Reminisce: Chapter Six
BACK THEN
Marie waited for Logan in the corridor, chewing on her bottom lip. She wasn’t cold, but she wondered if she should have put her slippers on. Her bare toes on the carpet--did they look weird? Were they too bumpy? She held a bottle in front of her, one in each hand--but maybe that looked too earnest?--and instead dangled the beer by her hip. Casual. Then she realized how childish she was being. What kind of idiot worried about things like that, when on the other side of the door--the groans, the creaking bed, the sounds of her friend in distress. Bumpy toes. Jesus. She knocked again. “Logan?”
She pictured him, as vividly as if the walls were made of glass. She saw him flinching into the present, fists clenched, angry and ready to prove it. It took Logan awhile to wake up--to reconcile himself to now, to twisted bedsheets and lack of immediate danger. At least, if his nightmares were the same. If they were anything like hers.
The knob turned, and the door drew inward--just a few inches, enough for him to peer out. Shirtless, sweaty, and surprised to see her-- “Kid, you alright? Is everything alright?”--he checked the corridor in both directions, and then Marie, scanning her up and down.
“I’m fine. I just thought I’d check on you.”
His eyebrows shot up.
He started to speak, stopped. Grimaced.
She was not one of those people who thought the world owed herself something. She wasn’t angry when the things she hoped for didn’t turn out like she imagined. Having a family, having a boyfriend, having an adventure, having a mutation. She liked to think that she took her punches without too much sniffing.
That being said, Marie hadn’t ever expected Logan to look embarrassed to see her.
“Just...just give me a second Kid, okay?” He said, tightly, almost through his teeth.
“O-” He’d ducked back inside before she could reach “kay”. She was left waiting again with the empty hallway, air conditioning roaring in her ears like an underfed lion. This is ridiculous. What am I doing here? What did I want from this?
When the door reopened--just wide enough for him to squeeze through--Logan was wearing a wifebeater and the same decidedly tense expression. He closed the door behind his back and then checked to make sure it was shut, despite the hard click it made. It was the same bedroom they’d given Logan last time. Maybe he was thinking about what had happened in there, last time. Perhaps he didn’t want to remind her of the other nightmare, of his claws, of every disaster that had followed. Perhaps, one foot still in his nightmare, he wanted to but a barrier between himself and the phantoms he’d left on the pillow.
So she lifted the Molsons and gave them a little shake. That, finally, inspired a weak grin. He took one of them, knuckle brushing her pinkie finger--quick enough for a pulse to react, but not a mutation. “Didn’t know you drank.”
“Well, I didn’t, before.”
“Picked up one of my bad habits?”
“And a couple others.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, blushed. “Please don’t be.”
He popped the cap off his beer and then did her’s. Again, that breath-second of contact. A millimeter of skin, yet she felt a tickling heat spread as if her arms were tinder.
“So you and Bobby, huh?” He said it with an overly hearty voice.
She took a sharp breath. “Excuse me?”
“I heard you two got pretty close.”
“Heard from who?”
He shrugged.
“Well we’re not. We’re not close. Not now.” Plenty of other people had asked about them, their relationship or lack thereof. She wasn’t sure why it hit the deadened nerve, coming from Logan.
He’d just brought the bottle to his lips but pulled it away without a drink. “Did something happen?” He wasn’t smirking now. The suddenness of the gesture, the jerk of his shoulder, painted images that made her worry for Bobby. “No,” she said emphatically and tried not to notice his nostrils flare. She tried to head him off, speaking quickly, the first words that would come off her tongue--“What happened? Up North? What did you find?”
It occurred to her--briefly--that Logan and she were both asking the questions most likely to push the other away.
Logan’s expression didn’t shutter up this time. He merely raised an eyebrow. Then, flicking another glance behind him, he stepped away from the bedroom door and took a careful seat against the wall. Watching him lower his weight to the floor, a predator presenting himself unthreatened and non-threatening--she was sitting beside him before she realized it. She left a careful foot of space, for the sake of their respective bare skin, but Logan sprawled, and hardly seemed aware that his knee was touching hers. She could feel the heat of his skin under the loose sweatpants, the tautly corded muscles. She found it impossible to relax, and she was the first one to shift away when her own leg started trembling.
“I found the place they put the adamantium in me. Where I got these,” he showed her his arm but didn’t let out the claws he was referring to. “It was ruins. And bones. Not a lot else.”
“What happened then?” She spoke softly as if rising above a whisper would cause him to draw the blinds against her.
Matching her, he kept his voice low, a gravel rumble. “Tried to follow some leads, figure out what sort of person I was, what I might have been doing to end up in a facility like that.”
“And? What were you doing?”
“Nothing good. I wasn’t doing anything good.”
“That doesn’t mean you deserved it. What they did to you.”
“I’m not sure what I deserve, Kid.”
You look so tired, Logan, she thought. But instead of saying that, she asked, “Do you know how long you’re going to stay this time?”
He sighed, scratched his nose with his thumb. “No.”
I don’t want you to go.
“I don’t know how long I’m going to stay here, either.” It was the first time she’d said that, the first time leaving had seemed such a real and near possibility. But Logan didn’t react as if this was something exceptional. He just grunted. “Why do you call me ‘kid’?” she blurted.
“Well, what kind of name is ‘Rogue’?” He gave either a short laugh or a sharp exhale, and smiled at her, a genuine smile, one that creased the corners of his eyes.
“But you know my other--”
He blinked, shifted, as if the floor was suddenly less comfortable, dropping the smile in exchange for another strange glance toward his room. “Others don’t. You got a right to share any part of yourself you choose. Or not. Not my place to give that away for you-,” he paused, “-Kid.”
Considering this, she felt a warmth so sudden and complete enough to make her wonder how long she’d felt cold. “But I’m not a kid, Logan.”
He drank his beer. “I know that.”
After a while, she realized that his knee has settled near hers again. This took so much of her attention that she couldn’t have said how long he was watching her. She looked up, heat bubbling under her cheeks. She’d always felt conflicted about having Logan’s eyes on her. On the one hand, she couldn’t hide anything from him. On the other, she didn’t need to. And Logan--Logan had a way of making a look feel like a touch. It seemed that he stared at her until her whole body became a tissue-thin shell around her thumping heart. Then, abruptly, lightly, he said, “So what’s the deal with this boy? Bobby?”
He’d caught her. He’d done it all deliberately, she realized--letting her ask questions so that she’d answer his, circling back to the subject he was interested in. She wanted to swear, or laugh, or kick him. And he knew all of that, too, or so said the quirk of his mouth. Marie shook her head, grinding her teeth together, and took the time to straighten her face and nightgown before she gave him a reply. She set her bottle down between them so that she could pick at her fingernails. “We were dating, I guess. My first year here. And I was working with the Professor, to see if there was any way I could get some control over it, over my skin.” She swallowed. She tore off a hangnail. “It didn’t work out.”
“Right,” he said, nodding. There was nothing in his face except attention, and that emboldened her--
“Actually, I just quit the sessions.”
She waited for him to ask why; everybody had asked why.
“So this boy was disappointed?”
Marie was startled into the truth. “The boy was mad.” Suddenly it all seemed hilarious, but Logan didn’t appear to find it so. And then--maybe because he hadn’t asked her why--she told him.
“The first time my mutation showed up, I was with a--um--boy. And, y’know, I remember, right before, wishing there was some way you could tell, to know for sure, if someone cared about you, or if they just wanted to touch you and then tell their friends they had.” She took a breath, speaking to her lap, to the little dot of blood in the corner of her thumb. “I liked Bobby. And I did want to be able to, y’know... But he just--”
She took a breath. Bobby had behaved as if once he was able to put his hands on her, he’d have the right to. As if it were a given. She felt control of her mutation would come at the cost of the right to her own flesh. Where she’d grown up, boys touching girls left an imprint, a stamp--both on their bodies and their reputation, both interchangeable. In church, in the locker rooms, at the breakfast table, a girl’s sex was a perishable good: something that could be soiled, damaged, taken, stolen, given too freely. Not being touched was its own stamp--she remembered the notes passed, from desk to desk in the classroom. Nicknames scrawled on lockers, the bathroom stalls. The Virgin Marie. But beside them, worse--Spreadlegs Sarah, Cum-in-me Christie. She’d hated that ultimatum. She’d hated that none of it applied to the boys, that nothing seemed to get taken from them.
And for such a long time, she’d been scared--what if this bottled-up indignation had something to do with her brewing mutation, that she’d summoned it, created it from a wish to be the one who took. Why else was this the gift evolution had given her? This curse that had made her horribly, perpetually protected--was it her fault?
She didn’t tell Logan all of this, obviously. She couldn’t have put it into words. But he listened quietly to what she was able to say. He didn’t ask questions, and he didn’t distract, and he didn’t clutter up her truth with his opinion. “What I can do makes me feel dangerous. But protected. But lonely. But strong. I don’t like it. But I just don’t always hate it,” she said to him.
She might have been reading too much empathy into his silence, the way a deer might see kindness in a tiger’s flat gold gaze. But she didn’t think so. She was looking at him; she was working up her nerve to add that there was someone she wished could touch her, would touch her--
when, from the other side of the bedroom door, there came a delicate, distinctly female cough.
Someone else was in his room.
Logan winced and looked abashed, and Marie remembered something: that Scott was away for the night., having taken the Professor to visit Magneto in prison. All of a sudden, she reevaluated why they were sitting here in the hallway. The odd grimace he’d made before he’d come out to speak with her. How long it had taken him to answer her knocks. The groaning sounds, the creaking of the bed.
Her knee jerked as it had touched an electric wire, or a doctor’s reflex hammer, causing her to knock over her (mostly full) beer. Liquid pumped onto the carpet, the stain spreading like blood from a vital artery.
“Anyway, I didn’t mean--”
“Kid--”
“--to bother you--”
“Hold on a second.”
“Thanks for letting me ramble on--
“You don’t have to--”
“I’ll let you get back to--”
“Rogue, just wait--”
“--sleep. I know how much you need it.”
They were both scrambling up. He reached out a hand to her shoulder, but didn’t grab hold--the nightgown was sleeveless. She picked up the bottle, clumsily spilling even more of the beer. The rug was going to smell like Molson. It was going to stain. “We’ve ruined it,” she said, with a frantic laugh. Her cheeks burned. Her throat burned.
“Kid--”
“I’m not a kid.”
She moved past him. It was easy to walk away as if she wasn’t bothered because she wasn’t. As a matter of fact, Marie didn’t feel anything at all. There was a sense of cottony absence in her chest, of waiting, as if standing alone on a subway platform or sitting in a dentist’s chair. She forced herself to walk down the middle of the carpet, keeping her eyes on the fleur-de-lis pattern. Halfway down the hall, she heard Logan’s footfalls, felt him reaching for her again. She turned around to tell him--she didn’t know what she was going to tell him--but found herself mistaken, again. Logan wasn’t following. He wasn’t even where she’d left him--he’d already gone back to bed.
_____________________________________________________________________
Marie took a shower. No particular reason, she’d just remembered that she hadn’t conditioned her hair this morning. She didn’t think about what had happened. It had been a little embarrassing, but no big deal. She’d shrugged it off. Completely. She scrubbed herself with some of Jubilee’s mango exfoliating wash, shaved her legs, moisturized.
It was one in the morning by the time she finished drying off. Marie had an exam she needed to study for, so she stacked textbooks on her bedside table and set her alarm for 5:30 so that she’d have time before breakfast. Then she changed her mind and read a few chapters, highlighting paragraphs and scribbling comments in the margins. The thing was, she thought, finally flicking off her booklight as her roommates began to stir--the thing was, nothing Logan or Jean did was any of her business. Marie had no right to feel one way or the other about it. Simple as that.
She didn’t judge them. Anyway, she’d had Logan inside her mind. She knew what he was like. She knew that he was lonely. She knew that he was attracted to Dr. Grey. Hell, after Liberty Island she’d been attracted to Jean. And who wouldn’t be? Serene, intelligent, beautiful, with that suggestion of power tugging at its harness. And if it pissed off Scott (Scott! she thought, with a pang), then all the better. She wanted Logan to be happy. Nothing else really mattered.
That settled, she plumped her pillow, curled up on her side with the blanket tugged to her neck. Her eyes stung--not with tears, but tiredness. She closed them, focused on the coolness of the pillow on her cheek. She exhaled, felt the muscles in her neck uncoil.
Her eyes jumped back open. Did she really think Jean was going to make Logan happy? Maybe for a little while. And happiness even in its smallest dose was something her friend deserved. Besides, again, it was none of her business. It wasn’t as if she had any claim to Logan.
That idea was ridiculous. Stupid. And she wasn’t stupid. So what did she expect from him? Nothing! But this protest was a little too loud, even in her own mind. Because it wasn’t quite true, was it? She and Logan---what? What, exactly, did Logan and she have? One unwilling hitchhike, two days, and a mission for the Xmen?
He almost died for me, she reminded herself. A different, colder voice responded--He would die for just about anyone. He wants to. That hurt, not least because she could feel the dregs of Wolverine in her agree. Still, it didn’t hurt as much as the next--if Logan wasn’t, in some way, hers, then what did she have here? Or anywhere?
The clock beside her said 3:00, in blurry digital numbers.
Okay. Okay. Let’s say you two actually have a connection, something special. What would that even look like?
This was more to her liking. Marie took awhile picturing that, in detail. It was the first time she’d let herself do so. When she finally resurfaced from the fantasy, body flushed and brain swimming, the cold voice was waiting for her.
Great. Now. Assuming you’re somehow right, assuming you’re not this obsessive lunatic, assuming everything you dream comes true...knowing yourself, knowing Logan, knowing this place. How would something like that end?
Her alarm went off.
____________________________________________________________________
She noticed it now, the way that the doctor would enter a room, her normally impeccable hair disheveled. The way she held Scott’s hand and smiled sardonically. Scott, paused in the middle of grading papers so long the nib of his pen would go dry. Ororo’s pursed lips. It felt as if the mansion were a tinderbox, and everyone around her was juggling lit matches.
Unable to resolve the problem, Marie decided that the most mature thing to do would be to ignore it entirely. That meant avoiding Jean, who she couldn’t look at without stomach pains. It meant avoiding Jubilee, who could pry out gossip with all the tactical ruthlessness of a hardened marine. It also meant avoiding Scott, who even in her weakest moments she knew possessed a deeper and more justifiable stake in the pain of the circumstances. She’d been able to talk through things that bothered her with him before, but this was not one of them. But she was surprised to discover how much she missed her friend.
Most of all, she was forced to avoid Logan.
He didn’t make it easy.
____________
“Hey, Ki-Rogue.” He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed, leaning against one of the posts. Others in such a stance might seem to be waiting for something or someone, but the Wolverine could make it look restful, as at home as a person on a couch, feet on the coffee table, nothing to do and no urge to do it.
“Hi,” she said back. She almost tripped on the bottom step, the silver lining of which was the uptick it gave her voice, making her sound nearly perky. “On my way to the library!” She hoped the breathless way that she said it would indicate a terrible urgency to the trip, and forestall conversation.
“Need a ride?”
“Do you have a ride?”
“I could get us one.”
There was a joke, on the tip of her tongue, about stealing things from Scott. It seemed funny for a second, and then it didn’t. So, instead--”That’s alright, Ororo said I could borrow a car.”
“You learned how to drive?”
“Mm-hm.” She looked him in the eye. “Mr. Summers taught me. I’ll see you, Logan.”
________
He was on the porch, smoking the last viable leaves of a cigar. That and the glow of the electric lantern above the door, around which moths flitted like planes over a battlefield, made the only light.
Those, and the tight, bright gleam in his eyes. “Everything alright?”
“I’m just fine, Logan. How are you?”
“Hot date?”
“What? I mean--no, just, y’know, schoolwork.” Too late, she realized that he’d been teasing.
“This late at night?”
“Yeah, well, my instructor lets me use the lab as long as I want. I’m working on a--on a project.”
He rolled the end of the cigar between his fingers. “Haven’t seen much of you lately. I thought we could get out of the mansion and do something, maybe go get--” Logan paused, seeming to struggle to think of a nonalcoholic pursuit. “--ice cream?”
“Maybe. I’m pretty busy with--with--”
“Your project.”
“Right. My project.” She couldn’t really see his face, but she could sense a certain unhappiness emanating from him. She swallowed. “Anyway. Better go get some rest. I’m pretty tired.”
“Right.”
She pulled open the heavy oak door.
“Hey--are we okay?”
She thought about it. “Of course.”
“Goodnight, Marie.”
A warm flush worked its way all through her body. “Goodnight, Logan.”
She went inside.
_____________________________________________________________________
“He could be fine for years. For years. That’s what the oncologist--”
“She also said that we should have a plan for--”
“So what are you suggesting? That we just put him away? Is that what you’d do to me if I were sick?”
“I’m not saying that. But have you considered how serious the consequences could be, not if but when his conditions worsens? He would want us to think of the students, Jean.”
“Would want? For God’s sake. He’s not dead, Scott. He’s upstairs, teaching British Literature. Why don’t you go--why don’t you go ask him, you ask him if he wants to leave his school, his home, us--”
“I know he doesn’t. You think I want to imagine this place without him? But these--these degenerative--we have no way of predicting how it’s going to affect his abilities.”
“The medication--”
“--is a band-aid. We have to consider long-term care. And not when it’s too late.”
“I can’t believe you’re lecturing me as if you’re the one who crossed that stage with a Ph.D. I’m a doctor, Scott. And you think I can’t take care of him? You think I wouldn’t?”
“Don’t make me the bad guy here.”
“You’re just--”
“You think I like this? He’s like--he’s like a father to me, Jean. He’s--”
Here, Scott’s voice scratched like a bike veering off a road, tires scrabbling for purchase on the gravel. Marie couldn’t help it. She peered over the top of the Buick. She’d been sponging the remains of her morning coffee off the passenger seat when the two of them came through. The sound of their voices froze her; she’d hardly heard any of them shout, and neither at each other. There’d been no excuse for not announcing herself; except knowing that they would have been horrified to discover a witness to their fight.
But now she saw Scott’s head on Jean’s shoulder, tears leaking out from under his visor. She was holding him. When she spoke, it was with the simplicity of a mother to a child. “Xavier has been a father to many of the kids here. And we’re going to have to think about how we’d like them to remember him. But not yet.”
He sighed, choked. “Not yet,” he acquiesced. Not because he agreed, but because he didn’t have the strength to do otherwise.
She touched the back of his head. For a moment, they simply looked like a couple who had been at each other’s side since childhood, a relationship so old that no wall of restraint stood between them unbroken.
Then Jean looked up. The warmth in her gaze turned into something blistering as it met Marie’s. Very slowly, very slightly, she shook her head. She put her hand on Scott’s cheek, tucking his face into her neck and holding it there, protectively, until Marie crept out of the garage.
_____________________________________________________________________
If there was a silver lining to a silver lining that kept her skin covered--besides sparing her the inconvenience of shaving--it was that in the autumn months, she hardly seemed stranger than anyone else. But today was one of those freak spikes on the weather map, buffered by weeks of clouds and runny noses. Students carried out soccer balls and picnic baskets; taking more advantage of this one sunny afternoon than they ever did in the summer--following the unwritten law that happiness needs brevity. Marie was sitting on a bench beneath one of the oaks, her head tilted back, letting the heat press against her eyelids and cheeks and shoulders.
That’s how Jean found her. The doctor had to cross the grass in five-inch stilettos, but she still behaved as if meeting Marie was a pleasant coincidence. It was this cheer that caused her to sit up straight, heart drumming.
“What’s that you’re reading, Rogue? Oh, Persuasion. I just love Austen.”
“Me too.”
“Do you? I had no idea. Gosh, I feel it’s been so long since you and I caught up.”
Unable to remember conversing with the other woman beyond her yearly flu shot, Marie could only smile politely at first. But southern etiquette rose to the challenge--”Would you like to sit down?”
“I’d be delighted--oh.” Her pause was delicate, as was the glance she gave to Marie’s bare arms. She took the hint, picking her cardigan off the bench and pulling it on. She was sweating in moments. Jean took a perch on the far end of the seat, with a good two feet between them.
“Mm. I’ve always adored this spot, ever since I was a child even younger than you. It’s just lovely.” She breathed deep. “I’ve been doling out band-aids and sunscreen all day. Nice to have a break. Little 'me' time.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Of course, you get plenty of that, don’t you? I’m a little jealous.” She said it in a joking way, and her eyes matched her smile--crinkled and bright. “You get so much time to yourself. You’re not at anybody’s beck and call; nobody really needs you for anything. It must feel so restful.”
“Well, I am in college.”
“That’s true,” Jean conceded. “What was your major again?”
“Art history.”
“Right.” She drew out the word, and as she finally clipped it off with her teeth, a silenced spread between them that she seemed in no rush to end. Then, “Got big weekend plans?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you should. You’re young, you should get out with your friends. Maybe see if Logan will take you to lunch or something.”
She registered Marie’s surprise and told her, in a tone anyone would call affectionate, “I think it’s sweet how he dotes on you. It’s good for him to feel like he’s got a little sister. Takes the edge off those claws, yeah?”
“You think that’s how he sees me? Like a sister?”
“Oh yes. We all do--if not a daughter or niece. Why that look?”
Marie hadn’t been aware that her expression had changed, but Jean went on in a way that made it moot. “Except you don’t really see him as a brother, do you?”
“I’ve never--I’ve never--”
“You’re adorable. It’s okay, it’s just between us. Not that there are any secrets in this school.”
“People talk about--”
“People will talk about anything and everything. One of the things I’ve always found difficult about living here is the lack of division between personal and private. There’s always an audience...ears at the door, so to speak. Don’t worry. The general consensus is that it’s cute.”
“But--”
“But--” with the utmost care, Jean patted Marie’s gloved hand. “We’ve got to be careful, don’t we? Take a crush too far, and it starts to look...well. Obsessive.”
“I never--”
“Of course you haven’t. You’re a reasonable young lady; you’ve had to be more rational than most girls about your romantic options.” The doctor looked at her with a sympathy that took the sting from her words. At least, the immediate sting--pain would come later, like a sunburn. “I’m sorry. Am I being too blunt?”
Marie shook her head. And pulled her hand away.
“But like I said, don’t worry! Logan doesn’t suspect a thing. He cares for you. A man like him, used to real women--you’re a breath of fresh air.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“No! Are you crazy? What kind of friend would I be? I’m not the sort of woman to spread rumors I know would embarrass someone I care about. I hope you’re not, either. I don’t want anyone to be hurt.”
She took her gaze off of her knees and looked Jean in the eye. “Are you talking about the Professor, Scott, or Logan?”
Nothing changed in the woman’s expression. It was gentle. “All of the above, I suppose.”
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
After finishing this chapter, I can easily say that I slept better than I have all month, since moving into this new house. I woke up smiling. Strangely for someone usually pinned under the writer's block, I actually ended up writing more scenes than ended up in this final draft! This section is a delicate one, longer, and I wanted to make sure it maintained the tone and pacing of the previous chapters. I hope I pulled it off.
Chapter End Notes:
.
I'm always terribly nervous when I type these endnotes, because I know I'll have to hit "Add Story".
And good or bad, whatever came out of my pen will be at the mercy of the internet. But thank you, as always, for taking the time to click on this story. Just doing that makes you a superhero, in my opinion.
I hope you enjoyed chapter six-- hearing what you think about it has the power to make my entire day/week/month, so please type something in that review box. Thank you again, and see you soon!
I'm always terribly nervous when I type these endnotes, because I know I'll have to hit "Add Story".
And good or bad, whatever came out of my pen will be at the mercy of the internet. But thank you, as always, for taking the time to click on this story. Just doing that makes you a superhero, in my opinion.
I hope you enjoyed chapter six-- hearing what you think about it has the power to make my entire day/week/month, so please type something in that review box. Thank you again, and see you soon!