with them, before letting them slide up under her shirt... Marie let her own hand slide under her camisole, resting on the skin of her stomach before drawing it up to cover her breast, feeling her nipple tighten against her palm.
A warm puff of breeze on her neck, feeling like a breath. She imagined the rumbly voice in her ear, the brush of stubble against her neck as he kissed her there. She shifted against the ground, her thighs rubbing together, the skin of them hypersensitive. “Touch me,” she let herself breathe. “Touch me, Logan.”
SNICKT
Her eyes flew open, the breath stopping in her throat. It can’t be...she must have imagined it...but it was followed immediately by a muffled, “Fuck,” and that was not her imagination.
She leapt to her feet, half-formed thoughts scrabbling through her brain.
Ohmygodhecan’thaveseen...hecan’thaveheard...pleaseno..., but when her voice rang out it was firm. Even in her panic she knew she didn’t have to yell for him to hear her.
“Logan, come out. I know you’re there.”
Nothing but the natural movement of the woods for a long moment, and she had almost convinced herself that she had imagined it, when there he was, stepping out from behind a tree a bare few yards away, and ohmygodhe’ssoclose, hashebeensoclosethewholetime, hesaweverything...
He took one step out of the shadows and then another, and a ray of sunlight illuminated his shadowed eyes, allowing her to see the strange expression -- pity? -- in them.
She was running before she knew it, wheeling around and crashing through the thick underbrush, the only thought in her head now was getaway, getaway, getaway.
She could feel more than hear him in pursuit, and her panic only grew. The bitter taste of humiliation combined with the ancient fear of the hunted, and she knew she was on the edge of hysteria but could not stop her frantic flight.
She skidded down a small slope, landing hard on her hands and knees, feeling the cut of a rock against her shin and numbness in her scraped hands that would soon turn to burning, but she scrabbled up and kept running, knowing in some corner of her brain (the corner in which Logan lived?) that the scent of blood would only help him track her.
All she could hear was the pounding of her heart and her own desperate thrashing progress, and so he seemed to appear out of nowhere, grabbing her from behind, wrapping her in the blanket that the son of a bitch had apparently had the presence of mind to grab off the ground before giving chase.
It was futile to try to escape from the iron band of his arms around her waist but she still tried, her feet skidding under her, bucking a small step forward, kicking against his shins and causing them both to stumble heavily to their knees.
“Just try to touch me,” she gasped, still thrashing. “I’ll suck the life out of you and spit out the husk, I’ll do it, I don’t care...”
“Marie,” he said, still struggling to restrain her. And then a more irritated, “Marie, just stop it.”
Finally he managed to flip her over, effectively pinning her by straddling her hips, holding her hands tight to the ground above her head. She realized he was even wearing gloves. Fucking Boy Scout, how did he have gloves? The bastard was not even breathing very heavily, while she was gasping and shuddering trying to catch her breath.
Suddenly all the fight went out of her. She let herself sink against the ground, wishing she could disappear into it like Kitty, shield herself in metal like Piotr, set the very ground ablaze like Pyro. Instead all she could do was close her eyes and hope the world ended in the next few moments so she wouldn’t have to face him.
A long moment passed, and still he said nothing. She kept her eyes tightly closed and her head turned aside, but she still felt his eyes on her, and struggled to get a grip on herself. She could still play this off somehow. A snide comment, a joke, maybe she could pretend like it never happened. God knows Logan was always more than willing to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. She opened her mouth to say something flip and casual, and yet what came out was a borderline hysterical shrillness.
“I have nothing!”
She hadn’t known she was going to say it, and her eyes flew open in surprise, meeting his shocked gaze. She saw his expression soften.
“Marie,” he said, “It’s okay...Bobby...”
“You think this is about Bobby,” she practically spat at him. “Bobby!? Fuck you. I don’t give a shit about Bobby.”
Logan leaned back a little, loosening his grip on her wrists but still holding her firmly, his eyes assessing.
“What, then?”
The question struck her as a bit funny, and she realized the hysteria was still underneath, trying to bubble up. She couldn’t stop the rush of words if she wanted to.
“Bobby...just add him to the long list of things I’ll never have. A boyfriend. A kiss. A fuck,” she said, bucking her hips up against him in mocking emphasis of the word, forcing a grunt from him. Her anger faded a little, and she hated the quavering despair that crept into her voice. “A husband. A child...”
She closed her eyes again, trying to keep the tears that were thickening her voice from leaking out. “So, tell me what I have Logan. I have nothing. I used to have a friend, but now you can’t even stand to be near me. All I had now was these woods, and the ability to come out here and play out my sad little fantasy of being normal. And now you’ve taken that from me, I don’t even have my pathetic little illusion. I’ll never be comfortable here again, never be sure that I am truly alone. So tell me, what do I have?”
Instead of answering her question, he asked his own.
“Why did you say my name?,” he rasped.
She cringed at the question, shaking her head in useless denial. She tried to gather up the shreds of her anger at this unnecessary cruelty. Did he have to wring the last ounce of humiliation from her situation? Well, fuck him. Nothing would make him more uncomfortable than the truth.
“I said your name because I was thinking of you, Logan,” she said bitterly. “It’s always you I think of. It always has been. Happy now?”
She felt his weight shift, and then slowly he sat back, freeing her. She got to her feet, looking at the ground, the trees, anywhere but at him. A small sharp rock was on the ground in front of her, and she scooped it up as she rose, squeezing it hard in her palm and welcoming the feel of the sharp edge cutting into the skin there.
She hadn’t noticed before now, but he had even brought her backpack, it was on the ground at their feet, apparently abandoned in the struggle. She pulled out her water bottle and splashed water over the scrapes on her knees and hands. She took a long drink, and sighed. She just felt empty now, all the humiliation, rage, and sadness burned from her. She could still feel him there, watching her. What was he waiting for?
“You can leave any time, Logan,” she said, her back to him. “Leave here, leave the mansion. I know you think you are bound by some ridiculous obligation, but that’s not true anymore. The helpless girl you made that promise to is gone. I can feel you trying to break free, distancing yourself more every day. I know I just embarrass you, disgust you now. I understand. Just stop pretending, it’s only hurting us both. I’m not Marie anymore, and I don’t need your protection.” She could hear the flatness and emptiness in her voice as she finished her thought. “I’m Rogue, and I don’t need anyone.”
Again she pressed the sharp stone into her palm, and focused on the pain. I am stone, she thought. Nothing can hurt me, I am stone.
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