Logan is not a vain man. He knows he is attractive -- to both sexes -- and in almost perfect physical shape. How much of that is his mutation, he's never been sure. He doesn't question, just accepts the good things it brings with it.

He knows he is attractive, but he doesn't spend much time thinking or worrying about it.

Which is why Rogue was surprised when he brought home the mirror. It's long -- she can see herself from head to toe in it -- and it now hangs on the back of the door in their bathroom.

He occasionally stands before it naked, and she admires the planes and angles of his body, the sheer perfection of skin stretched over bone and muscle -- thinking that he's doing the same. She secretly giggles at this preening, and though she would never tell him, she thinks it's adorable.

She doesn't know he hates his skin, almost as much as she hates hers.

There isn't a mark on it -- no scars, no bruises, not even a callus. His skin is flawless. He carries all his scars on the inside, his suffering hidden by the cloak of perfection.

She has long since stopped being shy; living together means casual nudity to him, even with the ever-present danger of her lethal skin, and she has become used to being naked in front of him, though she still gets nervous that he will be hurt.

She doesn't know the placement of the mirror was deliberate, that he watches her when the bathroom door is angled the right way. She steps out of the shower, water glistening over pale skin, the sunlight from the window gilding her to the color of warm honey.

As she goes about her morning routine, brushing her teeth and her hair, applying her lotion and plucking her eyebrows, he watches her, takes careful inventory of her well-being.

He starts with her feet: heels callused from going barefoot whenever she can, toenails trimmed and painted weekly. Up her calves, his brow furrowing over the large bruise purpling on the back of her right leg and the small scabs from where she's cut herself shaving. Over her knees, which wear the faded wine-dark stains of an active childhood. He scowls at the inch-long scar across her thigh; her uniform torn by a knife on one of their missions, a superficial cut, but one that left a remembrance. She had refused his offer of healing, as she does every time.

He sees the little scar on her belly, the result of an appendectomy at the age of twelve. It resembles a small pink spider, and outside of the doctor who put it there, only he has seen it up close, traced his lips over the dead tissue that doesn't react when touched.

He sometimes wonders if he should love the scars instead of hating them, because they allow him to touch her with his lips and hands, but he'd rather always have the barrier of silk between them than have her hurt again.

There are faint red marks on her hips -- his hands put those there this morning as he made love to her. Even those he wishes away, feels the old self-loathing rise at his rough treatment of her, though she laughs and tells him she likes it, that he's just being an old woman. He knows she tells the truth, but still, he worries.

She seems so fragile, as if she's made of glass, and he hates being rough and clumsy with such a priceless gift.

He continues his inventory. There's a burn mark on her arm; he scowls. It's new, and he wonders which of their enemies put it there, or if she was simply careless when baking cookies with the youngsters yesterday.

Her hands are red, the knuckles still chapped from the long, cold winter. Skin raised in Mississippi doesn't react well to cold New York weather. Fingernails, too, are trimmed short and painted red. Her fingers are long and elegant, unencumbered by jewelry.

On the underside of her left breast, he notes the bite mark he left earlier and winces. She rakes her nails down his back and the sting is invigorating, but the trails of her passion are gone long before he can get to the mirror to look.

His dog tag lies between her breasts. It leaves its own mark on her, the public declaration that she is his, and he, hers. Someday, he thinks, he will put a ring on her finger, but neither of them is ready for that, and the dog tag is enough for now.

There is no scar, no trace at all, of where he impaled her. He healed that completely, and would do so again in a heartbeat, God forbid the need ever arose.

Her face and neck are flushed from the heat of the shower, and the skin on them is unmarked. She has a flawless complexion, the envy of the other women in the house. She talks of getting a tattoo, and he grits his teeth and pretends to go along with it, not wishing to have her touched -- branded -- by any hand but his. And even that he would relieve her of, if she'd let him.

His eyes settle on her hair.

The lingering reproach of the two white streaks that she will never dye. She likes them, claims they are chic and sexy. And she's not wrong. But they silently rebuke him. Had he been faster, stronger, smarter, he'd have been able to save her before she'd had to experience that pain, and then his own to compound it, when he healed her.

She is strong. He knows this in his heart and his mind, even as the evidence before his eyes belies it.

She has taken him on, taken Magneto; she has survived the road and the nightmares and the damage he's done her unintentionally, and she has the scars to show for it.

He envies them, even as he wishes she'd let him make them go away. But she wears them proudly, seeing them as badges, road signs on her journey, each with its own story to tell of how she grew from being the sad, scared girl Marie into the strong and confident Rogue.

Then he looks again at himself, and sees a blank slate, a life unexamined, unlived, and wills her to imprint her love on his soul, even as the marks fade from his body.

He knows she's strong enough to do it, strong enough to bear the burden for them both.

And he loves her all the more.

fin