Chapter 8: Rogue
Her back ached. That was the first thing she noticed. It was a dull, sore sort of pain that radiated in her spine and traveled outward, the kind that suggested she was in the latter half of her life, the kind that let her know she was tired. So very tired.
It was dark. That was the second thing she noticed, as she quietly blinked a few times, her eyes opening from her spot on the living room couch, where she had accidentally drifted off.
And the third thing, well. The third thing was that her brown eyes now met Logan’s soft hazel, as the man stood over her, frowning.
Immediately, her heart raced, a litany of terrible possibilities flooding her mind. Had he had another nightmare? A coughing fit? A hallucination? As these paranoid questions inundated her, another part of her mind, some deep, darker part, cringed at the concept that this is how she responded upon seeing her lover in the middle of the night now.
“What’s wrong?” she said, sitting up quickly, wincing a bit from the ache in her spine as she did so. She was moving to turn on the lamp on the end table, but he slowly reached out, grabbing her wrist lightly, inhibiting her from doing so.
“Leave it off,” Logan muttered, and then he turned his hand, extending it, palm and fingers offering to help her up. Rogue glanced at the hands of the man she loved, knuckles wrapped in medical gauze, freshly dressed from earlier this evening when he had awoken from another nightmare and had once more extended the claws. This was the fourth night in a row that she had slept only a few hours, trying as she had been to keep awake and alert when Logan needed her, but the fatigue was now pressing down on her, seeping into her bones. She stared at his hand intently for a moment, then brought her eyes up to meet his.
“Come to bed, Marie,” he murmured. “You need to sleep, and I don’t want ya to do it on the couch.” She stared at him for another long moment, before slowly and quietly taking his hand. He pulled her to a standing position easily enough, before wrapping his arms around her thin waist. She sighed heavily in the dark, for a moment simply laying her forehead against his chest. He snaked a hand up to cradle the back of her head, and they stood there like that for a long while, the tips of his fingers stroking the brown of her hair.
“Come on kid,” he finally murmured, and then he was pulling her along, gently leading her back to the bedroom. She sat down on the bed she hadn’t occupied in three days a bit awkwardly, lying down then, grateful for the coolness of the pillow, and he silently lay down beside her. She turned into him intuitively, facing the front of his body, before she ran a hand down the side of his face, and his head leaned into her touch, nuzzling her palm.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she finally said through a frown.
“Don’t worry about it,” he muttered through closed eyes. For a moment no one spoke, and the only sounds were the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the ticking of the clock on the wall in the living room. She sighed again, as she watched Logan open his eyes once more, staring at her.
“Laura’s dance is tonight,” he said after some time. It wasn’t a question, and Marie wondered if it was more of a way of Logan marking time. With dozing most of the past few days away and being in and out of sleep at night, time had moved differently. It had for them all.
“Yeah, it is,” Marie said through a faint smile. Logan didn’t return it.
“How’s she doing?” he asked softly, even as a gentle hand ran down the length of one arm and Marie shuddered slightly. Logan had done very little talking lately, and something about this moment suddenly felt like a small, important gift.
“She’s fine,” Marie said quietly. “She misses you.” Marie could barely make out Logan’s frown in the dark, but it was still there.
“I’ve fucked it all up,” he muttered quietly.
“No, you haven’t, sugar,” Marie said softly. Again, more silence. Logan turned onto his back, staring up at the ceiling fan oscillating above them both. For a while, she listened to his breathing and the occasional cough; however, he wasn’t likely to go back to sleep, not with her in bed.
Three nights ago, only a day after the hallucination, Logan had woken up from a horrific nightmare, claws out. They had been inches from her stomach. He had retracted them, horrified, and from then on out she had stayed awake, ready to patch his wounds and ease him back to sleep. The quiet new truth that that he might truly, really hurt her if she kept sleeping next to him remained unspoken, although she knew Logan was hurting over it. She had been too.
“It’s falling apart, darlin’,” he finally muttered after some time to the dark.
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
“The rest of it,” he muttered. She was silent in the dark and his hand reflexively tightened on her shoulder.
“Marie. I smelled him. Felt him,” he said hoarsely.
“It was once, sugar,” she said evenly.
“Until it happens again,” Logan muttered. Marie closed her eyes tightly. She didn’t want to hear this. The fact of the matter was Marie suspected that Logan’s nightmares and further slide into depression had been spurred by the hallucination. It had happened once. Once was enough. And what was far more damaging was the resulting aftermath. Whether or not his senses were actually failing him, if Logan believed they were, then that was that. And he did now. He had been inclined to sleep the day away to deal with this new reality, this truth, and it was breaking everyone’s heart.
He turned back to her then, pulling an arm around her waist and bringing her closer. She now lay curved up against his body, that deceptively strong frame taught with muscle, and his warm skin instantly settled the churning feelings inside her.
“Sleep,” he finally muttered.
“But, sugar, you’re the one who-” she began but she could feel him shake his head in the dark.
“No. Not now. I’ll manage. For now, I’m gonna breathe you in, listen to yer heartbeat, and let you rest.”
Marie sighed, surprised how quickly her eyelids began to droop as she gave in to the gnawing feeling of exhaustion, dozing off to the steady rhythm of his breath and the faithful warmth of tangled limbs.
--
She had awoken to a still-alert Logan in the early morning, the slatted light from the window throwing patterns of white onto their bedspread their bodies were still draped on top of. She had yawned, smiling at him softly, and he had smiled back, tracing a thumb over her lips.
“Are you ok?” she asked.
“Fine, darlin’,” he muttered.
“How long was I out?” she asked quietly.
“Few hours,” he murmured. As she woke up a little more, Marie noticed the dark circles under her lover’s eyes, the tired slack of his body.
“Now you need rest,” she said, and he only offered her a small shake of his head.
“S’just the medicine talkin’,” he said flatly.
“Doesn’t matter the reason,” she said, putting her hand to his chest, curling up a bit more closely against him.
“Coffee with you first, kid,” he said through a small smile. “Laura’s not up yet, but I wanna be when she is.”
A few minutes later Logan sat at the kitchen island, thoughtfully watching Marie make a fresh pot of coffee. His hair was mussed and he was shirtless, sporting only a pair of athletic pants, and Marie, despite all that had transpired in the past few days, found herself appreciating the view.
“What?” he asked through an arched brow as she snagged two mugs from the kitchen cabinet.
“Nothing,” Marie said through a small smile. “You want it black?”
He only nodded, before staring down at his hands, fiddling with the fraying edge of the gauze on his left set of knuckles.
“Does Laura have what she needs for tonight?” he asked suddenly, and Marie stopped to look up from what she was doing and smiled at him.
“I think the plan is to go dress shopping later today,” Marie said softly.
“She nervous?” he asked.
“Hasn’t really talked about it much. If anyone’s nervous I’m sure it’s Cole, the poor thing,” Marie muttered, pouring the fresh coffee into two mugs.
“Heh. Kid’s alright,” Logan said. Marie slightly frowned at this, turning around to face Logan once more.
“I’m not sure…” Marie trailed off, unable to quite put her suspicions into words as she added a little milk to her mug.
“What?” Logan asked. “Cole’s not who you think?”
“Oh no, he’s fine. He’s Jody’s son. He’s a good kid. It’s just...I’m worried he’s in for a little heartache. They just seem like such friends to me. I’m not so sure if Laura really likes him or not…” Marie trailed off quietly. Logan’s interest seemed to perk even more at this.
“But she’s always talkin’ about love. Amor and all that. You think she likes another boy?” Logan asked, and, after a moment, he spoke again, another thought striking him. “Or… someone else?” he added carefully.
Marie bit her lip a little as she gently stirred her coffee with a spoon before offering an answer. “Maybe. I don’t think any someone specifically yet...but maybe. And Cole, well, I think she was just excited someone, anyone, was thoughtful enough to ask her to the dance.” Logan raised another eyebrow at this, considering.
“I guess I can see that. Our little hija wantin’ just to fit in a bit more,” Logan murmured, as Marie walked across the kitchen to place the warm mug into Logan’s assuredly sore hands.
“Our hija,” she murmured through a smile. He put down the mug quietly on the island beside him and growled approvingly, taking her waist between his hands. “Yeah darlin’. Ours. Our daughter.”
She smiled, leaning into him for a moment, before reaching for the mug he had set down and handing it back to him.
“Drink,” she said. Logan had the slightest ghost of a frown on this face, but still dutifully took the mug from Marie. His hands barely shook as he did so, but she knew that he was exercising vast amounts of control to keep the tremors slight.
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
Marie assumed Laura was sleeping in late, and Marie could guess why. Logan had told Marie long ago that Laura had fallen into the habit of staying up sometimes at night, double checking on both of them, and Marie could only assume the events of the past few days had exacerbated that habit. Across the island, Logan and Marie had been talking quietly, but she could tell now, that, despite the coffee, Logan’s body had begun to droop. He hardly slept at all last night, and it was beginning to show. As Marie cleaned up from breakfast, she was just about to suggest he lay down when she heard him mutter something into his coffee cup once more.
“I’ve been thinkin’ about that line,” he said quietly through a sigh. Marie stopped what she was doing, and walked slowly over to her side of the kitchen island, their empty coffee mugs now on the counter between them.
“What line?”
“The one you painted last month. The one with the boat,” he said, and Marie frowned deeply. She had set aside that painting weeks ago, focusing more on sketching since she could do that in the main living room. She hadn’t thought of the painting since. She had thought no one had.
“What about it sugar?” she said softly.
“There was always some line between you and me. Anytime we got it right, even if we had it our way for a little while, things would go to shit. I’m no believer in fate, but it seems like it’s not too much on our side,” he ended quietly. Marie simply stared at him wildly for a moment, trying to understand why he was bringing this up and why he had interpreted what she had created that way.
“That’s not what I meant when I painted it,” she finally murmured.
“No?” he asked, eyebrows arching in mild surprise.
“No,” she muttered.
“Then what did it mean?”
Marie stared at him for a long while, trying to remember how she had felt when her hand had drawn the brush across the canvas, black painting dividing the white space in two. She had added blue later, made it the surface of a lake perhaps, but it had first been nothing but that line. Now that she recalled the image, she was starting to understand why Logan would have interpreted it that way.
“I…. I was thinking about time, maybe,” she finally said.
“Time?”
The truth was that Marie had been thinking about time since Logan had left her at Xavier’s four years ago. About it’s relativity. About how it stretched, lingered, compressed itself. It was one of the only things that had soothed her, reading all she could about Einstein’s theory of special and general relativity. He was gone, but he wasn’t. It had provided her comfort. During the cancer, during his absence, during her endless search to find him in Canada.
“Yeah,” she murmured again. “How it’s all relative. Time speeds down, slows up. All based on perception. I’d like to think that maybe we’re all points, or dots. Like we’re doing everything at once.”
“The bad and the good,” Logan muttered, and a chill shot down Marie’s spine.
“Yeah, I guess,” she said thoughtfully.
“Even so, I don’t want dots, and I certainly don’t want lines between us,” he said. “I want it all. All of you, all of the time.” That had her looking sharply to him once more.
“What do you mean by that sugar?” she whispered quietly. He said nothing, resigned instead to picking up the coffee mug shakily and standing, walking it slowly around the island and to the kitchen sink. He turned back to her, kissing her gently on her forehead.
“Nevermind, darlin’. Gonna go rest since the kid’s still sleeping,” he muttered. Marie frowned as he began to walk out of the kitchen, and she found herself murmuring his name once more.
“Logan, wait,” Marie said. He turned back, dark eyes locked on hers, and for a second no one moved, everything and nothing, stretched out between them. Finally, she blinked, realizing why she had spoken, and turning back momentarily to rifle through the kitchen drawer, she had the pillbox out and slid a handful of pills across the counter. He frowned deeply, before sweeping them across the rest of the space and swallowing them all at once.
--
The next hour found Marie alone. Both Logan and Laura still slept, so Marie was left to wander the house by herself. It was no surprise, really, that she ended up once more in her study. She purposefully avoided the painting and ones she had attempted like it, and instead found herself drawn to her bookshelf. She slowly ran her hand over the spines of her books, so many books. Dostoyevsky. Proust. Austen. Dickinson. Twain. She stopped there, for reasons unknown to her, pulling out a nonfiction collection from the prolific American author that she enjoyed more than Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. Life on the Mississippi. She cradled the book closely to her, bringing it over to the armchair in the corner, cracking it open. The yellowed pages stared back at her, a faded inscription written in blue ballpoint pen on the title page.
12-25-78
Kevin,
This one for me was one of the most profound explorations of mankind ever written. Read & Enjoy. - Peter T.
Marie smiled faintly at it, running her thumb over the words. She had read the inscription before and had faintly wondered who Kevin was, what Peter T. was like. What their relationship was and why Peter felt compelled to give him this book on Christmas. Thumbing through the pages, she found herself settling on a dog-eared corner about halfway in, and she turned to the page, realizing that a whole paragraph had been circled in the same blue pen.
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furish toward compassing the safepiloiting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty’s cheek mean to a doctor but a “break” that ripples above some deadly disease?
Marie froze at these words. Through a wave of nausea she closed the book quickly, shoving it away from her through a deep and troubled frown.
--
She had tried to wake him. It was no use. He slept deeply, so deep Marie had checked a couple times to make sure he was breathing. She was hesitant to leave him to go to the mall, but Marie also knew that he would have wanted her to go, to help Laura get ready. Laura had been downtrodden all day with the knowledge that she had slept in too late and had missed her father when he was awake, but, as Laura’s sullen mood persisted, Marie started to suspect there were also other reasons for her demeanor. It wasn’t every day you went to your first middle school dance after all.
Later, the curls of Laura’s brown hair. Laura’s slender frame in the midnight blue dress, the silver swirls looking like some far off place, like blinking stars. She was so beautiful, so solemn, so carefully perched on that precipice between girl and woman. Marie’s heart flattened when she watched Laura bend down over her sleeping father, brushing her lips to murmur something so soft Marie hadn’t heard what it was. And then the resolute look as she glanced at Marie once more, willing herself to stand, to press on, to move forward.
The ride had been silent, but Marie could feel Laura’s tension spike when they had gotten closer to the school.
I don’t wanna do this, she had said. I don’t want to do any of it. None of it. Terminé con esto. Es mentira. A lie.
A lie. Laura had been referring to her hair, but something about that word now plagued Marie, even as she now drove back from the school. Marie had been harsher with the younger girl than she had intended, but she couldn’t take it right now. Not today. Not after seeing him so tired. Not after the remark about the painting. Not after the words in that goddamn book.
You’re getting out of this car, even if I have to force you out, and you’re going to go take that poor boy’s hand who is still waiting for you and you’re going to dance with him. Because Laura...I need you to. You understand me?
Tonight, for once, she needed someone to be ok. She needed something to work. She needed something to be normal.
Some of the tension had left Marie’s body as she watched Laura get out of the car and stand next to Cole. Marie’s heart had lurched a bit as he offered her a corsage, and, realizing she was openly staring, Marie had shaken her head a little and started up the Bronco once more.
A lie. But what part?
Now, the sun was falling out of the sky, as the sleepy town of Hay River stood huddled on either side of the street. Marie frowned as she drove, grip tightening on the wheel. At no point had she anticipated, expected to live in a place like this. Was that part of the lie? And if not, which part was?
Their lives had stalled at some point. Had slowed so much that now they all seemed to only be hobbling forward, pretending things were better than they were, preserving something they might have already lost. But that was the funny thing about time. You didn’t always know that you had slowed, because you were always bound by the limits of your perception. But every speed on your knees was still crawling. Was that what Laura had meant?
The Bronco ironically struggled itself as it made its way up the hill, and just as she was about to curse the car for being another relentlessly tired thing in her life, Marie was struck with a sour feeling.
Something was wrong.
Everything was suddenly off. Discordant, as if all the notes had been changed to sharps and flats or the world had been tossed upside down. As soon as she pulled the Bronco up into the driveway, she could feel it seeping out of the lake house, all of the light now gone from the late spring sky, casting everything in shadows. She found her palms were sweating as she fumbled with the keys, yanking them out of the ignition. The air felt electric, as if on the brink of a storm, and as the night wind whipped through her sweater, she found herself slamming the door shut, the pace of her boots quickening as they made contact with the gravel and then up the stairs to the front door.
Much like her lover’s hands always did, her hand shook as she reached out to open the door, and then, the sound of a thud, a crash. Glass breaking. Wood splintering. Inside the white lakehouse: chaos. Instinctively, she turned and locked the door behind her.
“Logan…?” she murmured, looking around the darkened house desperately, before she even could understand, could comprehend what was happening.
Noises. Shouts. The sound of furniture snapping, breaking. She was breathing heavily now, trying to understand where the noises were coming from, since they seemed to be coming from everywhere. Glancing around the kitchen, she took in an opened, empty liquor bottle, pills from the container scattered all over the kitchen floor.
“Logan!” she shouted his name this time, and then there...a sharp thud from upstairs. From Laura’s bedroom.
Her heart leapt into her throat as she flew up the stairs to see the man she had loved for so long standing in Laura’s bedroom, seething and bewildered. His eyes were completely dark, much like they were when the animal was in full control, but he was still muttering in English, even through growls, and there was a sheen of sweat on his face. The room was dark, but the adamantium caught the light that flooded out from Laura’s bathroom, the only light on in the entire house. Around them both, Laura’s room in tatters, and even from where she stood Marie could see the white tile in the bathroom floor glittering silver from shattered bits of glass and mirror.
“He was here….He was here….” Logan muttered. He hadn’t quite noticed her presence yet, even as he turned his head around this way and that, tracking ghosts.
“Sugar.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“They took him here. He thought he was me, and they...they…. god. Laura. Is she alright at least?”
Marie was stone still, blinking even through the hot wetness of those first tears.
“I needta...needta tell her the rest of the story. I need to tell her…” he muttered, still ignoring her and looking about the room frantically. Finally, Marie dragged her feet forward as if they were made of lead, desperately searching for her voice, careful to speak firmly and clearly when she did so.“Logan,” she said.
Suddenly, his posture, the way he held himself changed, and he whipped his head around to her and let out a low, angry growl. The air was still singed with electric current, so much so that the fine hairs on Marie’s arms and neck stood up.
He snarled, taking a threatening, animalistic step toward her. Everything in Marie wanted to instinctively back up, but, instead, she held her ground.
“Baby,” she said, through more tears.
As he took another predatory step toward her, her heart thudded heavily in her chest and she suddenly dodged instinctively to the right, trying to put space between them. He was quicker though, catlike in his reflexes, and he was over to her in an instant, had her up against the wall, claws mere millimeters from her throat, and he was all animal now, breathing her in, taking in the scent of her fear, and Marie thought for one wild moment that this was the kind of fear that hundreds, if not thousands of people Logan had slain had felt in their last moments of life.
She did it instinctively. No willful action from her mind at all as her skin defensively turned on, just as she grabbed his left forearm. Just a little, something inside her said, and, instantly, his face changed as her skin sucked the slightest bit of life out of him, and he looked at her, confused and pained as he stumbled backward. She was still sobbing as a rush of terrible memories flooded her mind. The drop of blood from Charles’ mouth, claws in Laura’s back as an exact replica of Logan carried the young girl down the stairs. The dead look in the old man’s eyes in the back of a Ford pick-up truck and then... oh god... the dead look in her own eyes, the way he held her limp body in the dying light of their bedroom in Westchester. She sank down against the wall as she tried to lock everything away in a box in her mind, while, in front of her, Logan withdrew his claws, the blood still seeping from his hands.
He still wasn’t himself though, and silent tears ran down his cheeks, the sight of which savagely cut through Marie. She had never, not once, seen him cry. Marie looked at him, wild-eyed and desperate as he crumpled to the edge of Laura’s bed, and then she was once more scrambling upward, finding her feet and throwing herself in his arms as he sobbed.
“You...god... he almost….I almost... fuck. Fuck!” he breathed bitterly into her ear, once more finding real words.
She was outside of herself, watching from above again, as she held his body tightly to hers, frantically stroking the hair on the back of his head, shushing him through breathy, soothing murmurs.
“It’s alright sugar.... It’s gonna be alright,” she whispered desperately. A lie. She comforted him like she might a young child, holding his strong body closer to her, blood and broken things, dots and lines, scattered hopelessly around them both.
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