I almost died last week.

Everywhere I turned, there was fighting and blood and death. We were trying to save the world. Of course, we wouldn't have had to if there hadn't been someone struggling just as boldly to destroy it, but... I cannot claim innocence; I killed, too. What I can claim is self-defense.

At least, I try to.

See, battle always brings the Wolverine out in full-force. Everything Logan is wrapped up and locked away for later, when pausing to feel or even think won't bring the whole brawl crashing down around me. The fact of the matter, whether I like it or not, is that the Wolverine enjoys it. He likes being in control, being in his element, a situation he can understand, surrounded by adversaries to be neutralized.

What I don't admit is that I, Logan, probably get off on it, as well.

Noise and confusion pressed in on me from all sides, but one enemy in particular fought hard enough to nearly take me down. No matter how fiercely I beat him, he kept coming back for more, and that both annoyed and thrilled the Wolverine.

It scared Logan.

Not all of the man had been locked away by the beast that night, and I was still able to think beyond my opponent's next move. To feel something more than the rushing high of spilling enemy blood.

When I thought, I thought of her, and it was her face I saw when my eyes closed against the fleeting pain of a landed blow.

Her eyes are so wide, so expressive. When she first met me, they were always nervous, on guard. Alarmed. Like a trapped animal. As time passed and we grew closer, her eyes began to enlarge with something softer than worry, and warmer than fear.

God, brown eyes so deep and beautiful I could drown in them.

I almost died last week, because I was thinking about her face, and I made a mistake. The beast in me should have been angry at that carelessness, but he understood.

He will always understand what that face does to me, because it does the same thing to him.

Three nights ago, I had a dream. It was the kind where reality is suspended, and time seems to move in patterns that crash back and forth, slowing and speeding with no predictability. I couldn't tell where I was or what I was doing, but I knew who I was with, because her face was there.

Again.

My body reacted without asking for permission, though I would have given it anyway. Dreams are for the things you cannot or will not do during the waking hours, and the way I stared at and then touched her lips...

That qualifies as something I won't be doing. I can't touch her and I know that. I curse it as fact, undeniable truth. She's untouchable.

But I can dream, and I did.

I never understood until now what all the pansy-assed poets meant when they talked about Cupid's-bow mouths and lips so lush you could wrap yourself in them and live happily ever after.

I do now.

I kissed her, and she slid her body next to mine, shaping softness into hardness, but I barely noticed. I was focused on her lips. I pressed my mouth to them, devouring the sweet flesh with easy swipes of my tongue and careful little bites. Tasting her, drinking her into myself.

I could have kissed her forever, but it was all too soon that I woke up, sweating and shaking. I tried to go back to sleep right then, hoping to recapture the sensation of parted flesh and breathy sighs.

Damn it, trying to dream never works.

But, when I drifted off again, I still saw her face.

It's getting to the point where I always do.

Last night, I came.

I woke from another dream, my skin tight with longing and hot to the touch. Her face still floated right behind my eyes, and I shook and moaned when my hand slid down my body, just the way I imagined hers would. And I tried to pretend that my hand was smaller, more delicate, and swathed in satin fabric as it closed around my hardness, clasping desperately.

In my bed, I groaned and touched my skin. In my mind, it was her, moaning and trembling slightly as I reacted to her stroking. She leaned over me, her hair falling around her face in skeins of brown and silver as she moved, and I shivered when it drifted over my chest.

She whispered her love for me as I came, her name falling from my lips like the pleas of a drowning man. Begging for mercy from the crashing waves, even as I allowed them to pull me down into oblivion.

When I opened my eyes and found only myself, it made me feel tired, so tired.

I want her. Sweet Jesus, I want her.

Now, whenever I take a breath, sleeping or waking, all I see is her face.

I want her.

Marie.

I barely hear the opening of the infirmary door, and I basically ignore it, because Scott is supposed to be coming to fetch me for lunch. He does that when I'm caught up in research, because I tend to forget.

Then I hear Logan say my name, and I pause before looking up, wondering that it will be today. Hoping it won't be more of the same. More questions, more...

I look into his eyes, and I know before he opens his mouth.

"Rogue?" he rasps. "Did it work? Is she...?"

Something inside me twists and cracks apart painfully at the look on his face, so hopeful and eager. It's the sixth time he's asked me that.

Six days.

Six goddamn days.

When he comes and asks about her, it's the only time his eyes are truly clear, lucid. Sane.

"Logan..." I begin gently, rising to stand before him. "Logan, do you remember what happened?"

His brows furrow at my soft, hesitant tone, and I know that he is searching his brain for something to grasp, something to find that makes sense, that answers my query. "When?" he asks, tilting his head.

I choose my words carefully. "The night Magneto kidnapped Rogue. When we flew to the Statue of Liberty."

His expression grows even more puzzled, and my heart spasms achingly. "Yeah, Jeannie." He nods slowly. "I... I saved her." But his bottom lip has started to tremble, and he backs away from me a little. "I got to her, and I..."

"No, Logan." My denial is quiet, and I shake my head. "We were too late."

Four words - we were too late. Four tiny words, but they're too much for Logan, and the veil of denial, of delusion, slides back into place over his eyes. He is silent for a handful of heartbeats, then whispers, "Marie has the softest skin, Jean." An infinitesimal smile kicks at the corners of his mouth. "So beautiful..."

He hasn't cried in six days, since the night it took all three of us just to pull him away from her. Scott wound up with eighteen stitches in his arm, and Ororo nursed a concussion for three days.

Rogue was the only one who died on that statue, but we lost two people. Logan is adrift in a world of his own making, where the only reality that exists is her face, alive and smiling up at him.

We lost them both.

Tears burn my eyes and then my face as I watch him turn and go.

the end