Author's Chapter Notes:
The end of this chapter will mark the end of part one (of two parts).
Chapter 12: Then / Now

Then

The fire threw wild, orange light into the study, casting flickering shadows about the room. It was just how she imagined it would be. The long hallways, the paintings, the thick Persian rugs. All the things about the man who made him who he was. Logan hadn’t been like this. He was rough around the edges, just like he was inside. Hank McCoy, however, seemed to embody a perfect dichotomy.

That’s how she found him: the door opened, sitting in one of the high back armchairs, sipping tea. As if, outside, the world wasn’t burning.

“Rogue,” he said, eyes still on the fire in the hearth. No matter how light she kept her footsteps, she had lived with Logan long enough to know that Hank would have heard her. The Logan in her head had stopped articulating warnings, had essentially ceased all communication with her years ago, but she got a sense of his lingering presence from time to time, and she knew he was still there, listening, watching, waiting.

Outside: the world’s rage boiled over. The riot had swelled, grown into something ugly and unbearable. There were shouts, screams, bricks shattering glass and the acrid smell of tar. Trees were burning. Inside, the fire danced in the hearth, catching Hank’s face in the light. He looked older, like everyone she had ever known, wary.

“Hank,” she managed to breathe.

“They’ve sent you to kill me?” he asked. Helpless tears rolled down her face. He knew. Of course, he knew.

“They’re already here,” she whispered.

“I know, but we still have time. Sit,” he said, gesturing to the other open arm chair. Her limbs shook as she did so, summoning the courage to at least have the decency of facing him.

“They’ll all die otherwise. Yes?” he murmured, looking at her.

She silently nodded.

“He knows me. He knows them.”

Hank sighed, taking the fragile tea cup in his large, blue hand. He sipped it slightly, then set it down.

“I know you’ve been coerced, Rogue. I know that your life and the lives of those you love hang in the balance. I know you’ve thought of ending it all, just to be rid of it. I also know you’ve been trying to fight against it, feeding them the most useless information you can. But that part’s over now, isn’t it?”

She looked up to him, tears still burning her eyes. There was nothing she could say. He had said it all.

“I want you to listen to me, and do exactly as I say. There might be a chance.” She looked at him, really looked at him, eyes dancing with questions.

“Take the plans and give them to Charles. Find him.”

“They keep close tabs,” she murmured. “They know how to find me.”

“Good. Inform them of every step you take. Betray us if you have to. You need to maintain the semblance of your loyalty, but you’ll also have Charles. He’ll know. Just barely, but you can be a step ahead.”

“Hank...” she said quietly.

“But…when the time is right, you can make a difference. Congregate them, and eliminate as many as possible. But it has to start with you. Right now.”

“Good people will die,” she murmured.

“Good people are already dying, Rogue. Charles needs the plans. I am sorry, my dear, but there is no other way.”

“I can’t…” But in one second he was standing over her, blue hand hovering just beyond her own.

“May I?” he asked. She nodded slightly, more tears falling, and he took hold of her wrist, grasping it tightly. And then she was seething, crumpling to the floor, the influx of new senses and memories crippling, overwhelming, but there, still, nestled among it all: the plans.

Hank managed to stay standing, but he was bent over in pain from the touch. As she slowly got up from her knees, she suddenly could hear everything. Like before, like with Logan.

“Hank…” she said helplessly, but he was already headed toward the door. “They’ll kill you.”

He turned back to her, sighing as he did so.

“You still don’t understand, do you, my dear? If they suspect you, it’s over. If I don’t die, they all will.”

A grandfather clock was roaring in her ears. Branches on fire scorched her nose. Just then, the click of a door, the heavy weight of his shoes in the dry grass, his face calm and resolute. And then, the swarm. The sounds of blades, bats, guns, ropes, the entire bloody procession. It went on and on and on. At some point, she started screaming, just to drown out all the rest.


--

She watched as he bucked and weaved, a beautiful, animalistic signature to his movements, the blood flying as he pulled his claws out of bodies, ending life after life, the metal singing. He inhaled in every time before throwing his fists forward, and when he anticipated a blow, he dodged, danced, all instinct and intuition and truth. He was painted in their blood by now, a living, seething canvas. As Logan and Rogue ran, more guards flocked to him, all moths drawn to the same flame.

They were drowning in the hallways of Two Rivers, the flashing red lights illuminating them both, swimming in the piercing sounds of alarms. He was ahead of her, protecting her, taking out as many guards as he could, both of them trying to get to the mainframe.

Finally, they reached the metal cage where the database was housed. Logan mowed down the grate easily, before another guard came at him, and she nearly missed being entangled in the tussle by climbing through the wire and wreckage. She grabbed the computer hard drive that had been slung around her neck, jamming it into the mainframe. She quickly picked out the skeleton key password on the touch screen, and went to work. Logan had moved further down the hallway to where Blink would be ready. Guards were darting this way and that, but, just as they anticipated, Rogue could have been invisible. The man who could cut through anything upstaging the girl with the quiet, deadly skin.

Hey, we’re both lethal, kid, the Logan in her head added.

You bet your ass we are, she said back.

The screen lit up, and, impossibly fast, the virus Storm had designed freed itself and started wreaking havoc. It now flew into the cloud, undermining the computer’s security system.

Atta girl.

Just then, she heard metal give way, the click of a hundred doors being opened at once. People began shouting, a shred of hope in some of their voices. I’ve done it Charles, she sent out to the Professor. Almost on cue, she could hear Blink’s portal cracking down the first prison block, the portal snapping open and closed again and again in a snarl of purple and black as Blink weaved between stray guards and started extracting prisoners. Charles and Storm were still overhead in the Blackbird in the sky, poised for phase two.

Good job, kid. Now, make the call.

Her phone was already out. It was a number she had committed to memory.

“Trask Industries. Certified informant identification number please.”

“4695388,” she said softly.

“Connecting.”

“Rogue, what do you have for us?”

“Two Rivers. Charles Xaiver and the rest of the X-Men are extracting prisoners on foot.”

“Our team will convene there with drones and Mark X’s at 2300 hours. Good job, Rogue.”

Kid! Look out!

Rogue turned to find Logan’s claws slice through another guard outside of the mainframe, and she saw the other behind him by the time it was too late.

“Logan!” she shouted, but then she felt the sting on the back of her neck too, the pins-and-needles feeling of the metal inserting into her spine, and she dropped helplessly to the ground, consciousness fading.



--
Logan’s vision went in and out of focus as he groaned, attempting to sit up a bit and instantly regretting it. As he looked down, blood. His blood. And pain. The hell? Then, he could feel that fucking paperweight on the back of his neck, and, intent on pawing at the inhibitor collar to get it off, he reached back just in time to feel a smooth, bare hand grab his wrist. Looking up dazedly to find its owner, he saw her kneeling over him, a cut on her forehead and a slightly bruised eye, but, remarkably in one piece.

“Wha? Marie?”

“Don’t touch that thing. These fuckers can inject you with a poison that will leave you dead in five minutes if you fiddle with them too much. That’s why they work.”

Logan’s eyes widened, not so much because of that piece of information, but because his brain was finally registering the fact that Marie’s bare hand was still holding onto his wrist and they were both still conscious.

“Fuck, they got you too?” he managed to say, as he moaned again trying to straighten.

“Yeah. Listen to me, don’t sit up right now, baby. Lie back down. I’m going to try to ease the bleeding.” Then, before he knew it, she was stripping off the top half of his uniform and tearing off his shirt underneath.

“Dear god,” Marie managed to say, and Logan propped himself on his arms to see his chest was pebbled with mostly unhealed gunshot wounds. His body had rid itself of the bullets, but the collar had effectively cut off the rest of the healing before the job was finished. Meanwhile, Marie had gathered a bunch of medical gauze and was tearing it into long strips.

“Pick the worst wounds and apply pressure to slow the bleeding,” he muttered, as some old bit of intuition from his days fighting alongside normally-healing humans in every major conflict on earth came back to him.

“I know what I’m doing, sugar. I just never thought I’d be doing it to you,” she said, finally using some gauze and applying pressure to the nastiest exit wounds. Logan gritted his teeth, trying not to pass out and stay relatively still while her bare hands freely roamed all over his bare skin for the first time, touching him and checking him for further damage. He must have lost a lot of fucking blood. He was lightheaded and a sudden bout of nausea threatened to overtake him.

“Marie,” he managed to choke out.

“I think you might’ve torn a few muscles on your side, and if you could break a rib you would have. It’s bruising pretty bad right here,” she said, feeling along the left side of his chest, where his abdominal muscles met his ribs.

“Marie!” he said forcefully.

“What?” she asked, a mounting frustration in her voice.

“It’s just… that’s a whole hell lot of your touch all at once that I ain’t had the pleasure of experiencing before. A lot to process,” he managed to say. With that, she instantly blushed, removing her hands for a moment before going back to applying pressure.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “Only trying to help.”

“I know,” he groaned, trying once more to sit up again.

“Easy,” she said, holding onto one shoulder as he leaned his back more against the cinderblock wall he must have had been originally throw by.

“I feel like shit,” he muttered.

“At least it’s not worse. The guards are definitely just regular old Canadian military. They’re new at this, and they don’t know shit about mutants. If they had been thinking they would’ve done more damage to you after they slapped that collar on. I don’t think they even knew you could heal.”

“Where are we?” Logan asked.

“One of the med bays off the second prison block. It’s one of the only rooms with a locking mechanism the virus I implanted didn’t reach. Honestly, I don’t know how they found it. But they had some spare time, I guess. As they install, the collars knock you out for a few minutes. Enough time that they were able to throw us in here. I think they thought we were stray prisoners.”

“At least they didn’t kill us. How many of the actual prisoners got out?”

“Both blocks,” Marie responded, smiling a little at their success.

“Good,” he murmured.

“Charles has been in communication. Blink’s a little busy seeing them to safety, but they’ll be back to fetch us. If we live long enough...” she trailed off, staring down at his blood on her hands.

“Hell, Marie, it ain’t that bad. I’ll survive. And where is everybody else? All the guards?”

“Well you took out a fair few,” she said, finally wiping the hair away from her face, smearing some of her own blood from the cut on her forehead with the back of her hand. “I doubt there are more than ten of them left.”

“I can’t tell where anyone’s at,” Logan grumbled. “I can’t smell or hear for shit now.”

At this, Rogue oddly smiled a little once more. “Welcome to being human, sugar,” she murmured.

“I think I recall you tellin’ me we already were,” Logan joked a little, despite a new wave of pain coming from his chest. She had been right about the ribs.

“Well, something like that,” she said. Marie smiled a little as she looked down at him, running her hand through his hair at the temple like that day in the snow. Only this time her hand lingered, a more deliberate touch. Logan closed his eyes, breathing in slowly.

“Dear lord, that feels amazing. The fact that you can even do that…” she blushed a little, as he continued. “I know they ain’t too popular, but fuck if that thing doesn’t have a silver lining. At least on you.” Rogue smiled a little more sadly, but continued to keep her hand in his hair, stroking his temple softly.

“How do we get these things off us anyway, in the end?” he asked.

“They all have unique pin numbers. The medical director of each camp memorizes a series of them, and he enters them into a portable reader to unlock them if they have to.”

“Shit, baby. You’ve done your homework. But I probably killed that sorry son of a bitch who knew the codes,” Logan muttered.

“A powerful telekinetic can unlock them too without unleashing the poison. We’re lucky; Charles is probably one of the few people alive who can do it,” she said quietly.

“But we have to get to him first,” Logan grumbled. It was then he moved up a bit more, and she tsked him slightly, pressing a thin hand to his warm chest to get him to lay down more.

“Stop… hurting yourself. You really don’t know how to behave when you’re injured, do you?”

“No. Not really. This is like fucking Japan all over again,” he grumbled.

“What?” Rogue asked quietly.

“There were… a few days in Japan when I wasn’t healing at all. Some fucking microbug. Had to rip the thing outta my goddamn chest. Almost died,” he muttered bitterly.

“I didn’t know that,” she whispered, looking down at the spot where his heart was beating, although he couldn’t hear it like he normally could. He couldn’t hear hers either, he realized, and it made him feel unsteady.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning on telling you,” he stopped. And then, after a pause, he added: “Just like you weren’t planning on telling me about the tip off.”

“What?” she said, stiffening a little.

“Before we got bagged. You tipped off Trask. You’re calling them all here.” He saw her sigh in mild frustration.

“Hell…he was right. You did catch me,” she murmured under her breath.

“Who?”

Marie only waved to her own head.

“Oh yeah. I almost had forgotten about that fucker.” She rolled her eyes slightly, but continued to look vaguely guilty.

“So, why, baby?” he asked carefully, fighting back another swell of sharp pain.

“I had to. Charles needed the Trask’s Canada medical division in one place at the same time.”

“And what? You just had some of the higher-up’s numbers on fucking speed dial?” Logan persisted. It was then, she stopped, keeping her gaze focused downward and biting her lip uncomfortably.

“Shit,” he murmured under his breath.

“What?” she asked.

“That’s it,” he said.

“What’s it?”

“You’re a goddamned double-agent, aren’t you?” he asked, through narrow eyes. Marie instantly blushed five shades of red, taking her hand off the bandage she’d been holding.

“You make it sound like…James Bond or something,” she murmured. Fuck, so he was right.

“How long?” Logan asked. Still, she said nothing.

“How long, Marie?”

“Since Hank,” she murmured. Logan desperately tried to wrap his head around the information. Since Hank. Since he had met her in Mexico, then. How had she been involved? And how the fuck had she made those sort of connections?

“How did they know to trust you?” was the question he finally settled on asking.

“That’s…more complicated…” she trailed off, still now unsure of how much to share. “I was… coerced, in the beginning.”

“Fuck, Marie. Fuck. All those meetings with Charles?”

“Planning this, mostly,” she responded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Logan practically whispered, now sitting up fully, not giving a damn if it caused him pain. He noticed most of the blood was slowing anyhow, even if he did still feel lightheaded.

“Charles forbid it. Storm didn’t know, either. If we were ever compromised and you knew something…”

“You think I would have actually let them torture it out of me? Do you know me at all? Shit, Marie. And Hank-”

“I don’t want to talk about Hank,” she snapped, her eyes darkening.

“Ok,” he said simply, letting it go, the truth of it all still hanging between them.

“I have no fucking clue who you are,” he added after a while.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Of course you do,” she said.

“Well, I sure as hell don’t wanna know how you got mixed up in that shit.” Some silence ate away at them both, as he looked back at her solemnly.

“How long until they get here?” he finally asked.

“The drones that are going to try to apprehend the Blackbird will be here in 20 minutes. We picked a remote location on purpose.”

“Mark X’s on their way too?”

“Yes. Fifteen of them. But they don’t know about Blink. They think we’re helping the prisoners escape on foot,” she explained.

“Holy fuck. What are we gonna do? Charles planning on nuking ‘em?”

“Well, kinda,” she said, glancing towards the ground. “A contained, partially-atomic blast Charles has been saving for the right sort of party.”

“He never fails to deliver, does he? And what if they hadn’t extracted all the prisoners?”

Rogue frowned a bit. “There were…debates about that. In the end, I only agreed to call if I knew they were all out.”

“Hell,” he murmured, when, suddenly the sound of gun shots rang out and Logan was so quickly standing on his feet he almost fell over again. Marie was at the door, looking through the tiny pane of glass that had a view to the outside.

“Who are they shooting, Marie?” Logan asked.

“The guards,” she said warily. “Someone’s shooting the leftover guards.” Logan seethed, sweat forming on his forehead just from the effort of standing.

“I guess someone’s here early to the party,” he muttered, and she turned around to look at him, new fear in her eyes. “What do we do?” he asked.

“We need to stall them. Charles needs more time. We’re supposed to meet Blink at the portal in Block A in ten minutes or…”

“He’ll bomb the place anyway,” Logan finished.

“I tried communicating to him again, but I’m no telepath. If he’s not actively listening for some reason…”

The footsteps got closer, and there was frantic shouting outside of the door.

“And they think you’re on their side, right?” Logan murmured.

“Well, sort of,” she said, looking up at him, knowing there was no more time to explain.

“So, we play along…until we don’t,” he muttered. Her look grew more solemn and she nodded just slightly, before turning to face the door once more.

As the sounds got closer, he noticed she had reached out instinctively, taking his hand in hers. He reflexively wrapped his fingers around it, and it felt warm and good and right. They stood like that for a moment, staring at the door, that rectangular shaft of light coming through the glass pane, before breaking apart seconds before it opened.

Suddenly the room was flooded with new soldiers in gas masks and riot gear, and the world blurred. Logan unsheathed his claws reflexively, knowing damn well the wounds wouldn’t heal afterward, driving his fist up into one of the men, before turning, realizing they had already grabbed Marie and that she was helpless to resist, her strength gone.

Two men pounced on Logan, and he fought hard to shake them, slicing an arm off one of them. Suddenly the man was screaming, a geyser of blood where his arm should have been, before another man drove the back of his gun straight into Logan’s temple. The metal of his skull held, but the room danced. As he struggled to come to himself again, another man shot a couple bullets at him, one directly hitting his calf and his legs crumpled beneath him.

They had him on the ground now, a boot dangerously close to his head, dozens of more guns pointed directly at him. From his hazy vision, he saw a soldier hold Marie’s arms behind her back roughly. Logan struggled at the weight of the men who held him down, growling as he did so.

Finally, Logan could make out a few more people filing into the place, but this time they were impeccably dressed, and one man was in a white lab coat.

“Rogue,” a man said, donned in a pinstriped suit in the center of them all, one that Logan didn’t recognize. “Where are they?”

Rogue said nothing, looking sharply at the ground in front of the man’s feet, willfully diverting her gaze from Logan. He could feel her burning up from here.

“Rogue, we’ve been around the whole perimeter, and there are no prisoners to speak of. Let alone any X-Men.”

“Your lookin’ at one of them, bub,” Logan growled roughly from the floor. The boot that kept his head on the ground lowered slightly, and he felt the terrible pressure in his brain get worse. Pinstripes turned to him then, leering.

“Yes…the mighty Wolverine. Your reputation outdoes you, I’m afraid,” he said. “Somehow Rogue managed to apprehend you.”

“She’s pretty strong,” he threateningly taunted from the floor.

“And also for some reason gave up that strength to put an inhibition collar on herself,” the man said, obviously skeptical.

“We were detained by guards who thought we were strays,” Rogue said calmly to the room.

“Fine…you offer us the Wolverine, but no Charles Xavier, no Ororo Munroe, no Erik Lensherr. I’m beginning to wonder Rogue, have you gone soft for these people?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she spat. “I’ve been working for Trask covertly for over seven years, supplying you with information.” Logan’s mind struggled to work properly. What had she said? Since Hank. So, she had been wrapped up in this longer than a few months. Much longer.

“Both blocks are empty,” the man in a white lab coat said. “Except for a few juvenile mutants in the medbay in Block A.”

Just then, he saw the quickest of glances from Rogue, her eyes knowing and intense. Fuck. Just like this med bay, the doors must have stayed close. So they hadn’t gotten them all out.

“Rogue, I’m just going to assume there is more you’re willing to share and you’re being…hesitant. It’s that or you have wasted our time, which is indefensible.”

“Charles is in the sky, that’s all I know,” she said quietly, evenly. The greying man in pinstripes sneered, and turned back over to Logan.

“Lift him up,” he said. Logan anticipated what was coming, and there were a few precious moments where he braced himself.

“Do it,” he ordered to one of the soldiers, and then one of them was driving a knife up into the right side of Logan’s chest, missing his heart by a few centimeters. The pain cracked and sizzled, his vision fading for a few seconds as he angrily yelled, muscles straining as he writhed against the men who held him down.

“You sure that’s it?” the man in the suit said, looking back at Rogue.

Rogue’s face was completely, absolutely blank, eyes dark and opaque. As the man turned to her, she said nothing, and then he was giving the order and the soldier was twisting the knife again, and Logan knew it was now nicking vital organs. He felt his blood pressure lowering, felt his body struggling to maintain its pulse, the taste of iron blooming in his mouth. The man in the suit leaned down next to him, smiling insidiously, before he nodded once more to the soldier and the knife twisted again. Logan scream turned into a harsh growl as he gritted his teeth severely, before managing to spit a spray of blood in the fucker’s face.

He sneered at Logan, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his sleeve, before standing, looking back at Rogue. Meanwhile, the soldier had left the knife still embedded in Logan’s chest. Logan’s vision was going black around the edges, and he could feel his consciousness beginning to slip. Marie was still standing in the same spot, but he could tell her muscles were taught. And then, it all clicked into place. He knew what she was going to do.

No.

“Still nothing, Rogue?” the man was shouting. “Should we bring the children in here and-”

Just then, at lightning speed, Rogue kneed the man hard that had relaxed his grip on her, getting enough access to whip her hand free. Logan watched as, in one swift move, she yanked the collar off from the back of her neck, wincing as she pulled its needles out of the top of her spine, then she had dodged to the left, using her bare hand to grab the man in the white lab coat by his uncovered wrist.

Instantly, men were on her, but she now easily shoved them off. Gun shots rang out, flying into her left shoulder, and she screamed out in pain, but she had already dropped the medical officer with her deadly touch, eyes alight now with his knowledge. Throwing her body into another soldier that sent him flying across the room, she seized the portable reader off the body in the white lab coat and punched in a code. Just then, Logan felt his own collar unsnap, and his body flew to work, strength and vitality coming back to him in one, overwhelming rush.


--

Marie watched as Logan ripped the knife out of his chest and began mowing men over as fast as he could, even as a rain of new bullets poured down on him. He growled, carving them up, as some of the people fled in different directions, realizing what Rogue had unleashed on them all. She staggered over to him then, a searing pain still in her shoulder, but managed to find him in the fray.

“Med Bay A, now!” she shouted, and then they were running out the door, flying to the other side of the prison. Behind, she heard boots running after them and, above, the roar of a jet.

Logan! Rogue! Hurry! The Mark X’s have targeted the Blackbird. We need you on this plane now!

They turned the corner and they were now in Block A, and she practically slammed into the door of the still-locked room of the med bay, trying to focus as the man she had taken in screamed inside of her head.
.
Shut him up for me! she shouted to the inward Logan, as she sifted through the memorized codes from his consciousness, looking for the right one.

The man’s screaming finally subsided, and a sweat had formed on her brow as she typed in the correct number. She could still hear Logan behind her fighting a fresh swell of armed gunman off, trying to offer her cover.

He’s contained now, but, Marie…

I know.

Baby, you have minutes.

I know, sugar.

She was inside the room now, and she turned around wildly to see three children. A girl, the youngest, no older than six, was unconscious on a cot. Two older boys sat huddled in the corner, looking terrified. They all had the mark: an angry, violent M carved red onto the side of their faces.

“Logan!” she cried, and he was already inside, scooping up the unconscious girl in his arms. She motioned toward the door at the other two, helpless to grab their hand or touch them in any way.

“Let’s go!” she shouted.

They silently looked at each other for a moment before they got up and followed her, and now they were careening down Block A, rows and rows of empty cells, the doors still open, flying past them, Rogue and the two younger boys finally catching up. In front of her, she saw Logan cradling the soft, brown curls on the back of the girl’s head as he ran, her thin, limp arm slung over his broad, muscular shoulder, and Marie’s heart broke.

Meanwhile, inside, something dark had started seizing up, a thick black gunk that had started sticking her lungs.

Marie.

I know.

Ahead of them, finally, the portal was snapping open in a purple and black snarl, and, around them, the walls of the building started to shake. Logan was already helping the kids through, before climbing through the portal himself. That’s when she stopped, planted to the ground, just beyond the divide between his life and her own.

Logan whipped his head back to her, a wild, questioning look dancing in his fierce, golden eyes.

“Come ON!” he roared.

“No,” she said simply.

“Marie!”

“It’s done, baby,” she said, her voice struggling, while the world, the awful, awful world they lived in fell apart around them. Outside, she could feel the air tighten, the heavy metal falling toward the earth, the promise of destruction on the wind.

“You knew…” he finally breathed. She said nothing, closing her eyes momentarily before opening them again, letting the last of her guard fall away, finally showing him everything she was.

“You knew it would come to this. That’s why, last night, you wouldn’t…” he stopped, voice breaking.

“I love you,” she said, fiercely, just beyond the rift. “You hear me? I love you. Always have.”

“Marie, baby, don’t do this. I just got you back,” Logan begged, but, as he reached for her again, she took a step backward, while also pressing him back through the portal from where he had tried to reach her. She was stronger than him; he couldn’t stop her.

“I’ll see you in another life, sugar. A better one.”

“No. Baby, baby-”

No.

Alarms screamed around them, the rumble of boots closed in on her, the walls cracked, and she looked at him one last time before the portal snapped closed, and they were all gone.


Now

The autumn breeze that rustled the leaves outside flew in through the open window of the lake house as he worked. Despite the chilly temperature, sweat dropped from this brow, a drop here and there seeping into the wooden floor boards underneath him. He was in the process of replacing them, stripping the old and laying down the new, one by one, piece by piece. Suddenly, he heard her in the doorway, and he looked up, wiping his forehead as he did so.

“You bored?” he said through a slight grin. He had been dragging Laura to the lake house almost every weekend now, after he had set up in agreement with the bank, who currently owned it, to remodel it as a sort of occupational hobby. He claimed it was about getting better at his craft, but, secretly, he liked putting work into this place. It wasn’t his, but it made it feel something close to it. The bank had apathetically agreed, seemingly unbothered by his scraping around the place, especially if it was going to raise the value of the home.

“Sort of,” she finally said, picking at the chipping paint of the front doorway.

“Go explorin’,” he said through a smirk, finally standing and stalking over to grab a beer from then three or four he had brought with him in the cooler. He popped the top off, and the she rolled her eyes.

“I already did that,” she said unenthusiastically.

“I don’t know what to tell ya, kid. Couple more hours here, at least,” he said, before taking a long drink of the lager.

“You could always help me,” he said after setting down the beer, looking down at the mess on the floor. Laura sighed, before turning back to the outside.

“Don’t you dare think of driving that Bronco off somewhere,” he shouted after her, and she stopped, turning back to him, smiling a bit, before wheeling back around.

“And Laura, stay within sight of the lake house, ok?”

“Si, papa!” she shouted, waving her hand up at him.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but down on the lake he could feel the ripples lapping and the geese honking across its surface. The old radio he had bought would incrementally fade in and out with music as he worked. His hands had started aching after a while from the continual grip on the hammer, and he stopped once more after some time, rubbing his right shoulder, the one that she had once done some damage to, what felt like lifetimes ago.

He thought of her, then, and it was the first time in a long time that he didn’t shut down the memory. He let it float by lazily in the fading light, before he finally stood, hearing something that sounded like rustling down by the stairs. It was good timing; he was finishing up and he could round up Laura to leave to get home in time for dinner.

“Hey Laura, what’s five times five?” he asked playfully, walking through the threshold between the house and world beyond.

“Come on, kid, that’s an easy one,” he said, wiping his hands before looking up. But there was no one there. And the noise had been…?

“Laura?” he asked, looking around a little bit more, his voice growing more cautious.

“Laura?”

The lake, the shore, the house, the car. Nothing but the breeze, nothing but the cool wind, kicking up the dust in the near-dark.
Chapter End Notes:
Me (practically whispering to reader): Now would be a good time to go watch Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut, if you haven’t in a while.

Reader: Please don’t say you’re doing this.

Me: Oh, we’re doing it. You knew it was going to happen. I need everyone on the same timeline now.

Reader: You…frustrate me.

Me: I can give you my Google Play password, if you need it.

Reader: …

Me: I know you own the Blue-ray anyway.

Reader: Fuck. You.
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