Love this story as much as the first part, "Fighter." Glad you continued it. For some reason, this line made me laugh out loud:

What was it with this girl and pouring him drinks she didn’t intend to let him finish?

It's so dryly humorous, it's a wonderful line for Logan.

Wow. I almost feel like I need to think a little more before writing a review, which is really a compliment to the complexity of your story. I think the shift in Marie and ultimately in Logan was a very bold choice. I'm still thinking about it. Still kind of sad for Logan and Marie, but maybe like Wolverine thought I need some time to adjust to fall in love with these two new people who did find their happiness together. Overall, a great story, and I'm so glad to have read it!

To celebrate your return to the site I am visiting some of your earlier stories, and I was shocked -- SHOCKED -- to see that I had never reviewed this one. It is one of my absolute favorites. You do such a great job with both characters, but even more strikingly you do such a wonderful, natural job of showing how a conversation between these two might really play out. It doesn't go cleanly from a to b, there are tangents and wanderings and misunderstandings, and so many small beautiful moments that are just fantastic. So anyway, thanks for this one...it's a gem.

This was really sweet. I liked the natural development of Marie's mutation, how it returned almost in stages. Nice work!

Just ran across this story and it's so good -- poignant and real. Racing to read the next chapter...

Author's Response: I\'m sorry that I didn\'t reply earlier! I\'m glad you read it, how did you like the rest?

Wow, this is awesome! Keep going!

ACK! How did I get suckered in again to an unfinished story!? Damn, damn, damn.

I love all your stuff, but this fic really stuck with me in particular. It's just so sweet and poignant. I came back to reread it and was surprised that it wasn't as long as I remembered -- the characters seemed so fleshed out and I hadn't realized you had done that with just not many lines of dialogue. And the somewhat naive ( maybe that's not the best descriptor but I can't think of another) Logan just tugs at my heartstrings.

Damn, do I love this story. This must be the twentieth time I've read it...any time I feel the need to be inspired by good writing, I come back to it. Shame on me for not reviewing it before. Sometimes I think stories just leave me awestruck and speechless, and this is one of them. It's so perfectly in character, and you capture that aspect of Logan that is cryptic and unreadable in a way no other author seems to manage, and for some reason that distance and mystery to his character is just inexpressibly sexy. Anyway, everything about this piece is perfect -- the moodiness, the characterizations, the hot-but-emotional smut. Great work.

Holy wow! This was such a great story! I know I had started reading it before and dropped off...couldn't remember why, and now I realize it's because I liked the early chapters so much I wanted it to be done before I read the whole thing. It was awesome. Great action, super hilarious, it just rocked all over. I really liked the way you treated the Logan-Marie reconciliation, I think it would have rung false if they had gotten back together right afterwards but the extended courtship/trust-rebuilding was perfect. And totally worth the payoff. Great writing. Hobbits do it better, indeed!

I realized I never reviewed this story, and I think the reason is I had too many things to say, and composed the review endlessly in my head, and never got around to writing it down. Sorry about that!

So, I owe you a review. I recently re-read this story start to finish, which is quite a time investment, but worth every minute. I'm kind of glad I didn't review the first time, because this story has definitely had a "sleeper effect" on me. I will admit that the seemingly callous attitude of Rogue had very strongly turned me off when I first started reading. I still cannot believe how wonderfully you manage such a masterful turnaround, making a character whose actions on the outside seem reckless and unfeeling and make it all so entirely sympathetic from her point of view. In that way I think this is one of the most skillful stories I've ever read.

I have never been a particular Remy fan, but this Remy is so wonderfully characterized you made me fall a little in love with him. Again, you keep the surface (the "chere," the referring-to-himself-in-the-third-person) that always seemed shallow and affected and then show so much more underneath.

I think it probably did take the six months or so between my first reading of this story and my current one to come to terms with the ending. Not in that I don't think it's immeasurably generous for them to come to that understanding, but of course my true Rogan heart is sad that Logan never gets that moment he imagined, where he is just holding Rogue and she smells only of him. Does he deserve it? Maybe not, and Remy certainly does not deserve to "lose." So either way, you've created a wonderfully nuanced and untenable situation, and I was never going to be fully happy with the outcome. But that's partly why I think this story is so great, in addition to being so well-written and well-plotted and well-characterized. It is, as you say messy, in a very realistic way.

Anyway, the upshot is that I think this is a fantastic story, and I hope you are still continuing with your more recent WIP on this site and haven't forgotten us!

Okay, here is how ridiculously invested I am in this story. Earlier this evening, I was thinking, "Damn, it's been awhile since I saw an update, I wonder when one will come?" Then later I checked and saw an update, and simultaneously thought "Yay!" and "Shit! -- if this is the last chapter I won't be able to enjoy it, knowing it's ending." Then I saw that you had not checked "Story Complete" and briefly rejoiced, and then I read the author's notes and had to decide how brief your brief epilogue was likely to be and if that could stop me from cursing at the scroll bar as it reached the end of this chapter. So, that's the little rollercoaster I went on. :-)

As for the chapter itself, I loved it and will need to read it a few times more. As much as I want shiny-happy-rainbow-smut for these two, I'm glad you went in the more believable direction. But, we still better get some good smut. Like, seriously.

So far this is my favorite line:
Rooms seemed disturbing and off, like a supermarket after hours, like a doze that any moment will end with a sudden fall and the sleeper jolting into unhappy consciousness

Author's Response: Ha! That is stupendously gratifying (have I ever mentioned how insanely jealous I am of your talent for swift updates? I hate you in a very adoring way). Am currently teetering back and forth on the issue of an epilogue, cannot entirely promise one now. Thank you, for this, for giving me such a tremendous start to my day--so much that I almost forgot it was a Monday--and for general amazingness. >hugs<