Logan and Marie shared a glance before the former nodded agreeably to the later. "Logan couldn't find the transponder - it made the chip electrocute him when he got too far away from it - " she said by way of explanation, for the benefit of Jubilee and Victor, who was still sitting, listening silently from the other end of the table. "But he decided we were out of time, the handover to the lab was apparently imminent; that last lab you raided had been planning to try to intercept the handover. Logan decided the only way to get out was to cut the chip out of his head."
Victor hissed, grimacing at the thought, something like that must have been connected to the nervous system, that would have been painful as hell to do and hard to heal from. Jean gasped in shock, as she too considered just how they would have achieved such a feat.
Marie continued, ignoring the reactions, as she tried to ignore the memory of putting her hand inside Logan's head to rip the chip and its circuitry out. "We made a plan, I'd help him get the chip out, then leave, taking Niamh with me and he would catch up when he had healed. He didn't want us staying without him able to protect us."
"... Cut the chip out of his head?" Jubilee asked a moment later, a potato chip paused halfway to her mouth. "How?" Logan dramatically shot a handful of claws out if his clenched fist in front of her. "Oh," she squeaked.
"When did Xavier start looking for us?" Marie asked, after a lull in the conversation.
"After Logan vanished," Ororo replied, "He thought you were hiding in the school still, and that if we kept Logan under surveillance you would eventually come out looking for him, but when Logan disappeared too, he realised you'd both left."
"How long did it take for him to find us?" Logan queried curiously.
"Well, I wasn't relieved, i.e. found, until seven am," Ororo replied. Try as she might she hadn't been able to be angry with Logan for how he had got the jump on her before he left, all she had been able to think was that if she had been in his situation, she would have done exactly the same thing, and it turned out his situation had been even worse than she had realised then. "He began looking for you at about eight but he claimed he hadn't been able to find either of you, he always used the excuse that Rogue's mutation, and the metal in your skull, stopped him from getting readings on you. That's what he told us the chip was for, for tracking you in case you went berserker on a mission and ran off and we needed to find you," Ororo admitted.
Her explanation made sense to Logan, Xavier had clearly not even trusted his own people, and when he had been double crossing literally everyone he was involved with, it was no surprise why.
Scott interjected then, "We want to apologize Logan..."
"Wolverine," Logan replied bluntly, these people hadn't earned the right to be so familiar with either of them.
"Wolverine," Scott conceded, "We treated you poorly under Charles's orders, we would like to make it up to you, would you give us a second chance, we could really use your help around here and..."
"No," Logan replied, no way, no how, was he staying, he would never be able to trust these people, and though he did believe the school had a necessary function and role to play in the conflict between humans and mutants, it was still a legacy of the man who had wronged him, them, so gravely.
"But Wolverine, think of Rogue, and the baby..." Jean tried.
"I am," Logan replied bluntly, "My family is safer as far away from anything to do with that son of a bitch as possible."
"But she could finish school..." Jean continued to press.
"If Marie wants to finish school that can be done anywhere, or she can wait until Niamh's a bit older and skip straight to college," he replied firmly.
"Does Rogue get any say in this?" Jean asked, sounding just a little condescending.
"No," Logan replied sarcastically, "She's my pet, she does what I tell her to do." Marie and Victor both laughed openly in response, even Jubilee knew Rogue well enough to know she would kick up a stink about being forced to do something she didn't want to and joined in their laughter.
"I won't be staying," Marie added, "You couldn't pay me to stay, I don't even want to stay the night but we'll have to work that out, now that we're not running in secret I'd rather not hitchhike," she added for Logan's benefit.
"You hitchhiked? With a baby?" Jubilee asked incredulously, hell she'd known Rogue was a hard-ass but that was a whole new level of tough.
Marie just ignored her as Victor spoke up, "There's a car on the way for us," he began before Logan interrupted.
"I thought you were heading the purge?" Logan asked.
"Remotely for now," Victor replied, with an affirmative nod, his phone was still periodically pinging with updates, "Family comes first, I don't know where you two were headed when you left but your old cabin is still in the family, I planned to drive you up there and help you get settled before I join the frontline. If that's all right with you?"
Logan paused for thought before nodding, he had had an idea of a place he believed was his home, and a general location. He had planned to head in that direction and see if he could find it, even if just for any information it may be able to offer on who he had been.
"You could always go with Victor, to the front," Marie suggested, as she rested her head on his shoulder as she stroked their sleeping baby's nose.
"You want me to do that?" Logan asked, regarding Marie carefully.
"I want you do what you think is best," Marie replied, careful to avoid giving her own opinion on the matter he noted.
"Baby, staying with you and Niamh will always be the best option, you trump everything, so stop second guessing me," he replied with a grin, as he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"I just... I saw how you looked when you watched that footage, you wanted to be there, you wanted to..."
"I want to be with you more sweetheart. I'll admit, I'm a soldier, I have been most of my life apparently, and this is a cause I would gladly fight for but I don't need to, my time for fighting is done, I get to live a little now, and I get to live with you, and with baby, and I don’t want to miss a minute of it. Can you accept that?" he asked her plainly.
She didn't look at him for a moment but when she turned her face up to him, a brilliant smile on her face, and tears in her eyes he knew he'd made the right call. She nodded as she wrapped her arms around him as she agreed she could, before admitting she'd just be worrying about him constantly if he went.
"I'd be worrying about you too," he told her, hugging her tightly. He was glad they were both on the same page, hell, really it was like they were reading from the same version of the book, word for identical word, they'd disagreed on very little since the beginning of their relationship. It was a little disconcerting how similar they both were.
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