Marie had to close her eyes for a moment against the flood of mixed-up emotions and the prickle of tears. “I’m so glad you’re awake,” she said. She reached out automatically to brush back the hair at his temple. He flinched away from her hand. “Oh -- sorry,” she said, pulling her hand back as if it had been stung. She felt color rise in her cheeks. “I’m -- I’m sorry.”
Logan felt like he had been run over by a truck. His mouth was dry and fuzzy, and his head ached -- hell, his whole body ached. The brightness of the room hurt his eyes. And to top it all, he had this weird feeling that there was something just at the edge of his mind, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He pulled himself up onto his elbows, and took another look at the girl lying in bed with him. She was a looker all right. She smelled great -- more than great. She smelled familiar, but still new. But damned if he could remember a thing about her. Well, he had never been known for his good manners. “Listen, sorry lady, but do I know you?”
Lookit that, she blushed some more. The women he knew weren’t usually blushers. Shameless was a better way to describe the women he usually picked up. Something was definitely off about this situation, and if he could just figure it out...
“You...well, kind of. I mean, we met...a couple of days ago?” She seemed to be struggling with the situation too, but the hell if he knew what she had to be confused about. “Do you -- do you not remember?” Logan winced at the pain in his head as he sat up more and rolled his neck. Remember...what did he remember?
/pain, burning pain/
/drowning, a metal cage plunging into freezing water/
/the smell of chemicals and fear/
/lashing out against restraints, the shuffle of the guards’ boots/
/flesh being peeled off his bones/
Suddenly he found himself out of bed, back against the wall, the claws out and ready. His heart pounded like it was going to jump out of his chest, and his breath rasped in his dry throat. The girl was staring at him with wide eyes.
“What is this -- what the fuck is this?!” he rasped out. “What the fuck is going on?!”
The girl was sitting up now. “Logan, it’s okay...”
“Don’t you tell me what the fuck is okay,” he snarled, and she flinched. “How do you know my name?” She seemed to be at a loss to explain that, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Who the fuck are you?” he said, and that seemed to hurt her, the salty smell of her sorrow catching in his throat.
“My name is Marie,” she said, and for some reason he felt her name like a chime in his chest. MarieMarieMarie. “I -- I’m a mutant too,” she said. “I work with a group of people who try to -- to help other mutants. They got me out of a lab, like the one you were in, a few years ago. And a few days ago we got you out.”
A lab. Now he was starting to remember more. They had taken him outside of Laughlin City. He knew he shouldn’t have used the handle Wolverine for the fights, he had probably led them right fucking to him. A half-assed roadblock and a few guys with sniper rifles and tranq guns, and he remembered now the helpless rage as he pulled against the restraints, knowing he was being taken back to his nightmares...
“Where am I?” The girl was telling the truth, he could tell that, but he still couldn’t tell what the fuck was going on. “Why -- why don’t I remember much?”
“You’re in Westchester, New York. In a lake house owned by a man, Charles Xavier. He’s the one who -- who got our group together. He’s a mutant too. I think -- I think you don’t remember much because of the drugs they had you on at the lab. You’ve been pretty...out of it...for the last couple of days. Listen, I know you’re scared...” He snarled at that -- she didn’t know shit. “...but, I promise you’re safe here. I’ll answer any questions you have. And if there’s anything you need -- like food, or I don’t know if you want to call someone and let them know you’re all right -- just tell me. I’ll help you.”
Call someone. Yeah, right. Who the fuck cared if he lived or died? Right now all he wanted to do was get the hell away. He needed to think, if the aching in his head would go away he could just think...
“Just stay right there,” he growled. He sniffed the air, looking for others. He moved toward the bedroom door, and froze for a minute when he saw the six deep gouges there. /His body pressed against hers, the smell of her blood/ He darted out the door, keeping close to the wall. An empty living room and a kitchen, with a chair half-smashed on the ground. The smell of pancakes. /”Not a fan of pancakes?”/ The couch had a blanket and pillows tumbled on it, smelling of both him and her. /His head pressed against her belly, her fingers brushing through his hair. “Shhhh, it’s okay... I’m not mad...”/
She was sitting on the edge of the bed. The curtain of her hair hid her face, but he thought she was maybe wiping tears away. Her head jerked up. He felt something twist in his stomach. “Listen,” he said, and then stopped. He really didn’t have a good follow-up to that. “I’ve been here with you, right? I think I remember a little.”
She took a shaky breath and stood up. “Yeah,” she said carefully. “You’ve been here with me for awhile.” Her voice was kind of funny, kind of flat. He thought of the “Hey,” when she first woke up. She didn’t sound like that anymore, and all of a sudden he really wanted her to sound like that again.
He tried to take a deep breath. “Listen, I’m sorry if I scared you. I just -- I didn’t know what was going on for a minute there, okay? I still don’t know what the hell is going on.” She laughed a bit -- it was shaky, but it was a laugh.
“Yeah, okay, I get that,” she said. “Do you -- you want a drink or something?” He knew he liked something about this girl. MarieMarieMarie.
“Got a beer?” he asked.
He followed her into the kitchen, and then outside onto the back deck with the six pack. Some fancy local craft brew stuff, but he wasn’t in the mood to be picky. He sat down and savored that first sip. Damn, that was good. They looked out over the water in silence for awhile, but it wasn’t one of those prickly silences, it was just -- comfortable. He had the urge to reach out and take her hand, which was pretty fucking out of character for him. The sun was still low enough in the sky to make a golden trail in the water, and... “Did we sit out here before?”
She looked over at him, but he couldn’t read what was in her eyes. “Yeah, it was...I guess it was yesterday morning?” she said. “It seems like a long time ago,” she said softly, as if to herself. He didn’t know what to make of that.
All of a sudden he was mad. “Why the hell are you out here with me?” he snapped. “Who thought that was a good idea?” He saw color rise in her cheeks again, but wasn’t sure if it was more blushing or anger to match his.
“I did,” she said, with an edge to her voice. Okay, anger then. “I thought it was a good idea. Trust me, I was the only one.” He gave her a sharp look, but apparently she wasn’t going to say much more about it.
He looked back over the water, still pissed off, but not sure why. “I could have hurt you,” he said. /His body pressed to hers, the scent of her blood/ He looked at her again. “I did hurt you, didn’t I?” He looked down at her ankle. He had marked her limp before, as she walked to the kitchen. “I did that?”
She shrugged. “It was an accident.” He felt nauseous suddenly, a cold sweat prickling on his back. “Did I -- was there anything else?” /His body pressed to hers, the scent of her blood, her voice crying “No!”/ He felt sick at the thought. He hunched his shoulders. “I gotta ask. Did I hurt you...anywhere else?”
“No!” she said, and then seemed a bit shy of her vehemence. “You wouldn’t do that,” she said more softly.
He raised a skeptical brow at that. “Wouldn’t I?”
“No,” she said, with a certainty that unnerved him. “You wouldn’t.”
He sighed and sat back. Everything about this situation was confusing as fuck. This girl who seemed to know him, these flashes of knowing her. It was like he’d see something, and then suddenly his vision would split and he’d see a different view of it -- a dim shadow of a memory, but with all this intense emotion behind it. Confusing as fuck. He thought over what she had told him so far. “I was in a lab?” She nodded. “How long?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and hell if she didn’t sound really sad about that. “They got some records out...they are still decrypting them. I’m sure you can see them anytime you want.” He nodded. Didn’t that sound like fun. He only remembered bits and pieces, but it already seemed like more than he wanted to know.
“And you guys just...broke in there and broke me out? Just...’cause you felt like it?”
“It’s part of what we do. Professor Xavier got information that mutants were being held, and experimented on, so we went in. There were nine others, and then you. The others are at the mansion...” -- He raised an eyebrow again at the idea of a mansion for mutants -- “...but you were...different.”
“Different how?”
She seemed to consider the question carefully. “The meds seemed to work on the others exactly as they were designed,” she said. “They still had their mutations, but they were completely zoned out. Like living, breathing, dolls. You were more aware. Confused, but aware. At first we weren’t even sure if you would come with us.”
/A voice like honey, and the smell of rain and earth and comfort. “Go,” she said./ “You were there,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I left because of you.”
She nodded. “That’s why you’re here with me. We seemed to do okay together. And I’m not exactly defenseless, either.”
That caught his interest. She must have a hell of a mutation to not be scared of him, but whatever it was it didn’t seem to have protected her completely. She still had that ankle, after all. “So, what’s your mutation?” he asked. Very smooth, he thought, it’s barely a step above “What’s your sign?”
She looked away, for long enough that he thought she wasn’t going to answer. “It’s my skin,” she said finally. “If I touch someone, my skin to theirs, it...I dunno, sucks their life force out of them, and into me. If I hold on too long I kill them. Even a little and I hurt them. And it hurts me too. I get their thoughts and feelings and memories. I don’t want to know that stuff. I wish I didn’t have to carry it. I used to not have any control over it. When I was in the lab...” her voice broke. He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to say any more, but somehow he thought she wanted to.
She cleared her throat and started again. “Anyway, I didn’t have control over it then, and they made me hurt a lot of people, and it hurt me real bad too. When Professor Xavier’s people found me I was pretty much crazy from all the stuff in my head that I didn’t know how to deal with. But the Professor is a really good guy. He’s a telepath, and crazy talented. He can talk to you in your head, but other stuff too. He could even make you do things if he wanted, but he doesn’t. He helped me. It’s hard to explain, he taught me how to build walls in my head to keep the other people separate and quiet, and to keep ahold of the part that was just me. And then over time, he helped me so that I could turn my skin on and off, so I didn’t have to worry all the time. That was -- a really big thing for me.”
She looked at him for the first time after saying that, and he nodded. He could see how that would be a really big thing. “If the person I touch is a mutant, I pick up their mutations too. It used to be that they would just show up afterwards whether I wanted them to or not, and then go away over time. Lately the Professor has been helpin’ me figure out how to keep them, and maybe use them when I want to. It’s tough -- the walls are hard to build in the first place, and then to break them down again -- it’s kind of risky sometimes. We’re workin’ on it, though.”
Logan turned that around in his head for awhile. He could see how that could be handy, but it seemed like a lot of bad stuff went along with the good. “This Professor sounds like a good guy,” he said finally. She smiled, a big genuine grin that lit up her face. Damn, she’s pretty, Logan thought.
“He really is a good guy. They all are. I’m sure they’ll be real anxious to meet you, when you’re ready.” She started to get up. “ I should call and let the doctor know you’re better. I promised him.”
She swayed a little, and he caught her arm to steady her. “Okay there, darlin’?” he asked. She giggled, an honest-to-God giggle.
“I guess I have a little mornin’ drunk goin’ on,” she said. Well, lookit that, the honey in her voice came out even more when she was tipsy. He smiled, using the excuse to gather her in a little close to his body as they walked.
“You better be careful about walkin’ around on that ankle drunk,” he said. Damn, she felt good pressed against his side like that -- soft and small. And the smell of her, earthraincomfortMarie
“I’m not normally such a lightweight,” she said. “But I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast yesterday, and in fact neither have you.”
“Well, we better fix that,” he said. They made their way to the kitchen, and this time he made her sit with her foot up while he fixed the eggs.
He picked up the broken chair, and set it to the side. “What happened here?” he said.
She seemed to sober up in a hurry. “You had a seizure,” she said quietly. “Scared me real bad.” He tried to remember, but he had nothing for that one.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked. She looked at him funny.
“No, you just fell over. I was just scared for you.” That one surprised him. He was used to people being scared of him, but he didn’t think anyone had ever been scared for him before.
“Why did you care?” he asked. That was a damn stupid thing to say, he thought. It came out sounding mean, and he didn’t mean it that way. She seemed to understand what he meant, though.
“I...I guess I like you. And I was taking care of you.” He still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He didn’t like that he had needed taking care of, but overall he thought he had gotten pretty damn lucky in getting her to be the one to do it.
“I’ll fix the chair,” is all he could think of to say, and there it was -- that smile of hers again. He could get used to that.
They ate breakfast pretty companionably. She didn’t seem to expect him to carry on much in the way of conversation, which suited him just fine. She filled him in a little on Professor Xavier and the doctor who had apparently been out here to see him and some of the other members of her group. X-Men, she said they called themselves, which struck him as a little silly but since they had busted him out of hell on earth he wasn’t going to say so out loud.
She told him about the mansion that was a school for mutant kids, and although she was too polite to even hint it he realized the reason he was out here and not there was because he had been too damn dangerous to be anywhere near kids. Again he got a little mad that Marie had taken that risk. She shouldn’ta be putting herself in danger like that. He coulda done anything to her, and her X-Men wouldn’ta been much help.
She mentioned that at the mansion they all call her Rogue, that Marie was her real name but that she didn’t really tell anyone about it. He asked why she had told it to him, and she just kinda blushed again, and said it seemed like a good idea at the time.
She said the doc had been up late and she’d give him a chance to sleep in a little, and that she’d call after her shower. He was kinda glad to have a little more time just with her, and wondered if she was feeling the same way. The Professor seemed like a good guy and he sure owed him one, but he was never much for meeting lots of people and he still felt like he was getting his bearings again. It was okay with him to just stay here with Marie for a little longer, and not have to try to figure out what he was going to do from here.
Instead he just lay on the couch a little bit while she showered, trying not to think too much about her naked in there, but not doing so good at it, especially surrounded by the smell of them both mixed together like he was. MarieMarieMarie.
Then she was out, all pink and soft and damp, her shirt sticking to her wet skin a little bit in the front, and he had to swallow a few times before he could ask her if it was okay if he showered next.
She set him up with a change of clothes and even a razor, following him into the bathroom to show him where everything was and how to use the complicated shower that had about fifteen damn knobs. The smell of her was everywhere in the steamy air, and he closed his eyes to drink it in for a minute. /Her soft waist between his hands, the taste of her skin where the pulse beat strongest/
Before he could think about what he was saying, the question popped out. “Marie, did we take a bath together?” Boy, now that was the mother of all blushes. She must be pink from the top of her head to her toes.
“I was just trying to -- to get you clean, and -- and you wouldn’t go in without me,” she stuttered. He smiled. She was cute when she was rattled.
“Well, darlin’, I hope I enjoyed it.”
A little secret smile from her at that, and she called out, “I think you did,” as she walked towards the door. Right at the door, she turned to look at him, and there’s that secret smile again. “And so did I.” Well, damn.
He shaved first, thinking it over. He enjoyed the shower a lot, thinking the whole time that he probably didn’t enjoy it as much as the bath with Marie, and wasn’t it a damn shame that he only remembered bits and pieces of that.
She had left him a full set of clothes, even shoes in his size and a comfortable-looking leather jacket, and he wondered how she had managed that. He came out of the bedroom intent on getting her to do a little clarifyin’, but stopped short at the look in her face when she saw him.
“What, I miss a spot shaving or sumthin’?” he asked self-consciously. She shook her head and laughed, coming closer to him.
“You just look a lot different, all cleaned up and dressed,” she said. She reached a hand out to touch his shaven cheek, and boy did that feel nice.
He put his hand over hers. “Marie,” he started...
Suddenly her hand clenched into a fist below his, and she fell to her knees. “Marie!” he said. “Marie, baby, what’s wrong?”
She could see Logan hunched over her, concern in his eyes, mouth moving. All she could hear, though, was Professor Xavier’s crisp voice in her head, urgent in a way she had never heard before. “Rogue -- RUN,” he was saying.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Well, Logan is finally talking, so please let me know how you think I'm doing with his "voice." And to steal a line from the very funny movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, "For those of you out in the Midwest -- sorry I said "fuck" so much."
Chapter End Notes:
Aha! Nobody expects the evil cliffhanger!