The best thing about starting over at a mutant high school was that nobody knew what I used to be. Nobody knew what I used to look like before I stumbled in after being rescued from a sabre-toothed mutant in northern Canada.
When they brought me to Xavier's, I was still Marie, the girl from Meridian, Mississippi. I had a history, I'd run from my family, and I was only tangentially a mutant.
Now, I'm completely a mutant, and kinda like an orphan.
The other thing is, I'm not Marie anymore. I don't wear Marie's clothes anymore. No more skirts and tank tops. I'm not even wearing her body. It's like I'm this blank slate, or something.
The first night at the school, when Logan made me a human - I mean, mutant - kabob, I touched his face to take some of his healing power. It was the only way I could think of at the time to keep from dying. Hey, have you ever had three adamantium claws skewered through your upper body? Thinking is tough at that point.
I didn't notice until the next day that not only had those cuts healed, but some of my other cuts and bruises had repaired themselves, too.
The bruises on my ribs and the bump on my head from the car accident were gone. The cut on my knee from when I'd scrambled into Logan's trailer was completely healed over, and I didn't even have a scar there.
But I was still Marie. I still had mostly my own memories and my own body. Then that freak Magneto strapped me to the mutant maker on the Statue of Liberty, and I was knocked out unconscious for a while.
When I woke up, Logan was pressed against me, his lips on my forehead, hand on my cheek. Then he collapsed, and I could feel him buzzing around in my head and I felt he'd brought me back from the dead. Sometimes I think he did it out of pure stubbornness, actually.
For the next two days, he was in my head, bumping around and voicing his opinions about everything. It felt kind of comforting, because the real Logan was still passed out in a bed at the mansion. I sat next to him for a few hours, hoping he'd wake up and I could tell him how stupid he'd been and how grateful I was.
Of course, he woke up when Jean visited him. Figures.
Anyway, when he left, he gave me the dog tags for safekeeping. It was nice of him to give me the only connection he had to his forgotten past, especially since he'd taken all of my past. His voice faded from my head eventually, and all I have left are the tags.
The thing is, the second time he touched me, to heal me after Magneto's mutant maker nearly killed me, he held on for longer. He held on for so long, all of my scars and marks disappeared.
The scar on my right shoulder, from when I fell off the monkey bars when I was seven, and Daddy bandaged me while I sat on the kitchen countertop (something Mama would not have allowed if she'd been there), is gone. Instead of the darker line arcing on my shoulder, I have normal (but still deadly) skin.
The little half-moon on my left hand, from when I was five and had the chicken pox and hadn't been able to keep away from that one itch - that's gone, too. No more indentation on the skin.
When I was twelve, my appendix had burst and I'd gotten an appendectomy. All my friends from junior high sent flowers and balloons, and I still remember the little penguin-shaped one that bobbed around listlessly in the room. That scar is gone, too. I have smooth skin instead of the knobby white tissue on my abdomen. Sometimes, I wonder if my appendix has grown back. Jean did say that Logan has regenerative powers. Does that mean he can donate part of his liver and just have it grow back later? Gross.
All the little scars on my legs, from years of skinning my knees and running into things and falling off my bike - I never said I was a graceful mutant - are all gone, too.
It's like I'm a brand new person. Everything that I carried with me from Meridian is gone. I'm not really Marie anymore, because I can't point to anything on my body and tell people where I got that scar or this spot. I guess it's a good thing nobody here knows me from before, because I got a different body along with my new life.
I honestly am grateful to Logan for saving my life after Magneto, but sometimes I wish he hadn't. Because maybe Magneto's changed my hair, but Logan's healed away everything else. Then again, that could be a disfigurement itself, in a way.
It's a good thing Logan doesn't know that when he saved me, he took away everything else, too. Logan really doesn't need to feel guilty about saving me. He's got a protective streak a mile wide, and I bet it'd tear him up to know he hurt me. It's kinda sweet.
So when Logan gave me the dog tags before he left, I decided that if I wasn't Marie from Meridian anymore, maybe I could become Rogue from the X-Men.
Or maybe I could become Rogue, half of the Wolverine/Rogue Traveling Vaudeville Act. Who knows what Logan's gift could turn into?
This is all very new to me, anyway.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to Steph for the two betas, even though her immediate response to the first few paragraphs was, "This is going to be an angst fic, isn't it, you bitch?" (And no, it's not.) Thanks also to Mare for enabling this new obsession.