Character and characters. The hallmark of your writing and the reason these "oldies" are still read and reread. They and you are just that good.

I am really getting tired of and snarked out by this bitchy, nasty, ugly depiction of characters I love. Get them together in some soulful way or destroy them as a couple of sick-hearted, soul-dead trash.

Author's Response: i\'m taking this a compliment that i did a good job making them horrible people. :)

“All Ah want is you,” she whispered. “All Ah want is us…”

“Then take it, darlin’,” he said, voice husky with arousal. “Take it all.”

Ohhhhhh, beautiful!!!!! This is among the best bits of dialog between these two ever! What a hell of a great story, and a terrific wrap-up! great work!

Your patience and goodwill in addressing my not-entirely-positive observations are respectfully appreciated. On the "reader knows all" side of things, however, I never picked up any indication here that Logan and Remy ever entertained even the slightest of "naughty thoughts" (tee-hee, whistle) for each other, much less that they would ever allow themselves to engage in a three-way with Rogue. I still stand with my initial impression of their refusal of Rogue's coy suggestion. I do not get that they are more interested in a threesome than they are willing to admit, in the least. If the last four lines were meant to be cheekily humorous, the intention fell dead flat with this reader.

Having much in common does not necessarily translate into sexual attraction, and although I have read an occasional slash fic that worked (and some threeways that worked) for me, I did not get that "vibe" at all with this story, however you may have intended.

I am also more compelled by Logan's backstory. His struggle to regain his humanity from tortured, abused, brainwashed lab experiment, rediscovering his ability to trust and to love is what has drawn me to him more than any other character in this genre. I am constantly looking for stories about this struggle, and at his core, find him to be a "strong" character, just to have survived what had been done to him with any humanity intact. When even his students express their disregard to his face, it really is too bad. I realize yours is a reaction to **X3**, but it takes Logan much too far in the opposite direction, at least for me.

I'm glad that I've made you happy that I dislike your Logan, but I'm not happy that I dislike your Logan, but I made someone happy with this dislike, so I should be happy for them, but I'm not happy, but you are happy, but....... hnnnnnngggghhh.....

As you prefer to write characters which readers may find unsympathetic, or pallid, or just plain dislike, I will take note. I have been warned, indeed. Thank you.

Author's Response: Thank you for your response to my response! I wish these \"comment-author responses\" were always as interactive. I think your reading of the flatness of the ending is fruitful, and makes the last four lines more, as you said in your previous comment, brutal (never a bad thing around these parts). I think I am starting to like it more, your way! I agree that there is no sexual attraction between the two men written in the story, so the last four lines are an open-ended gesture (my interpretation is certainly not the authoritative one) to what may happen, or what can never happen. What I hope for is the opening of multiple possibilities: on the one hand, I obviously resist the \'one chosen happy couple\' ending, but I also absolutely agree that just throwing the three of them together is, at least as the story is written now, an unfounded fantasy. How they live that relationship is no longer for me to write; only that I believe they can live it in a genuine (which is not to say easy or untroubled) way. I present neither the fantasy of the resolved couple, nor the fantasy of the resolved threesome; just the possibility of an alternative, and imperfect (but not for that reason impossible or unfair), way of living/loving. As for Logan, I fully understand that his interpretation in this story may be too muted for some readers, including yourself, perhaps mostly because here I am questioning heroic redemption narrative typically inspired by Logan\'s back story. The question of Logan being a strong character because he has survived what has happened to him is a complex one, as the question of survival is a very important one for me. But I do not always think of survival, in and of itself, in an optimistic way, even if the survivor seems to end up all right on the other end. If anything, it\'s the \'all-rightness\' of post-survival that I often find more harrowing than actual trauma. As for strength: it\'s true, I am interested in characters--especially in an action universe--that search for other ways of being (or that even resist being) \"strong.\" Especially because in this story, Logan\'s history does not end at merely being a failed experiment--and therefore, only the \"object\" of violence--but as someone who has, himself, been responsible for unforgivable crimes against others. I think what I wonder is, how can someone respond to the violence that has made him, and that he has made with his hands? I think I can understand a \"strong and redeemed\" Logan interpretation for a character that has only been a failed lab experiment; but this Logan has lived far, far beyond his experiments. For a character who has existed as a weapon of war and been responsible for horrifying and violent crimes, to try to live in a way that struggles to resist the use of certain kinds of force and power is something I want to explore--even if it means he is not blindly admired by his students; or, for that matter, his readers. (Although at some point in the story, Rogue clarifies what she believes his students\' true feelings about him to be. ) It seems to really bother you that his students make fun of him! But am I the only one who has had classes where the most beloved (and sometimes feared) teachers are actually the ones who take the most teasing from their students? I don\'t think all cruelty is only cruelty, just as I don\'t think all kindness is only kindness. But even if a class of ten-year-olds do \"disregard\" him, I think there is something to be said about his acceptance of that; of not \"retaliating,\" or having to \"prove\" his power and authority to them in the way an ego-driven hero might be compelled to do. Teaching tai-chi and aikido, picking up mats and putting them away, day in, day out--I think that mostly blank and thankless work exhibits more strength than throwing flaming cars off bridges à-la-Rogue, while admittedly it may make for a character some might read as \"pallid.” But those incomplete and endless acts, which are only gestures towards redemption, are more interesting to me than presenting a character who is already (or eventually successfully becomes) \"strong\" and \"redeemed,\" and \"able to trust and love others,\" which seems to describe this story\'s (more conventional) Rogue character arc, more than Logan\'s. With Logan I think I\'m interested in the daily, difficult, and incomplete work of contrition. I don\'t know that I \"prefer\" to write characters that people will dislike; I\'m not purposely writing to make people angry or disturbed! When I read fiction, I don\'t \"dislike\" characters simply because they are unsympathetic; I don\'t read uniquely to be affirmed in my own perspective. Rather the opposite, really. Though yes, about being warned! We don\'t go to all authors for all things; and sometimes, we can\'t go to some authors for anything at all. I may well be one of those authors, for you; but I thank you deeply and warmly for your engaged and thoughtful reading until now.

Damn, I can’t stay away from this story! If read with a slightly different perspective, there is far more of a conventional romance here than the title and a cursory reading suggests. Storm and Hank finally admit something of their feelings for each other. Piotr and Bobby become a couple. And Rogue does make a choice between Remy and Logan. She ultimately chooses Logan.

Throughout much of the story, she’s angry with him in a way that says that she still has deep feelings for him. She’s angry with herself, her sixteen year old self, the self that doesn’t want to feel or know because it hurts too much to let someone inside that way. In the end, she cannot escape it. It’s Logan’s name she repeats over and over in her mind even when she doesn’t want to. It’s to Logan that she finally makes her impassioned declaration of love in spite of all she knows and all he is. She doesn’t make a similar confession of such bone-deep, raw, unflinching passion to Remy, even though she also comes to love him.

Logan and Rogue are trying to protect themselves by shutting down their feelings, and casual sex works just fine – for a while. No one gets inside to hurt them again, but all is for naught in the final analysis. Logan, who recognized a kindred spirit in Jean, although they would never be together, is trying to shut those feelings away, all the while he’s gradually developing “that something with Rogue’s face on it and no words” which both he and Rogue are forced to recognize. She finally does recognize it for what it is, and is finally open to it during that terrible confrontation with Logan in her room prior to the San Francisco assignment. That recognition causes her to tremble and shake and shake and shake right along with Logan.

In this albeit quirky interpretation, Though Rogue does choose Logan, she never could have come to that realization without Remy’s insistence that she see them – both of the men – for what they were and who they are. It’s Remy who forces her to confront her feelings and to finally look at him and Logan, and face their ugly histories. Both men made her “feel” – something she didn’t want to do and thought she could suppress by engaging in casual, no-strings sex. She finally comes to grips with her love for Logan, and tells him in great detail how she has loved him for so long. She could only have done that with Remy’s insightful and insistent prodding, and along the way, she developed another kind of love – but love, nonetheless – for Remy.

There are many kinds of love. In the end she chooses to be with Logan, but maintains contact with Remy as with a strong, knowing (and at one time biblically “known”) friend for life. She chose Logan, but Remy will always be there for her. The last four lines? She’s in bed with Logan after sex and makes her suggestion to him. She’s on the phone after sex (also with Logan-?- but not necessarily within his earshot) when she makes her suggestion to Remy. She maintains contact with Remy, but I don’t think she is necessarily screwing him on the side, as well. She makes her suggestion teasingly, knowing both men would refuse, but perhaps she’s grown after all, and sex is not so casual anymore.

OK, in my particularly skewed reinterpretation here, I could extrapolate that she did choose between the two men. Most of her angst concerned Logan, and Remy sensed that as well in several of his observations and in some of his remarks, both to her and to Logan. Logan she loves to her core; Remy she loves because he is the one who truly opened her eyes and loves her still. Two men – two different kinds of love. Maybe not what the author had in mind, but the writing is so good that the ending could be open to different (crazy different) interpretations.

Oh, the damage they inflicted on the medbay door? I didn’t envision some big showdown between them. Just the two of them desperately trying to claw/blast their way to her side.

Damn, a lot of commercially published “serious” fiction hasn’t captured my imagination or made me think this much! Damn!

Author's Response: You are a gem. Truly. I have had such a wonderful time having these exchanges with you, and I can only say again that I wish all comment-author responses were as interactive. Hey, I love skewed and quirky readings of most everything (as seen by my own interpretations--look at how I write Magneto in SFIPoM, lord)! So anything that challenges the supposed authority of the author is interesting to me. I like your reading, and I think it\'s a way for people who are squeamish about the threesome ending to think about the ways in which these characters would work out this relationship. I agree also that there are various romances haunting this story, despite its title--and in some ways, because of its title. (Although the title is just as much a reference to the story being a subversive twist of the idea of \"chivalric romance,\" which is to say, \"stories of heroic deeds,\" perhaps even more than it is against \"romance\" understood as \"romantic love.\") I definitely wanted there to be multiple types of relationships haunting the story, in an effort to show the different and disparate ways that other characters live out their love, which might bear similarities (or insights) for the main three, but which are all ultimately unique, and to some extent, incomprehensible by those outside the relationship; \"painted and private and theirs,\" I think I wrote at some point. \r\n\r\nI agree that the confession of love to Logan is \"bone-deep\" and \"raw\" in a way that is wholly his, wholly theirs. Painted and private and theirs, indeed. On a side note--thank you for the brief comment about Logan and Jean; I take Logan\'s feelings for Jean extremely seriously. I cannot imagine his character without those feelings, so I can\'t quite understand a lot of the Jean hatred floating around. Frankly, I like her character quite a lot, and if I didn\'t write from X3, this could easily have been a Jean/Rogue/Logan story. Which might still happen, hell. I think it\'s important to acknowledge the presence of the other \"love interests\" in this universe, especially since the Logan/Rogue movieverse pairing is something of a departure from the comicverse in the first place. That theirs would be a relationship always fraught by the serious presence of other people has only made their unique intimacy more compelling to me. \r\n\r\nNow back to your comments. I think your reading is another interesting way to think about how to live out another form of loving: to admit that you love someone in a true and uncompromised way, without necessarily having to \"be\" with that person; in this case, Gambit. I think that may be a way of loving just as \"alternative\" as the threesome the story proposed, and I\'m amenable to it--especially since all my other stories with Logan and Rogue as a \"couple\" feature unconsummated (or, at least, inexplicit or unresolved) love between the two of them, anyway. My only hesitation with this interpretation is that it is a touch too neat for me; I think the story is proposing three people who are in love, messily, and allow that messiness to be, rather than trying to organize it into a more socially acceptable arrangement; that to be true to the messiness is to be true to the love these characters feel. As a reader here I think the act of \"choosing,\" of being compelled by societal convention to \"choose\" is the act of violence, of exclusion; that the story wants to imagine another way of confronting one\'s feelings. \r\n\r\nI think I can quite easily imagine a future in which Rogue and Gambit OR Rogue and Logan are \"just friends,\" but neither option seems to really dare to think about the possibilities that loving another person can offer to us. There is a sense here of Rogue neatly putting the two characters into manageable boxes: to love one man \"legitimately,\" which is to say, monogamously; and to love another man platonically and with fond, noble memories--which is to say, no \"screwing\" on the side. But I don\'t think of Rogue\'s relationship with either men as a side relationship; not Gambit just because he is not part of the main \"duo,\" and not Logan just because he is so subdued in this story. It would be very easy to imagine an ending in which Rogue ends up with one of these characters: easy to thank Gambit for his very insightful life lessons and send him on his way, relegated to lovable-rube-side-character-who-is-important-in-her-heart, just as I can imagine a situation in which Rogue confronts Logan\'s past and Logan\'s role in her life, only to finally, healingly, let go of it and \"move on\" with the new love that has given her the courage to do so, etc, etc. Both of which are perfectly logical ways to resolve this relationship; and I can very easily imagine the story that would do that. But I don\'t think this is that story. I do think the story continues to stand against a certain kind of totalizing logic or \"tying up\" of loose ends. I think either of the two possible choices I just described would be unjust to either of the two men, and untrue to the relations that the story has shown. It is still more compelling to me that the idea of \"choosing\" be rejected as a violence; but I can understand readers who find that too radical and who wish to interpret the story in a way that suits their tastes. I think yours is a willful misreading--but I happen to love and practice willful misreadings all the time, so no opposition there. In any case, I love the idea of there being \"crazy different interpretations\" to this story. For those people who demand a choice, who demand the Rogue/Logan ending (I do know what site I\'m on!), your interpretation will be a helpful one. But I do hope that not everyone will demand a choice. \r\n \r\nAnd yes, about the medbay door: I didn\'t even realize that scene might point towards a fight between Logan and Gambit. I don\'t really ever see these two seriously fighting, at least not in this story. Just scowling at each other and muttering under their breath. Haha. And don\'t worry--there is no sequel coming! At all. Ever. I was being gentle in the last comment. NO SEQUEL! That means your reading will be safe, too. ;) Thanks again for returning to this story and sharing your new observations and interpretations, it is much, much appreciated. \r\n\r\nAs a side note: Something I just realized a few days ago. This story portrays Logan and Gambit as people who are responsible for unforgivable crimes against humanity; and yet what most readers seem to find totally unconscionable is the suggestion that either of them would accept the fact that the woman they love, loves them AND another person, also. Wait--what? How does \"polyamory\" trump \"torture/murder\" on the Intolerable Scale? This worries me slightly. (This isn\'t directed at you specifically--you just had the luck to have the latest comment, so I\'m addressing it here.) But--what? After I realized that, I sort of couldn\'t stop thinking about it. It must be related to the idea that in films we accept extreme violence, yet are scandalized by frank depictions of sexuality. Is the idea of a someone loving and consummating love with more than one person at a time so intolerable that we must find ways to make it untrue? Once I started thinking about that, I sort of couldn\'t stop.

Acse, what a privilege to be able to exchange comments with you, even if we do not slavishly agree! Your responses have been as facsinating to read, as your prose. I'm glad you liked my reference to the Logan/Jean relationship, because I have not seen another author on this site (no big surprise) present this aspect of their relationship in the terms you used. It struck a realistic chord with me. I am aware that the Logan/Rogue pairing is movieverse, specifically X1 (the basic reason for the existence of this site), not comicverse (as my "kid" sister, a longtime X-Men reader, has repeatedly told me, with a sarcastic roll of the eyes ;-)

Interesting about the general resistance to a sexual threesome ending here, myself included. And the violence? - it's true, most movie-going Americans have no problems with violence in "action" films. The bodies pile up...but, let acts of passionate love, naked or not body parts on full view, appear and the film is condemned as "porn." It's a sad comment that killing is more acceptable as entertainment than physical expressions of human love, desire, or just lust.

Remy and Logan (more blood on his hands than can be measured) are both criminals, but they'll never be brought to justice; never repay society for their heinous acts. Not one of us who commented on this story ever turned a thought to that. It's as if that was never an issue, just the love/not love ... perhaps it is we who are shallow.

Thanks again, Acse. I've enjoyed the conversation immensely.

Author's Response: It really has been a joy for me, too--perhaps even more so because we don\'t agree on everything! I\'m so happy that you have enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. And yes, about the Logan/Jean relationship; Jean\'s presence in Logan\'s life is to me undeniable and non-negotiable, and I think it does a disservice to his character (and the uniqueness and complexity of his feelings for Marie/Rogue) to dismiss them, or dismiss Jean as some kind of evil harpy villain; so much of what defines his character is lodged within those feelings. So there will definitely be no anti-Jean sentiment around these parts! For me, any Logan, even one deeply in love with Rogue, has to have also been truly and movingly in love with Jean. I don\'t think of that love as \"competing\" with Rogue. Why do female characters always have to be pitted against each other, anyway? I\'d like to think better of these two women. // Haha, well, while I talk about the comicverse, admittedly I don\'t know it that well; just what I read on Wikipedia and various Marvel websites and forums, while researching these stories. I mainly grew up watching the 90s cartoon, so that was my first introduction to X-Men, until the movies came. So I\'m definitely not an authority on what is movieverse and comicverse! But as I learn more, I think the distinctions between the two can make for interesting tensions in stories. (Aren\'t the movies like AU fanfiction anyway? Haha.) // Now, about the resistance to the story\'s relationship outcomes, compared with lack of resistance to certain developments in Logan/Gambit\'s characters: yeah, when I realized it, it sort of freaked me out. To some extent, I actually think the threesome ending is a direct reaction to those very unredeemable and unforgivable acts. For two characters who have committed such violence, to try to love in an impossibly open way, seemed to me a gesture that, while not quite atonement, approaches something like atonement. Or, perhaps the better word is generosity; a sort of radical kindness, particularly in the way the gesture affirms: \"I love you; that is to say, I love you in your entire situation; I love you, as the Separate and Other person that you are, without asking to erase any part of you for my own gain.\" Kind of the way Gambit says he \"loves the Rogue that loves the Wolverine\". The challenge to love everything, even (and perhaps especially) what we might otherwise hate--to give everything, in loving, without reserve; and without demanding \"symmetric\" recompense or repayment of that love. A love that does not hinge on some idea of absolute and exclusive mutuality or reciprocity--a love that gives everything away, without exerting a debt. The burden of that gesture is mostly on Logan and Gambit: on their ability to show that kind of extreme generosity in loving, when their previous lives have been so terribly un-generous; all about transactions, contracts, demanding things of their victims, whether it be answers, lives, etc. // For Rogue, however, I think the the question of the way she comes to love is related to the Agamben quote that begins (I think) the \"How I Got Over\" chapter, about how \"seeing something in its being-thus is love.\" That Rogue would finally have the courage to see others how they are, when she is so opposed to seeing people at all; to be exposed to others in the fullness of their being-thus, with the terrifying nakedness of everything another person carries, was, is; everything irreparable and real in another person. And then, not only to look into that naked otherness, but to love it: fully, unreservedly, radically. That the gesture of loving can also be its own impossible gesture of forgiveness. And furthermore, the idea that what she can do for these two men--when they ought to be condemned, when they ought to be punished, when they cannot ever, ever be redeemed for what they have done--is to love them. That there is something love can do, can give, that is beyond law, beyond right, beyond justice. I think Emmanuel Lévinas defines justice as \"the relation to others.\" That our relation to others is justice; that our way of loving can also be an ethical gesture. The way Rogue tells Logan she loves him before telling him his past, so he knows that this love surrounds everything; the way Rogue lets Gambit know that she has done what he had begged her to do (look into the file he gave her, which is to say, truly look at him) before affirming her love, before saying \"Yes\" to loving this person. // Also: shallow?! No, no, no, please don\'t do yourself/selves a disservice. There is too much passion and conviction throughout the comments to be anywhere near shallow. Ultimately this is a site based on a couple; so what happens to the couple is still the main concern of most readers, and I fully understand that. But I do think confronting the horror of Logan/Gambit\'s past actions in this story is probably crucial to understanding why the story ended the way it did. [In the more explicit interpretation, that is. ;)] // PHEW! I think you must be tired of all these long-winded responses at this point! But thanks again for reading and re-reading; this story has really been privileged to have you as a reader. This discussion has also really helped me to better understand and articulate for myself some of the ideas floating around in the story. For that--but not only for that--I am also immensely grateful to you.

Now that the real Logan's finally in the story...it's over. Great job on an entertaing, gripping story, well-written and with excellent characterizations. Only wish it was completed. After all this time and the demands of real life, I suppose this never will be, though. Too bad.

"Does Terri have an author name?" **sigh** How the mighty are soon forgotten. Much of Terri's terrific Rogan stories and series are on the old WRFA site...OR you can hie thee hence to her own site ("The Peep Hut"):

http://www.peephut.org/fics.html

Darlin', you are in for a treat!

Author's Response: Oops, sorry I didn\'t respond earlier. Probably because I was on Terri\'s site reading all her fics. ;-) Thanks for the recommendation! Didn\'t mean to insult, I\'m new to the site (and X-Men fanfic world) so I didn\'t know Terri to forget her. I thought all the stories from the old WRFA were in the new one as well. Live and learn!

I have to agree with Capt_Mackenzie here. Logan's recovered his "pre-lab" self *really* quickly, and he seems to have formed entirely too much of an emotional attachment way too soon. This chapter and the last have dragged the story from the rescue and recovery of a lab-tortured Wolverine into a mundane, wham-bam action piece with some PWP thrown in. Nothing wrong with some good smut, but after the wonderful character set-up of the first several chapters, this just doesn't ring true and cheapens what you'd created before. With this chapter, I feel that the story has fallen off the tracks, and what was terrific has now become pedestrian.

Also, in writing dialog, you should begin a new paragraph for each character speaking. This makes the conversation clearer to read.

Sorry.... I wouldn't say this if your beginning chapters hadn't made me care so much. You are capable of so much better, but it's your story and your choices.

Author's Response: Yeah, it\'s hard to know how to respond -- if it\'s even possible to explain my thinking without sounding defensive. I had a very clear idea for the early chapters, and they turned out just how I wanted them, all the way through \"The Beer\" chapter. I realize there has been a shift and I am in fact less thrilled with the recent chapters, but here\'s how I think about it. At a certain point I needed Logan to recover. The scientific mechanism I developed for his recovery meant that he would recover completely and suddenly. At that point, there is nothing to keep him with Marie except a.) an external threat or b.) an emotional connection. I\'m trying to balance the two, but if it\'s ending up as action / PWP / sap then that\'s probably how the rest of the story is going to feel. I\'m glad (I guess) that people liked the beginning of the story enough to feel that I\'m ruining it now, but unless I wanted Coherent!Logan to say, \"Okay, nice meeting you, thanks for the brew, I\'m off to go cage-fighting again!\" I think this is where the story is going to go from here. Maybe I just wasn\'t creative enough to think of a reason for him to stick around and be all UST-y with Marie after his recovery, but that ship has sailed. Like I said, there will be some more shipper-y parts coming up, and if it helps in my mind a lot of the sappier things he said to her were under extreme circumstances and when she was not actually in a position to actually hear them and not necessarily things he would look her in the eye and tell her, but if people are waiting for a return to Feral!Logan that\'s probably not in the cards. I do appreciate all the reviews, both positive and negative, though! \r\n\r\nThanks for the tip about the dialogue/paragraphs. I read on my phone and lots of little paragraphs drive me up the wall, so I don\'t know if I\'ll adopt that style now, but I\'ll keep it in mind for future stories.

"marry" -? Is someone getting married? A Christmas wedding is soooo festive!

Actually, I heartily thank all of the writers who have contributed so much to our reading enjoyment, and wish everyone - readers, writers, mutants, and humans - a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

His constant conflict with himself concerning Marie is beautifully drawn in this short, angst piece. ...and sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar...ha!

I am so glad to see these chapters from your Logan/Marie series are finally appearing here! They have definitely raised the overall quality of this site.

Author's Response: Ah, that is extremely kind of you to say, and I thank you for that opinion, but my stories are really the result of other writers challenging and encouraging me to be better with each story I pen. Many of them have examples here that are far more beautifully written than mine, and I still exchange ideas with them on lj because they have my respect and awe. So, as much as I am humbly flattered, I must disagree - I can never raise any bar higher than they have already set it.

Great start. I vote "epic," but it's all up to you.

Author's Response: Thank you! Epic it is!