Author's Chapter Notes:
In which Rogue gets some truth, and lets her hair down, Logan discovers that a home's got to have a woman and a woman's got to have a home, and Jean Grey ponders having been a Lady of the 80's.
Chapter Three: Journeys End In Lovers Meeting

I: Logan


Home.

Coming up out of that blinding blizzard and seeing the familiar lights of Pa's homestead, smoke pouring out of the chimney, it was a helluva sight.

He paused a minute, as a crowd of half-formed fragments of memory tumbled in on him.

Pa sitting on the wood porch, when the homestead was nothing more than a cabin and a vegetable patch, in his chair with a jug of whiskey on one side of him and a bucket full of stones to throw at the rabbits on the other.

How old was he, then, nine or ten, running from the big house after his lessons sniffing and sneezing, shedding his fancy clothes along the way?

A boy who loved and feared his Pa, in equal amounts.

A flash of Victor on the roof of one of the new rooms they put on, yelling for him not to run with a saw in his hands.

More recent memories, in his WWII fatigues, scowling at the local yokel who was laying the pipes and wiring up the place for electricity.

Not to mention is recollections of the last twenty years, wandering home, somehow, after Weapon X, and working with Pa as a logger for…

…a long time.

He clomped up the porch steps in his engineer boots, dragging their gear behind him.

"This is it, Rogue. We're home."

Rogue hesitated.

"C'mon, darlin.' Pa won't bite you."

Pa opened up the door.

"Well, you look a damn sight better than ya did when I found ya half dead down on the road a few months ago, Jimmy lad! Where you been? I was about to go out on this bastard storm, and look for you. Got your job all lined up, an' I aired out your room. There was mice livin' it it, but I tracked 'em down. Hadda clean the place up, too."

"Thanks, Pa. This is Marie."

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Marie."

"Ahm sorry, Mr. Logan. I don't mean to stare, but you and your son…why, he's a dead ringer for you!"

"Yeah, Jimmy's a real chip off the old block. And you call me Black Tom, everybody does. So, Victor's told me you've got an interest in history. It ain't history to me! Yunno, I first come to this part of the world during the War Between the States. I was a hired mercenary in the Confederate Army for four years. That's what convinced me to retire. After that war, I was through. Now Victor's mother, she was a Southern belle, too. You do remind me of her, a little. Now, Victoria was from Georgia, and she was a beautiful woman. Tall, blond hair, and green eyes like a great cat. My Victoria, she was a real, genuine lady. Dunno what she saw in me. She lost everything in the war, her whole family died, she only survived because she was like me. I promised her we'd start all over again. We came up here to Canada with Victor's mother, Victoria, an' I took a job workin' for the Howletts as groundskeeper. And Victor, he was born, right here, in this room, back in 77. He surprised the hell out of both if us, because Victoria was almost as old as I am. 1877, I mean. Musta been four or five years later we had some damn fight and Victoria said I was unfit to be a father or a husband, though we was never married, an' she took Victor away. I think he was four or five, and he cried for me like a little banshee. I always thought she would come back, but she were a strong-willed woman, and she never did. By the time that bastard she did marry killed my Victoria and Victor made short work of him, an' came back here, the Squire' son, I reckon he was the Squire then, he married an English girl. Beth. That was Jimmy's mother. She was a fine English lady. I reckon you remind me a little of her, too. You look a little like her. Jimmy, you remember your Ma?"

"No much, Pa. I remember she was beautiful. But she always looked sad."

"That was my fault, alright. Oh, I should have left her alone, Miss Marie, but I loved her. That's the way with me and Jimmy, when we love a woman we go crazy in the head for her. Bastard crazy. And Beth loved me. More than she loved old Soft John. He was no use to her! Gave her two boys, one died inside her, the other when he was a baby. I gave her Jimmy, he was a fine, strong boy. That was what she wanted, more than anything, a fine, strong son. That was my Jimmy . He did a lot of sneezin', though. Always had a drippy nose, when he was little. He still sneezes in the springtime, when the flowers come in."

"Pa…"

"I know you and Victor told this girl nothin' about our family. You don't remember, and Victor don't like to talk about the past. Before you hear otherwise, my girl, I loved Beth. So much it was like to take my bastard breath away. She never tried to take Jimmy away from me, though she did pass him off as Soft John's boy. He weren't so bad, old Soft John, I suppose. Took good care of Jimmy, and Beth. I tried to take them both away, and they say I killed her, but I didn't. It was all an accident, of sorts. Soft John had a gun, and I had the claws, and we went at each other and she got in the middle. That's the first time I seen Jimmy's claws. He thought I'd killed his Ma, too. Stuck 'em right through me. Poor boy thought I was dead. When I come to he was still crying. I told him to run, and I'd take all the blame. Run up to the homestead, I'll fetch your brother back to you."

Black Tom was banging pots and pans together as he told his tale, finishing dinner.

Rogue was entranced.

"Ten years I was on the lam, and Victor, well, he was a grown man and gone by then, he had to come back and take care of Jimmy. He went south, became a cowboy in California, or someplace like that. Come up here in his ten gallon hat with his guns on. Jimmy, you remember that?"

"A little bit, Pa. I kinda remember Victor ridin' up over that hill, and me runnin' out to meet him. I was so little. And so damn scared. You should seen him, Marie. He looked just like General Custer to me." Logan chuckled.

"See how it works? It's all in there with him, you just got to jog his memory. Anyway, ten years went by and the mansion went to rack and ruin, by and by, so I came back. The boys had the places all built up to this, it was two rooms when I left. They built that barn, and the chicken coop, and the corral. My garden there, well ya can't see it in the snow, it was half the size. When summer comes I plant. Never have to buy vegetables in the summer. I still keep a cow, and chickens. And a workhorse. I've had to go up to the camp on horseback, or with him pullin' a cart, before. A horse can get where a truck can't, in the snow. An' why buy milk and eggs? B'sides, animals are good for company. That reminds me. Jimmy, go out to the bran, milk the cow. Take this basket, get some eggs. An' feed the animals while I commence to feed you. And find that bastard dog, he'll freeze out there, tonight."

"Yes, Pa."

Victor always gave a trouble when he was asked to do something, but not Logan.

He was a man who loved and feared his Pa in equal amounts.

Logan heard him talking to Marie as he put his coat on and his hat and went back outside.

"But when I come back, that was when we all went to the Yukon. During the Gold Rush. We had a claim, the three of us, and we built us a shack on our land. It was a good claim, so the bastards was forever tryin' to rob old Black Tom and his boys. They come for a piece, but they left us in pieces…"

Rogue, who was a history enthusiast sat at Black Tom's kitchen table raptly, soaking up the old man's hodgepodge of tall tales, obscure truths, and family anecdotes while Logan took care of the animals.

He came back in with Pa's dog, a big mutt who looked like he had wolf, husky and malamute in him, maybe a little spitz, too.

Then Logan took their gear into his bedroom, and unpacked it.

Their bedroom, now.

Marie got his powers, and some of his memories, you could slice that any way you liked, but she had a little piece of his soul.

And, just by being Victor's brother and knowing what it was to be young, and influenced by him, he had a little piece of hers.

Logan shook his head to clear those thought away.

He had work to do this winter, him and Pa.

They had to make sure she didn't turn out like Victor.

And he had some work of his own, to do.

"…bastard foolin' around in there, Jimmy! Food's on the table!"

Logan went back into the front room, where the kitchen, the pantry, and the table were.

He sat down, and his father smacked him upside the head.

"Go and wash your hands, Jimmy, lad, and don't eat with your hands, we're in the presence of a lady."

Rogue blushed.

They all sat down.

"Well, Eddie, look at us, havin dinner with our Jimmy, and his girl!" Black Tom told the dog.

"What happened to Zoe?" Logan asked.

"Aww, she got sore at me. Went back up to the Blackfoot village. She said she was staying until spring, this time, and I think she meant it. But she'll be back. She has been, for, Jesus, it must be 25 years now. Sometimse I think I hear her up in the trees, but then I look and she's gone."

"Trees?" Rogue asked.

"Zoe Blackfeather, that's my girl. She's French an Injun."

"That doesn't explain why she's in the trees, Pa."

"Oh. She's got wings. Pass the potatoes, Jimmy."

"Really? Are there a lot of us, living in these parts?"

"Sure. There's always a lot of us mutants livin' in remote places. Everybody down in Howlettt is either one of us or related to one of us." Logan explained.

"A whole village of mutants? Logan, why did you ever leave here?"

"That's' what I want to know?"

Logan shrugged and put the bowl of potatoes down.

"I guess I enjoy a little variety in m'life." He said.

One month later…

II: Rogue


Living with Logan, in his room at his cabin was peaceful, serene, and quiet.

They had stayed with Black Tom for about a week, a week in which Logan spent much of his time that he wasn't at the logging camp on some mysterious errand, and Rogue spent a lot of time with Black Tom, who filled her in on the recent history of his taciturn sons.

He did this mostly as he took her on hikes through the forest, acquainting her with things he thought a feral should know.

Tracking was the most difficult of the things Black Tom taught her; sometimes they sat in one place for hours, following a trail.

Usually Zoe Blackfeather's.

Rogue sat bundled up in the cold, whereas Black Tom only wore a corduroy and sheepskin coat and what looked like an extremely old Confederate cavalry hat.

It probably was one.

"Where did I leave off last time. Oh. Right. Well, it was, '78, or '79, nineteen that is. I got this call from Victor, telling me about how he and Jimmy had another falling out. And this was the big one. Jimmy does not recall, but his brothers' always been a hard man to get along with. They've had two or three falling outs where Jimmy swore he'd never speak to him again. It was different when they were younger. I used to tell Jimmy when he was about your age, Jimmy, lad your brother ain't the king of the world. He don't know everything. Jimmy, he used to think his brother was Buffalo Bill and General Custer and Wyatt Earp all rolled into one. Anyway, I had to drive down to Pennsylvania, and find the boy. He hardly knew me. He looked at me like I was a stranger and said 'Pa?' like he didn't know his own name, let alone mine. He knew I was his Pa, though, Instinct, maybe. Looks, possibly."

"Poor Logan. It must have been horrible for him."

"It was. I didn't know what to do with him, so I brought him up here. I told him who he was, Jimmy Logan, and that he was a lumberjack, an' I was his father, an' he worked for the Howlett Logging Company. I showed him I had claws like his, and I told him he'd been in the Marines, the Special Forces, and that some bastard officer must have lured him back, and did what they did to him, with all that metal, and it shorted out his brain. That was good enough for the boy, for awhile. He stayed here for a year or two, and in that time, he pretty much got as much of his memory back as he has now. Just enough to pain him, and not enough to give him any real satisfaction. He got to remembering enough about Victor, and about Kayla, and he went off, again. He come back in about 1983, wantin' to do something more than chop trees. So I told him how he used to be with the X-Men. I never said so before because I didn't know if his mind could take it, but when he come back from, Japan I think he was, and Madripoor, he were there, too, he seemed to have evened out, some."

"Logan was with the X men before he lost his memory?"

"Oh yeah. See, him and Victor had their second big falling out after World War II. Jimmy met a woman there, and married her, and so did Victor, and both their wives got killed. Jimmy thought that it was Victor who killed his wife, and Victor thought it was Jimmy, out of spite, who outed his wife as a mutant to the C of H. Turns out they was both wrong, but that was when Jimmy made his first real steps out of his brothers' shadow. He went to work for S.H.I.E.L.D, and when Professor Xavier started his school in 1963, they sent Jimmy in to look after things, him being a mutant and all. He ended up leaving S.H.I.E.L.D and becoming an X-Man, and he left them in 1971 when Victor got him involved in Vietnam, and everything else, good and bad, came from that."

"Is that when he met Dr. Grey? When he went back to the X-Men?"

"Well, she wasn't Dr. Grey, then. He went back, and he called me to tell me that he recalled Charles Xavier, now that he'd net him, and your mother, she was still there, in those days, and the whole place seemed rather familiar. As for the good doctor, in those days, she was a 17 year old red-headed stepchild of a schoolgirl and hotshot young X-Man who went by the name Marvel Girl. She was keepin' company even then with Cyclops, but Jimmy still fell for her like the old ton of bricks. He looked at her and the thunderbolt hit him. Came back up here in the summer of '84, an' fixed his cabin all up him that him and Kayla used to live in. Now, Jimmy's never admitted to it, but I think that Professor Logan the Combat Instructor and Miss Marvel Girl had themselves a red hot affair, in those days, when she was still a student at the Institute. Except I think the future Dr. Grey took it less seriously than Jimmy did. Or maybe she didn't. At any rate, my fool son, who was 94 at the time, he asked her to marry him, as soon as she turned 18. You know what she told him?"

"What?"

"She told him she was only 18, and she was too young to know who she wanted to marry, or if she wanted to marry, and Jimmy said he'd wait. And he meant it. He waited eleven years while all the time she went and became Dr. Grey, and kept up with seein' Cyclops. They even got engaged. Meanwhile, Dr. Grey and Jimmy, they became real close friends. Then, in 1995, she upped and became Mrs. Scott Summers. And poor Jimmy upped and lost his head, and spent the next five years wanderin' around these parts and up in the Yukon, doin' his level best to drink himself to death, livin' like a homeless derelict bum who didn't know where he had been the day before and didn't care where he was goin' the day after."

Rogue took in what Black Tom had told her.

SHUNK!

"What an awful bitch! How could she do that to Logan! He's such a kind, gentle, good-hearted man? How could she string him along for eleven years? And these are the good guys?"

"Don't get all riled up, Rogue. You put them pig stickers away, now, there's nobody here but you an' me. I'm not sure if she quite strung him along. Maybe she really didn't know who she was gonna say yes to until she did it. It just may be she loved Jimmy, too, but she feels about him the way you do about Victor. That he ain't no good for her, and that he's too hard to love. Either way, she sure ain't gonna be too glad to see you." Black Tom chuckled.

"Can I ask you one more thing, Black Tom?"

"Shoot."

"What became of Kayla Silverfox? I'm not sure I believe what Victor told me."

"She's dead, alright, poor girl. But Victor didn't kill her. That Stryker bastard did."

"But what about the rest of the story? Was she really one of his operatives, who fell in love with Logan, anyway? Did she really cheat on him with everybody?"

"Well, it was the seventies, little girl, people had a different idea of what cheating was, in those days. That was some fine time to be a man, I can tell you. I wish days like that would come back. Its' just like you say, except for the cheating with everybody part. Victor, he don't even know how to spell monogamy, but he expects women to not even think of any other man but him. I knew Kayla, she was half-Injun too, she was kin to my Zoe, and the way I heard it, later, from Zoe was that Victor decided that what was good for Logan was good for him, and there was a little matter of a bottle of cherry brandy and a case of Newcastle Brown involved, and well, it was the 70's. Long story short, Victor neither raped nor murdered Kayla, God rest her soul."

"That sounds more like Victor. To seduce a woman and then call her a whore because she gave in."

"He's too old-fashioned, our Victor is. And you look just about blue with the cold. Well, I expect Zoe's given us the slip, because I've run my mouth too long. Let's get ourselves home, Jimmy must be there, by now."

At the end of that week, Logan had a surprise for her.

He had been spending his spare time making his little house on the mountain habitable, again.

Knowing Logan's history. Rogue realized that Logan's cabin was the wellspring of his lifelong dream.

To have a home of his own, and a woman of his own, and a family.

That wasn't so hard, for other men, for lesser men, but for Logan it was an impossible dream, littered with death, disappointment, and heartbreak.

Well, having it seemed, permanently absorbed Logan's mutation, Rogue knew that it was going to be very difficult for her to die.

And as for disappointing Logan, she was determined to never do that, and promised herself she would die before she broke his heart.

Rogue resolved that wherever they were, she would make that place a home for Logan; and she began with this place that was closest to his heart, his home on top of the mountain where he was born and raised.

He got up early in the morning, around five and Marie got up with him, and always insisted on cooking his breakfast.

Logan's truck was still ailing, so Black Tom always came up the path, which was about a half mile up the mountain from his own homestead, and they would load it up with the tools of their trade, and get on their way to the Howlett Logging Company by six.

And after they were gone, Marie often went back to bed for a little while.

She'd get up again, around nine, and take a bath, and get dressed, and go for a long walk, and try to put all of the things that Logan and Black Tom had been teaching her about being a feral mutant into practice.

If the weather permitted, she made a hot meal for both of them, and braved the moodiness of Logan's truck to take it to the logging camp in time for lunch at noon.

If she had shopping to do, or laundry, she'd drive into Howlett, and go to the store and the Laundromat, and, of course, the beer distributor.

Then, it was back up the mountain, grateful that the truck had held out.

In the afternoon, she usually lazed by the fire in the big room with a book, listening to the local jazz station on the radio.

Rogue was an old-fashioned girl, and she liked old-fashioned music.

They also played quite a bit of blues from the thirties and the forties, which Rogue also liked.

At least once a week, she would call the station, if the telephone lines were working, and request "I Know You, Rider."

They usually played Billie Holliday's version, although sometimes' Janis' Joplin's, but that was alright, Rogue liked both.

To love you baby, it's as easy as fallin' off a log.

Wanna be your baby, but I sure won't be your dog.

Those were the lyrics she liked best.

Both lines had applied to loving Victor, but only the first to loving Logan.

He was a good man, a fine and decent man; it was easy to love him, and easy to be loved by him, and she was on her way to meeting an entire school full of good, decent people, Logan's people, who had never done an evil thing in all their lives.

Well, except maybe Dr. Jean Grey, but Rogue tried to think of the woman in the light Black Tom had presented her in.

It wasn't right to judge someone you had not even met, yet.

Rogue tried to keep her feet treading the upward path, on her way, as Logan put it, into the light, with him the one taking her there.

Perhaps, at a great cost to his own personal happiness.

It wasn't so much that she didn't think about Victor.

She thought about Victor every day; she had a crush on him since she was a little girl, and he had been her lover since she was 16.

But she was falling in love again, in love with Logan, and she didn't feel bad about that, because he was Victor's brother, because Victor had sent him to her.

Because she saw no reason in the world why she couldn't or shouldn't have them both.

And loving Logan, well, it was as easy as falling off a log.

Noble, tragic, ruggedly handsome Logan, who had the soul of a poet in the body of the Wolverine.

He reminded her of the kind of character that Clint Eastwood played in his Westerns.

A flawed man with a past best left unmentioned, but still quiet and stalwart, a good man underneath the veneer of tarnish that was on his shin armor.

A good man despite all the bad that had happened to him.

That was probably the biggest difference between Logan and Victor, right there.

He seemed a lot happier, far less troubled than he was when they had met.

He fell back into regular habits, changing his clothes every morning, trimming his beard and shaving every day, and taking a bath and washing his hair every other night.

After his first payday, Logan abruptly went into town and came back with new clothes, well, new for him, from the local thrift shop which was also an army surplus store, and, excepting his hat, his two coats, his boots and a favorite pair of Levis, he threw all of his raggedly old clothes had had been dying in for five years into the fire.

Rogue burnt his old socks and underwear, and went into town to the army surplus store the next day and bought him new ones; he had forgotten about those.

Life was getting better and better, she woke up in the morning happy, and stayed that way all day long.

Rogue had dinner on the table at six, when Logan came home.

After dinner, if there was a game on, Logan would go up on the roof and wrestle with the TV antenna until he could pick something up on his ancient set, and she would sit in the rocking chair by the window, reading while he was glued to the TV.

The matter was compounded by the fact that, where they were, there was of course, no cable, and usually, bad reception.

Logan's battles with the ancient relic were epic.

He would turn the dial and turn the dial, as if he could will something to come up out of the snow on every channel.

"Tomorrow I'm goin up onna roof and fuck around with that antenna. Even if all I can get is soap operas an' Sesame Street, that'll be somethin'. That's' one thing I do miss about New York. Charlie's TV. He's got the biggest goddamn TV you can get. Me and Kurt and Pete, we was always parked in front of that TV. Now Cyke, he liked football. He was Mr. Boy Scout, until it was Sunday during football season, an' it was time for the Jets game. You shoulda seen him when they were losin'. Cursin' and throwin' things at the TV. I remember during the playoffs, I think it was about ten years ago, he was jumpin' up and down on the couch, yellin', 'Go, you fuckin' sunnuvabitch, go!' I dunno, darlin'. Maybe it ain't just the TV I miss. I guess I miss my friends, too." He told Rogue.

"Well, we'll be back there soon, Logan. And I'm sure they've all missed you, too."

Logan was feeling a little blue, all the sudden, thinking about New York.

He reached over and turned the dial on the old TV, searching vainly for something.

"Fuck it. I'm going up on that son of a bitch roof right now!" he snarled.

You would hear him, cursing and stomping around on the roof, and he did fall off of it once or twice, but he always managed to get something, and even if it was Sesame Street, he'd watch it.

Then Logan would turn off the TV, and go into the big room to throw away his beer bottles, and that was when Rogue would leap out of her clothes and into bed.

He'd come back in, and throw another log on the fire, and then crawl into the old brass bed with her, under the pile of fading home-made quilts.

His skin always smelled of sweat, and pine sap, and that certain scent that was just Logan.

She honestly didn't know how it was Logan could get up every morning so early and go to work, because they made love for half the night, sometimes with such a desperate intensity that it made Rogue wonder if she really was the only thing holding Logan back from the abyss.

The thought made her hold onto him even tighter.

Maybe it was because he had been so lonely for so long, or maybe it was because of his healing factor, or maybe Logan was just a horny little devil, but he always made love to her once, sometimes twice, and then again, when they awoke in the morning.

And make no mistake, Logan was one hell of a lover; Rogue thought that even if she could have slept with a thousand men, Logan still would have been the best among them; they really burnt up the sheets. He put his heart and his soul and his ninety years of experience into it. He wasn't trying to impress upon her what a great lover he was. She always got the impression with Victor that he was trying to prove something to her, again and again.

Logan made love to her because she was his girl, his Marie, but also because he just plain old loved to fuck, and was glad to find she did, too.

The first time she saw him naked, she was just struck by how unapologetically and rudely masculine his body was.

He would occasionally make jokes at his own expense about how short he was, but Rogue hardly noticed because of the sheer muscular massiveness of his stocky, burly, hairy body.

She didn't know whether to laugh or scream, though, that first time, because on a man as short as Logan, it really did look like he had three legs.

He even laughed when she told him she thought he had an inch or so on his brother, who was more than a foot taller than him.

"Yeah, I know. I remember when I first pointed that out to him. I ain't never going to forget that. Ol' Vic, he got so damn mad. He's been pissed off at me over it for almost eighty years."

Rogue looked forward all day to nights with Logan, and not just because she enjoyed making love.

It was because the bedroom was the one place she didn't have to worry about acting like a lady.

The whole time she was growing up, it was a constant debriefing on when and how you should act like a lady.

When you're at school, when you're at a friend's house while you're in public.

Everywhere and for every damn thing, there was rule about acting like a lady.

Well, nobody ever told you to act like a lady in bed, because it was assumed that ladies didn't do that sort of thing unless they absolutely had to.

Well, some of us like it.

No sir, nobody ever told you how a lady was meant to act when she was getting fucked within an inch of her fine, upstanding life.

There were no rules at all on what a lady did with a man who was just this side of a wild animal locked between her legs, a wild, burly, hairy real-life lumberjack, smelling of pine sap and dirt and sweat, driving his big, hard cock into you until you felt as though you might come so hard you would die.

That your brains would just shoot out of your ears.

In that case, in the bedroom was the one time that you weren't meat to act like a lady at all.

In the bedroom, a man wanted you to act like a whore.

A brazen, lustful, cock-hungry harlot.

She imagined some ladies had a problem with that, but Rogue didn't.

She was in that bed when Logan was still throwing out his empties and getting firewood for the night not just because she was 100% convinced he was the world's greatest lover, and he had so very much to give her, in more ways than one, but because she liked to let her hair down.

And get down.

And dirty.

Very dirty.

On hockey nights, Logan would go to the bar in Howlett to watch the game, and if it was too snowy to drive, he would start out early and walk.

Rogue still wet to bed ay her usual time, around 11.

And lie awake, waiting for him.

Somewhere after midnight, Logan would wake her up, getting into bed with her.

The smell of the sweat of his labors and the outdoors still clung to his skin, and he would usually be a little drunk.

When she had been a young girl, Rogue was convinced that if she ever did get to make love to a man, that it would only be with her mouth.

Reasoning that the only part of her body to touch his would be her lips, and that if the man was, like they drilled into your head at school, wearing a rubber, she wouldn't be able to hurt him.

All of her fantasies were settled around that act, and when she finally had the opportunity to do it; without any protection being necessary, in their case, it wasn't like she had imagined.

It was better.

She was still, in some ways, an innocent girl, and didn't realize the premium that men put on it; she knew that it pleased her lovers, and it pleased her to give as well as to receive, just as much as it pleased her to make love.

When Logan was a little drunk, it loosened his tongue, and he would wake her up, kissing her neck and murmuring obscene sweet nothings into her ear.

And when he was drunk, she had the courage to say certain things to him that she would never be able to bring herself to say when he was sober.

"Hello, little darlin'. You keepin' my bed warm for me?"

"Always, sugah. Are you drunk again?"

"Who, me?"

He laughed, foolishly, as he found his way out of his shirt, and kicked off his boots.

"You're a fine man, Logan. Butsin in here at one in the mornin', drunk, thinkin' I been up all night', waitin' for you to come home, so ah could have the divine pleasure of suckin' your dick for you."

"Little darlin', I know you have."

"You got me there, sugah. Bring that rocket over here, before it goes off in your pants."

And she would unbuckle his belt, and unzip his pants, and push his pants and his shorts down, if he had remembered to wear shorts, and, without looking away from his beautiful blue eyes, she'd get her mouth all the way around his big, magnificent cock, until she could feel his ten gallon balls banging against her chin.

Then, she would roll over for him like falling off a log.

Logan didn't seem to be shocked at all; he was a real natural man.

She and Logan did just about every damn thing you could do just about every night, and Logan, bless his feral soul was never shy about wanting to love her up with his talented mouth.

He'd tell her that it was her smell that got him; it just drove him crazy.

Everything about Logan drove Rogue crazy; there were nights when she thought she would just become deranged with lust; and she never hesitated to give into her passions; those nights she'd get right on top of him and ride him like he could take her all the way to the moon and back again.

Under normal circumstances the most swearing you got out of Rogue were a few damns, hells and shits.

When she was very angry, perhaps a goddamn or a bastard or a son of a bitch, but it was rare she'd say such things.

Now Logan, he was just as bad as Victor with his fuck this, and fuck that, and he swore like the old soldier he was, freely giving voice to motherfucker and cocksucker, and even the dreaded C-U-Know-What.

Had he ever used that word in conjunction with her, Rogue would have clawed at least one of his eyes out.

But, then again, there were certain times at which his saying a word like that to her, even that word, well, that was alright.

Logan had this way of saying the absolute filthiest things he could think of, very quietly, in her ears while they were locked together, and it just about made her deranged.

On week-ends, she and Logan would spend most of the day in the woods, her survival training, and often they' sleep in a tent on Friday or Saturday nights.

It was one such night, rolled up in her sleeping bag, that Rogue came to realize what Victor meant when he told her that his brother was a tactless son of a bitch, on account of being brought up with their Pa, and he didn't know there were some things you just didn't talk about.

"Darlin', I've known a lot of women, in my time, but I never met one before whose got a mouth on her in the sack like you have. I swear the more turned on you get, the dirtier your mouth is. I hope nobody ever walks by this tent while I'm fuckin' you, because to hear the things you call me an' the volume you do it at, they'd think I was murderin' you. ."

"LOGAN!" Rogue exclaimed.

He just laughed.

"Now I now Vic must have really liked you, because if you talked to him like that, shit, I'm surprised he didn't murder you." Logan chuckled

"Logan! Don't you know there's some things you just shouldn't talk about?" Rogue shouted.

"Well, we're goin to go live in a mansion where we'll be cheek by jowl with a lot of other people. And if you're gonna howl at the top of your lungs when I pop your cork for you, an' call me everything but a white man, they're all gonna think I'm just a dirty old man, and I'm forcin' you into it. Hell, my rooms are right next to Scooter's, and if he hears you screamin'and cursin in the middle of the night, he's gonna assume I'm launching an unwanted attack on your virtue, and bust the door in…"

Rogue was aware she was blushing to the roost of her hair.

"…I mean, how am I going to explain to him that you screamin' at me as how I'm a bastard fucking devil of a hellbound son of a bitch is just love talk, an' that you just kind of develop Tourette's in the middle of bustin' a nut?"

"LOGAN!"

"It's the truth, darlin'."

Rogue realized that he really did have no shame.

"Logan, I can't help what comes out of my mouth when ah, as you put it, pop my cork. If it offends, you're just going to have to put your hand over mah mouth, or we'll get some foam and soundproof the bedroom walls."

"It don't offend me. And if you won't be embarrassed, shit, I live to offend Scooter. I mean, we get along well enough, if somebody asked me, I would tell them he's my friend, but, he's so uptight. You're really gonna offend the shit outa him." Logan replied, gleefully.

Rogue gave him a big hug.

"You really are a natural man, Logan. Just like God made you. As if you grew outa this snow along with the trees."

She almost didn't want the winter to end, she almost didn't want to leave the cabin, and their happy, and, if not a touch heatedly pornographic, idyllic existence there.

But, as life seemed to want to teach Rogue over and over again, nothing lasts forever.

X-Institute, 1983

I: Jean


Somewhere in the neighborhood of four in the morning, and accompanied by Billy Idol on the radio, Tony Stark, 19, Boy Wonder, Wonderboy, parked his car by the gates of the X-Institute.

"Turn that off! You wanna wake up the whole place? Fucking hell, Tony, you almost ran into the gate."

Said Jean Grey, 17.

Model student and good girl by day, teenage head-case hellcat by night.

"That's because I am incredibly drunk. Look, Jean, watch yourself. I know you think he's Fuck On A Stick, but this Wolverine guy, he's killed more people than cancer."

"He's just a man, Tony. And I'm not going to marry him, I'm just going to fuck him. He's a big boy. I'm sure he'll get the message."

Jean was three sheets to the wind, herself, she could hardly get out of the car.

"Jesus H. Christ, I am totally fucked. How about a bump to straighten me out?"

Tony uncapped the little vial around his neck, and unzipped his pants.

"Man, you are such a perv." Jean giggled.

"Well? Do you think this is pleasant for me? My cock's going numb." he insisted.

"Yeah. I'll bet."

Jean opened the car door, and got down on her knees to snort the white powder.

She lingered, awhile.

"Tomorrow, tomorrow, my dear? Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel?" Tony asked

"Totally." Jean agreed.

She kissed him good-bye, and watched the car roar unevenly away, this time to the tune of the Ramones.

First she snuck into the school, and then she snuck into Professor Logan's office, which was off of the gym.

He was a pretty tough nut to crack, but she knew he wanted her, bad.

So, she was just going to help him along.

Marvel Girl snuck into his office, locked the door, took off her clothes, and put on her mask.

She crept over to the Murphy bed where he slept, and got in with him.

SNIKT!

"Whoa! Take it easy, Professor. I'm not here to hurt you."

He sure sat up like she was.

"Jeannie? What the hell are you fuckin' doin?"

Marvel Girl dove under the blankets.

"You're a big boy. You'll figure it out…Holy fuck! You really are a big boy…"

"Oh, Jeannie…my sweet little darlin'…"

Getting his nut didn't slow the Combat Instructor down.

Before Jean knew what hit her, Logan was on top of her, hell he was all over her.

Even though she was drunk, and had a headful of coke, well she would have had to be dead not to feel what he was doing to her, with his unexpectedly nimble hands, and his incredibly talented mouth.

She was screaming for him by the time he got it into her, all of it, and Jean knew what people meant when they siad they saw stars.

Forget Scott.

Hell, even forget Tony.

They were boys.

This, this was what it was like with a MAN.

He told her to come for him, and she did.

And she did and she did and she did.

"Oh wow, like, Logan, oh man, I am so totally in love with you right now. That was fuckin' awesome! Can we do it again, tomorrow night? Same time?"

He hugged her so close to his barrel chest in his massive arms that Jean almost couldn't breathe.

"Whatever you want. You own me, darlin'. I'm all yours." Logan promised.

Canada. Seventeen years later.

"That's the road, Scott. Right there."

"Jean, honey, that's not a road."

"Well, whatever it is, this is the way. Turn right."

Over the last five years, Jean had replayed in her mind all of the better ways she could have handled telling Logan she was going to marry Scott, and not him.

They were all better than what she did.

For starters, Jean thought she should have told him back when she was still Marvel Girl, and he was, in her mind, Professor Logan, the terribly exotic adventurer with whom she was having a very forbidden and terribly torrid affair.

Jean fought with herself, over that.

Sometimes she would get up on her high horse, and tell herself that she was 17 years old and Logan was very much a grown man, a man of the world, and that it was up to him to do the right thing and refuse her advances, and he was crazy to fall in love with her like she was as grown up as he was, and expect her to be ready for marriage, at 18.

But then again she would recall that she was two different people in her teens.

On one hand she was at the head of her class. A good student, a model mutant, an up and coming young superhero, and Scott, who was all of the above was her fine and upstanding boyfriend.

So fine and upstanding that she had to talk him into sleeping with her, initially.

On the other hand, she was a red-haired hellcat, who snuck away from the Institute at night to go to New York and live it up.

Black leather jackets and heavy-metal concerts, and punk joints and after-hours all night clubs and everything that went with it.

At the same time as she was having her official relationship with Scott, she was having a very sordid affair with the debonair and yet degenerate Tony Stark, who was two years or so older than her, but already a college graduate and well on his way to becoming the genius colossus astride the world he would become.

He was also well on the way to being the mess who, as of 2000, was on his second or third turn at rehab for just about everything but sex addiction, a thing Tony considered to be completely fictitious.

Tony was her usual companion in those days, and they spent his money as fast as he made it, living high, getting high, and, incidentally, doing a whole lot of fucking.

So it didn't seem too radical to Jean when she decided she wanted Professor Logan to just have him, and when he tried to weasel out of her grasp, she went to his office, where he slept, in the middle of the night, took off her clothes, crawled into bed with him, and woke him up going down like the Titanic.

Of course, Jean grew out of her wild phase and let Tony go on to bigger and better heights of degeneracy, and also thought better of the affair with Professor Logan, ending it right after she graduated from high school, except she meant that she wanted to be just good friends.

He shocked the hell out of her when he told her he loved her and asked her to marry him.

It had been just fucking, to her.

Jean wasn't even sure if she loved Scott, and it made her feel horrible, realizing that she had very callously played with the older man's fragile emotions.

And what she told him at the time was the truth; she was too young to know what she wanted.

As the years went on she became as close to Logan as she was to Scott.

Closer, in some ways.

He became her very best friend in the world; she felt like she could tell him anything, trust him with any secret, count on him no matter what.

Her love for Scott grew; he was very much her most natural choice for a husband and a lover, but the attraction she had to Logan never went away.

As she got older and they grew closer, it deepened.

Then Scott asked her to marry him, too.

Dr. Grey suddenly had a hell of a choice to make.

She had a whole pile of reasons why she chose Scott, for one thing, she loved him, and there were many other reasons, but she ended up with the happiest day of her life also being one of the saddest.

The day she married Scott Summers was also the day that Logan left the X-Men.

That had been five years ago.

Scott tried to tell her that it wasn't her fault, and that Logan was over a hundred years old, five years wasn't a lot of time for him, he'd be back.

But Jean thought all that was bullshit.

Five years was a long time for her, long enough for her to realize that, in a way, she did love Logan, and that she would always be attracted to him, and that she had, quite callously, hurt him, terribly, in some way that she could never, ever make up to him.

But that was not her biggest mistake.

Oh no.

Her wedding to Scott had been a very big party, and everyone had too much to drink.

Oh hell, everyone got stinking drunk.

Scott got so thoroughly hammered that he spent his wedding night unconscious and snoring like a goat.

But, Jean, due to the wild days of her youth, had a greater tolerance for booze.

And so did Logan.

She went for a walk, to clear her head, and came upon him, wandering the grounds, drunk and miserable.

He was in a rage, close to berserk., and he had shouted at her, and called her every dirty name he could think of.

Logan even backed her against a tree to the point where she was almost afraid he would hurt her.

But all he did was kiss her.

With such passion, and fury, and emotion that Jean couldn't help herself but kiss him back.

You are not supposed to spend your wedding night making wild, drunken monkey love on the ground with a man not your husband, and Jean supposed it was the final insult.

Logan woke up before she did, packed up a few things, piled his motorcycle into his truck and he was gone.

They had both paid a price for that one night of passion, but sometimes, Jean thought it was close to worth it; Logan was one hell of a man.

You near even heard of fucking like that; it was so hot she thought the goddamn ground was going to burst into flames.

Maybe it had.

Briefly.

But, then again, she lost her best friend, and the team lost Wolverine, and the school lost Professor Logan, and Logan lost his home and his family and they lost him.

It was too high a price to pay for their foolishness, and Jean spent a lot of time over the next five years trying to make things right.

She wasn't the only one.

It would have been hard to convince Logan, but needing Wolverine, tactically took a back seat to losing their friend, Logan.

And, of course, Jean knew, everybody blamed her for it, even though they had no idea the extent to which it really was.

Jean had never told Scott any of it; every time she tried she realized that he would never understand.

Logan's trail began in New England, and they followed it over five years all the way back to his roots in the Great White North, in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, and in the fabled Yukon.

It was a trail that led down into the depths of depravity and despair.

At first they had found people who knew Logan as a mechanic or a truck driver, sometimes a groundskeeper and even as a night watchman.

But, as they followed him north and west his trail led down and down until last year they were in BC talking to men who had known him for quite some time, twenty years or so, off and on, shaking their heads about what had happened to "Jimmy Logan".

"He's up in the Yukon, as far as we know. Lives in his old beater of a truck, and makes his money for drinkin an' gas an' greasy-spoon meals takin' cage matches."

One night in Howlett, British Columbia, Logan's home town, they ran into a man they had thought largely mythological.

"Black Tom" Logan.

Wolverine's father.

The short, stocky man in the lumberjack shirt and work pants couldn't have been anyone else, he looked so much like Logan it was uncanny; the biggest difference was that there was a little grey in his hair around the temples, and he wore an old-fashioned moustache with his sideburns.

He seemed awfully drunk, but he still recognized them.

"You two are from that bunch my boy used to run with. Have you seen my Jimmy? Is he still alive?"

Jean was too shocked to speak.

That Logan's father was alive, and that he feared his son wasn't.

"We hope so, Mr. Logan. We haven't seen him in five years. When was the last time you saw him?"

"About two years back, I think it s now? What is this, '99? Then it would be two years. And he was in a bastard bad way, then. Drunk, Shabby. Homeless. I told him, come with me, Jimmy lad, you know there's always a job for you at Howlett Logging. But whatever he was looking for in the bottom of that bottle, he hadn't found it yet. They're a problem, my boys. Jimmy's got too much heart, and Victor's got too little. But I wouldn't trade 'em for the world. You two got any little ones, yet?"

Scott blushed.

"No." he replied.

"They're a bastard pain in the ass. Especially little mutants. Maybe I was too old to be their Dad, I dunno. I was better than that bastard preacher my Victoria married, Victor is the way he is because of that Zebediah Creed. He killed my Victoria, and I'd piss on his grave if I could find it. They say I killed my Elizabeth, but it's a lie, you know. It was all an accident. A bastard accident. Too bad Jimmy had to see it. But I'm an old man, very old, I was born in 1760, and I'm drunk. And worried about my son. At least Victor has a fucking job, you know? I know where he is, and I know he's not out in the cold, somewhere, and at least he calls. Jimmy never calls. I don't know where my boy is, I wish I done. He was doin' so well with you lot, too. I got a whole scrapbook fulla pictures."

Jean couldn't take it.

She remembered all the way back to 1983, when she looked at what Professor Logan did for an undershirt and a pair of sweatpants, and through the years of their friendship, and that last, terrible, wonderful, heartbreaking night they had spent, together.

"Mr. Logan, it's all my fault. I'm sorry." Jean blurted out.

"Your fault, lass? It takes two to make a fault. It's his fault, too. He's that way, my Jimmy. He's got the soul of a poet in the body of a drunken Mick, and a feral drunken Mick, at that. Comes from his mother. Jimmy, he falls in love hard, an' he always falls for the wrong woman. The ones who live belong to other men, and the ones he manages to hold onto, they never make it. He tries to blame it all on his brother, but he's made enough of his own messes, he has. It's a bastard blessing to him he can't remember most of them."

Black Tom took another drink.

"D'you go in a' fight with my Jimmy, lass, right beside him, shoulder to shoulder?" he asked.

"Yes. Your son is my best friend. I've known him for most of my life, and I guess I took if for granted he would always be there. Until he was gone. Whatever you have to tell me, I need to hear it." Jean said.

"Then you're tough enough to take the truth."

Black Tom paused.

"I seen the boy a month or so back. I found his truck down by where the path to my land meets the road. The door was open, they key was in the ignition, but no Jimmy. I found him a little bit away, lyin' face down with the snow yellow all around him. I turned him over, an' he was cold, and his face were blue. He'd not just pissed himself, he'd been sick, and he was lyin' there in a puddle of his own sick, breathin' it back into his lungs. I thought he were dead, I really did, but I hefted him up and carried him to the cabin. I poured ice cold water over him, and shouted in his ears, an' smacked him in the face, and he came round a little, and he was sick again. I got him walkin, into the house an' he were with me there a week or so. I tried to make him stay, but he left, again. I'm goin' to the Yukon meself to look for him. Because it's death and nothing else Jimmy's looking for; someone to put him in his grave. Not while I live. It ain't natural for a father to have to bury his child."

Jean could not abide that.

"Well stay here and look. Where can I contact you if we find him?"

Black Tom gave them Howlett Logging's number, and she and Scott spent another two weeks driving around and staying in motels before they went back to the X-Institute.

Another month or two went by before they got the call from Logan's father that he was safe and sound at the cabin, and in a lot better shape.

But, the story had changed.

In the dead of winter, he had met a girl on the road, a young girl, 18 or 19, 20, maybe, a girl of his own kind, and it changed him.

Friends of his seemed to be more optimistic.

"Jimmy'a a changed man since he met his Southern belle. He's been working at the logging camp with me through the worst part of this winter. In the spring, he wants to take her back to New York, to you lot, so she can finish with school. Poor girl, she's runnin' from something, but you can see plain that they've saved each other."

Scott would have been satisfied with waiting for Spring, but Jean didn't like it.

"What if Magneto decides he wants his daughter back, right now? What if he finds out where she is? What if he sends Sabretooth to come and get her? I don't like it, Scott. We'd better go get Logan. And the girl. Now."

Jean's words seemed prophetic to her, because as they came close to the old homestead, she and Scott caught up to Logan having a confrontation with Sabretooth , right in front of their father's cabin, with the Southern belle in question and Old Black Tom warily looking on.

They came upon a very confusing conversation, already in progress.

"Can't you fuckin' do anything right, Jimmy? Do I hafta draw you a picture? I'm not the bad guy, this time. He sent me here to get her. To get her and take her back so he can kill her. And you're fuckin' around here, puttin' Pop an the girl in danger because of some fuckin' frail who married another man? What are you, stupid! Can't you do anything right, runt?"

SNIKT!

SHUNK!

"His father has claws?" Scott asked.

"Apparently. I always thought there was bone under the adamantium. Military intelligence isn't that bright." Jean replied.

"Jimmy! Vic! That's' it! I'll swat yer eyes out, and ye can go home in the dark!"

"Yes , Pa." Logan said, dutifully.

"But Pa…" Victor protested.

His father smacked him upside the head.

"Not on my land, you don't! Why don't you boys bury the hatchet? You can't kill each other, anyway, God knows you've tried."

"You know what, Vic? I don't know what the fuck you're talking about but…."

"I'm talking about her father. Magneto. He wants to kill her."

Logan looked shocked.

"Kill her? Why would he want to kill her? Why do you two keep telling me he wants to kill her?"

That was when Sabretooth saw her and Scott.

"You tell him."

Logan whirled around.

"It's complicated. But Sabretooth isn't lying. Both of you, get your things and come with us, and I'll tell you on the way back home." Scott explained, succinctly.

"Marie?" Logan asked.

"It's true, Logan."

"Marie, darlin', go get our stuff. Pa, my duffel's awful heavy. Maybe you can help her."

"I see. Don't look back, Rogue. I think Jimmy's gonna have to make it look good when Victor goes back to tell his boss he couldn't shift you."

Logan waited until they were in the cabin.

"How good does this have to look to Magneto?" he asked Sabretooth.

"He and Raven are waiting at the diner in Howlett. I better look ripped up. Or what he'll do to me will make the nightmares you have about when they stuck all that metal on your ass look like a blowjob from a French whore."

SNIKT!

Logan stuck one set of claws in Creed's stomach, and slashed his face with the other, ripping his eye out.

Jean and Scott both averted their eyes.

"That good?" Wolverine grunted.

"Yeah." Sabretooth gasped.

"She's comin' back. Get your ass out of sight!"

Sabretooth retreated towards the treeline.

"Jimmy?"

"What?"

"You mind me for once, little brother. Take good care of her for me. Don't let her come back. Ever."

"I won't, Vic. You can be one hundred per-cent motherfuckin' sure of that."

They all walked down the mountain, together, where Logan's truck, and Scott's waited.

"Holy shit, Cyke, that's a real nice truck! Dodge, right? The kind with the Hemi in it. What year is it?"

Scott had been worrying about what to say to Logan, after five years.

When he was a boy, Logan had been his teacher, and although the older man had never said anything about his student becoming his boss, he never changed the way he related to him.

In a way, Scott still looked up to Logan; and when Cyclops was in a jam he couldn't figure a way out of, Wolverine was always the first teammate he needed to talk to.

Scott was glad to have the opportunity for an icebreaker.

"It's a 2000. And I sent it down to Mason's Auto, on the Lower East Side, for some special modifications."

"Superhero shit?"

"You bet. How's the old beater running?"

"I hadda do some repairs, but she runs like a dream. Most of the time. I guess she needs a trip to Mason's Auto, too."

"Well, there's room enough in the cargo hold of the Blackbird for both of them. And all your stuff. Look, Logan, I'd like you to come back and join the team. But even if you're not willing to suit up, again, I'd still like you to come back. Everybody missed you. Hell, even I miss you. I mean, we're your family, Logan. As much as your father is, and more than your brother, who wants to kill you half the time and wants you to be a serial killer like him, the other half. We want you to come home."

Jean could tell from the look on Logan's face that he was surprised to hear that from Scott.

"What about you, Jeannie?" he asked.

Jean bit her lip.

It didn't work.

As her students would say, she totally lost her shit.

"You hairy little jerk ! Look at you! Look at the condition you're in! This is good shape? What kind of shape were you in before? What the hell have you been doing to yourself for five years? What the hell is the matter with you? You just left! Left! Do you know the kind of resources we allocated to find you? No, I came all the way up here in the middle of the winter to say have a nice life! Of course I came to get you! You're only my best friend in the whole world! I've only known you since I was 17? Why would I give a fuck if you just sort of upped and left! Logan, you are coming with us one way, or the other, goddamn you! "

Jean looked at the girl, and she had her poker face on.

"Well, I'll come back with you. But I'm never putting that uniform on, again." Logan replied, evenly.

"What? Are you completely fucked in your head? Did you drink something loose? What are you going to do? Buy a bar? Drive a cab? Get a job at McDonalds? " Jean insisted.

"That's what he was thinkin'. But ah told him that's no work for him. You should have seen the state he was in when ah first met him, three months ago."

That was volunteered by Rogue.

"Logan, if it's because we have some…personal problems, you and Jean and I, we can work them out. There was never any reason for you to leave, well, not just your team, but your home. Hell, I would have stayed engaged to Jean, indefinitely, if I knew you were going to take it that hard."

"It ain't that. I wanna have a normal life. I realized that when I met Marie. When she's older, after she's done with school at the Institute, and college, we can get married. Maybe she'll be a teacher or somethin' like that, an' we can live in a fuckin' house, like other people do, an' I can have a wife an' a family an' a normal fuckin' life."

"What about when Sabretooth shows up?" Jean asked.

"Victor won't harm me. And if ah had any children, they'd all have claws." Rogue interjected.

"He wouldn't hurt them. He's got some decency. The war's between him and me, and nobody else." Logan added.

"Do you love the girl, Logan? Is that in there?" Jean insisted.

"Of course I do. What kind of a man would I be if I didn't?" Logan bristled.

Scott cut in.

"Logan, we are not trying to do make you do anything that you don't want to do. But I'm not sure your enemies would let you have a normal life. You don't have to give up on having a wife and a family, because you're in the X-Men. And I have to agree with Miss Lehnsherr. You won't be happy driving a cab or being a grease monkey. You're not the idiot you pretend to be."

"Please, Logan, just stay at the Institute until ah get mah bearings." Rogue added.

"You too, Marie?"

"You want what's best for me, don't you, sugah? Ah want what's best for you. Oh, and Mr. Summers, how do you know my name?"

"Your…father has been at the X-Mansion every week since you disappeared. We thought it was an attack the first time. He seems extremely distraught. According to him, you have been…a little too chummy with Victor Creed for quite some time, and he came up with an outrageous lie about your life being in danger to get you away from your home and make his enemy, Logan, look like a fool in the process."

"What do you believe, Mr. Summers?"

"I believe that neither Sabretooth or Magneto can be trusted, and that's one of the reasons I'm here. The other is Logan."

"I still can't believe you came all the way up here just for me?'

Rogue rolled her eyes, and Jean exploded.

She grabbed Logan by the collar of his jacket.

"That's' right, you tell him. He refuses to listen to me." Rogue said.

"Will you wake the fuck up and smell the coffee, Logan? People like us don't get to have normal lives. The X-Men need you. The students need you. The city needs you. Hell, there are times when the whole world needs you. You and your girlfriend can play housie-housie just as well at the Mansion as you could anywhere else." Jean snapped.

Now, Rogue broke in.

"Now just you wait a minute. Ah don't like your tone, Dr. Grey. Whatever bad blood there is between you and Logan doesn't concern me, and I will not sit here and let you paint me like I'm some cheap two dollar whore. What Logan and ah have, together, is important and meaningful to both of us, and ah will thank you not to cast aspersions on it."

Logan swallowed a laugh, and Jean looked at Magneto's daughter like she had ten heads.

"You really want to make a home for him, don't you?" Jean asked.

"Ah do. Ah have. And ah will continue to do so. But I agree, Logan. Wherever else we went, we'd have nothing. And ah wouldn't stay one minute at that school without you. And not as a God-damned groundskeeper. As an X-Man. As Wolverine. Ah have no idea what mah father is planning. And Ah could not begin to imagine what Victor may do next. But ah do know that you will be needed to try and stop it."

Logan looked at his knuckles.

"Alright. Alright, I'll suit up with you, again. Just until whatever Magneto has planned is dealt with. Then we'll see." He said.

"Thank you, Logan." Scott said

Jean didn't say a word.

"So, do I get a new leather uniform, too? I like the new uniforms. That goddamn spandex, it makes your balls itch an it's always ridin' up the crack in your ass."

Scott blushed a little.

"We'd better get going. Before the badguys catch up to us." He decided.

"What about my uniform?"

"Well, when we had the new uniforms made, I took the liberty of having one made for you. Just in case." Scott confessed.

Jean took Logan aside white Scott coaxed Logan's old beater of a truck into the X-Jet, with Rogue spotting for him.

"What's with the kid, Logan?"

"I'm with her, Jeannie. That's what."

"Are you crazy? She's Magneto's kid, and she was Creed's before she was yours. I know I was that age when this whole mess started, and I screwed everything up, but that doesn't mean you have to start over again in the same place."

"I'm not. Rogue ain't you, Jean. And I'm not the man I used to be. I got a little smarter', darlin'."

Logan went to enter the X-Jet and Jean stopped him.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Jeannie, I love you. I will die loving you. But I'm not going to die from loving you. You married Cyke, you got on with your life. And I'm gonna get on with mine. You're my best friend too, you know. But from now on, that's it. It's better that way. For both of us."

Scott and Rogue finished up, and got in the jet, and Logan parked himself in the pilot's chair, just as if it had been five days and not five years.

Scott seated himself beside Logan, with great pomp and circumstance, and he and Wolverine proceeded to have a conversation in which Logan persisted in calling him "Scooter", until he lost his cool, and after that things went smoothly between them.

First, Jean felt as if she was going to cry, and then, quietly, she did.

"Dr. Grey?"

Rogue quietly slipped her a tissue, with her gloved hand.

"Ah understand. Sometimes, ah cry a little, when ah think of Victor, too. Count your blessings that even though Logan wasn't the right man for you, you can still be friends. Victor and ah, we will never have that opportunity." She whispered.

"Thank you." Jean replied.

She took the tissue, and wiped her eyes.
Chapter End Notes:
Hoo boy! That sound, constant readers, is the plot, thickening! OK sports fans, let's total up the scorecard. Rogue loves Victor, and Logan, but she's chosen Logan, because she thinks Victor is bad news. Jean loves Scott and Logan, well sorta, but shes chosen Scott because she thinks Logan is bad news. Logan loves Jean, and Rogue, but he is determined Jean will never break his heart again, because it would kill him. And Victor loves Rogue,and misses his whiny runty brother, but hasn't got a hope in hell, because he knows he's bad news for everybody. And how the hell did Tony Stark get in this mess? Oh well. You guys know Tony. If there's a controversy going on, he's always right in the middle of it.
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