The hair on the back of Rogue’s neck prickled. He was watching her again. She refocused her attention on Scott, determined not to look up at the Danger Room’s observation area.
“You have to protect your left side,” Scott was saying. “It’s a natural inclination to turn your attention to your dominant side, which means you have to concentrate all the more on threats coming from your left.” His right leg swept towards hers, and she instinctively jumped, landing solidly on her feet, using her forearm to block the jab aimed at her head from the left.
“Good,” he said. “Enhanced senses can be a distraction, but when you are focused they can be your biggest asset in a fight. Listen for the shift in my breathing to know when I’m setting up for a punch. Focus on the interruptions in the wind to know when people are approaching. Use their scents to know which ones will be more likely to attack and which ones will be more likely to run.”
Rogue pulled back, narrowing her eyes. “That’s not coming from you,” she said darkly. Again she felt Logan’s gaze on her back, as the muscles between her shoulderblades tensed in reaction. “That’s coming from him.”
The visor masked Scott’s expression, but she smelled his hesitation. “It’s information,” he finally said. “Use it.”
Anger flooded over Rogue. “I don’t want his goddamn advice,” she spat. “And I don’t appreciate his goddamn surveillance,” she said loudly, looking pointedly at the darkened observation room. “We’re done for today.”
He was waiting for her as she left the Danger Room, standing squarely between her and the elevator.
“Move.” She felt the rage welling up, her blood roaring in her ears. Control, she told herself, forcing herself to take deep breaths, tamping down hard on the urge to use Magneto again.
Logan crossed his arms in front of his chest, biceps bulging within the confines of his flannel shirt, his face set in determination.
“Ah’ll take the stairs,” she said, wheeling around. Damn him, but he was fast, appearing in her path once again before she had taken even a few steps.
“We have to talk,” he said stonily.
She clenched her jaw. “Ah don’t have to do anythin’ you say. And Ah’m not gonna. Now quit it. Quit watchin’ me in the garden. Quit spyin’ on me in the Danger Room. Quit standin’ outside my door at night.” She smiled bitterly at the flicker of surprise in his eyes. “Ah may not have had these damn overdrive senses as long as you have, but Ah got ‘em now, and Ah know when you’re playin’ at being my fuckin’ shadow. So jus’ quit it.”
“I wouldn’t have to shadow you if you’d just fuckin’ talk to me. I never figured you for a coward.”
“A...” she was so angry she was close to sputtering.
“Yeah. A coward,” he growled. “If you wanted to, it would take you ten seconds to find out the truth. You could know exactly what went on between us. You could know that I wasn’t lyin’ about how I felt about you. You have everything you need to know in your head, if you would just face up to it, but you’re too damn scared. It’s easier to believe that I was just messin’ with you. Easier to be angry at me than to admit that I actually cared for you.”
She had heard enough. She tried to shove past him, and again he put his body right in front of her.
His nostrils flared, and she was suddenly acutely aware of what he was smelling. Her sweat, her anger, the smell of Scott on her. His fists clenched and she saw the glimmer of silver before he was able to pull the claws back. In a flash, he had her shoved up against the wall, his face so close to hers she drew her head back to avoid contact with his skin, hitting her head against the wall with a solid thunk.
He pulled back a little bit, at the same time bringing his arms up on either side of her, hemming her in. His massive shoulders filled her vision, the muscles bunched with tension under the flannel. He was so close she could see his pulse pounding under the tanned skin of his neck, could practically taste the saltiness of his skin. The heated scent of him washed over her and she felt her body react involuntarily, longing and arousal threatening to swamp the anger. She turned her head to the side and closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “Just leave me alone.”
He stood silent for a minute, but she could still feel his gaze on her. She felt the warm inrush of air as he inhaled her scent, and the gentle huff of his breath on her neck as he exhaled. She couldn’t entirely suppress the shiver that ran through her body. Finally she felt him drop his arms. When she opened her eyes he was leaning against the opposite wall, hands in his back pockets. She could tell his anger had faded as quickly as it had flared. His eyes held nothing but regret and concern.
“Is your head okay?”
She couldn’t help a surprised snort of laughter. Her head was anything but okay. She knew what he meant, though, and touched the spot where she had hit it. “Yeah. It’s slowin’ down, but I still got the healin’.”
He sighed, looking almost dejected. “I’m not your enemy, Marie.”
Her anger was gone too, leaving her feeling cold and empty inside. “Maybe not. But you’re not my friend either. Not like you pretended to be.” She turned toward the elevator, and this time he made no move to stop her. She stopped, but didn’t turn to look at him. “And the name is Rogue.”
________________
Marie lay in bed, Logan’s words running through her mind in an endless loop. He hadn’t said anything the Logan in her head hadn’t been saying for the past three weeks, but somehow she couldn’t shake it off as easily. You have everything you need to know in your head, if you would just face up to it...
“Face up to it,” she grumbled into her pillow. “More like rub my face in it.” She huffed in a deep breath and flopped over.
Easier to be angry at me than to admit that I actually cared for you...
God, she was tempted to ask Xavier to give her that dreamless sleep again for the first time in over a week. Why was he so insistent that she look at his memories of their time together? What could it possibly accomplish?
She closed her eyes tight, taking a deep breath. Xavier had been helping her to refine her mental barriers. She pictured in her mind’s eye the ragtag, rudimentary patchwork walls she had created on her own, interspersed with the smooth, flawless sections Xavier had help her craft. She sought out within her mind the amorphous form of Logan and Wolverine, only partly contained by the walls in progress.
She held her breath and opened her mind, just a little...
He lay in the warm car, watching her as she talked about the man who had hurt her. She was so beautiful, so vibrant. Something in his chest twisted at the idea of someone hurting her like that. He wished he had been there to protect her. Without premeditation, he leaned forward, and then he was kissing her, her lips soft and warm and sweet beneath his. She tasted like peaches and sunshine and sweet grass, and he was greedy for it...
She sat up with a gasp, throwing up whatever blocks she could in the way of his memories.
I told ya, darlin’, I never lied about the way I felt about you...
“Shut up!” She covered her ears futilely with shaking hands. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
A long silence from him, and she thought that maybe she had finally shut him up. And then...
Doesn’t it?
_____________
Rogue placed the peony root carefully into the hole she had dug, and pushed the soil in around it. The wind suddenly shifted, and she caught his scent. Her head snapped up, eyes searching until she found him in the distance, leaning against the wall of the mansion, watching her. She turned her attention back to the peony.
“He’s a good man, you know,” Ororo said calmly.
Rogue patted the soil down carefully. “No, I’m not sure that I do know that.”
Ororo smiled. “Well, I do. It’s not like he ever really gets close to anyone, but I know him about as well as any of us do.” Her expression grew serious. “Enough to see how much he’s hurting right now.”
“How much he’s hurting...” Rogue repeated incredulously.
“He doesn’t leave the mansion. That’s not easy for a restless man like him, you should know that. He doesn’t sleep. He’s always tense. The way he watches you...”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Isn’t it?”
Rogue threw the spade down, aggravated. “Why are you taking his side?”
Ororo stood, dusting the soil off the knees of her jeans. “Maybe his side is your side also. Maybe I want both of my friends to stop suffering for the mistakes that were made.”
“So I’m supposed to -- what? Just forget it all? That he lied to me from the moment he met me? That it was all an elaborate manipulation to get me here?”
Ororo sighed and picked up the next peony, carefully exposing the small buds above the root cluster. “No. I don’t suppose you could forget something like that,” she said. She picked up Rogue’s spade, and started digging the next hole. “But maybe in time you could forgive it.”
________
Marie lay in her bed, kicking at the sheets in agitation. She tried to punch her pillow into a more comfortable shape, perhaps a tad too aggressively. Don’t do it, she told herself. Just go to sleep. Don’t do it.
She shut her eyes, but against her will she felt her mind turning inwards, seeking, skimming through the walls and personalities to find him...
“Don’t do it,” she said out loud to herself, clenching her fists until her fingernails dug into her palms. “Don’t...”
And then she was dipping in, her own secret shameful addiction, the razor-sharp pleasure-pain of Logan’s memories.
She drew back to look at him, and the mixture of lust and wonder in her eyes was as erotic to him as the feel and smell and taste of her. He pressed her down again as he arched up, pushing into her softness, watching with fascination her intake of breath, the dark flicker in her eyes, the color rising in her cheeks at the sensation. He ran a thumb across her lips. “So goddamn beautiful...”
The bittersweet rush of joy and grief overwhelmed her as she sampled the memory, eroding her concentration. Her mind slipped sideways...
He pulled her hard against him, squeezing her tight. What have I done?
He put his head down on the steering wheel, breathing heavily, his chest tight with pressure. “I think I fucked this up,” he ground out to Xavier.
Marie’s eyes snapped open, grounding herself in the reality of the darkened room, her body flooded with Logan’s feelings of guilt and shame. She sat up, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Dammit, dammit, dammit...”
She didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to understand his actions, didn’t want to sympathize with the impossible position he had found himself in.
She unwillingly thought of the weeks after she had absorbed Lehnsherr. His memories of the Holocaust had terrified her, not just because of the horrors themselves, but because it had made her understand him. With those atrocities fresh in her mind, Lehnsherr’s talk of sacrifice and acceptable losses for the sake of mutantkind had actually rung true, his logic no longer seeming twisted and perverse. When his voice in her head had castigated her for ruining his plans, she had almost agreed with him. She was just one person -- alone, unloved. Maybe she should have let herself be used if it would protect other mutants from the genocide Lehnsherr was convinced was imminent. Only her rage at what Lehnsherr had done to Bobby helped her keep enough distance to rein Lehnsherr’s thoughts in, eventually walling him tightly away.
Easier to be angry at me than to admit that I actually cared for you, Logan had said. He had been right. It was easier to hold onto that anger, and dammit she wasn’t entirely ready to let it go yet. She craved the black-and-white, needed some degree of certainty in the midst of all the other chaos in her head. Because if Logan hadn’t been entirely in the wrong, if he really had cared for her...what should she do now?
Well, she certainly wasn’t getting to sleep tonight. She was already wearing pajama pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. She pulled on some socks and a hoodie, closing her door softly and padding across the hall and down the stairs. Midnight snack? She wasn’t hungry. Late-night t.v.? She wasn’t in the mood. The Logan and Wolverine in her head were suspiciously silent, leaving her to her thoughts.
She found herself out on the terrace, looking out over the darkened lawn. Her residual night vision picked out details she never would have seen before, the predatory instincts of the Wolverine twitching to life as a small animal rustled in the forest. She sat cross-legged on the low wall, trying to calm her jumbled thoughts, breathing in the night air, the scents of the mansion muted and diluted by the cool breeze.
It wasn’t until she caught his scent at her back that she realized she had been waiting for him. She closed her eyes, turning her enhanced senses towards him. The smell of him, rich and warm, woods and smoke and spice. The thump of his heart and the flexing of his joints. She could see him in her mind’s eye as clearly as if she had turned around to gaze at him. Hell, she could practically feel him, as if he held a piece of her somewhere inside him, instead of the other way around. She knew he was standing at the doorway to the terrace, unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. She mapped the changes in his scent as he watched her. Uncertainty, arousal, frustration...
She uncoiled her legs and silently moved over, making space for him next to her. She felt the momentary suspension of his breathing, and then he was moving towards her. He swung up on the wall next to her with a gracefulness that belied the crushing weight that she knew he carried on his skeleton. At times she had felt the illusory drag of the metal on her own bones, sapping her strength.
She breathed in his scent and heat, willing her heart to stop skipping beats, trying to keep her breaths deep and even despite the tightness in her chest. Finally, she opened her eyes and looked at him. He looked exactly as she had imagined, and yet still the sight of him felt like a punch to the gut. His rumpled hair, the scruff of his beard, the stretch of his white t-shirt over corded muscles. His eyes were cautious as he regarded her. She couldn’t blame him, she felt the volatility under her own skin, rage and sadness and longing and lust, the emotions roiling together, exaggerated and amplified by his proximity.
She closed her eyes again and breathed in the night air, trying to let the emotions go with every exhale.
“You finally looked,” he said.
It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway.
“I fucked up. I know it. If I could take it back, I would. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything.”
She nodded again. She knew that too, now. All of it, but it was still good to hear him say it. She felt a thickening at the back of her throat, and willed the tears away. That damned weakness of hers, welling up when she most wanted to be strong.
He looked out across the lawn, a muscle ticking in his jaw, his hands clenching on the stone wall so hard she thought it might crumble. “So where does that leave us?”
Damn his directness. That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? But she didn’t know the answer. She didn’t feel like she knew anything right now. The earth seemed to be constantly shifting under her feet. She shook her head helplessly. She knew she was scaring him with her continued silence, but she didn’t know what would happen if she opened her mouth, if she would cry, or scream at him, or -- worst of all -- beg him to just fucking hold her again...
“Marie...” he said, the single word thick with longing and regret, and the rough edge of his voice scraped against her soul. She bowed her head and gulped in a deep breath, the tears prickling at her eyes now. It felt like it took all the strength she had, but she reached out slowly until she was able to put her bare hand over his where it grasped the wall. With a wordless sound of anguish low in his throat he turned his hand, desperately grasping hers so tightly that her fingers immediately went numb.
They sat for awhile in silence. Finally, Marie gave his hand a squeeze, and he reluctantly loosened his grasp. She went inside, and this time he did not follow.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Another slow-ish chapter, but at least it is long and has some good Rogan interaction. Next comes smut and action, and then we're off and running to the big finale! Please review if you're willing. :-D
Chapter End Notes:
Please review! :-D