After several minutes, where Scott and Kitty gently comforted the broken young woman, Jean and Jubilee silently rocked and shushed the two fussing new-borns, and Ororo tried her best to distract the toddler, Marie finally pulled herself together. Clearing her throat roughly, as she wiped away her tears, she removed herself from the careful embrace of the two people sitting around her.

"I need to feed them," she murmured softly, her voice still thick from her tears. Gently she took one new-born and began to suckle the child, silently but lovingly tracing the tiny face with a bare finger.

"Logan hasn't even got to meet them yet," she admitted, in the barest hint of a whisper, "But he picked their names, he picked all their names, he picked Suki's name before she was even born, the boys took a bit longer, Yuma, and Niko..." She rambled on, sharing little tidbits of information about Logan's family life with his friends, as she tried to avoid thinking about the fact that they were here... because Logan was not.

Once both babies were fed, and changed, and snoring softly as they snoozed on a folded blanket on the coffee table, the little toddler, Suki, climbed up into Marie's lap. The poor girl was so out of sorts, and Marie silently berated herself for allowing her daughter to see her fall apart as she hugged the girl firmly until she wriggled out of her grip.

"Mama, milkies?" the girl asked, her lip quivering uncertainly as she patted Marie's breast.

"Of course baby," Marie replied, watching as the dark haired head of her almost two year old disappeared under her shirt in search of her comfort food. Catching sight of the curious looks being cast at the child Marie clarified, "If she's feeling under the weather or out of sorts she heads back for more, other than that she's fully weaned, today's thrown us all for a bit of a loop I suppose," she murmured softly, rocking Suki gently as she felt the toddler begin to drift off to sleep also; she had missed the start of her nap in the middle of this turn of events.

"Tell us about you and Logan," Kitty hinted gently, "How did you meet?"

"That's not really that nice of a story," Marie started, shrugging and continuing when prompted. "I'm a mutant, I know you guys know Logan is too, so I figure it's safe to tell you that... When my mutation manifested, I put someone in a coma, by accident, my parents freaked out, told me I had half an hour to pack and get out, their daughter was dead, they never wanted to see me again, my dad shoved a hundred bucks in my hand then shoved me and my bag out the door... and that was the last time I ever saw my parents. I was on the road for months and months, I was hitchhiking, trying to get to Alaska... I'd always wanted to go, and I figured the cold would help me hide my mutation. I thought I was being careful with the rides I accepted, I wasn't doing the whole, thumb out as you walk down the road deal, I'd pick up rides at truck stops where I could see the drivers first and watch them interacting, I wanted rides from people who were nice but not too nice, if you know what I mean, not the serial killer type of nice," she joked.

"One day, I got a ride with an older guy, he was nice, grandfatherly looking, acted all concerned about me, told me I reminded him of his niece and he hated the thought of someone that sweet in my position, he would take me as far north as he was headed and then find me another ride with someone he trusted... I fell asleep a little while later, turned out he had spiked the coffee he offered me. When I woke up I was handcuffed in a cage in the back of his truck... he was unconscious, he discovered my mutation while I was out, got enough of a belt to knock him out temporarily, I couldn't reach the keys to get the cuffs off before he woke up, when he did he was pissed, he... he beat me up pretty bad, and then he was pissed because the bruises would mean he couldn't sell me for a while. He did sell me eventually, apparently he didn't tell the guy who bought me about my mutation though, he got a good whack off it, a couple actually, trying to... to hurt me, then he chickened out and decided he'd try and on sell me to someone else but he couldn't, I guess everyone figured out something was fishy with him trying to sell me ‘untested'.

"One night, the van door got yanked open, by that time I was used to been shown off to the people he was trying to sell me to, only this time, he wasn't trying to sell me... He made a bet, stupid bet, bet against the Wolverine in a cage fight, obviously he lost, only, he didn't have the money, so he offered me up in lieu of cash. When Logan heard the guy was trying to sell me to the barkeep or the bookie to settle his bet, Logan paid out the bet and demanded the guy hand me over. By that stage, I had barely eaten for over a month, hadn't been allowed to shower, the guy gave me one of those camping toilet things just because he didn't want to be cleaning up after me but that was the most I had in the way of mod-cons. I'd been chained up, on a mattress in the back of this guys van for so long my legs had forgotten how to work.

“I should have been afraid, seeing this big, hairy, mean looking guy reaching in to grab me but... there was something in his eyes, I just knew he wasn't going to hurt me. He scooped me up like I weighed nothing, carried me over to his truck, set me down in the passenger seat, turned up the heater and wrapped me in a blanket, then told me to wait there - not like I could have gone anywhere else, even if I wanted to. I didn't find out what he went back for until later, we stopped at a motel probably a day or two later, and as we walked into the lobby – or he walked, I got carried – the news was playing on this little TV on the counter, a story about the body of a convicted pedophile and serial rapist, found in a vehicle in front of a bar, no sign of his latest victim... the police were urging anyone with information to come forward...

"The guy at the check in took one look at me, and straight back to the TV before he glanced toward Logan, Logan just looked him dead in the eye and said 'she's safe now and you didn't see anything', and marched me into the room he paid for. He helped me get cleaned up, he fed me, and for a couple of weeks we hid out in that motel room, until the bruises started to fade and I put on enough weight to look like I hadn't just been liberated from a concentration camp. I told him my story, he told me his, and then he drove me all the way to Alaska... at some point we fell for each other, though he kept denying it, I'd catch him staring at me and then he'd realise I caught him and he'd look away... he was always so gentle, and tender, things you wouldn't expect from looking at him. I went to him one night, tried to seduce him, because let's face it, what woman wouldn't," Marie giggled, catching the agreeing nods of several of her fellow females in the room.

“He turned me down, which kind of sucked but he said it wasn't because he didn't want me that way he just... he didn't want me to want him just because he was convenient, or because he rescued me... I understood that. Then summer was coming to a close, he had to go back to New York, I was going to ask if he would take me with him but then he pulled up out front of this place one day, for sale sign out the front with a sold sticker slapped across it, and told me that if I wanted it, this could be my home. He bought the house, bought me a car, he had helped me get my license over the summer, and even set me up with a job before he left, said he would be back in the holidays when the school semester ended.

"The following summer Logan finally sat me down and told me how much he'd missed me, how much he worried about me when he wasn't here with me, that he loved me, he asked me to marry him right off the bat. I said yes, of course. It was kind of tricky, I had only just turned seventeen, and if you want to get married in Alaska under eighteen, you need permission from parents, by that stage I hadn't seen or heard from my parents in about two years, Logan tried to contact them but as soon as he mentioned me they hung up on him, telling him they didn't have a daughter and didn't want to hear anything about me. So, we either had to wait, or get a Judge to give us permission, we didn't want to wait anymore, so, we went to the Judge, and a week later we were married. Everything was amazing, then at the end of summer, Logan had to go back to New York.

"I was sad but by then I was kind of used to it, I guess, then around October we hit a bit of a bump in the road, I started feeling sick, eventually my boss made me go to the doctor when he caught me throwing up at work one day, and surprise, 'you're pregnant'. I told Logan over the phone the next morning, god he sounded so smug I wanted to reach through the phone and slap him, of course that was probably because I'd just finished puking up my third attempt at breakfast for that morning so I wasn't really feeling that great. I managed to time doctors visits and things for when Logan was able to get out during breaks, he was a little disappointed about missing Suki's birth but I sent him lots of photos, and we would video chat every day, he got to watch her feeding, and sleeping, and bathtime, and diaper changes. When he finally arrived for summer the first thing he did was march into the nursery and cuddle her, and me, he cuddled me too, but the look on his face when he got to hold her for the first time... it was amazing.

"He didn't want to abandon his contract with the school, but him going back at the end of that summer was so hard, it was only for a couple more years though, then he was coming home, for good... we were going to be a whole, full time, family..." Marie closed her eyes against the fresh flood of tears that threatened to fall, and hugged her now sleeping toddler. They would still be a family, she would make sure her children never forgot their daddy.
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