'The road your soul takes
Is the one you marked out at your death.
If only the road we walk
Could be the one to save us...'

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He took her back to the bike, threw her on the back and just fired the thing up, he couldn't take her back to the place he'd just been. It would be tantamount to killing what was left of her, it was a place to die in, to be consumed by bitterness. No she was better off on the road than in there, locked up, afraid of living and being what she was.

The needle might have changed her body but her mind was still 'mutant', her charge toward the fight today had proved that. She'd been 'with' him, fought by his side, even though the rest of them didn't even see her as a mutant now. His hand gripped hers wrapped around his middle, feeling her tighten her hands around him. Her body crushed against his back, he wanted her closer, he needed to see her, to feel her breathe.

So when he stopped a little further down the road, outside a restuarant she looked confused until he pulled her in front of him. Putting his nose in her hair, nuzzling her skin and breathing her scent into him. Meeting her gaze seeing her understand and shift into his body, letting her curves slip against his own. Her legs riding over his, plastered to him like a second skin. His chest covering her entire back, he had enough room to do what he needed to do to drive. Tucking herself down into the cavern his body created, a place to hide in if she wanted it.

Inside....it was all she'd ever needed.

When they set off again Marie felt herself forced back into his body with the speed of their passage. Logan didn't care who saw them, he was getting out of the city, taking her with him and all that mattered was the touch of his warmth on her back. The breath that plumed on her hair and the comfort she felt as he took her further and further away from the lie she'd been living.

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When he stopped it was cold, skies were clouded but the warmth of the city had been left far behind, she was wearing his jacket and he was just looking out over the lights of New York in the distance. She'd figured they were at the half-way point between Westchester and New York. A crossroads of sorts, a place to make decisions and as the night wore on the silence between them both deepened.

Logan broke first, his voice was still; calm almost and the words that she heard we're almost insane against the tone he was using. Perhaps it was the coldness of them that proved what he was saying to her was the truth, maybe it was the anger in his gaze but she believed him.

"You're a 'risk'; a mutant that won't go away and live your own 'life'. If what I found you in you could call a life." His gaze locked onto her own, the depths opening for her to look into, to read what he was saying, to understand the risks he was taking for her, for a 'human'. "They want you 'gone', removed, 'lost', 'dealt with'. Not a good PR exercise to end up killing an old member of the team on the six o clock news."

He'd moved closer to her then, wrapped a hand in her hair, rested his own skull against hers and she could feel the extra weight of it, the metal coating the bone. "Marie, I know them, you *know* them, it won't be left alone, you have to *go*. Somewhere they can't find you again, somewhere you can live well, the way you need to."
Logan looked through her, saw the truth she'd been hiding, all her loneliness was there to see, all the nights she'd woken with a wetness on her pillow that had nothing to do with sleep. She'd been half a person, half herself since the needle had been plunged into her arm.

The decision came easily, it was so simple, she'd leave, find a new life, a new place, a new *her*. Seeing Logan resting on his bike, hands lost in her form, needing her to understand what he was saying. He couldn't follow her, not now, maybe not ever but she'd never be without him, he'd find her if she needed him.

She wasn't human and she wasn't mutant, she was something else, a part of her wondered how many others were out there like her, torn in two by their desire to be 'normal' only to find they had been in the first place?

Moving around she hugged him to her, imprinting him to her mind, to her memory, to her heart, her soul. His sigh rattled through him and she knew he was close to breaking, she had to go, he couldn't do what he did with her nearby. They'd find her and it's be him that would come calling and he wouldn't be there to hold her.

"Ah know Logan, Ah understand but everythin' Ah had was back there." Her hand motioned to the city in the distance, "What do Ah do now? Ah don't even have a passport, no i.d, nothin'. All Ah have is what Ah'm standin in." Logan nodded and put a hand into his back pocket, his hand was filled by a billfold. The silver monogram clip was something she recognised, Storm had given it to the Professor for his birthday the month she'd left.
"Here, take it," pressing it into her grip making sure she gripped the money tight in her hand. Her eyes dragged up to meet his own, they'd know who stole it, that he'd helped her leave, that he'd taken her away from them.
"Logan....they'll know it..." he put his fingers on her lips stilling her voice.
"Darlin' I don't care anymore." He looked so tired then, his face aging decades in seconds, "I can't lose you, I won't."

The first thing he did was to show her a small phone, made her take the number down telling her to ring it twice in thirty seconds if she wanted to see him and he'd ring her back. When he was sure she had it clear they got back on the bike. Stuffing the money into her pocket she held him and felt his breath calm as the night grew colder.
They got back on the bike and went West, out of the area, away from the influence of Xavier and his world. Logan would return there soon enough but for her it was her time to get out, to be free of him. Logan would always be with her, he'd find her if need be, she could reach out to him when she needed to or wanted to.

Finally they stopped at a small motel, it's lights were still on and the place looked family run. Logan got her to hide by a doorway, he paid for his usual room and when he approached it she snuck into the open door.
What was left of the night passed by in silence, just wrapped up in each other. Nothing sexual by anyones standards but it was the closeness they'd both missed; the ability to just hold onto each other. A piece of someone that was all theirs, death and beauty reflected in the other half of the person laid next to them.

When dawn came the room showed it's shabby face and they rose together, still touching skin and body they followed each other as they did what the morning required. No sense of shame or discomfort, just the settled peace of contentment; a decision reached and a plan to follow.

Time dragged by and she knew he was putting it off, he didn't want to leave her but he had to. He had to go back, to deflect attention from *her*. Before he left he made her promise to call in a month from today, her eye had gone to the shabby calendar on the small dresser table. That'd make it October, she'd agreed, quiet and small she'd let him leave. Watched as his shape had hunched over the suddenly huge bike, the gap where she'd been empty and huge. He'd tried to smile at her but his eyes had told another story, he didn't want to go but he had no choice. If it came to him or her, she'd win everytime and it was that that made her salt sting that morning as he drove away.

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He knew they'd suspect what he'd done but he'd been going missing before and stolen from the residents to fund his destructive behaviour. No one seemed to question it, no one even bothered to find out why he spent some days comatose on stuff that would kill lesser men.
All they seemed to care about was whether he could function in a fight, an seeing as the stuff he was takin made him grouchy when he woke up it seemed to be a winner all round.

He'd missed her, denied it until he'd seen her fighting at the edges of the battle yesterday. The ache he'd been feeling was suddenly gone, when his eyes had met hers, when he'd seen her take the man down, felt the spark that jumped across the distance between them. He'd found the missing piece of himself, she had it, Marie. When he'd touched her, given himself over to save her, she'd taken it inside her, held it safe and he couldn't get it back. He didn't want it back, he wanted her, all of her.

He'd wait, play the game, hide his emotions from those who didn't even see him anymore. Play the part they needed him to play but when she called he'd go, and he'd make sure they couldn't follow him.

It was this thought alone that kept his mind sane on the journey back, even through the fights and alcohol he tried to drown in. He got back a week later, everyone expecting him to waltz in tired and beaten like he always was. He didn't disappoint them, but this time they met him with sorrow filled voices. They told him Marie's home had been robbed and she was missing, the door had been smashed open and the police were looking for her but they didn't expect to find her. Scott even touched his shoulder, trying to comfort him, trying to be the commander he thought he was. He didn't do or say anything about it, he just lost himself in the bottles that seemed to be in never ending supply lately. The voices around him that whispered of his depression, his inability to cope with her disappearance. That maybe it was for the best, after all she hadn't really fitted in had she?

And underneath it all he was laughing at them all, she was alive, safe, living, breathing and she had his number. All he had to do was wait and he was good at that, he'd waited for life to turn and it had finally. Just like the seasons, his was coming at last.