A Stranger in the Land…Jeremiah 14:8

It was just one of those things he’d learned from a lifetime—well, fifteen years of one anyway—on the road. In a big city, crashing for the night in your car was best accomplished in an industrial area. No residents, no drunken assholes on their way home from bars, so generally speaking no nosy cops.

But in small towns, businesses are next to houses, and strange trucks on the street lead to questions. So in a small town, what you do is park behind the church. Any day but Sunday, that lot’s empty at night, and if anyone does see it, it’s probably a do-gooder with a Good Samaritan complex. In other words, a sucker unlikely to call the police.

Logan found a suitable house of worship—small, slightly shabby and with a parking lot shielded from the road—and pulled in behind it, in the shade of a large tree. He’d seen a diner a few blocks up the street on his way in, so that was an added plus. It was already past dusk and the place looked deserted, so he was probably safe from bingo players or choir practices happening. He threw his jacket into the back of his camper and set off to find food.

The diner was typical. Shabby formica tables, tired and dusty fake plants, a specials list in the window that clearly hadn’t been changed in years. A fiftyish waitress with a plastic rose pinned to the nametag on her bosom greeted him with an overly bright smile as he walked in. Five or six obvious regulars were scattered around the place, mostly at the counter, and they looked up when Logan entered with the usual small-town combination of curiosity and suspicion. He walked past them to a table in the back and sat down with his back to the wall.

The waitress approached with the menu. “Evenin’, honey. Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”

”You got beer?”

She pursed her lips coyly. “Not here, hon. Gotta go a ways and find a roadhouse if you want alcohol.”

Logan bit back a curse. Goddamn Southern towns. “Coffee, then. Two hamburgers, fries, make the fries well done.”

“How ‘bout the hamburgers?” She was taking a pen and pad from her apron pocket and jotting down the order; why, Logan couldn’t imagine, since it looked like he was the only thing in the place that had moved all day.

“Rare. Bloody.” He handed back the menu.

She gave him the coy look again. “Comin’ right up.”

Logan leaned back in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck. If he hit the road as soon as it was light, he might make the Mexico border by late that night. Or if he slanted his route a little through Texas, at least he’d be sure of getting a beer at his next stop. One of the men at the bar had turned around and was regarding him with frank curiosity, and when Logan met his gaze the man inclined his head.

“You from outta town, mister?”

As if he didn’t know. “Yep.”

“From whereabouts?”

“Canada.”

The man broke into a smile. “Canada! You hear that, Ed? Man’s from Canada. That’s where me and Liz went for our honeymoon. Ni-agara Falls—boy, I tell you, that’s some sight. I ever tell you ‘bout that?”

“’Bout a million times, that’s all,” one of the other men called back. There was a general round of laughter, and the first man waved it off good-naturedly.

“Aw, you just hate that I c’n tell a better story’n you.” He turned back to Logan. “You ever been to Niagara Falls, mister?”

Swearing mentally, Logan wondered whether it would be more off-putting to say yes or no. Probably wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. “Yeah, I’ve been there.”

“Hear that? He’s been there. Well, ain’t it somethin’?”

Logan nodded shortly. “Yeah, it’s something.” The waitress came back with a cup of coffee and set it down in front of him. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing, honey.” She started to set down a small container of cream, but he waved it away.

“Black’s fine.”

His new friend at the bar spoke up again. “Doris, you hear? This feller’s been to Niagara Falls too.”

“Well, sure I heard, Denny. Ain’t a big enough place a girl can get away from the sound of your voice.” She gave Logan a flirtatious smile. “Denny’s a big traveler. Guess you are too?”

Logan gave a noncommittal grunt and hunched over his coffee, but it was no use. Denny was going to tell his story, come hell or high water. Over the next hour, he endured the tale of Denny’s honeymoon, a story about a drunken trip to Kansas City, numerous reminisces about Atlanta and Jackson and one excruciatingly long shaggy-dog story about Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Logan saw the punch line—“And ‘she’ was a ‘he’!” —coming twenty minutes in advance. It was like watching a stage show—all the other players obviously knew each story by heart and chipped in their oft-repeated observations on cue.

But there was an unexpected payoff. When Logan tossed a few dollars on the table for Doris and got up to leave, his new best friend Denny threw a comradely arm over his shoulder. “So, buddy, what’s your name?””

Logan shrugged the man’s arm off, turned and fixed him with a glare. “Why?”

Denny took a step back, looking slightly startled, but he gave a nervous smile. “Hey, no offense, pal. Just though a fellow traveler might be a little—“ He leaned in conspiratorially. “Thirsty. Know what I mean?”

One corner of Logan’s mouth twitched up. Then he held out a hand. “Name’s Logan.”

“Well, all right!” Denny grabbed his hand and clapped his shoulder. “Me ‘n the boys’re headed out—g’night, Doris sweetheart.”

“Y’all get on outta here. I gotta close up.” The waitress shooed the other men out. One of them slapped her backside as he went by and she squealed in feigned indignation.

Another thing about Southern towns—someone always has a convenient stand-alone garage “away from the women”. They didn’t have much beer, but after the single case ran out they produced a stash of moonshine that would’ve trashed an entire Confederate regiment. When Logan decided he’d had enough and rose to leave, three of them were passed out and Denny and two others were in a corner of the garage trying to harmonize to “My Old Kentucky Home”. Denny broke away when he saw Logan sidling towards the door. “Logan, buddy—you leavin’?”

“Yeah. Gotta head out early.” It was as friendly as he ever managed to be.

Denny’s eyes were watery. “Aw, man—gonna miss you, buddy.” He threw his arms around a startled Logan and hugged him. “You come back any time, y’hear?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.” Like when hell freezes over. He gave the man a half-hearted pat on the back and detached himself with some difficulty from the embrace.

“Me’n the boys’ll always be glad to see ya. Damn, I wish I was goin’ with you.” Denny wiped a hand over his eyes. “But Liz’d kill me, right, boys?”

“Damn right, Den,” someone slurred.

“Right. Right. Liz’d kill me.” Danny grinned drunkenly.

“Maybe next time, bub. Thanks for the drink.” Logan turned to go and Denny hollered after him.

“C’mon back soon. I’ll tell you ‘bout this time down in New Orleans…”

Logan walked quickly, letting the door swing closed behind him.

The Wages of Sin…Romans 6:23

The girl knelt at the foot of the cot and clasped her hands. Three weeks she’d stared at nothing but these walls; three weeks she’d been locked up here at the church, in a room without windows that usually held sacramental wine and boxes of cups and plates and coffee urns. Three weeks since her mother brought her here, pushed her out of the car with trembling hands and begged the preacher to save her daughter.

She was sixteen.

I don’t know what’s happening to me. She couldn’t believe God would punish her like this. It was only kissing, she and David were both just kissing, she hadn’t been sinful.

Kissing is sinful. But oh, David wasn’t a sinner. He was good.

She stared at her hands, encased in cheap satin gloves from last year’s spring dance. They were mint green and she remembered how much she loved the color of her dress back then. Now she hated it.

She hated her sick, poisonous body, and the poison she felt seeping into her mind and soul just seemed to follow naturally. She bowed her head over her clasped hands, but none of the words she’d so carefully learned in Sunday school classes came to her. Her throat burned from whatever the preacher had made her drink earlier, and he head felt too heavy for her to hold up.

There was a jug of water on the floor next to her cot, a thin blanket over it, and a bucket and a roll of toilet paper in the corner. The only other thing left in the room was the worn Bible she’d had since she was six, the only thing her father had let her carry out of her house when he’d forced her mother and her into the car and driven them to the church.

Three weeks, and since then she’d seen no one except Father Fallon and his son Tommy. They appeared at the door periodically, the preacher’s once-beloved face now mean and threatening, his son’s twisted with sick delight. Tommy had tried to ask her out for years, but she’d never liked him. And this year David had asked her out instead, David who wasn’t a dumb jock and who wasn’t on the football team but who everyone liked anyway. And Tommy hadn’t bothered her.

Now David was in the hospital, maybe dead, for all she knew, and all because of her. And Tommy…she pulled her shirt tighter around her body and shivered; she was starting to feel chilled. The buttons had been torn off it a while ago and she wished she had something else to wear, but they wouldn’t give her anything. They’d even taken her shoes away when she tried to kick out, to keep them from coming near her. But usually it was hot in this room; she didn’t know why she was so cold.

She raised her head with an effort. It was getting hard to hear, but she thought someone was coming. She turned her head towards the door, feeling as though she was moving in slow motion. “Have you been praying, child?”

She tried to get to her feet, feeling her legs shaking, but had to sink back down. “Yes, Father.”

“Have you repented of your sins? Have you asked God to heal you of this curse?”

They were the same words he always used. She’d tried every possible answer. None of them worked, because the curse hadn’t been lifted. “Please, I’m trying. I’m trying so hard, I swear.” She couldn’t help shrinking back a little, because she knew what would come next. He would make Tommy hold her down, and then his hand would come towards her face, and—

Only Tommy wasn’t there this time. “You get away from me. I want to go home,” she told him.

“It’s all right, Marie.” In her dazed state, it was even more strange to see his face coming towards her, looking so much like the man who’d confirmed her, who she’d thought of as being as safe and as identifiable as her own father. She wanted it to be like that again, wanted nothing more than to go back somehow to that time three weeks ago when her life hadn’t changed forever, when she wasn’t a monster. When he wasn’t, either. “I’m going to take you home.”

Hope rose in her heart. “Mama? Is she here to get me?” Then she saw the rope in his hands and she shook her head, a whimper escaping her. She’d been tied up before; the first week they’d tied her down on the cot, only letting her up to use the bathroom and pray with the pastor. She didn’t want to be tied up again. “Please, don’t—I’m not going to try to get away. I promise.”

“Shh.” His hands took her arms gently but firmly, bringing her wrists together in front of her, and she was too weak and dizzy from the drug he’d given her to resist. “Don’t be afraid.” His voice was so familiar, so soothing, and she couldn’t muster the energy to fight him. He knotted the rope around her wrists, leaving the ends dangling. “It’s all right. Just come upstairs with me and pray at the altar one more time.” He took a blanket from her cot and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Then I want to go home,” she repeated dully. His arm went around her, helping her rise to her feet, and then she was being guided toward the door, out of the room. She was so glad to leave it behind she couldn’t even worry about where he was taking her, why he’d tied her up.

“Yes, Marie. I’ll take you home.”

She didn’t fight as he brought her into the sanctuary and led her to the altar. She knelt down on the cushion he had ready for her and didn’t resist as he fastened her wrists to the railing in front of her. She’d knelt here before, taking communion, every Sunday since she could remember, and all those times blurred in her drugged memory as she heard him move to stand behind her and open the large black Bible he always used to preach from.

“Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the Throne, and to the Lamb…” The man read the words sonorously, but they came without conscious thought. Inside his head his thoughts were churning, in turmoil, even as he spoke the words of spiritual salvation. And she knew those thoughts. That was why he was here, why he was forced into what he had to do. The second woe has passed, and the third is soon to come.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega…” It was too long ago for him to remember the beginning. The holy preacher put his hand out to the congregation, but the hand that fell on the girl’s head was that of a man, a man who pursued a woman into sorceries and immoralities. He shook with temptation, and turned a page.

“…and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” Then God’s temple in heaven was opened.

It would never be opened for him, ever again. He passed a hand over his sweating forehead and his vision blurred as he looked down on the page, looked for the familiar words that seemed foreign to him now. And another angel, a second, followed them.

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of her impure passion.”

The preacher felt a great lightening of his spirit at those words. That was it. That was the truth. He was only the instrument. It was another who had drunk of that unclean wine, one he was obliged to protect at all costs.

It was for his son. He knew it was too late for himself. He wouldn’t do this to protect himself, not even though the girl might denounce him in front of the entire congregation. She’d never be believed, the town would turn on her as a freak and a danger to them all. But his boy was given over to this thing now, and until she was gone, he would be confused and turn his heart and soul away from the right. I charge you to keep the Commandment unstained and free from reproach until…until…

He reached down and took hold of the girl’s hair, tilting her head back. She was only half-conscious, her eyes glassy, and he closed the book in his hand. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth,” he muttered, and something sparked in the unseeing brown eyes. He could see farther, too, down to her shirt that gaped open at the neck—

“Daddy?”

Fallon let go of the girl and caught his Bible to his chest. “Tommy. You have to leave.”

His son stood behind him, hands thrust in the pockets of his jacket. “I want to be here, daddy.” He took a step closer. “I want to help.”

“This is not for you to see,” the old man insisted, and he moved to block his son’s eyes from the thing he had prepared. “Go.”

Tommy Fallon stared at his father for a moment. What he feared and what he desired were warring for his heart and mind, but in the end, habit won out. It was easier to watch than to act. He dropped his eyes and turned slowly, slouching off towards the back of the church.

The preacher waited only to see the door close behind his son before he whirled, shaking now with the need to finish, now, to have done with it once and for all.

He knew it was right, and just, and necessary, but his hand still shook as he reached into his pocket. His voice, though, rolled out through the sanctuary as it had for thirty years, unceasing, resonant. World without end.

Marie heard its tone, even though she could no longer understand the words. She closed her eyes and tried to pray, but the only words she could think of were from the first childish prayer she’d ever known. Now I lay me down to sleep…

Her head dropped forward onto her bound hands, and she stopped being aware of anything at all except the far-away sound of holy words she could no longer understand.

And outside the church, in the darkness, a solitary figure moved closer to the light.

Thou Shalt Not Suffer…Exodus 22:18

A solitary figure paced the parking lot behind the church. Half-boy, half-man, he walked back and forth with jerky steps; his thoughts were in turmoil.

Father knows best. The Father, and the Son…

The teenager shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket in a gesture of frustration. He should have been allowed to help. He should be there with Marie. He loved her, and it was her fault his father had sent him away. The years of habitual obedience to his father’s authority were difficult to fight against, but his resentment was strong enough to make inroads on that tendency.

His father.

Something green and oily snaked into his thoughts, and he closed his hand around the hunting knife he carried whenever he could. It was a prized possession, one he’d coveted for a year before he’d saved enough to buy it, and its leather handgrip was worn to his touch. It comforted him. He would use it on anyone who tried to get rid of him again, anyone who thought they could take Marie away from him.

Father doesn’t get to have her. He squelched the thought immediately. That was disgusting. His father didn’t understand, that was all. He didn’t understand that Marie was his, that he loved her and didn’t care if she was different or strange. He was a man now, and it was time his daddy realized that. He could make his own decisions.

Tommy let go of the clasp knife, and felt behind his back for what he’d tucked there earlier in the evening. His car was parked around the corner; he’d drawn his money out of the bank that afternoon.

He was ready.

He sidled into the shadows of the church anyway. His father would be finished praying soon; Tommy was still obedient enough not to want to interrupt. But the side door would still be open. He skulked along the row of bushes that ran, neatly trimmed, under the stained glass windows at the side of the church.

It had gotten chilly, now that the sun had been down some hours. Logan squinted up at the moon, gauging the time, and with a final glance back to make sure none of the crowd was following him, he set off back towards the church.

The streets, like those of any small town, were deserted at this hour. He didn’t look up until he was walking down the dark drive leading to the church parking lot. Then he suddenly realized that there was light—too much light—and he could sense people nearby. Jerking his head up, he saw that the light was coming from within the church. He saw a figure moving in the shadows of the bushes beside the church and his eyes narrowed.

Little small-town punk. It was none of his business, but somehow he didn’t like the idea of ignoring it. It wasn’t just a single person, either; as he neared the front doors of the church he could tell that the other people he’d become aware of were inside as well.

The front doors of the church were padlocked shut, their wrought-iron handles chained together. Logan growled in frustration and moved stealthily around the side of the building, towards the place where the shadowy figure had disappeared. There was a side door to the church and as he moved towards it, he passed a window that opened onto the main room of the edifice. The glass was colored and it made the room within look wavy and unfocused, but he could see someone—no, two people—in front of the room where the altar would be.

He hesitated as he reached the door. It’s a church, for chrissakes. People pray in ‘em. Probably there was nothing wrong and he was just going to be calling attention to himself for nothing. But his instincts insisted otherwise, and he cracked the door open to look inside.

The door was at a lower level than the main floor of the room inside; he was peering up through a small stairwell through another wrought-iron railing. Much of the room was in shadow, but the front of the church was lit. A girl knelt before the altar, her hands clasped and her head bowed as if in prayer. Behind her stood a man in a black coat, holding up a large black book.

“And the Lord said consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.”

Logan stopped short with a hand on the door. This didn’t look like anything bad.

Then, as he watched, the man put the book down at his side and drew something from one pocket. He leaned forward and Logan thought he was going to embrace the girl, or perhaps place something over her shoulders.

“Daddy?”

The man froze, his body hunched over the girl as though to hide her. “Tommy. I told you to leave. Now go!”

“I can’t do that, Daddy. Not without her.” The younger man’s voice was tremulous, but determined, and automatically Logan glanced at the girl to see her reaction to her—boyfriend? He really had no idea, but in any event the girl didn’t move from her position. He heard footsteps from somewhere outside of his line of vision. “Just finish and let us go.”

The man turned his head, and Logan saw with a shock that his face was red and twisted with emotion. “I said go. Go home. Go home, Thomas. I will speak to you later—“

“No.”

The preacher’s head jerked back and his eyes squeezed shut. “God damn you, boy, get the hell out of here!”

It was shocking, both the words and the sudden lashing change of tone. Logan was startled enough that he didn’t move for a moment, and the sound echoed through the large room. The man jerked his head again, once, twice, as though he was trying to shake something off. Logan saw his eyes open, and he expected to see the man turn on his son. He still wasn’t sure what this was about, but he wasn’t about to leave now.

Instead the man’s hands went back to the girl’s shoulders, went around her in an oddly protective gesture. It wasn’t until her head jerked back that Logan realized with a start that he’d tightened something around her throat. Then he didn’t stop to think through any more details; he just shoved the door open with a thrust that slammed it back against the wall. “Hey!” He didn’t bother with the stairs; he seized the top rail of the stairs and simply vaulted himself up and over.

The man turned to stare at him with wild eyes, dragging the girl around with him, and now Logan could see that her hands were tied to the rails of the altar. The man’s face twisted as he saw the intruder. “Who—who’s there? Get out!“ He shrieked as Logan, never breaking stride, struck his hands away from the girl and sent him staggering backwards into a row of pews.

Logan caught the girl before she could fall to the floor. Some kind of rough leather cord was around her neck; he pulled it loose, but something strange happened—a wave of dizziness swept over him and for a second he felt an almost vampiric draw on his strength and breath. What the hell—? He jerked his hand back and saw the girl’s eyes flutter and open. She coughed painfully and closed her hands around the rail she was bound to, holding herself up. Her eyes came up and met Logan’s. He saw fear in them.

“Who are you?” Her voice was choked and hoarse.

“You—you are trespassing here!” The man in the black coat stood behind her, raising the hand that still held the Bible. The girl gasped at his voice and Logan knew she was just as frightened of this man as of him, if not more. “I command you to leave.”

“The hell I will.” Logan rose to his full height menacingly. “Not till I find out what’s going on here.” He looked at the girl. “You all right?”

“Whoever you are, you will leave this church. I am the priest here.” Logan could see veins literally standing out on the man’s head, he was so overwrought. Then his eyes moved. “Tommy! Get away from here.”

Before Logan could do anything else, someone was on him from behind. Fuck. Forgot all about Tommy. He had time just to think that before a heavy weight struck him and an arm was around his neck, trying to bring him down. He threw the attacker off, turning with a roar to face his assailant before the pain really hit him. He reached down and felt the hilt of a knife protruding from his side.

The boy facing him couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen; he was wearing a letterman’s jacket and had the freshly-shorn, hard-scrubbed look of a small-town athlete. For an instant, as he felt the blood pulsing out around the blade, Logan was grimly aware of the triangle they formed: himself, wounded and outnumbered, the father, redfaced and half-staggering as he raised the Bible above his head, and the son, flushed with adrenaline and anticipation of triumph.

The unpleasant grin on the boy’s face faded away as Logan reached down, yanked the knife out of his body and slowly reversed it in his hand as he began to advance.

“What are you, some kinda freak like her?” The boy stumbled backwards and dodged behind a row of pews.

“You get away from my son!” The preacher’s eyes, still wild, registered the way the wound closed up even as Logan turned. “You are the devil! You are one of the multitude—“ His hand came up to his own throat. As Logan watched, his eyes bulged out and he staggered backwards. The tense standoff dissolved into what would have been farce if it hadn’t been so pathetic.

“Daddy!” The little punk was frozen in place, clearly afraid to come anywhere near Logan, and the blood in his cheeks had vanished, leaving him pasty and pale. “Marie—you call that here? Get up, girl—you gotta send it away.”

“What the hell is going on here?” Logan snarled, but no one answered him. This is insane. “You—are you okay?” Logan addressed that to the girl. She didn’t answer either; she looked terrified, but he wasn’t sure if it was of him or what was happening.

“Who are you?” The boy was edging toward his father.

“None of your business.” Logan advanced another step. “Why don’t you just get out of here?” He jerked his head toward the now-silent man. “Both of you.”

The boy took that as tacit permission to sidle down the row towards his father, but before he could get there, the man made a choking noise and toppled forward. His son abandoned caution and ran to him, catching him just before he fell from his knees to the floor. “Daddy! Please, you gotta help me.”

“Oh, God…” A moan came from the girl, whose eyes were locked on the afflicted man. The preacher’s eyes were rolling back in his head and his chin jerked up several times toward the ceiling. With his hands still clutching at his own neck, it was a grotesque parody of a prayer. Then his body went limp and his son’s arms lowered him gently to the floor. In the same movement, he reached behind him and pulled a gun. He held it, shaking slightly, pointed towards Logan. “Get out of here.”

“Put that thing down, kid.”

“You get on outta here! I know what you are. You’re the devil, I know it—” His eyes squeezed shut and he began muttering frantically. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name—”

“Your father ain’t gonna help. Put the gun down.” Logan took another step forward and the gun went off, the boy’s eyes opening even as his lips continued to soundlessly mouth the prayer. The girl screamed. Logan felt a jolt and a burn as a bullet slammed into his shoulder and blood pulsed out to darken his white t-shirt, already bloodied at the waist. Everything seemed to slow down.

Logan turned his head, looking down at the wound. He rotated his shoulder, shaking off the pain, then raised eyes glazing with fury to his enemy. The boy tried frantically to recock the weapon.

The bullet fell to the floor as Logan’s body healed around it and rejected it as foreign. He began his advance again and at the second step he released the claws. The boy’s arms dropped as he stopped making even a pretense of attempting to fire again. “Jesus Christ—what are you?”

“Drop that gun, kid, and you walk away. You don’t…” He raised one hand. “You’ll find out what the devil really looks like.”

“We weren’t doin’ anything wrong. Daddy, he was trying to save her soul.” The gun rattled to the floor. “You—them things come outta your hands. Jesus Christ.” He looked down towards the girl. “Marie—you call him off me, you gotta call him off.” Logan reflexively glanced back at the girl; she hadn’t moved from where she knelt by the railing, her head now buried in her arms again, though this time he didn’t mistake it for genuflection. The boy took advantage of his distraction to bolt for the side door. Logan had no intention of following him anyway. The boy turned at the door and screamed “Agent of Satan!” Then he was gone, disappearing into the night, and in the sudden silence of the room Logan could hear the muffled sobs of the girl at the altar.

He glanced around. The preacher was certainly dead. The best thing he could do was to get out now, drive as fast and as far as he could. It wouldn’t take the boy long to rouse the town and then there’d be hell to pay. Someone else could take care of the girl. He retracted the claws and turned to go.

The choked sobs continued. He took two steps towards the side door. Stopped. Hesitated. Cursed himself inwardly for a fool. Then, before he could change his mind, he turned swiftly and went to kneel beside her.

Her hands were over her face and she was sobbing brokenly. She wore a long dark skirt and a white blouse that he could now see was torn and hanging loose around her body. Her long, reddish-brown hair fell in a tangled mess over her face.

He reached for her hands, intending to untie them, but as soon as she realized he was there her head jerked up and she scrambled backwards as far as she could. “Don’t you touch me.” Her voice was husky and rough, like it hurt her to talk, and he could see the angry red mark around her throat where the cord had bitten into her flesh.

“I was gonna untie you.” She was young, a teenager herself. “You want help?”

She shook her head. “Who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter. Look, you don’t want help, I gotta get out of here.” He still held the boy’s knife in his hand; with a quick movement he cut through the ropes that held her wrists to the railing and then stood up. “Can you get home all right? You shouldn’t stay here; that kid’ll be back with a mob in ten minutes.”

“Oh, my god.” She’d turned her head and seen the preacher lying brokenly on the floor. “Oh, my god. Is he—” She brought her hands up to her chest and Logan saw that although he’d cut her free from the railing, the rope was still knotted around them. She sank down until she was sitting on the ground. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

Logan moved in between her and the body. “Don’t look at it. Just get out of here.”

“Oh, my god.” Another moan escaped her. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to call you. Please, just go. Please, Jesus, I didn’t—“

Oh, for chrissakes. “You didn’t do anything. Look, kid, I didn’t mean for that to happen, but he was hurting you.” He crouched down again and set the knife down on the floor. “You’ll be fine. Just tell the cops what they were doing to you.”

“I can’t,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. They ain’t gonna think you did this.”

“Yes they will,” she said. Her face had gone completely white. “They’ll kill me.”

Logan decided she was in shock. He reached towards her bound wrists again and she kicked out to move backwards, away from him.

“Don’t touch my skin! Don’t touch me! I’ll hurt you.” She sounded panicked.

Logan drew back. Not just ‘don’t touch me’ this time, but ‘don’t touch my skin’. Something clicked in his mind: the ritual, her words, the strange feeling he’d had when he pulled the cord from her throat—he got it. “Your skin? You’re a mutant?”

She just stared at him. “I’m possessed.”

“You’re—“ His sensitive ears picked up the sounds of men shouting, still a few blocks away, but getting closer. He looked around and saw a blanket lying on the floor. He grabbed it and held it out to her. “Come on. We gotta get out of here. They’re coming.”

She closed her eyes and her lips moved silently in a prayer of her own, he supposed. But there wasn’t time to discuss theology, so he threw the blanket over her and picked her up bodily, hoisting her over one shoulder. She went limp in his arms as he strode out the side door and carried her to his camper. He was careful to keep the blanket between himself and any potential bare flesh; he doubted she could really hurt him, but after that jolt he’d gotten earlier there was no sense in taking chances and anyway, she’d been violated enough. He yanked open the side door and more or less dumped her on the floor inside. He slammed the door behind her and ran for the driver’s seat. He started up the engine, not bothering with headlights, backed up as quickly as he could without detaching the trailer from its moorings. With a screech of protesting tires, he peeled out of the parking lot and down the about-to-be non-deserted street.

What Happened On the Road…Luke 24:35

Logan drove fast but not recklessly; all he needed at this point was to get stopped by a Southern sheriff with a speed trap. He turned on the headlights as soon as he got a few streets away. It would be a relief when he reached the interstate. It was deserted at this time of night and in this area, but at least it was a thoroughfare, a route for others passing through this backwater state. He risked a glance back over his shoulder. “You all right back there?”

There was a long pause, then a tremulous voice. “What do you want with me?”

He turned his attention back to the road. “I don’t want anything with you, kid. Just had to get outta there before they came after both of us.”

“Where’re you taking me?”

He sighed. That was a damn good question. “I don’t know. You got somewhere safe to go? Family?”

There was another long pause, then her voice, small and sad. “No.”

Well, fuck. “Friends? School?” Nothing but silence answered from the camper. “Come on, kid, there’s got to be somewhere.”

“They don’t want me. They were all scared once I—“ He heard another choked sob. He could fill in the rest of the story, of course. Her mutation had manifested and in this area, fear outweighed both education and compassion by a mile. He focused on the road. What was he going to say to that? After a few minutes she spoke again. “What did you call me?”

“You’re a mutant.” He turned onto another road.

“Like on TV?”

He smiled grimly to himself at that. “Yeah, I guess.” There had been all too much news coverage about mutants for his taste lately—all of it scare stories, breathless is-this-the-end-of-the-world yellow journalism. Just more idiots scared of their own shadows, of what they didn’t understand.

“I never heard of any mutants like me.” She sounded doubtful.

Yeah, well. “Mutations are all different. That’s why they’re mutations.”

“How do you know?”

Smart little thing. He considered possible answers. I’m a mutant bounty hunter? I’m an undercover reporter? I’m doing a PhD? He settled for the truth. “I’m one too. I’ve met a few.”

He could feel her moving closer to the front of the camper. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He glanced up at the rear-view mirror; he could just see her, crouching in the back. “Come up here.”

Her heart rate increased at that. “Why?”

“You want to stay tied up?” After a moment he heard her crawling towards him. He fished in his back pocket and came out with a penknife; he held it out behind him.

“I don’t think I can open that.” She didn’t take it. “I’m wearing gloves and I can’t really…feel my fingers right now.”

Oh, for chrissakes. “Come here.” She clambered between the seats, a little unsteadily, and landed somewhat unceremoniously on the passenger side. He got the knife open with one hand. “Hold out your hands.” She did, and he managed to balance his attention between the road and her long enough to saw through the ropes. She moved back against the door as soon as they were cut, rubbing her wrists through the gloves.

“Thanks.” She fell silent again after that one word, and they drove on quietly for a while.

“I can get you to somewhere else. A city. Somewhere they don’t know. You can just tell ‘em you’re a runaway, they don’t have to know about…” He trailed off. It sounded pretty pathetic, even to him. What the hell was an underage mutant from a small town going to do in a strange city?

“Okay.” She sniffled audibly, and he closed his eyes briefly at the resignation in her voice. What the fuck was he doing? This wasn’t his problem.

“There’s some clothes in a bag back there somewhere. Find me a new shirt and one for you.” His was splattered with blood from the bullet and knife wounds and hers—well, it wasn’t really a shirt any more. She maneuvered past him again and he heard her sifting through his belongings. He kept his eyes on the road. After a few minutes, she came back. As she reached the front they went over a bump in the road and the camper swayed; she fell against his side and reflexively he caught her. She gasped and tried to pull away, but he kept a hand on her long enough to make sure she was on her feet. “It’s all right. Take it easy.”

She slipped back into her seat and held out a shirt to him. He could see that she was wearing a black t-shirt of his; he hoped it had been washed sometime in the last month. He took the garment she held out and dropped it into his lap as he reached to worm out of the blood-stained shirt he still wore. He was scrubbing at his shoulder to try and mop up the rest of the blood when he noticed her sitting on the edge of her seat, frozen in place, her head turned as far as she could manage towards the passenger side window; Logan could feel the rush of blood in her face and neck from all the way across the truck. He saw her bring one gloved hand to the side of her head and he almost laughed.

Modest little lady. He pulled the clean t-shirt over his head and tossed the bloody one into the back before pulling the shirt down. Then he glanced over again. “Okay, kid. Decent.”

She relaxed a little, and turned to sit forward. She still had her eyes averted; she drew her bare feet up onto the seat with her and he saw her pull the too-big shirt down over her knees.

“Relax, will you?” She gave him a startled glance. “Just sit back. It’s gonna be a while.” He didn’t plan to stop within state lines, though come to think of it, wasn’t that just a brilliant idea, taking a minor out of state. Well, screw it. “Tell me what happened back there,” he suggested, more to give her something to do than anything else.

“I…can’t really.” Her voice was still hoarse, and belatedly he remembered the marks on her neck. It was always a struggle to remember that other people didn’t heal when they were hurt. She put a hand up to her hair, trying to smooth it out.

“You all right?”

“Yeah. Thanks. For the shirt and—“ She gestured back the way they’d come with a nod of the head.

“’S’okay.” She put her head down on her knees then, leaning forward, and they drove on in silence. Logan didn’t really know what else to say to her. She was leaving everything she knew, probably, and he had exactly no experience talking to kids anyway. Eventually, he looked over and realized she was asleep, arms still hugging her knees. One loose lock of hair had drifted down over her face and on impulse he reached over to tuck it behind her ear, careful not to touch her skin. Relaxed in sleep, she looked even younger, and he wondered how in hell anyone could want to hurt her.

She slept until he pulled into a truck stop at about four in the morning. He parked behind several eighteen-wheelers and cut the engine; she lifted her head and blinked sleepily. Then he saw her eyes change as she remembered where she was.

“What—are we stopping here?” She rubbed a hand over her face. “Is this it?”

“No. This’s just a truck stop. I gotta grab some coffee. Unless you want to change your mind, call someone from here.” He couldn’t help thinking that the further he took her from where she’d started, the more trouble it was going to be.

“No. There’s no one to call.” Her voice was sad, but determined.

He gave her a calculated look. “You sure about that?” She had to have family, somewhere. “Where are your parents?”

“I can’t call them.” She wouldn’t look at him. He waited, and finally she sighed and looked up. “They’re the ones who took me to the church. They don’t want me, and even if they did…” She set her lips firmly; he had the feeling it was to keep from crying. “I won’t go back there. I’d rather die.”

“Don’t get melodramatic on me,” Logan said mildly, and was slightly amused when she narrowed her eyes at him.

“Thanks for the ride.” She reached for the handle of the door and he reached for her hand to stop her. The second his hand brushed hers she yanked away so violently she almost hit herself in the face. “Don’t do that!”

“Calm down! You’re wearin’ gloves, for chrissakes. Just relax. I’m not gonna send you back if you don’t want.” She sat there, breathing a little hard, but not moving, and slowly he moved his arm back from the door. “Your throat feel better?” When she’d raised her voice, it didn’t sound as hoarse as it had before.

Reflexively, Marie’s hand went to her neck. She swallowed experimentally, then nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.” She let her hand drop away and Logan looked at her a little curiously; the ridged wound that had encircled her neck was gone. He leaned forward.

“Let me see that. Don’t worry, I won’t touch you.” Reluctantly she lifted her chin as he leaned forward; he looked her over and then carefully lifted her hair away from the side of her neck.

“Is it bad?” Marie’s voice was high and nervous.

“No.” He let her hair fall back. The marks were completely gone, and he knew he hadn’t imagined them; he’d had to peel that cord away from her neck. Didn’t make sense. Marie was still looking uncomfortable, and he decided it didn’t matter, not right now. “Okay. You stay here.” She looked puzzled. “Look, after what happened…back there, it’s better if we’re not seen together, at least for a little while. Just get in the back if anyone comes by.” A roughneck walking in with a teenage girl would get noticed at a truck stop at four AM in Louisiana, even one that wasn’t barefoot and looking shellshocked. And when the death of the pastor hit the news, he’d just as soon they not know which way he’d gone. At the moment, there was at least half a chance that there wouldn’t even be a description of his vehicle. “You want anything? You hungry?” She shook her head. “Okay. I’ll be right back.” He got out of the camper, not looking back as he crossed the parking lot rapidly.

Twenty minutes later, when he returned, she was gone.

Logan opened the door and his senses told him immediately that she wasn’t there, though the blanket she’d been wrapped in still lay across the passenger seat. Part of him was incredibly relieved. And the other part—the other part he didn’t understand at all, but it was making it adamantly clear that he had to find her, that driving away and leaving her to be someone else’s responsibility was not an option.

Then he saw her coming towards him, across the parking lot from the dark shadows behind the building, and his relief at seeing her was even greater than his initial response at finding her gone. She moved more quickly when she saw him standing beside the vehicle, almost running, as if she were afraid he’d leave if she didn’t hurry. She scurried to her side of the camper and climbed back in. “I’m sorry,” she said hastily.

Logan leaned into the open driver’s side door. “Where were you?”

“No one saw me, honest.” She sounded scared. “I just had to…I mean, the one in the camper doesn’t seem to work.” She bit her lip and looked down. Logan almost laughed when he got it.

“Sorry, kid. Didn’t think about that.” He got in, handing a paper sack across the cab to her. “Here. Don’t spill it.”

She held the bag gingerly as he started up and got back out onto the road. When they were back on the main highway, he held out a hand. “Give me the coffee.” She opened the bag and handed over the steaming cup. “The Coke’s for you.”

She gave him a quick, surprised look. “Thank you,” she said, and he could tell it was an automatic response.

“Welcome.”

“What’s your name?” She was looking at him, holding the takeout cup poised, waiting for the answer. Which he wasn’t sure he should give.

“Logan.” He said it a little reluctantly.

“I’m Marie.”

“I know. I heard that kid back there.”

“Oh.” One soft syllable.

He shifted a little uncomfortably. “There’s a bunk in the back, if you want to lie down. Get some more sleep.”

“No, I’d rather stay up here. If that’s okay.”

“Whatever.”

She pulled her knees up again, tucking her long skirt over her feet, and watched the road for a while. Eventually she looked back at him. “Where are we going?”

He’d been thinking about that. “I’m not sure. I was thinking either Houston or New Orleans.” He knew people in both cities; maybe someone could figure out what to do with her. Although the people he tended to know….”You ever been to either of them?”

“I’ve never been anywhere. Except Atlanta, we went once when I was eight.”

Great. Logan sighed inwardly. She’d get eaten alive in a big city. Maybe cross Texas, somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico before he headed south? There had to be some kind of an organization she could go to, be taken care of.

“Mr. Logan? I’m sorry. I know you didn’t have to do any of this.”

“Just Logan, all right? Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t look over, but he could feel her gaze on him and it was making him even more uncomfortable. “What do you think?”

“I don’t want to be a bother,” she said quietly. “I know none of this is your problem. Anywhere is fine.”

And maybe it was the fact that her words echoed his own thoughts that made him so unreasonably angry. “”Look, kid, that’s gotta stop. It wasn’t your fault, and you’re not botherin’ me. Anyone would have—“

“No. They wouldn’t.” That was about the first thing she’d said that she sounded sure of.

“Well, quit apologizing. We’ll find somewhere you’ll be safe, and till then, it’s okay. Deal?”

There was a long moment of silence before she answered. “Deal.” He looked then. She was curled up, her chin resting on her knees again, looking uncertain and lost, but a little more hopeful. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your…mutation?”

He gave her a sharper glance. “What’d you see? Back there?”

She looked confused. “I didn’t see anything. I didn’t look. I just heard the fighting, and Tommy shot at you, and then you came and got me.”

He thought about whether he should continue. “I heal fast. From, you know…gunshots and things. And my senses are extra strong.”

“Wow. That’s way better than mine.” His mouth quirked a little at one corner. “What comes out of your hands?”

Aw, shit. He remembered what the punk who’d attacked him had said. She didn’t need to know about the claws; as far as he was concerned, the fewer people who knew about them, the better. “Don’t worry about it, kid. It’s no big deal.” She withdrew at that, falling silent again. He drove for a while, until the silence was driving him crazy. “All right. You want to know?”

“Yes.” She had her chin set firmly again, an expression he was already starting to recognize.

“Claws. Metal ones.” He took a sour satisfaction in seeing the slightly fearful start she gave. Well, you asked.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I see them?” Now he was the one startled.

“There’s nothing to see. They’re like knives.” She just kept staring at him, and finally he sighed—aloud, this time—and took one hand off the wheel. He released them slowly, one at a time.

“Wow,” she said again. Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t seem particularly scared or upset. “That’s a mutation?”

“No.” He retracted the claws, not responding to the unasked question. That he definitely wasn’t talking about, he didn’t care how long she sat there in silence. He rubbed his knuckles unconsciously.

“Does it hurt?” He looked over at her. What, to get stabbed? She nodded her head towards his hand. “When they come out.”

No one had ever asked him that before, and he answered before he thought. “Every time.”

She looked away then, a sad expression flickering over her features. “I’m sorry. You should’ve told me.”

“Hey. We had a deal. Cut the apologies.” She gave a half-smile at that. “It’s no big thing. And I told you, I heal. Fast.” The sad silent act was back. He drove another couple of miles before he couldn’t stand it any more. “So where do you think? Houston? New Orleans? You got any bright ideas?”

“Isn’t New Orleans where they have the big party?”

He smiled then; couldn’t help it. “Mardi Gras? It’s in February.” Not that it was likely to happen, not this year. It had been almost a year since the big storm, but things still weren’t normal in New Orleans. And that might be better, actually—people worrying about big disasters would be less likely to notice the little ones.

He shook his head. Christ. She’s a kid, not a disaster.

“Oh. My cousin, she’s older than me, she went to Tulane. She always talked about it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “This cousin still live there?”

“No. She graduated last year.”

Shit. Oh, well. Still. “Okay, you want to see New Orleans?” He could sense that her interest picked up.

“Yeah. If that’s okay for you.”

“New Orleans it is.” Made no difference to him. Stay on 59, he’d just cross over into Mexico on the east side instead of the west after he found her someplace to go. She fell silent again, but somehow this time it wasn’t uncomfortable. They drove on, through the night, and eventually when he looked over, she was asleep again.

The Faithful City….Zechariah 8:3

Logan pulled into the darkened lot behind the bar and cut the engine. The Quarter had actually come off pretty well in the flood, had been one of the least-affected areas, but the city was still largely in shambles and he knew a lot of it must have looked like a war zone to the girl. Marie had been awake for the last fifty miles or so, but she hadn’t said anything and he’d left her alone. Still, he was sure it wasn’t what she’d expected, if she’d had any expectations at all. Probably she was pretty much in a state of shock. Now she looked over at him, still silent, her knees tucked up in front of her as usual.

“I’m gonna go tell my friend we’re here,” he told her. “Wait here.” She just nodded and put her chin back down on her knees. Logan opened the door of the camper and swung himself out. He hesitated a moment. “You’ll be okay, right?”

“I’ll stay here.” She didn’t move as she answered the unasked question.

In the back of the building there was a door, almost hidden by the piles of clanking, leaky trash bags. Logan kicked a couple of them out of the way and tried the handle. It was locked, but he knew this door. One well-placed thump of his fist just over the lock, and he heard the bolt fall back. He opened the door, pushing aside more trash, and entered a darkened hallway. He turned towards a glimmer of light and found another door leading to the stairs.

At the top of the stairs he looked around, squinting a little against the light coming though the plate-glass window in front. The bar was closed at this hour of the morning, of course, but he’d hoped to find someone in, cleaning or setting up. Then he heard a click from the stairs leading up to the second floor. Logan turned quickly and found himself staring into the business end of a shotgun. He raised his hands.

“Finally had enough of me, huh, Toby?”

“Logan!” The big man on the stairs lowered his gun and hurried the rest of the way down. “Goddamnit, buddy, why don’t you ever learn to call ahead? You should know better than to break into a bar ‘round here, these days. People’ll shoot first and ask the fuckin’ questions later.” He threw an arm over Logan’s shoulders. “You stayin’?”

“For a while, yeah. If that’s okay.” Toby, who had grown up in some backwoods part of the state, had retired from the underground fight circuit and opened this place four or five years back. The bar had a scruffy feel, but near-constant visits from his old cronies had given his place the reputation of somewhere you didn’t want to start trouble, and he’d been successful as a more-or-less legitimate businessman. For old times’ sake as much as anything else, when Logan came through town he generally stopped in.

And Toby had married a local girl a couple of years ago, a tough blonde who brooked no nonsense and who was experienced behind the bar as they came. She liked Logan, fortunately, because he was counting on some significant help from that direction.

“Sure, sure. Anytime. You know that.” The big Cajun set his shotgun down against the wall. “How ‘bout a beer?”

“In a minute. I got a little—situation.” Logan hesitated. “I ran into this girl back in Mississippi.”

Toby laughed, a rolling, jovial roar. “That’s some kinda situation, all right. Delta girls, you gotta watch out for ‘em.”

“No. You don’t understand—look, she’s a kid. She—“ He took hold of Toby’s arm. “She’s like me. You know what I mean?”

The other man sobered immediately, his eyes meeting Logan’s. “Yeah. I know.”

“Her folks threw her out and sent her to this preacher. Son-of-a-bitch tried to kill her.” Logan summed it up bluntly. “I threw her in the truck and got her out of there, but I swear to god, I got no fuckin’ idea what to do with her. I was hopin’ Lynn could help me out here.”

Toby nodded slowly. “A kid, huh?”

“Teenager. I don’t know, sixteen, seventeen maybe.”

“Jesus.” Toby peered over his shoulder. “Where is she?”

“Still in the truck. I didn’t want to bring her in here till I’d talked to you.”

Toby waved his hands at Logan. “Go on. Go get her. Christ, Logan, you ain’t got to ask.” He picked up the shotgun. “I’ll go get Lynnie.”

When Logan returned to the truck, Marie was sitting just as he’d left her, looking as if she hadn’t moved a muscle. He made his way through the debris and opened the passenger-side door. “Hey, kid. Come on. It’s all right.” He held out his arms. “Let me—you can’t walk through this mess.” She was still barefoot.

She put her feet down, but hesitated. “You can’t—“

“Cut it out. I did it before.” He tugged at the blanket she was still sitting on. “Here. Use this if you’re worried.” Silently she wrapped it around her shoulders and then let him lift her out of the truck and carry her into the building. He didn’t set her down, but carried her up the stairs and into the still-darkened bar, finally depositing her in one of the booths that lined the wall. Toby wasn’t in sight, but a minute later he heard a minor commotion on the stairs.

“Just give me a second, for the Lord’s sake.” Lynn appeared, wiping her hands on a towel she was unpinning from her waist and smoothing out her hair; Toby followed in her wake. “Logan, sweetheart! So good to see you.” She came over and hugged him. “Toby says you brought a friend with you.” Logan could sense Marie’s nervous energy increase as the older woman looked around him and saw her. He felt Lynn’s fingers tighten on his arm briefly, and then she let go and sat down in the booth opposite Marie. “Hi, honey. You all right?” Marie just nodded, but Lynn’s voice was reassuring and Logan thought she relaxed just a bit. “My name’s Lynn and this’s my husband, Toby. We’re real old friends of Logan’s.” The blonde woman leaned over the table. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Marie gave Logan a quick glance and he tried to look encouraging. “Marie. I’m Marie.”

“Marie, why don’t you and me go upstairs and get you freshened up?” Lynn held out a hand and reflexively the girl pulled back. Logan leaned forward.

“It’s okay, kid. Lynn—you can’t touch her. Somethin’ with her skin.”

If Lynn was surprised, she covered it quickly. “Well, that’s no problem. I do hair and makeup on the side and I got all kinds of gloves upstairs. You just come with me, honey, and we’ll manage just fine. You boys can stay here and get caught up.” She waited until Marie had gotten up from the booth before putting a hand—carefully—on her shoulder. “You look like you’ve been drivin’ all night. We’ll get you cleaned up and maybe you can sleep for a couple of hours, all right?” She guided Marie up the stairs and out of sight.

Toby just looked at Logan. “Beer?”

“Yeah.” Toby led the way to the bar, swung up the barrier and pulled a couple of pints from something on draught. He set one in front of Logan, and raised his own glass in a vague salute.

“So. Welcome back.”

Make Me a Sanctuary…Exodus 25:8

Marie followed the older woman up the stairs. She couldn’t truly take in her surroundings; her head was still back in Meridian, she was exhausted, and she really had no idea who these people were, or how she’d ended up here instead of safe in her bedroom at home.

Home. She wasn’t sure she knew what the word meant any more. Lynn led her down a hallway decorated with colorful posters and opened a door into a small bedroom.

“Come here, sweetheart. Sit down.” Lynn brought her over to the bed. She sat beside the girl and took Marie’s gloved hands in her own. “You look exhausted, honey. You want to just lie down for a while, or you want to get cleaned up first?”

Marie just stared at her. Lynn’s sympathy was incomprehensible to her right now. She felt the warm hands on hers, the friendly pressure and the kind gaze—her eyes filled up with tears despite her best efforts. “I don’t know—I—” Lynn put an arm around her and she dropped her head onto the woman’s shoulder, careful to keep her face turned away.

“Shh. It’s okay, honey. I know how it is. My stepfather threw me out when I was fifteen. It’s hard, I know.” Marie gulped back sobs and felt Lynn’s hand stroking her back gently. “I promise, you’re gonna be okay. You’re lucky you ran into Logan. He’s a real good man. Don’t you worry.”

It took some time for Marie to get her tears under control, and Lynn just held her and soothed her until she finally sat up, wiping at her cheeks with the back of one hand. Lynn brushed a lock of hair out of her face carefully. “Feelin’ a little better?” Marie nodded. “You’ve got real pretty hair. So long.”

“I wasn’t allowed to cut it. My mama always said girls shouldn’t…” Marie tugged at the long mass self-consciously. “I was supposed to let it grow.”

“Well, it’s beautiful.” Lynn smoothed the long tresses back from her face with a professional touch. “Such a great color. People pay plenty to get this shade. I should know.” Marie managed a watery smile. “Tell you what. There’s a bathroom right through there. Why don’t you take a shower and I’ll find you something to wear, and then you can get into bed and sleep for a few hours. Sound good?” Marie nodded. “Okay. This way.”

An hour later, she was tucked into bed, her hair still damp but clean and smelling of Lynn’s homemade shampoo—lilac, she’d said. She was wearing a shirt and a pair of loose-fitting pants Lynn had produced for her, and they made her feel even more odd and far from home, because she’d never worn anything but nightgowns before. But they were clean and soft, and she snuggled into the down pillows and let Lynn pull the quilt up over her shoulders. Lynn turned off the bedside light, then went to the small window to close the curtains against the sunlight that filtered in between the buildings. When she started to leave the room, Marie raised her head.

“Where’s Logan?”

Lynn turned, one hand on the door. “Downstairs with Toby, I imagine. You want me to ask him to come up?”

Marie shook her head quickly. “I just wondered.”

“He won’t go anywhere without telling you,” Lynn said firmly. “You get some sleep. When you wake up, we’ll all talk about what you want to do next.” She turned out the overhead light and shut the door behind her, and Marie sank back onto the pillow, already half-asleep.

When Marie woke up, it was dark out, and she could hear noise coming from the bar downstairs. It took her a moment of disorientation to remember where she was, and to sort out why it was nighttime. She sat up, pushing down the covers, and went to the door, cracking it open just a bit.

“Hey, kid.” Logan was leaning up against the wall outside the room, holding a beer bottle. “How you feeling?”

“Better. Thanks.” She ducked her head and tugged the shirt Lynn had lent her down over her stomach. “What time is it?”

“’Bout ten.”

“Oh—I’m sorry. You should’ve woken me up.”

The man gave her a sharp look. “Point was for you to get some sleep.” She fell silent. “Lynn said she left you some clothes. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go get something to eat.”

Marie suddenly realized how hungry she was. She nodded and closed the door.

Ten minutes later she opened the door again, nervously smoothing the borrowed clothing into place. Everything was a little big on her, but with the style of clothing that was sort of a relief. Lynn’s boots only fit with the aid of a couple of extra pairs of socks, Marie hadn’t worn blue jeans since the fifth grade, and the top was a dark emerald green with some bright embroidery at the wrists. It wasn’t tight, but that was only because it was intended to hug Lynn’s ampler bosom. Instead, it hung loosely over her body; she’d found a safety pin in the bureau and pinned it closed at the neck.

Lynn had also left her a pair of long black stretchy gloves, much nicer than the cheap satin ones that had matched her party dress. She tugged them up over the sparkly decorations on her sleeves before stepping out into the hallway. “I’m ready.”

Logan looked her over, and Marie shifted a little nervously under his gaze. But he just nodded and gestured down the hall. “Come on. This way.” He shepherded her down the hallway and down another set of stairs; they came out in the bar, but into a back room that was dark and silent in comparison to the noise she could hear from out front. Marie could just make out chairs stacked against the walls and what looked like a cage standing in the center of the room.

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.” Logan put a hand on her back and steered her to a side door, which opened out into the street. The air was cool and she shivered a little as he led the way down the street. “You cold?”

“I’m all right.” It was only a block or so before they came to a small restaurant and he stopped.

“This’ll do.” It was a quiet place, with red checkered tablecloths and candles on the tables; only a few patrons were seated around the room. A waiter in a white apron came bustling up to them and Logan pointed toward a table in the back. “Somewhere quiet.”

He waited until they were seated and the waiter had left before he said anything else. “So we gotta figure out what you’re gonna do.”

“I know.”

“You got any ideas?” She shook her head. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen. I’ll be seventeen in February.”

Logan rubbed hand over his jaw. Great. Just great. “So you’re still in high school, right?” He wasn’t sure, but that sounded too young for college.

“It’s summer vacation,” she said, and suddenly tears pooled up in her eyes. “I’m sorry. That was really stupid.”

“Hey. Cut it out.” He saw the waiter headed toward their table and put a hand out across the table. “Marie. Take it easy.” She sniffled hard but managed to restrain the tears as the man set down two glasses of water and a breadbasket.

“Do you know what you’d like? Special tonight, gumbo or shrimp étouffée.” The waiter wasn’t even looking up from his pad.

“Steak. Rare.”

“And you, ma’m’selle?” Marie was staring down at her hands in her lap, and Logan knew she wasn’t going to be able to answer.

He tried to make his voice as gentle as he could. “What do you think, kid? You like spicy food?” She managed a shrug. “How about spaghetti? You got somethin’ like that?”

“Best spaghetti and meatballs in the city, m’sieur.”

“Great. Bring her that. And bring me a beer, whatever you got on draft. And, I don’t know, a Coke for her.”

“Yes, sir. Right away.” The waiter bustled away. Marie wiped a hand across her face.

“I’m sorr—“

“Quit it. Just quit apologizing, right now.” Two more tears trickled down her face and he clenched his teeth. Good goin’, genius. “Look, I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t mean to yell at you. Just…stop sitting there thinking I’m gonna dump you in an alleyway somewhere if you say the wrong thing.”

She made a choked sound that he thought was a sob for a second, until she reached for her glass and took a gulp of water. When she looked up after her drink, he saw that she was trying not to smile. She grabbed her napkin and wiped her eyes, finally meeting his gaze. “I don’t think that. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I appreciate it. Really.”

“Well, don’t make a big deal out of it,” he said gruffly.

She nodded meekly as she shook her napkin out and laid it delicately across her lap. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

He wasn’t quite sure if she was laughing at him.

Gird Me With Strength…Psalms 18:39

I don’t know whether I’m awake or dreaming any more. A week ago I thought my whole life was over, and right now I’ve never felt more alive.

I think maybe I’m not supposed to feel this way. I should miss home. I should be afraid.

I’m not. I can’t be.

I don’t understand any of this. It’s all too much to take in. I don’t know what I thought would happen—maybe some kind of runaway organization, I’ve heard of places like that. A hospital, only I wouldn’t go to one, or I’d find a job, or…

I don’t know. Whatever I thought, this isn’t what I expected. Most of all, I didn’t expect Logan to still be around. I thought he’d leave me at—wherever, and that would be it. Instead, we’ve been staying with his friends and he doesn’t seem to be planning on going anywhere.

I’m not used to grownups who act like them. If I knew them back in Meridian, I’d have called them Mr. and Mrs. Devereaux and actually I wouldn’t have because I would never have known them. My mama wouldn’t have let me. She’d have said they were trashy.

But my mother threw me out of her house, and Lynn takes me shopping for makeup and clothes and she doesn’t care if I can’t touch people. Just because Logan brought me here, they took me in, no questions asked, and I didn’t know people did that. Not for someone they didn’t even know.

I never really thought about how many people there are in the world. Just in New Orleans, even. People back home talked about this city like it was some kind of strange foreign country, and it kind of is. Boys in college would go there on spring break, and my friends who had older brothers knew stories they’d whisper at parties and over sandwiches on the school lawn at lunch. And Jessie, my cousin who doesn’t even go to church any more since she went away to college. She was planning to go back after she graduated and she only stayed in Meridian because of the flood. She told me things. I never quite believed them.

Now I know they didn’t tell the half of it, and besides, they’re probably all whispering about me now.

New Orleans. God, it’s incredible. Parts of it are still so awful and so sad—whole neighborhoods that are just destroyed, just boarded-up houses waiting to be demolished with the homeless trying to find a corner to call their own. But parts of it are still beautiful, and it’s so teeming with life, even the broken bits—the people who live here want their city back, and they seem so hopeful, really. I saw a band playing in the street the other day and it turned out it was a funeral. It was a funeral and people were singing and dancing in the street. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in my life. There’s so much going on, everyone fighting to figure out how it’s all going to work, and it would be kind of scary if Logan weren’t here.

It’s so strange. I should be scared of him. I can’t even imagine what my mother would say about Logan. She’d probably have crossed the street just to avoid him, and my father would have wanted to shoot him on sight. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the same room with him back home.

No. That’s not true. I just wouldn’t have dared.

I have never known anyone even remotely like him. I like being with him. I like what I feel like when he’s around. I even like how I see other people looking at him—at us. Other women.

I know that’s stupid. It isn’t like that. But he’s been so nice to me, taking me places and showing me around. I know he gave Lynn the money to take me shopping, so it’s almost like he picked the things out for me. I got lots of gloves and scarves so I don’t have to worry so much about brushing up against people accidentally, and it’s okay here because people dress every way you can imagine—no one thinks it’s strange. I saw a lady last night wearing a lacy shawl for a skirt and just about a thousand strings of beads around her neck—it wasn’t even a top. I thought I would die of embarrassment, and Logan just laughed at me.

He does that. And he doesn’t let other people get too close and make me nervous, even in the crowds in the streets at night. He always puts an arm around my shoulders and walks and somehow the Red Sea just parts. It’s pretty cool. It’s like they all know not to get in his way, like they know he’s in charge. He won’t talk about it, but I think he used to be in the Army. You can just tell he’s always in control, and he always wears a dogtag like my daddy had from Vietnam. I think I understand that—my father never wanted to talk about the war. He said it was better off forgotten.

Nights in New Orleans are crazy. And wild, and rowdy, and colorful. I used to be really good in art class, and I got a sketchbook and tried to draw some of it the other day. It looked awful, but I’m going to keep trying. Logan got me a little camera, one of those ones you just use up and then throw away, and I took lots of pictures of the streets and people partying. That was an amazing night. We went out for dinner and then down by the water, where there’s all these old cast-iron fences and really ancient-looking stone walls, and he even took a picture of me. And Lynn took one of both of us in the bar later. I can’t wait to see them.

That’s another thing. Since the flood, there’s been a lot of strange things happening here, things that wouldn’t normally go on, at least not openly. I guess Toby and Logan both used to fight on some kind of tour, like wrestlers, and now Toby has fights in the bar once in a while, because the regular tourist business still isn’t back to normal and they can make a lot of money betting. And since Logan’s staying for a while, Toby asked if he wanted to earn some money that way.

He didn’t want me to know at first. I don’t know why—it’s kind of exciting, honestly. Lynn snuck me in the first night and that’s when I found out what the weird cage thing in the back room was for. I sat at the bar and Toby made sure no one bothered me, just like Logan does, and everyone was yelling and betting on the fight. Which Logan won.

He saw me at the bar—well, heard me, really, I guess I was cheering kind of loudly—and at first he was mad, but Lynn just laughed and told him not to be such a stick-in-the-mud. It was so funny, how she could just say something like that to him after he’d just knocked some huge guy cold, but she did. And then she tried to serve me a beer and Logan took it away from me, but he let me stay. And he’s fighting again tomorrow night, and I’m coming too.

The only bad thing that’s happened since I’ve been here was last night. I had this really awful nightmare, and it wasn’t what I would have thought, not about the church or anything. I didn’t understand it at all—I was dreaming there were doctors doing something awful to me, and it felt like I was drowning, and I woke up screaming and then Logan was there.

He made me tell him what the dream was about, but as soon as I started he got really upset. He cut me off and started to leave, but then he came back and he told me something. He said he had the same nightmares.

He wouldn’t really talk about that. He just asked me about my skin again, how it works. My mutation, he calls it. But I couldn’t really tell him much, just that I sometimes knew what Father Fallon was thinking after he touched me. I didn’t tell him about what—I wouldn’t tell Logan that for anything in the world. But he didn’t ask. He nodded, and then he said he thought it might be something like that, because he thought I’d absorbed his mutation that night.

I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t remember anything about that. It was the rope around my neck; when he took it off he touched me, because of course he didn’t know about my skin. He said there was a mark, but later there wasn’t. He heals that way, and that night I did too. So I must have gotten that from him, and the nightmare too.

That was all he said about it. He asked if I was all right, and I said yes, and then Lynn appeared in the doorway and he got up and left. I hadn’t really realized he had his arm around me until then.

I can’t remember it. I was drugged that night, and I must have passed out—but I wish I could remember that. Still. It doesn’t matter. Maybe I can ask him about it again later. After tonight.

Cruel As the Grave…Song of Songs

God, this trip is such a nightmare. I shouldn’t have come.

The Professor meant well, giving us a chance to get away together for a couple of days. Practically a vacation; no meetings with officials, no work, no hours spent hunched over a microscope. I should be enjoying this. I used to love to travel.

It’s just so exhausting, somehow. It seems like Scott and I have been fighting forever, and it’s not going away just because the scenery changes. I really thought it might this time, with less day-to-day stress and a chance to just relax on the trip down, but it seems like everything I do is wrong, and I am so sick and tired of that pained attitude and the veiled comments that I could scream.

And I don’t even have the normal excuse of not knowing what he’s thinking. I can feel his disapproval blipping at me from across the room, a constant low-level irritant. He won’t say anything; I’m just supposed to get it, what he’s upset about this time. We’re in such a vicious cycle, and I’m tired of apologizing for things I don’t really think I’m doing wrong.

There’s always something. Tonight it’s how I’m dressed. But I’m not playing this game, not tonight. What I’m wearing is perfectly appropriate for where we’re going, and I’m not going to walk into a bar dressed like I’m attending a Cabinet meeting, whether he likes it or not. Black leather pants, boots, and a gauzy red shirt; I’ve got a camisole under it and there is nothing untoward on display. This is not 1805 and I don’t care what he thinks.

It’s just that what he thinks is starting to give me a headache. As Scott pulls the car up to the curb and parks I feel in my clutch for the vial of Tylenol and curse mentally; apparently I’ve left it in our room. Perfect. Just perfect.

Without a word, Scott gets out of the car and starts around to open my door for me, but I don’t wait for him, swinging it open and getting out before he can get there. And the disapproval increases, how dare I take away his right to be a perfect outward gentleman, but I ignore that and walk ahead of him towards the bar.

God, I need a drink. And I’m going to have one, official business or not.

The bar is called Devereaux’s. The front room is reasonably crowded, with people playing darts and pool, watching a college football game on a big-screen TV at one side and cheering on their favorites. I know Scott already has the place scoped out and he starts directly towards the back, but I head for the bar and ask the woman behind it for a brandy. Scott stands behind me, practically tapping his foot with impatience, and when the woman brings me my drink he asks for a light beer.

The first sip burns my throat a little and I blink back moisture in my eyes. The blonde bartender gives me a friendly smile as I put down money for our drinks, and her cheerful thanks make such a stark contrast to the anger I can feel welling up behind me that it makes me want to toss back the whole glassful and order another.

I make myself take another slow sip instead. Scott leans in behind me. “We could have gotten a drink in the back.”

“I know. I wanted one here.” I don’t turn. “You know we’re early. Just relax, will you? We have all night.”

“I can think of about a dozen places I’d rather be, if you just want to get a drink. Can we get this finished and get out of here?” His voice is so cold.

“I like it here. And we can’t get this finished until the fights are over, so take it easy.” I turn then, and once again I find myself trying to placate him. “Come on. This is supposed to be a fun trip.”

Same old pattern. His mouth makes a thin line. “This place is a dump. If the kid is here, the sooner we get her out, the better.”

I just look at him. I swear, Scott didn’t used to be like this. I don’t know what happened. When we were in college, it was always him trying to drag me off from my studies to have fun, remind me that there were other things in life than one more paper or experiment to finish. Responsibility hasn’t been very kind to him, I think. I sigh, and pick up my glass. “All right. Let’s see what we can find out.”

I follow Scott through the bar, past a shrieking crowd of college kids who are thrilled by a play that’s just been made on the television, and the urge to stop and join them is almost irresistible. They’re having such a good time, and whether their team wins or loses, they won’t care for more than a minute. A tall blond young man moves out of my way with automatic courtesy as I edge by his group and makes a gesture that would be a tip of the hat if only he were wearing one: Southern manners, the boy was raised right. I give him a smile just as Scott turns to make sure I’m behind him. Damn.

“Come on.” A large man stands at the back of the room, by a door; Scott walks up to him, has a quiet word, passes over a discreetly folded bill. And we go through the door.

It’s a different world.

Outside, the kids were cheering for their alma maters with fervor, but here, we’re suddenly transported back to the Colosseum. This crowd is electrified, out for blood, and there’s no screen between them and their gladiators—I can smell the sweat and the blood that’s already been spilled tonight. The noise is incredible. I hear the wet, thick smack of flesh on flesh and the sharp lash of pain that follows assaults my senses.

It’s like a hit of cocaine. I push past Scott and get my first clear view of what’s happening in the back of the room.

That first look—it’s a shock. Pure primeval power, ancient instinct, kill or be killed. The presence, as the fighter turns and I see him full-on for the first time—I know it’s something I’ll never forget.

I barely notice his opponent, though in any other company he’d stand out, huge and bald and muscular. But the man facing me is different, and not just because I happen to be seeing him from the front.

He’s dark, bearded. I can feel the intensity of his gaze from here as he takes a step back, lifting a hand to wipe a trickle of blood from his chin. Both fighters are shirtless, circling, taut and alert, looking for each other’s weakness. Sweat glistens on his shoulders as he lifts his arms, readying his fists.

He’s enjoying this. I can tell.

And suddenly there’s a flurry of motion as he sees an opening and unleashes a furious assault on his opponent, his fists landing blow after blow against the larger man’s midsection. The bald man staggers back against the bars of the cage that encloses them and I can’t even hear the punches land over the roar the crowd of men lets out. The energy rises even further as the dark man waits, circling again, prowling in that circumscribed space. I watch, transfixed.

“Over there.” Scott’s voice, crisp and unemotional, in my ear. “By the bar.”

I don’t want to look away, but reluctantly I turn my head. It’s another shock.

She’s so young. That’s my first thought. The girl is standing up on the crossbars of her stool so she can see over the crowd, and she’s screaming right along with the men. Long dark hair streams down over her shoulders as she claps, raises her hands to her mouth to yell encouragement to her chosen fighter. I can see she’s wearing long black gloves, and they look incongruous with the shirt and jeans she’s wearing, as does the fringed scarf she’s got around her neck.

I’m sure it’s the dark man she’s cheering for. I can’t hear what she’s calling out over the crowd, but even as I watch she suddenly throws her hands up in the air, her face alight with triumph, the roar of the crowd increases even more, and when I turn back to the cage the fight is over, the tall bald man sprawled unconscious as the ringmaster raises the other man’s arm in victory.

“Winner and still champeen! The Wolverine!” I didn’t know they actually said things like that. The victor stands still for just the moment, and then he’s turning his back, stalking away from me and out of the cage, disappearing.

“Come on.” Scott takes my arm and starts to push through the sudden rush of people shoving towards the bar. “Let’s just get her and get the hell out of here.” Someone elbows him and he puts out an arm to shove back. “Hey! Watch it.”

“Watch it yourself, buddy,” slurs that particular reveler, but Scott pays no attention. He’s intent on his objective, but before we can get through the influx of drinkers demanding refills, the dark-haired fighter appears beside her, still pulling a white-t-shirt back over his head. He tosses a leather jacket down onto the bar beside the girl and then she throws her arms around his neck and he lifts her up off the barstool, his still-intense expression dissolving into a grin as the burly bartender reaches over to slap his shoulder in congratulations. The girl is laughing, and I see her bring one hand up to gently touch his cheek, as if to rub away the hurt from one of the blows he’s taken.

“Great,” Scott mutters beside me. “Who the hell is that? Her boyfriend?”

Automatically I shake my head, even though that’s exactly what it seems like. “I don’t think—” I don’t think now is the right moment, is what I don’t think, but Scott doesn’t wait to hear my opinion. He elbows past another knot of people, not even really making sure I’m behind him, and taps the fighter on the shoulder firmly.

“Excuse me. We need to speak to you.”

The man turns, setting the girl down on the floor next to him, and fixes Scott with the same intent stare I saw during the fight. Then his gaze flickers to me, and—it’s hard to describe. Like a sudden flame, an instant of utter and perfect calm in the center of a storm, a moment of silence in the maelstrom around us.

Scott doesn’t notice it. He just continues with his standard introduction, telling them our names, the name of the school, leaning in slightly as he uses the word ‘mutant’ for the first time. But the girl notices. I see her eyes move from Scott to me as well, and then something about her changes, as though a veil has come down over her face.

“What do you want exactly?” The dark man doesn’t look in the least receptive.

“We’re here looking for a girl who was taken from Meridian, Mississippi ten days ago,” Scott tells him, and at that I put a hand on his arm, because I know that’s the wrong way to go about this, but it’s too late. The fighter’s eyes narrow, but before he can answer the girl steps forward, shrugging off the arm he still has around her shoulders.

“I’m Marie D’Ancanto. I’m the one you’re looking for. But I wasn’t taken anywhere. I left.” She lifts her chin to look Scott in the eye as she speaks, but her voice shakes a little. “I’m not going back.”

I have to admire her for that. Scott transfers his smooth, reasoned, prepared speech to her instead, and as she stares at him a little blankly, the man beside her turns his attention back to me. This time it’s more than a quick glance. This time he lets his gaze linger, sweeping up and down and taking his time. Then he deliberately leans between Scott and the girl and holds out a hand.

“Jean, right?” His fingers close over mine. “Name’s Logan.” His deliberate use of first names, when Scott introduced me complete with title, stops the school-related spiel and Scott turns to me, frowning slightly. “You a teacher at this place?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“So what’s your mutation?” He raises one eyebrow inquiringly and I’m a little surprised at the sense of humor he’s revealing. I feel Scott’s hand on my arm, but I ignore it.

“I read minds.” He looks skeptical. “Like now you’re thinking…you don’t believe I can.”

“Jean,” Scott hisses in my ear. “This is not the time or the place.”
I don’t care. He’s right, of course, but I pay no attention. This man’s interest is as intoxicating as the brandy that’s beginning to work its way through my system. He leans a little closer to me and one corner of his mouth twists in a wry half-smile. “Okay, Red. Read my mind.”

There’s no one in this bar except the two of us. I don’t know what the hell Logan’s mutation is, but that power he definitely has. I don’t think who might be watching or even what they might see. I’m breathless, I’m giddy, I’m feeling nothing but the connection between the two of us. I lift my hand to his temple, not quite touching but so close, and I open my mind—Christ. Images assault my brain, and they’re nothing like I would have imagined. I can’t even sort them out, they’re so painful and brutal. It feels like an attack. I suddenly realize that Scott has grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away from the man’s face—

“Okay. That’s it. We’re getting out of here.”

I open my eyes. I’m not even sure when I closed them. The first thing I see is Logan, all vestige of amusement fled from his expression, and then I see the girl.

Oh, god. She looks like…she looks like I’ve just slapped her in the face. This is going all wrong, and I don’t know what to do. Scott has my hand in his now, and he’s leading us out of the bar.

At least the two of them are coming with us.

A Good and Broad Land…Exodus 3:8

Westchester, New York. Heaven on earth, right?

Sure seems like it. Nice house, free room and board, clean sheets every night, everything provided except the beer. Which I can borrow one of sixty top-of-the-line cars and go get for myself. Giant screen TV, better workout facilities than the Olympic boxing team gets, and potentially the opportunity to save the world.

I’m going completely stir-crazy here.

This place—it looks perfect. There’s nothing concrete I can point at and say, Okay, this is the problem. (Well, not entirely true. There’s the asshole who’s second in command.) But generally speaking, it’s a pretty soft deal.

I just don’t belong here. Should probably just get the hell out. I get that. Did what I came for, found the kid a good situation where she’ll be taken care of, time to move on. It’s a no-brainer. She’s having a little trouble getting settled, but I can’t help her there. She just needs to loosen up, quit waiting for someone to hand her the answers to all her problems on a silver platter.

That is the problem, I think. This place feels like they should have all the answers. For a little while, she wasn’t thinking about it. Those few days in New Orleans, the kid didn’t have to think further ahead than what she wanted for breakfast. Lots of new stuff going on, places she’d never seen, probably the first time she’d met anyone her whole town didn’t already know. Took her out of herself, her own stuff.

Not sure I really did her any favors there.

This is all getting pretty ridiculous. I’m not a fucking idiot. I see what’s going on here. For a minute there she was getting to do whatever she wanted, it was an adventure, she got a little attached to me, and now she thinks that’s all going away. As soon as she figures out it’s not like that, I’m not just dumping her here, she’ll be fine and I can quit worrying about it.

Except it’s not really like that, and it’s starting to get to me. Got a little too used to playing hero, and I guess I got a little attached too, if we’re being totally honest here. Got used to someone looking up to me. Now I don’t know how to get out of it. Not that I’m saying I want out of it, just…

Like I said. Stir-crazy. It’s stupid. The sooner she starts getting on with her life, the better, and me sticking around is probably not going to help. She doesn’t talk to anybody else, far as I can see. There’s six hundred kids her age running around this place, all of them mutants with the same shit to deal with, and she hides in her room or the library and acts like she’s the only one in the world with problems.

The thing is, though—she’s not talking to me either, unless I go find her and talk to her first. It’s not like I don’t get that, either. She’s had a lot to deal with in a hurry, no question. The head guy, Xavier, tried calling her parents after we got here and apparently that conversation didn’t go real well. Can’t have done much for her confidence. So it’s this game she’s playing—not that I think she’s doing it on purpose, but it’s something about pushing people away just so they’ll prove they’ll keep coming back.

I don’t have a lot of patience with games, but I’m willing to cut her some slack. Just not indefinitely.

The game I’m really getting tired of is the one Jeannie’s into. What the fuck she thinks she’s doing—she’s no kid, she’s a grown woman, and this is bullshit. If she wants out of her marriage—and fuck if I know what she’s doing with that idiot in the first place—well, that’s one thing, but she should just cut to the chase and walk out. This act she has going on, flirting, standing a little too close, pretending she doesn’t see Summers doing the slow burn—it’s getting old fast. I don’t know whether this is their regular thing or if it’s something new since I’ve been here, but I’ve got no interest in sneaking around. She wants to do this honestly, well, I could see it, her and me.

But I’m not kidding myself. I’ve seen this before, believe me. Pretty lady, wants a thrill, likes playing with fire, thinks a quick fuck with the dangerous guy in the bar will give her life some excitement. I don’t even mind that. I do mind being played, and I don’t like that she’s doing this in her own house. If she wants a real fight, she’s going about it the right way, but it ain’t gonna be me who starts it. I’m sure that’ll be a real shock to this crowd, too. I fight when I get paid to do it, not because some bored housewife thinks it’s fun to try and goad her husband into taking a swing at me.

Yeah, well, that’s not exactly fair either. I don’t think Jeannie’s as devious as all that. She’s not happy, that’s all it is, and she’s not thinking straight about what she’s starting—probably doesn’t want to think about it at all. Wouldn’t even matter, if I wasn’t living here. If I was just some guy at the bar down the road, she could tease Summers by making eyes at me all she wanted and then they’d go home and channel all that tension into the screw of their lives.

Or the fight of their lives. Don’t much care, but it’s not working out like that, because I am here. Right down the goddamn hall, where if she gets up for a glass of milk at night he’s got to lie there wondering did she stop off for a quick fuck against the wall before she got back in bed with him.

Almost feel sorry for the guy sometimes.

Almost. Maybe I could find this amusing if I weren’t stuck right in the middle of it. But I am, and even though I keep telling myself I’m not playing into it again, it keeps happening. Like I said, I’m not starting anything, but Summers just has a talent that amounts to genius for pissing me off. I’ll be sitting around, minding my own business, and Jean’ll come by with some casual question or contrived reason to talk to me, put a hand on my shoulder, lean over me making sure Summers is as aware of the view as I am. And then he’ll make some sarcastic comment, half the time to her instead of me like I’m not going to catch it, and every goddamn time, it gets to me. So I call him on it, he glares at me behind the red shades, and it’s another fun day at Superhero Central.

I’ve got to think that’s part of it with Marie too. She’s young, but she’s not stupid, and she sees it. That pisses me off more than anything else. They’re supposed to be in charge of a school, right? None of them seems to be doing a goddamn thing for her. They call it ‘giving her time to adjust’. Well, I think they should get themselves adjusted first. They should be taking care of her, that’s what she’s here for. Especially Jeannie—she’s a doctor, for chrissakes, and she could actually be helping if she bothered to try. What with the rest of this bullshit, I can‘t even talk to Jean about the kid without it looking like I’m making a move on her. I’d tell Marie to just go talk to her, but she ain’t about to do that and anyway, the last thing she needs is get tangled up in a lot of adult maneuvering she doesn’t really understand.

And there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing I can do about it. Every time I try, it just makes things worse. Today I thought she’d gone with the rest of the kids, off to some museum or something. Instead, in the middle of the afternoon, I find her hiding in the library with a book. All by herself. Not just any book, either—kid was sitting there reading the Bible. This, after her holier-than-thou hometown preacher tried to fucking kill her.

I don’t have much use for religion in general, but that was just unbelievable. And when I called her on it, all I got was a lot of whining about how I just didn’t understand, that no one could fix her and she had to believe in something. All this crap, with her sitting there wrapped up in her scarf and gloves and long sleeves, even though no one else was even in the room. And darting glances at the door every three seconds like she was worried about getting caught alone with me.

It’s a game. I remind myself of that, but it doesn’t seem to matter. And it’s sure as hell not going to help, yelling at her. It was just on top of everything else—I told her to cut the crap, that I didn’t want to hear it from her. I told her to get rid of the magic charms and the book full of reasons to hate herself and get it together. And she yelled right back, I’ll give her that much. It was a relief, to tell you the truth, after all the pussyfooting around I’m getting everywhere else. Said I didn’t know what I was talking about and why didn’t I just leave and I should talk, I had my own magic charms. I’d been talking about that cross she wears, but she was talking about my dogtag.

A fucking useless piece of metal I’d be better off without, not that she knows anything about it. So I took it off, slapped it into her hand and said fine, you take it, see if that works any better for you. Real nice move, right? She started crying then, tried to give it back to me and started apologizing all over the place, and I just walked out. How’s that for a big finish? Couldn’t have done anything else wrong if I tried, I don’t think.

And what I was trying to prove with that, I have no idea. I’m trying to get her to talk to me, not count on me to fix things for her. If that’s what she’s waiting for, she can forget it. Doesn’t work like that. But she should understand by now that I do care about her, damn it. Why the fuck else would I be putting up with this shit?

Yeah, yeah, I know. She’s not a mind-reader. Get in line with the words of wisdom.

So now I’m right back where I started. I got out of the Mansion and out on the grounds where I can at least smoke without getting dirty looks, and all I can say is we’re all going around in circles. Unless the games stop pretty damn quick, this situation is going to go south fast. Everyone has their own little agenda, and short of hauling her out of here with me, there doesn’t seem like anything I can do to cut through the bullshit. And that is a way more appealing idea than I really want to admit.

Still. Not going to happen. So what else am I supposed to do?

Fuck if I know.

The Night is Long…Job 7:4

Marie couldn’t sleep.

She and Logan had argued, and she hated fighting. She also didn’t want to think about what Logan had said to her, but she couldn’t keep his words from echoing in her head. Somewhere inside she knew he was right, that there wasn’t going to be any magic answer to her problems, but she felt like giving up that hope would leave her without anything at all to believe in.

It had seemed so simple, just a week ago. But that was before she had come here and everything had changed.

He doesn’t like me.

She pushed the covers back and sat up, her breath coming a little faster. Across the room she heard Jubilee snoring gently; Kitty was away visiting her family. She got up, moving towards the window and looking up at the nearly-full moon. The sky was velvet-black and studded with stars. Her hand closed around the necklace she wore.

Star light, star bright…She couldn’t continue the babyish rhyme. She just wanted to talk to him, to apologize and make it all right. Then maybe she’d be able to sleep. Before she could think better of it, she slipped from the room silently, closing the door quietly so as not to waken her roommate.

Logan’s room was on another floor. Marie crept through the hallway, terrified of waking another of the teachers. When she reached his room she put a hand on the door, listening. It sounded as though someone was talking and she knit her brow, trying to hear. Was there someone else there with him? Then there was a louder sound, almost a cry of pain. She twisted the doorknob, opened the door a crack and looked into the room.

Logan was in bed, asleep, but his body was twitching agitatedly and he was making strange, strangled sounds from deep in his throat. Oh, no. The nightmare. He’s having the nightmare. Her mother had always told her it was dangerous to wake somebody up too quickly from a bad dream. She pushed open the door and crossed the room cautiously, only then realizing that she’d forgotten to bring her gloves anyway. She leaned over him, one hand automatically reaching out, but she didn’t touch him. “Logan?” He didn’t wake up; he just turned his head sharply, as if he was dodging something in his dream. “Logan? Wake up. You’re dreaming.” She came a little closer and his eyes flew open. With a roar he sat up, and his fist drove at her chest. She gasped, and it was a startled second before she realized that he’d released his claws into her.

Through her. Marie tried to breathe, tried to cry out, but her lungs wouldn’t expand. It felt icy, where he’d stabbed her; there was no pain yet. She saw his eyes change, the understanding of what he’d done coming over him, and the claws retracted with a jerk. Now it hurt, more than she could have imagined, and her eyes went wide with the shock of it.

In his half-dazed state, all Logan could do was try to convince himself he was still dreaming, but the nightmare he’d been having was nothing compared to the one in front of him. No. No. This can’t be happening. But it was—Marie was there, horribly wounded and now staggering, blood already pulsing out to stain the white nightgown she wore. Her lips moved soundlessly and he repeated what he read on them. “Help me—help me!” He yelled it the second time, hoping against hope that somebody actually could. He heard motion down the hallways, people beginning to stir, but he could smell death on her already and he knew they’d be too late. He looked at her, started to reach towards her, and then her hand came up towards his face. She was trying to smile, even now, and when she laid her hand against his cheek he knew she was offering him forgiveness.

Then suddenly it felt as though his blood was being sucked away. He could feel every vein in his body standing out as her mutation took effect. He couldn’t even move; he could only stare at her as the life drained out of him.

He hoped it would be enough, this time.

Scott and Jean reached the room first, Scott fumbling for the light switch as Jean pulled her bathrobe around her. He stopped short. Logan lay on the floor, his body twitching convulsively, and Marie was standing over him, staring at her hands in front of her, apparently in shock. The white nightgown she wore was covered with blood.

Jean pushed past him. “Marie? Are you all right?” She got no answer, so she knelt beside Logan, feeling for a pulse, and tried to roll him onto his back. “Scott, help me.” Her husband came forward into the room , but he didn’t move to assist her. Instead, he reached a hand out towards Marie, arresting the gesture when he realized her hands were bare. His caution didn’t matter. As soon as she saw the motion, Marie screamed, backing away from both of them until she was backed in a corner of the room, still holding her hands up as if they didn’t belong to her.

Scott backed away and knelt to help his wife shift the heavy body of the man on the floor, but he directed his words to the girl. “Marie, it’s all right. He’s not going to hurt you.”

“Scott, I think she may have hurt him.” Jean gave him a reproachful look.

“Yeah? Then why is she bleeding?”

Jean didn’t answer. She just made certained that Logan was breathing and that his pulse was steady and then turned her attention to Marie. The girl’s eyes darted from side to side wildly as Jean cautiously came a little closer. “Marie? Can you hear me?”

Marie ignored her, but now her words were audible. “Got to—devil’s in her, devils, agents of evil…” She started to sink down in her corner and her voice changed abruptly, rising almost to a shriek. “Fucking kill those bastards! Find them…murder every goddamn one of them—” She jerked her arm away when Jean tried to put a hand on her shoulder and her voice altered again, becoming low and monotonal. “Vengeance is mine, vengeance…” Her voice trailed off into muttered curses and disjointed threats. Jean turned to Scott.

“Get the Professor. Now.” Scott knew better than to argue with Jean when she was being a doctor. He nodded and left the room.

Jean kept an eye on the girl, but stayed beside Logan. She didn’t understand where the blood was coming from; Marie didn’t seem to be injured, and she didn’t see any wounds on Logan either. The girl was kneeling now and her random mutterings had the tone of a litany.

“Hail Mary, unholy child, devil—no! No, didn’t want to—didn’t want to hurt…Mama, I’m sorry, Mary mother of God…Fuck you!”

It was disturbing, and Jean could feel the flutterings of her psyche, wild and out of her control.

“Jean.” Charles Xavier appeared in the doorway with Scott behind him, pushing his wheelchair. “What has happened?”

She turned to him with relief. “I’m not entirely sure, Professor. We heard Logan calling for help and when we got here, this is what we found. He’s stable—I’d like to check him out more thoroughly, but he seems to be all right. But she’s decompensated. She isn’t responding.”

Xavier wheeled himself closer to the girl, but she didn’t acknowledge him or stop her low chanting. He held out a hand and concentrated briefly, then closed his eyes and focused more.

Thou shalt not suffer…

…Mama, I’m dying…

…Evil in the hearts of men…

…help me…

GET OUT.

Xavier’s eyes snapped open. “Jean, I’m going to have to ask you to sedate her. Her mind is in such turmoil right now that I’m afraid I’ll injure her if I try to intervene.” Jean nodded and got up; Scott, ever-prepared, silently held out her portable kit, which he’d obviously retrieved from their room. Jean took out latex gloves, a needle and syringe and a small ampoule of a drug. She approached the girl carefully, but this time Marie simply ignored her, continuing her self-directed invocation. Jean measured out a dose of Haldol, took Marie’s arm and carefully rolled up one sleeve of her nightgown. Marie let her swab her arm and inject the drug, and then Jean pushed her sleeve back down and tentatively reached toward the bloody slits on the front of her gown. She lifted the torn material away from Marie’s body a little. As far as she could tell, there was no damage.

She turned back to her husband and Xavier. “I don’t think she’s hurt. He must have stabbed her; you can tell from the marks. I think—from something Logan mentioned, I think she absorbs mutations along with whatever else she gets.” She ignored Scott’s suddenly renewed look of suspicion. “It probably saved her life.”

Xavier nodded. “But she apparently isn’t dealing well with the other consequences.” His eyes were sad as he watched Marie; her muttering was slowing down and she was starting to slump against Jean’s body. “Jean, please hold her.”

He leaned forward and stretched a hand out again. Jean knew that look of intense concentration well. He focused, winced briefly—and then his eyes opened.

Marie would have melted bonelessly to the floor if Jean hadn’t held her up. Now she seemed deeply, dreamlessly asleep, and Jean gestured to Scott. “I’ll take her back to her room. Can you please get Logan back into bed?”

“I’ll call downstairs and have him taken to the Medlab.” Scott started to move towards the phone, but Jean stopped him.

“He’s not going to react well to waking up in the lab. Just get him back into bed and I’ll come back after I get Marie settled.” Scott hesitated, his hand still over the phone. “Scott. Could we please not have an argument about this?”

“I will remain here with Logan, Scott.” Xavier’s blue eyes looked weary. “I agree with Jean.”

Scott looked from his mentor to his wife and threw up his hands. “Fine. Fine.” He leaned over and tried to pull the fallen man up over his shoulder; he strained for a long moment before Logan’s arm slipped from his grip. “Goddamnit.”

“Try again, Scott. I’ll help.” Jean couldn’t literally lend a hand, but she assisted psychically; this time when Scott hefted Logan’s unconscious form he was able to get him onto the bed. He gestured to the girl Jean was still supporting.

“You need help with her?”

“Yes. Thanks.” Scott hesitated again, then pulled a sheet from Logan’s bed and wrapped it around Marie before lifting the girl in his arms. Jean picked up her kit and laid a hand on Xavier’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t rush. Make sure she’s all right.” Xavier smiled at his star pupil and wheeled himself beside the bed as she left.

Scott shouldered his way though the hallways, brushing off the curious looks from the older students and teachers who’d heard the commotion. “Go on, all of you. Back to bed.” He reached the room Marie had been assigned to and was met by a yawning Jubilation Lee, wrapped in a yellow bathrobe. Jubilee’s eyes opened wide when she saw them.

“What’s going on?” She stepped back and let Scott carry the unconscious girl in. “Dr. Grey? Is she okay?”

“We hope so. Is Kitty away?”

Jubilee nodded. “She’s visiting her folks.” She took a step closer as Scott lay Marie down on her bed. “Can I help?”

Jean was already setting her medical kit out on Marie’s desk, but she gave the young girl a quick smile. “Jubilee, the thing that would help the most right now is if you could ask one of your other friends if you could spend the night with them. I’m going to stay here to make sure she’s all right, but I don’t want to keep you awake too.”

“I’ll—okay. If you say so.”

Jean leaned over Marie and checked her pulse. She waited until Jubilee had left before turning to her husband. “You should go too. I’m going to change her out of this bloody thing and get her settled.”

“I can help.” Scott’s jaw was set in a way she knew all too well. “You can’t take care of her by yourself, Jean. It’s too dangerous.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m perfectly capable of changing her clothes by myself. You may remember, I’m a doctor and I work with mutants all the time?” Her husband crossed his arms and didn’t move. “This is not up for discussion. She’s a young girl and you’re not a medical professional. Please leave. Now.” Jean turned back to Marie and waited. Finally she heard him sigh and move toward the door.

“I’m going to be right outside. Call me if anything happens.” Jean heard the door open. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. Modesty seems to be the least of her concerns.” Jean whirled around at that, but all she saw was the door shutting firmly behind him. She pressed her lips together, making sure her anger was under control before she did anything else. After a moment, she went to the bureau and rummaged through it to find a long-sleeved shirt, some sweatpants, a pair of gloves. She went back to the girl and sat down beside her.

Marie’s eyes were closed, and she didn’t move as Jean stroked her hair back with a gentle touch. The older woman smiled down at her for a moment before she lifted one of her hands and began to work the glove onto her fingers. “I’m just going to get you out of this thing, all right? Then you can have a nice long sleep and you’ll feel much better when you wake up.” She hoped that was true. She finished with the gloves and moved down to work the sweats onto her, pushing up the nightgown as she went. Then she lifted Marie’s upper body and stripped the bloodstained garment off her. She laid her back down and leaned over, examining the area that had been under the torn area of the gown minutely. Despite the amount of blood, there wasn’t a mark on the girl, and she had to assume her theory had been correct. There didn’t seem to be any other explanation.

She reached for the shirt and then saw that there was something around Marie’s neck, a chain of some sort. She tried to free it, but it was tangled in the girl’s hair. Jean released the catch on the chain so she could get it loose and finally it came away in her hand. There was a small tag on the chain and she turned it over in her hand.

There was a number and a single word on the tag. Wolverine.

Jean’s brow knit. Logan must have given it to her. She didn’t know what to make of that. She really didn’t want to believe that anything untoward had been happening, but this looked almost like a badge of ownership.

She pushed the thought away firmly. It’s none of my business. She coiled up the chain and laid it down on Marie’s desk, beside the bed. “I’ll just put this here for you, okay, Marie? I don’t want it catching on your neck.” She lifted the girl’s torso again and got the shirt onto her, then tugged a blanket free and covered her up. She sat looking down at her for a long moment before getting up, stripping off her latex gloves absently as she went to the door.

Yet He Bore the Sins of Many…Isaiah 53:12

Logan.

Logan blinked slowly, wondering where the hell he was and who was calling him. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck—not impossible, all things considered, but he didn’t have any recollection of it. All he knew was that something was wrong.

He focused his eyes on the man sitting in the wheelchair next to his bed. This time Xavier spoke normally.

“Logan. How are you feeling?”

“Like hell.”

Xavier wheeled himself a little closer to him. “Don’t push yourself too quickly, please. Marie’s mutation is quite powerful.”

Marie. “What happened?” He had to know, right now. He already knew it was bad.

Xavier regarded him calmly. “Perhaps we should begin with what you remember.”

Logan shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts. “I was asleep, and then she was there—christ. I stabbed her.” It all came back in a sickening rush. “Is she all right?”

“Physically Marie is fine. Jean is looking after her.”

Physically? Logan knew an evasion when he heard one, and he didn’t like this one at all. He sat up, wincing as his head throbbed painfully. “What the hell does that mean? What’s wrong with her?”

The older man seemed to consider his words carefully before replying, which pissed Logan off even more. “When Marie touched you, she absorbed your healing ability for a short time, which allowed her to recover from her injuries. But she was having difficulty dealing with whatever it was she absorbed from your mind.”

Logan was off the bed in an instant. “You better explain exactly what you mean by that, old man.”

“Logan, please calm down..” Xavier didn’t move or exhibit any reaction to the epithet. “This is not an accusation of any wrongdoing. But you must be aware that some of your memories are—disturbing.”

Disturbing. Yeah, that was the understatement of the fucking century. Logna glared at the older man. And how the fuck did he know? The idea that another telepath had been rummaging around in his brain made him furious, but he couldn’t deal with that right now. “What happened to her?” he demanded.

“Marie had no way of being prepared for the absorption. I suspect she hasn’t yet fully assimilated even the people she touched before she came here. I had hoped to work with her slowly towards that goal.” Xavier sighed and suddenly looked very tired. “Logan, believe me, entering another person’s mind without their express permission is against every principle I hold dear.”

“You got about five more seconds before I go find out for myself,” Logan gritted out. “What happened? ”

“Marie experienced a psychotic break. She wasn’t able to differentiate between her own psyche and her absorbed memories.” Xavier spoke quietly but firmly. “I was forced to enter her mind and erect mental barriers for her. Much like the ones you’ve undoubtedly forged for yourself, but she had no such natural defenses—there was no time for her to prepare herself. I had to help her—” Xavier broke off at the look on the other man’s face. “Logan, please calm down.“

“I get it.” Logan paced to the wall and back. “So first I put the claws through her chest, and then I drove her insane.”

“You saved her life.” Xavier turned his chair to face Logan more directly. “Don’t forget that.”

Wouldn’t have had to save it if I hadn’t stabbed her in the first place. “What the hell was she doing here, anyway?” he muttered in frustration.

Xavier’s expression changed, ever so subtly. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”

Logan stared at him for a long moment. “Right.” He went to the closet and retrieved his knapsack. His boots lay on the floor and he sat on the chair by the desk to pull them on.

“Please don’t act impulsively. All of us here are concerned about Marie—“

“Yeah, I can see that.” He finished with his boots and stood, grabbing his jacket off the desk where he’d thrown it. “I’ll give you one less thing to be concerned about.”

“Where are you going?” Xavier asked patiently.

Logan had about had it with that unhurried tone. “What does that matter? You won’t have to worry about it.” He strode toward the door.

“Logan.” The Professor turned his chair again. “You can’t leave without speaking to her. Surely you realize that.”

He turned, the knapsack already slung over one shoulder. “Yeah, I realize that. Where is she?”

Xavier looked slightly flustered for the first time. “She’s in her room. Jean is with her, but—”

Logan didn’t wait to hear any more. He simply turned on his heel and walked out. He went down one flight of stairs, trying to remember where the room they’d assigned her was. He didn’t wonder for long. A door closed, and then voices reached his ears—a conversation being conducted in hushed tones, but perfectly audible to him.

“You can defend him all you want, but—” It was Summers.

“I’m not defending anyone, I’m just pointing out that you’re jumping to conclusions.” That was Jean, and she sounded even angrier than her husband.

“Jumping to conclusions. Right. She was in his room, Jean. At two in the morning. You don’t have to be a telepath to figure this one out.”

“Scott—“ Jean was angry enough that she didn’t bother to lower her voice this time. “You know what? I’m not having this conversation.” Logan heard her start to move down the hall.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me.” Summers was following her. “Look, just because you’re attracted to him—”

“What? ” Now she sounded absolutely outraged. “Don’t project your insecurities on me.”

“And don’t talk to me like I’m one of your patients. I can’t ignore this, Jean. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. Will you please calm down and just listen to me? The students are my responsibility and you’re refusing to even consider the obvious issue…”

They were still moving and Logan lost interest in the discussion. At least they were gone, and Marie was presumably alone. He moved quickly and silently to her door and cracked it open.

There were three beds in the room, but only one was occupied. One of the others was neatly made up and the other was rumpled; probably the other roommate had been bundled off somewhere else for the night. A bedside lamp was on and he could see Marie’s dark hair tumbled over the pillow. He came into the room and called softly. “Hey, kid. You awake?”

She didn’t stir. Logan’s nose twitched at an unfamiliar chemical scent and then he saw Jean’s medical kit lying open on the desk beside Marie’s bed.

So they’d had to sedate her. Logan came into the room, closing the door behind him, and set his knapsack down before approaching the bed.

She looks like an angel. The memory of her standing there, in that white nightgown, came back to him. She was wearing something else now; Jean must have helped her change. He sat down beside her and gently laid a hand on her head. She still didn’t respond at all.

“I’m sorry, kid.” She’d never know he’d been here, but somehow he needed to say it. “I wouldn’t have hurt you on purpose. You know that, right?” He sighed. “Yeah. I know you do.” Her hair was soft under his fingers, and he stroked it absently. “I know you’re gonna be pissed at me when you wake up, but one of these days you’ll understand. They’ll take care of you here. They’re good people, most of ‘em anyway.” His mouth twisted wryly. “I’m just sorry it’s gotta be like this.” He hesitated for a moment, then leaned forward and pressed his lips briefly against the top of her head. “You’ll be okay here, darlin’. Be happy.” He got up to go and his eye was caught by something on the little bulletin board over her desk.

It was a picture of the two of them in New Orleans, the one Lynn had taken at the bar. He reached out and touched it, tempted to take it with him. No. Not that one. He saw the envelope that held the prints lying half-hidden by a jumble of schoolwork on the desk; he picked it up and rifled through it, looking for one in particular. He found it quickly and shoved it into the inside pocket of his jacket before he could think too much about it. Then he saw the familiar chain and metal tag lying in a heap on the desk.

I gave that to her. But his hand closed over it anyway, and he hefted the surprisingly heavy little object indecisively. There were plenty of reasons to take it, mostly that she didn’t need to be reminded. She’d probably be angry, but that might be better. She’d forget soon enough. Then it came back to him again, seeing her standing there in front of him in his room, her eyes wide with pain and shock.

She was wearing it. His senses were too exact for him to doubt the accuracy of the memory—he’d seen the tag, dark against the white material of that nightgown. So either she’d taken it off, or someone had taken it off for her. And he knew what anyone seeing that would have thought. They’d think he’d marked her like an animal he owned. Like he’d been marked.

Logan started to put the chain back over his head, then stopped. He swore under his breath and then stuffed the dogtag into his pocket as well. He stood for one more minute, looking down at the sleeping girl, and then left quickly, grabbing his knapsack and closing the door quietly behind him.

He was almost at the front door when he heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. “Logan!” It was Jean Grey, running to catch up with him. “Wait.”

Reluctantly he turned. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you.” She came up to him, a little breathless. “Where are you going?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Everyone seems real interested in that all of a sudden.”

“You can’t just leave.”

“Watch me.” He turned to go and Jean caught his arm.

“Logan—she’s not going to understand if you’re not here when she wakes up.” That stung, but his back was to her and she didn’t see the expression that briefly crossed his features. When he turned again, his eyes were icy.

“She’ll understand just fine. Sooner she gets it through her head that I ain’t one of the good guys, the better off she’ll be.”

“Hey.” Jean wouldn’t let go of his arm. “You are one of the good guys. That was a very good thing you did, helping her.”

“Yeah, well, stabbing her pretty much wiped that one out.” Jean looked down. “Don’t think that husband of yours would agree with you, anyway.” Her eyes flew back up to his and he nodded. “Yeah. I heard him.” And thing was, much as he hated to admit it, Summers was right. If it was a question of responsibility, well, he’d always known that wasn’t his strong suit. If Summers was right for the wrong reasons, it really didn’t matter.

“I’m very angry with Scott about that.” She was keeping her tone measured, but he could hear the emotion behind it. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. He had no right to…assume.”

“He isn’t the only one who assumed things.” Logan shook her hand off his arm. “Doesn’t matter. I’m used to it.” She looked like she might cry, and he felt just a pang of regret. She really was a beautiful woman. He reached up and brushed a hand across her cheek. “Don’t know what you’re doing with an asshole like that.” He managed a half-smile. “You deserve better.”

“Don’t go.” Her eyes, deep green and flecked with gold, burned into his. She reached up and took his face between her hands.

He bent his head to hers and their lips met, but it wasn’t a passionate kiss, not the way he’d have imagined kissing her. She was gorgeous, smart, sophisticated.

Not for him.

But just for a moment he held onto her, letting that moment stretch and encompass everything that might have been in some other world but never would be in this one. Jean seemed to understand it too, and when he lifted his head she just smiled a little sadly at him.

“You should stay until she wakes up, anyway. At least say goodbye,” she said. He shook his head.

“Already did.”

“She won’t remember,” Jean argued. “Wait. Till morning.”

“It’s better this way. She’ll get over it.” He reached out and opened the door. “You look out for her, okay, Red?”

“Logan—” Jean wiped away a tear. “You want me to tell her anything? She’s not going to just forget about you.” She forced another smile. “She’s pretty taken with you, you know.”

“She deserves better too.” He squeezed her hand briefly, and then he left.

It was a long walk to the nearby town, and a long wait at a station for a bus that would take him on the first leg of the journey back through the South, back to pick up his own life where he’d left it off in New Orleans. Logan waited until he was on the bus, headed toward Philadelphia, before he reached into his pocket and felt to be sure the stolen photograph was still there.

It was. He didn’t take it out. He just stared out the window and waited for the journey to be over.

Claiming to be Wise…Romans 1:22

“Perhaps…I could have handled the situation better.”

It had been three months since the ‘situation’ in question had occurred. Jean was looking out the window in the Professor's study, at the sun just beginning to set over the grounds. She loved this place so much, loved this view, the peace and verdure that soothed her soul.

Tonight she barely noticed it. She turned at Xavier’s words with a short, uncomfortable laugh. “I don’t really think it could have been handled any worse.” She came back to the sofa and sat down beside her mentor’s wheelchair, reaching for the cup of tea that was waiting for her. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant. I know you tried.”

Charles Xavier sighed. “I truly regret that Logan felt the need to leave. I should have realized that sufficient trust hadn’t been established…” He stopped himself. “No. That is an excuse.” He pressed his lips together in a wry grimace. “For all the good telepathy does me sometimes, I might as well be deaf and blind.”

“The whole thing was unfortunate. I don’t really think there was anything you could have done. He didn’t trust any of us.” Jean kicked off her shoes and drew her feet up on the sofa with her.

Xavier regarded his protégé fondly. “How are you, Jean? This must be a difficult time for you.”

She gave him a weary smile. “Not as much as all that. This was a long time coming.” She set her cup down carefully. “Scott and I…we’d been growing apart for a long time. It wasn’t just this, you know—it was just the final straw.” She looked away for a second. “How are your sessions with Marie going?”

“Slowly.” Xavier accepted her change of subject. “She doesn’t trust me either. Small wonder. On some level she undoubtedly blames me for Logan’s departure.”

Jean laughed shakily. “Believe me, not half as much as she blames me and Scott. You’re a distant third at best. She hasn’t spoken to me since the night it happened.”

“It’s a difficult situation. I can’t hold out any real hope of her being able to control her mutation, and that has been a bitter disappointment to her.” He leaned forward. “Medically, do you think there are any avenues we might explore?”

“I don’t know. Other than physical block of her skin…and that’s not really any different than her wearing gloves. I didn’t learn much from the examination I gave her when she arrived, and now—“ Jean waved a hand. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me. Maybe later, when she’s...recovered a little. I don’t want to hold out false hopes either. That would really destroy her.”

Xavier nodded. “Then all we can do is watch and wait.” He lifted his own cup. “She has a real talent for art. I’m arranging for her to take special classes. Whatever we can do to engage her interests may help her adjust to her life here.”

“There’s no chance that her parents…” But Xavier was already shaking his head. “My god. She must feel—”

“Jean…” Xavier hesitated just slightly. “Forgive me if this is too personal an inquiry, but—Logan gave you no indication of intending to return?”

Jean felt a lurch in her stomach at the memory. “Professor—”

“I cannot help thinking that my suspicions, unwarranted as they may have been, may have hurt more people than Marie and Logan.” Xavier’s deep blue eyes held her gaze with a power she knew well.

She exhaled shakily. “Logan made it pretty clear he wasn’t coming back.” She lifted one hand briefly, then let it fall back to her lap. “I’m just sorry he left believing everyone here thought the worst of him.”

“Not everyone,” Xavier said quietly.

Jean caught her breath and looked at him sharply, but he wasn’t reading her, just watching and waiting for her answer. “He let me read him—just briefly, before we arrived. I saw things..." She trailed off again, remembering the shock of those images. "What happened to Logan was horrible, whatever it was, but I couldn’t get very far. And he didn’t much like that I’d seen what I did.” She met his eyes directly. “I liked him, Professor. Very much. He’s a complicated man, and very different from anyone I’ve ever known.”

“And you might have been able to help him.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know that. I don’t know that he would have let me try again. I think maybe the only reason he let me try at all was that he didn’t really believe I could do it.” She tried to find the best words to explain what she knew about Logan. “He’d never have trusted me with that knowledge of him. I’m too, I don’t know…”

“Civilized?” The Professor had a slight smile as he offered the suggestion, and she smiled back.

“I’m a doctor.” Xavier nodded at that, turning it over in his own mind. “’Analytical’, maybe. He’d always have felt like a problem I was trying to solve. That’s what I do, after all.” She finished her tea and got up, slipping back into her shoes. “And speaking of which, I have to go check on something in the lab.”

“Very well. Thank you for stopping by, Jean. I’ll keep you apprised of how my sessions with Marie are going.”

Jean closed the office door quietly behind her and turned, then gasped in surprise. Marie herself was standing there, an oversized sweater pulled around her thin frame.

“Are you done discussing me now?”

Jean could feel her pain, a sharp psychic stab. She pushed the sensation away. “Marie, we’re more than willing to talk to you directly.”

“Why did he leave?”

That was certainly direct enough. “Let’s go to my office,” Jean suggested.

“No. Here. Just answer me.”

Jean swallowed. The questions was simple enough, but the answer wasn't, and there was no part of Logan’s last conversation with her that she felt it would be wise to repeat out of context. And other parts she couldn't possibly tell. “I think he blamed himself for hurting you. I think he was afraid he’d hurt you again if he stayed.”

“You made him leave.” Marie’s gaze was accusatory.

“No, Marie. I promise you that. That wasn’t what happened.”

The younger woman stared at her for a long moment, and Jean felt almost as though her mind were being dissected the way Xavier could sometimes do. “So he didn’t say anything. About me.”

“Marie—it wasn’t your fault. Just wait. We can try and contact him—” Jean knew she was floundering, that this wasn't what she ought to be saying, but Marie's too-intense gaze left her feeling strangely caught off-center, no time to think.

“Don’t bother. He won’t come back.” Marie looked down, at last, and Jean felt an unreasonable relief at being released from that critical gaze. “I don’t want to be called Marie any more. I want a new name, like everyone else has.”

Jean was a little taken aback by the sudden change of topic. “All right. Of course. Whatever you want. You can think it over—”

“I know what I want to be called. I read it in a book.” The girl looked back up with eyes that were serene, and veiled, and far too old for her. “I’m Rogue.”

Call Me Mara… Ruth 1:19

I stand there for a moment after Dr. Grey reluctantly leaves. I knew she wouldn’t tell me what really happened. She probably doesn’t even know how much she’s lying, so she doesn’t have anything to tell. It wasn’t hard to reject her offer to talk, to discuss things in private.

I don’t much care about privacy any more. What have I got to keep private? This whole place knows what I am. It’s been long enough; I’ve put off these conversations, maybe still hoping something will change.

It won’t.

But there can’t be any more of these angry flare-ups, no more letting my temper get the best of me. I know that, and it’s even more important here. I take a deep breath before I knock on Professor Xavier’s door, and then open it and look in. He’s sitting by the sofa in his wheelchair; the table in front of him is set for tea. For an irrational moment some words go through my head: First breads, then meats, then sweets. My grandmother used to still take tea in the afternoon, and she taught me that. He turns his head and sees me standing there.

I step forward and repeat what I just told Dr. Grey. “I decided on a new name. I want to be called Rogue.”

He has the same reaction: surprise. I like that. But he recovers quickly, almost instantaneously. “Certainly. Would you like to sit down? I wasn’t expecting you just yet.”

“I don’t want to work with you today.” I don’t move from the doorway. “I just came by to tell you that. I don’t want to work this way any more, actually. I want to do it myself.” His eyes narrow a bit.

“Mar—Rogue, the blocks I placed in your mind were meant to be temporary. But they shouldn’t be released all at once. The information you absorbed is—”

“The information I absorbed isn’t the problem.” I don’t really want to talk about this, but I have to do this much. “I know that now. It’s like you said—I have to let it be part of me, the same as what I see or hear. That’s all. And I know I need to do that. But I don’t want you to do it.”

He nods, slowly. “I understand. That sounds like a very reasonable decision. Just promise me that you’ll be careful. And please, you must promise that if you have any doubts as to what you’re doing, you will consult me.”

“All right.” I wait for a moment; the Professor still looks worried. “I will, Professor. I’m not going to do anything I can’t control.”

“It isn’t that.” He puts his hands on the wheels of his chair and I have to force myself not to take a step back, but I think he senses my reaction anyway, because he stops. I have to be more careful about that. “Rogue, is there someone you would prefer to speak with? Another counselor, a woman perhaps—”

“No.” It comes out too quickly, too loudly, and again I have to cover my tracks. “I’m all right, Professor. I’m not the first kid whose parents couldn’t handle what they were. It hurts, yeah, but talking about it won’t fix it.”

“That may be true, but there are times when one should give oneself permission to speak of things.” That look on the Professor’s face—he’d better not be poking around in my head, he’d just better not. “And after you left your home, there were other events that were upsetting.”

Oh, hell, no. The thought crosses my mind before I can stop it, surprising me with its intensity, but I don’t miss a beat. “You mean Logan?” I shrug. “So he couldn’t deal either. He never promised me he’d be around forever. He stuck around till I had somewhere safe to go. It’s more than most people would’ve done.” There. That was good. No denial, no explanations.

“I just want to be certain you aren’t blaming yourself for what happened that night. I wish very much that he had waited to speak with you before he left.”

No. No one ever gets to talk to me about that. So I put a stop to it. I feel strangely powerful as I meet Professor Xavier’s eyes. “Believe me, Professor, I know exactly who to blame for that.”

It works. Decisively, absolutely. His eyes change and I know he won’t bring the subject up with me again. I’m almost sorry for having to do that to him. But not quite.

“I am so sorry, Rogue.”

I didn’t really expect that, but it doesn’t matter. This conversation has gone on long enough. I start to turn and leave, then stop. “Professor—I don’t think I’ll ever want to join the team. To be an X-Man. Is it still all right for me to stay here?”

“Of course.” He sounds shocked at the very idea. No wonder. Who would want me? “No one is ever pressured to do that.” The Professor does wheel a little closer to me then. “You’ll finish with your secondary work in a few more months. We can discuss your further education after that.”

“All right,” I repeat. He looks slightly hopeful, and I can give him that much, at least. This time I do leave, and he doesn’t try to stop me. I walk back through the grand hallways, back up the stairs and down the dormitory wing to my room.

My world keeps shifting, but I think now it’s finally settling down. I can stay here. The thought is more of a relief than I’d realized. I can learn to do the one thing I still really want to do. I want to make my life concrete. I want it out in the world on canvas, so that there’s some tangible evidence that a girl named Marie once lived. I think she died a while ago, but I’m not sure when. The night her parents forced her out? The day she realized what she was? The minute I decided what I’d become?

I don’t really know. But she was real, and she deserves to be remembered. I can be Rogue, and give her that.

When I reach the door to my room, I hear people inside, laughing, playing music. Kitty or Jubilee must have friends over. I hesitate, one hand hovering over the doorknob, but finally I step back and keep going down the hallway.

It’s not that they wouldn’t welcome me. They would. One thing about the School—no one ever makes you feel any stranger than anyone else. I’m hardly even the most unusual mutant here—at least on the surface, I can pass for normal. It’s only on the inside that I’m truly different. And I do like my roommates, sweet kind Kitty and bubbly Jubes. They’ve been wonderful, making me feel supported, insisting that my skin doesn’t worry them. I can feel almost normal when I’m with them, and sometimes it’s almost enough to pretend I am.

Not today, though. Even though I’ve told myself every waking moment since that last awful day, when I woke up to find Dr. Grey beside me and my world knocked askew again, that this is the way it has to be from now on, today was the day I truly admitted it, finally let that last hope go. It was so faint I didn’t even realize I was still holding onto it until I told them what I had to say.

Marie had faith, and faith can give you hope. But faith is a two-edged sword; it can cut you as well as strengthen you. Marie didn’t have much talent for picking tenets of faith, it would seem.

I think Rogue can do without them.

By next week, everyone will have heard, and no one will use her name any more. I’ll be Rogue, and Rogue can be strong and new and different. She’ll fit in. Rogue can do the work I’ve got planned. I’m looking forward to that.

But just for today, still in flux, still in transition, she’s still evolving from Marie. I walk down the back stairs and out into the grounds, careful not to cross within sight of the window of the Professor’s study. He might still be there, might still be watching, and I want to be alone. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now, or even know I’m being talked about. It’s none of their business. It’s none of their goddamn business.

It’s a beautiful evening, cool and quiet, and a slight breeze is rising as the sun begins to dip below the trees. I hug my sweater around me and walk until I reach the trees, the woods. I lean against the strong trunk of a maple and watch the sky turn golden-red. The day is ending and so is something else.

I don’t realize what I’m doing until I feel my hand against my own neck, my fingers reaching for something that isn’t there under my scarf. I took my cross off before I left my room, and the act of tracing it with a finger is another habit I’ll have to break. For just one second tears sting my eyes before I swallow them back and drop my hand away from my throat. I can’t let myself feel that, not even here, not even this one time. I won’t cry over someone who took everything when he left. No more mistakes. No more weaknesses. I deliberately put my hand on the trunk of the tree instead; even through the glove I can feel the rough texture of the bark.

I wonder if a tree has enough life for me to suck dry?

It’s getting chilly now, but I don’t move until the sun has finished its slow journey below the horizon, until the colors of the sunset have faded into muted pinks and then into the cool blues of evening. The breeze has increased since I’ve been here and I close my eyes as it rushes against my face for a moment before I open them, clear and dry, to face the future. I’m cold, and reluctantly I step away from the tree and turn to go in. The night air chases me a little as I make my way across the grounds, ruffling my hair around my face, and I welcome its touch.

When I feel the wind on my skin, I almost remember what it was like to feel alive.

Worthless Physicians Are You All…Job 13:4

Psychic power isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

And a medical degree isn’t all that big a deal either.

Most people think you could solve all the problems in the world with one or the other, let alone both. Well, trust me. Not likely. I used to think at least I could solve some, about a million years ago.

Every day, I try to fix things, patch people up. Figure things out. Make a difference, somewhere, somehow. That’s what I said I wanted when they asked me why I thought I should get into med school. What I said when they asked if I wanted to join the X-Men, come to that.

Sometimes I don’t think I should be painting iodine on skinned knees. That’s how bad.

A telepath is supposed to understand people’s minds, right? Leaving aside the moral question of intruding on someone else’s thoughts, et cetera. Well, here’s a telepath who failed to appreciate something as simple as the anger and insecurity building up in her own husband—the person I’m supposed to know best in the world—until it blew us apart. What’s that quotation, jealousy is cruel as the grave? It’s true. And I didn’t see it until it was too late.

Never mind that, even. Why didn’t I see what was going on in my own mind, those strange weeks after we found Logan and Rogue in New Orleans? I was so confident, then. I thought I knew all the right answers. It was obviously better for a teenage girl to be living at the school, getting an education, than wandering around on the road with a man.

Even a man like him. I’m ashamed of the way I reacted to him. Not because we ever did anything wrong, and not even because I was so intrigued by him. All right, attracted to him. Let’s drop the pretty euphemisms entirely, shall we?

It would be more accurate to say I’m ashamed of the way I reacted to them. Rogue was so young then, so wounded by what had happened with her parents, terrified at what the manifestation of her mutation meant, and it was obvious from the first moment I saw them that there was something special between the two of them. And no matter what Scott said, I don’t believe for an instant that it was anything it shouldn’t have been. I knew Scott for more than ten years, and I knew Logan less than two months, but there was no question whose word I would have taken on that.

And this is hard to admit. The analytical part of my mind that studied psychology has all sorts of fancy terms to dress it up in. I felt a need to assert authority. I was displacing the tension in my already-strained marital relationship. I was reacting to an unfamiliar situation and a difficult and emotional state of affairs by personalizing inappropriately.

Oh, bullshit.

The fact is, I was jealous. I was jealous of the way he was so protective of her, that she could obviously do no wrong in his eyes, and that her best interest was so clearly his first priority. I was in a so-called adult relationship, and that kind of assurance was completely foreign to me. Scott was certainly protective of me, but it came out of insecurity, not love. He was convinced I was going to leave him, and he acted out on that belief at every possible opportunity. (In the psychiatry biz, we call this a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”) And it wasn’t just Logan and his bad-boy persona that brought that out of him. He reacted that way to Henry McCoy, to the point where Hank and I had to curtail our research together, and if you can find a more gentlemanly and educated and civilized man than Hank…well, tell him you know a nice doctor who’d like to have dinner sometime.

But I digress. So I was jealous. Not in an overt high-school sense, but it was there. And I overcompensated in pretending it wasn’t, keeping quieter than I should when Scott loudly voiced his objections to Logan’s accompanying us back to the Mansion, and to his near-constant insinuations afterwards. Rogue’s psyche was so fragile then, and she so badly needed to know that she would be accepted, and I did my part in depriving her of the one person most capable of easing her through that transition in her life.

God, I sound like a doctor, don’t I? I didn’t want Logan to leave, or to ignore her, but I wanted some of that unreserved attention for myself. Logan’s tendency to flirt with attractive women was practically instinctive, and I enjoyed it. Encouraged it. And I let myself believe that it didn’t matter, because I also told myself that what Rogue felt for Logan was a form of hero worship that wasn’t healthy, even though I could see how much it hurt her to watch us, how much it made her feel inadequate.

Tell me that isn’t pathetic, a thirty-two-year old woman needing to prove something about her ability to relate to adult men to a sixteen-year old girl. A Southern small-town girl at that. And as I said, she was sixteen, not six. She was perfectly well aware of what all of her friends and family would have said about her being in Logan’s company, but I don’t think she ever worried about what we would think about her.

It bothered her because it colored what people at the Mansion would think about him. I saw it from the instant in the bar when Logan had his arm around her. She looked at me and Scott and she edged away from him, and I know she needed that support. She pushed it away to prove to us that it wasn’t like that. That he wasn’t like that.

I should have put a stop to that right then and there, but I didn’t. As I said, it was all wrapped up in things that had nothing to do with their circumstances, but that doesn’t make it any better. The best I could manage to do was to insist that Logan coming along too was a good idea, and that backfired badly anyway, so no points to me anywhere in the whole ridiculous mess. I foolishly thought that getting back home, getting back to civilization, would improve things.

In many ways it was worse. New Orleans was really a brilliant if unintentional choice. It’s a fairly laid-back city at the best of times. In the aftermath of Katrina, much like after 9/11 back in New York, both the best and the worst of people came out, but there was definitely an extraordinary acceptance of unusual situations. People’s lives were still in upheaval and very few questions were likely to be asked of another displaced survivor, neighborhoods were rebuilding and there was a great deal of goodwill to go along with the efforts to get back to normal. You could see the need people had to take joy where they found it. If you had to be a runaway mutant teenager, it was probably as good an environment as any.

We should have given them the address of the School and left them alone to get there when and if they felt like it. I’m sure they would have come eventually—Logan was far too intelligent and concerned for her to have kept her out on the road indefinitely. Another couple of weeks with him would hardly have mattered and probably would have done her a lot of good; it would have put their relationship on more solid a footing, and it would have been her free choice to come, not a decision made under pressure by strange adults. But Scott refused to give it more than overnight, I idiotically didn’t want to oppose him openly, and so it was up to Logan to make the best of a bad situation.

Which he did. I am absolutely in awe of the self-control he displayed over the next few weeks. He snarled at Scott occasionally, but honestly I’m surprised there weren’t open hostilities. There would have been, I’m sure, if not for Rogue. Logan simply wasn’t going to do anything that would make things more difficult for her, and that left him terribly vulnerable to Scott’s needling. I turned a blind eye to the whole thing, because facing it out openly would have turned all that jealous rage on me. I just kept hoping that things would eventually settle down.

Absurd, in retrospect. Things just kept getting worse. It wasn’t easy for Rogue at first, at the Mansion. Teenagers are like packs of wild dogs; they sniff around each other forever before they finally make overtures of friendship. And the majority of our students come from comfortable family backgrounds; many of their families are supportive, and others don’t know the nature of the school, so very few were in a position to identify with her. Those who were undoubtedly seemed strange to her, and it was far too much to expect of her to assimilate easily into yet another new environment so quickly. Her nature is not to want to give trouble, anyway, and although of course we offered her help in adjusting, we left it up to her. We should have seen to it that she got more support.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Rogue became more and more withdrawn. I think the other students saw it as either shyness or aloofness, but it wasn’t either. She was just lost. She wouldn’t let anyone get close to her, and that included Logan. I could see how frustrating that was for him, but again, his behavior outshone any of ours. He kept trying.

I didn’t know there had finally been words between them until after the accident. Actually, I didn’t know it until some months afterwards, when one of the other students mentioned it to me. That was the real explanation for why she’d gone to his room that late at night; she was upset about their argument and wanted to apologize, wanted to make it up with him.

She never got the chance, and I’m not sure she’ll ever really get over that. All the unpleasantness, all the tension that we’d allowed to build up came to a head that night, and Logan left before she even woke up.

I tried to stop him, but even there, I tried in the wrong way. I don’t know what I was thinking, if I was thinking at all. Kissing him came out of all the wrong motivations—to prove that I too could act on impulse, to petulantly act as badly as I’d been accused of, to feel just a touch of that unconditional acceptance for myself? I don’t know. I know I’m not really the kind of person who could ever conduct a relationship that way, and I know Logan wasn’t the type of man who would seriously go after someone else’s wife. But it was a desperate impulse, and I really was trying to make him understand that I didn’t think those things about him. I was.

It was the wrong thing to do. No surprise there; I was compiling a near-perfect record. But I think he did understand that, in fact I’m sure of it. It was just too little, too late. We’d had him backed into a corner from the instant they’d arrived and I suppose he just didn’t see any other alternative than trying to take the culpability on himself. He figured by leaving, he’d look like the bad guy and no one would blame her.

It worked, in a way. Rogue had been badly injured and the other students were solicitous of her, and the attention helped her form some relationships. But there is no doubt in my mind that it didn’t make up for losing Logan. She was very angry with both me and Scott, understandably, and I think she took a good deal of satisfaction in watching our marriage end. She certainly deserved that, uncomfortable as it was for me to see it.

I miss Scott. I don’t miss the fights and the tension and the constant problems I never seemed to be able to solve. But I do miss him. Sometimes I wake up at night and stretch out and it isn’t until my hand touches nothing on the other side of the bed that I remember that he isn’t there any more. There was something good there, once, before we let it get away from us.

The Professor and I discussed trying to find Logan and ask him to return, or at least to contact her, and I don’t think we made the right decision there either. In the early aftermath I just couldn’t be completely honest about everything that had happened—it was too close and too raw for me even to truly acknowledge it to myself. And as time went on and Rogue seemed to be adjusting better, it was just easier not to upset the status quo. She never asked for us to try, in fact she told us not to. She was developing interests in her schoolwork and art, she had friends—we didn’t want to interfere. The Professor had attempted to contact her parents early on, and that had gone badly. We felt we couldn’t risk raising her hopes again. I did try once to contact the owners of the bar we found them in, but either the name of the bar had changed or it had closed. And, well, that was that.

Rogue has become an extraordinary young woman, in my humble estimation. She seems to have outgrown her hostility towards me, or at least she’s learned to mask it decently. I was incredibly touched when one of her portraits was of me, done from a casual photograph out in the garden and titled Beauty. She’s channeled her energy into her artwork over the last few years, and her work is astounding in its depth and intensity. I’m so glad that she’s found that, and I saw the painting as a sign of forgiveness, of sorts.

But still I wonder, sometimes. One of the most uncomfortable things to realize about the fights I had with Scott was that I’m not entirely certain that he was altogether wrong. When I look back, after all this time, I know the signs of abuse were there in Rogue. Scott was right about that. He was just wrong about who had done it. Rogue has never talked to anyone, that I know of, about the time between her leaving home and when Logan found her. I'm not even quite sure how long that was. But I think it was long enough.

The touch of Rogue's mind is cool and unruffled, at that level that I can’t help feeling from the people around me, but I still suspect that there’s a great deal more underneath, things that perhaps she hasn’t yet dealt with completely. I hope, if that’s so, that she’ll eventually find a way to open that part of herself, painful though it might be.

I can’t ask. Our relationship is still far too tenuous for any offer of help on my part to be met with anything more than defensiveness, I know that. She’s an intensely private young woman, anyway, and the last thing I want to do is to invade. I simply don’t have that right, where she’s concerned. So I firmly put a lid on the temptation to pry, and I tell myself that it’s not my job to find solutions to problems no one has even told me exist.

I just hope that if there’s any other part I have to play in her life, I won’t get it wrong again. The last thing Logan asked me to do before I left was to look out for her, and I can’t help feeling how miserably I’ve failed at that in just about every respect.

But I’m trying. Wherever Logan is, I hope he knows that. And I hope someday he’ll come back, to see her, and to know that it was true, what I told him.

He was the good guy in all of this, and until I can know he believes that, it won’t ever really be right.

Has the Rain a Father? ...Job 38:28

I am a teacher. This is my school. I love what I have worked so hard to create here, and here I have found the greatest peace I have ever known.

In my lifetime on this earth, I have been many things. A scientist, and a scholar, and a diplomat. A politician of sorts, and a philosopher. I have been an able-bodied soldier and an invalid, and in each of those parts I have forged another piece of myself. But there is one of humanity’s great roles that has never been mine to play.

He has no children. A classic question to pose to a classful of eager literature students. To whom does that famous statement refer?

I like to think of my students as a family, as myself in loco parentis. There are a very few for whom that seems more than just an idle notion. Some who have become close to me, through the years, those whose own parents are no longer there, or those who have been rejected once their disparity from the rest of humankind became apparent. I have thought of those students, with unwarranted conceit perhaps, as some of my greatest successes as a teacher and a mentor.

Perhaps that is my great vanity.

He has no children. One of the great mysteries of Shakespeare. Does Macduff mean to speak of Malcolm or of Macbeth? If he means Malcolm, he is saying that the younger man does not understand his grief, because one must have a child to understand the loss of one. If he means Macbeth, he means he cannot truly take revenge because there is nothing he can take from Macbeth that will equal his own loss.

Perhaps Macduff was altogether wrong. For I fear that loss. I fear it when I send my students, my family if you will, out into a world that does not understand them. I fear it when I watch them take on governments and academicians and political forces that do not accept them, and never more so when violence seems to threaten us all. But I fear it as well when I worry that such outward matters have stolen their ability to fulfill their potential as human beings. For whatever their abilities, some things are common to us all. We need love, and safety, and trust in ourselves and in our friends.

He has no children. I have read the play a thousand times; I have seen great actors speak the words. I do not know what the Bard intended by them.

If Jean and Scott were my own, flesh of my flesh, I could not love them more. But I could do nothing as I watched their marriage fall apart. I tried to offer help, to give them words of wisdom. All in vain. I lost Scott and would have, I believe, lost Jean as well, had she not felt it her duty to stay. She still comes and takes tea with me, but she is a woman grown, and her unhappiness is not something she shares with me now. For I am not her father. Would a father know what to say to her? Ought I to know? If so, I have failed her.

And now there is another I may have failed.

Rogue is not the same as Jean or Scott was to me. She came later; she did not live here during her childhood. She asks for nothing from me, and after her troubled arrival, seems to have settled into a calm and productive life within the limits of her strange and dangerous mutation.

I wish I knew more of her. I am afraid that all my experience has not taught me the secret of talking to young women, particularly those who have little trust in men. From a very early point, Rogue exploited that weakness in me. She knew I would not push her to share what she wished to keep secret, but I have always hoped that she would find a confidante someday. I knew it was unlikely that she would ever come to trust in me, but I still hope that someday she might.

She does not come to me, but the fear I have for her is that she has come to believe that her limitations are all that defines her. I have tried to speak with her, and been turned away with quiet, steady words. She has few friends, though those she has are loyal and protective of her, and even with them she appears to be reserved. But I see the artwork she creates, and there is such passion in it that I cannot help but wonder: where does she keep that passion when she cannot pass it through a brush or a pen?

He has no children. I do not know if Rogue’s gifts can bring her what she needs to satisfy that fervor I know she has within herself. If she were my child, I might better understand. I might know, from the child that she was, enough about the woman she has become to comprehend what it is she needs. She is alone among many, isolated in the throng. She seems to have accepted that touch is something she cannot give, and giving none, accepts none in return.

I am not her father. If I were—at least there would have been a time I held her as a baby in my arms, a time I meant life and food and love to her, and perhaps that would be enough for her to trust me now. But I am not. I am only an old man, and physically frail. I am tired, and perhaps fearful of shadows. I know there is nothing I have not offered, that I have the right to offer, that she would accept from me any more than from any other.

Well. Perhaps one other. But that was long ago and better left alone. Perhaps.

No. I have no children.

My Father’s Mansion…John 14:2

This is my room.

Not the one I live in at the Mansion, the one that’s cluttered with paints and canvases and about a thousand pairs of gloves.

This one is bare, clean, free of even the slightest speck of dust. There’s no furniture, no paintings on the bare grey walls, nothing to break the monotony except the doors.

There are four doors opening into this room. Interestingly, I never think of there being any doors out of the room. I wonder why that is.

I guess because I never leave it. Not really.

This is the room in my mind that the Professor made for me four and a half years ago when he swept all the other personalities out, changed me from a budding schizophrenic into what I am now. I’ve done a lot of research on the subject, and I think the word that describes it best is depersonalization. I memorized the definition. It means an alteration in the perception or experience of one's self, so that the self is felt to be unreal — detached from reality or one's own body or mental processes. That pretty much sums it up. Since that night, the girl that goes out in the world, takes classes, shops, eats, goes to the movies—she’s an artificial construct. A carefully drawn piece of artwork, if you will.

Her name is Rogue.

No one knows this. At first, I thought the Professor suspected. He apologized to me for what he’d done when I woke up, said it was an emergency situation and he wouldn’t ever have done it without my cooperation and consent if there had been a choice. He pressed me to work with him at understanding what he’d done, working towards being able to release the controls he’d put into place so I could handle them myself.

I did some meditation and control exercises with him, but I would never let him into my mind again. Not for the reasons he thought, either. He told me at the start that he understood that I didn’t want to be ‘fixed’, that he was proud of me for wanting to do the work myself. I don’t know how satisfied he was with the work I did do. He’s got a very strict code of ethics when it comes to things like that, and I know he doesn’t “read” people without permission. I sometimes think he knows I didn’t exactly follow instructions, but he won’t investigate without my consent. He thinks my refusal is because of the violation it involves. It’s not. It’s just that if he saw what I’ve made of the room he built, he’d know what I am.

I don’t want anybody to know that. So I created the outside Rogue to satisfy the world, and when I’m alone I live in the room inside. It used to be nothing but smooth grey walls.

I made the doors.

The first one, off in shadows, is achingly familiar. It’s the door to my old room at home in my parents’ house, white-painted wood, a little scuffed-up, with lines along one side where my daddy used to make a pencil mark of my height every year on my birthday.

This was the first door I made.

The door isn’t locked, and if I go over to it, it will swing open at my touch. If I go inside, though, it’s barely the size of a large closet, an empty one swept clean of its contents, like a room in a summer house closed up for the cold weather. I might feel just the faintest touch of a presence there, an echo of feelings or emotions—fear, schoolboy lust, just simple innocent pleasure at being alone with a girlfriend on an August afternoon just before senior year began.

But David isn’t here anymore. My power was just awakening when I touched him and although he was unconscious for three weeks, he recovered, and he’s slowly faded away. Even when I first made the door and dared to open it, he wasn’t really here, though there was more of a presence then, just the faintest shadow of the boy I knew. I don’t think I hurt him too badly; I sometimes come in here and remember that golden afternoon, when I was still alive in the real world. He was a real nice boy, and even though I never saw him again after they came and took him to the hospital, I’d like to think that he knew I didn’t mean to hurt him. He didn’t understand that it was me sending him into convulsions, draining his life from him, so he wasn’t angry at me, even though he was afraid. But he’s gone now.

I’m glad.

The next door I also know from all the years of my childhood. It’s a double door, larger than the first, made to stand wide open on Sundays and welcome in worshippers. There are large handles on the door instead of doorknobs, ornate cast iron with a winding ivy pattern that feels rough under my hands. These doors are bolted, and a heavy chain is wrapped around the handles, padlocked tight so that even if those bolts were thrown back, the doors still wouldn’t open an inch.

I never go into this room.

Inside I know what I’d find: rows of pews, the wider aisle up the middle with smooth worn oaken floors, the spot where my parents and I sat Sunday after Sunday, where I can remember climbing up to stand on the shabby red velvet seat cushions. It would be dark, with cobwebs and dust because no one ever cleans in there. There are no windows. The room stops before the pews end and you would reach the place where the altar should stand; there is no holy shrine there. But there’s an occupant, one who prowls the aisle and the rows, clutching a black leather-bound book and muttering to itself. Its thoughts are black as well, ugly and cruel. They seep through the cracks of the door and give the walls of the room outside their greyish cast, no matter how hard I try to block the edges.

Father Fallon was his name outside. I’d known him all my life; he’d given me catechism lessons and I’d heard him preach almost every Sunday since I was five and my mama told me I was old enough to go to church with them every week. I remember the first time, feeling so grown up in my new white dress and shiny black patent-leather shoes, coming out after the service and the grey-haired preacher shaking my hand with grave courtesy. He seemed so much taller then.

He touched me when he was trying to exorcise me, over and over, and now I know what he was thinking that day, looking down at a pretty little girl in her best dress, and I know I’m not the only one who ever created a false persona to meet the world’s eyes.

In the real world, he died because of what he did to me. What’s left of him only survives in my mind, a chattering, mindless ghoul.

He hates me, and he lusts after me, and I can hear him pacing the floor, muttering Bible verses and foul curses one after the other as he goes. Before the Professor cleared my mind, I didn’t hear his voice, just the thoughts themselves, and I used to try to placate them, tried to read the passages that floated through my head and accept them, to make myself pure and holy again. Now he’s solidified and it’s his voice I hear, but twisted into a bizarre distortion of the rolling vibrant tones I remember.

If I opened that door, he would rush out and try to claim me again, to make me feel that shame and disgust at what I am and what he wants me to be, to use it against me so he could take me the way he always wanted to.

I don’t know whether I would have trouble defeating him if I let him out—I doubt it, actually. But I don’t. I don’t want to go through that, don’t want to bother. There isn’t any point. I can keep him locked away, and feeling nothing is better. It lets me do what I need to do.

Skip the next door for now.

The last one is smaller, almost as though it was built to be the door of a child’s playhouse. It’s gold, and there are beautiful patterns winding up and down its panels. I spent hours and hours creating them. There’s no handle of any kind. I’m the only one who can open this door, and it opens simply at my touch in the right spot.

Inside it’s light. I never know what the room will look like until I open the door. Sometimes it’s my old room at home, sometimes it’s not a room at all but the woods behind my house, bright and smelling of rain and honeysuckle on a summer day. Sometimes it’s a place I don’t even recognize, a place that doesn’t exist anywhere except in its occupant’s imagination.

Marie lives here.

I don’t visit often, but she’s always glad to see me. I think she makes the room different on purpose to distract me. She doesn’t like it when people aren’t happy. She shows me pretty things she’s discovered and takes my ungloved hand and we sit together, feeling the sunshine. It’s peaceful here.

I keep her safe here. I need to keep her secure, untouched, happy. Knowing that she’s there, always, is enough to let me do my work in the real world alone. If she wanted to come out, I’d talk her out of it, because I don’t want her to see those grey walls outside. But she never asks. She seems content in her world. I don’t come in when I’m disturbed or angry; she doesn’t need to see that in me. I don’t want to taint her in any way at all. Today I place my gloved hand against the door, tracing the silver filigree I labored over, sensing that glowing presence within just for a moment. But I don’t open the door. I have work to do today and if I went in she might sense what I’m doing, might want to try and give her golden innocence back to me, let me feel her joy and her happiness. Make me feel her love.

I don’t want that any more than I want to feel the shame Father Fallon pushes at me. Those things are hers.

I’m standing in front of the third door now.

Even as I approach it, I brace myself. The occupant of this room is never quiescent, never still. It knows I’m there and it’s coiled and ready to strike if ever the door opens even a crack.

This door is smooth, gleaming metal. It’s barred by long, thick, sharp shards of the same substance, three on each side, embedded in the walls on each side of the door and crossing at an angle at a point in the center, forming an upside-down V that matches the arch of the door itself. There is no handle and the walls blend almost imperceptibly into the door, keeping it sealed.

It doesn’t matter. I can feel the rage and anger of what’s in there, the frustration at being trapped and the desire to escape, to fight, to destroy its prison. I can’t even come close without its knowing, and it batters against the door, trying to get to me.

I don’t know what the room looks like inside. I’m sure it’s hellish. Nightmares exist in there, much worse ones than the ones that flutter in the eaves of the church. Those came of commonplace, mundane evil, and these are twisted and dark, made of coldly planned tortures in medical labs and intended murder and destruction. This is the presence that almost destroyed my mind, the one that would have taken me over if the Professor hadn’t locked it away. I could never control it if it got out. I’m not sure I’d even want to, and that still scares me.

The Wolverine lives here. I use the word advisedly. This is no faint shade or walking corpse like the first two rooms; inside I hear his growling and pacing, the distinctive metallic sound as he unsheathes his claws, looking for something to sink them into. I think he fights demons in there, the other nightmares trapped inside with him, and I’m sorry for that.

I would let him go if I could, but there’s no way out.

But there is one thing I can do, one small comfort I can offer, though he always fights it. I focus, gathering myself, and I feel him, snarling at the touch of my mind reaching towards him. I can make him quieter, just for a little while, and in that short space of time other memories come up, memories he doesn’t want because they remind him of the world outside, of the face he once had.

Logan’s memories.

I wonder sometimes if everyone, ultimately, is only a façade. But the memories calm the animal for a moment, they still the creatures that torment him, and I reach for one last scene. I’m almost finished here; this is the last time I’ll ever need to do this, and I’ve been saving this one moment for my final work.

I’m so tired.

New Orleans. Late at night. Lights are strung along the street and they glitter over the brightly colored gaudy storefronts. People everywhere, laughing and dancing in the streets, drunk and carefree.

I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m sixteen, I’ve been away from home three days and Logan is with me. I haven’t had time to think about anything since we left; I’m too overwhelmed by the newness of the world and what he’s showing me. I run ahead of him, down to the end of the street where it ends on the waterfront. I step up onto an old iron railing and lean over it, taking deep breaths of the air coming off the water, dark and thick with vegetation, trees and fish and a touch of decay, but alive, so alive.

I turn and Logan’s about fifteen feet away, watching me and actually almost smiling. He reaches into his jacket pocket and comes out with the little disposable camera he bought me earlier.

“Don’t move,” he tells me, and I stay where I am, twisted around to look at him with my feet stuck through the palings of the fence. He raises the camera and I smile at him.

That’s it. That’s the last picture I need in my mind. And strangely, Wolverine doesn’t want to let his/my/our memory go this time. He tries to hold my mind there, instead of racing away as usual as soon as I release him, and I’m so startled for a moment that I can’t pull away. Then something changes, something reaches into my thoughts and it isn’t quite the animal I’m controlling, it’s something else, something that’s almost—

I yank myself away and the door shudders as Wolverine throws himself against it again and again, his fury rising with every blow. I’m shaking too much to even step away for a moment, and I know it’s not only his demons he’s raging against inside. He saw. He knows, now, what I’m doing, and he’s furious. But he can’t break through; adamantium can’t cut adamantium, and he howls his anguish and rage.

A voice that’s not quite his, not quite Logan’s, spoke three words to me before I broke the connection.

Don’t do it.

I open my eyes and look around at my bedroom/studio, awash with late-afternoon sunlight. A fresh canvas is set up and waiting, and I lift the brush that sits waiting by my hand and begin mixing together blues and purples and greens on my palette, creating the color of the lamp-lit nighttime New Orleans sky.

It won’t be much longer, but I have to finish.

A Vision Of The Night…Job 33:15

“Put the Delta canvases on the south wall. I think the lighting is better for them there.” Julia Barrister turned to the woman standing behind her. “Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.” The young artist, taciturn as always, was looking up at the largest clean white wall, the place of honor, where two workmen were lifting a large canvas into place. “Be careful!”

“It’s all right, Marie. They’ve done this before.” The art-gallery manager came to put her arm around her newest client, but the girl shied away from her. “I’m sorry. I always forget.”

Marie managed a smile. It was so odd, being called by her real name again, but there was no explaining silly codenames in the normal human world. Even in New York, or maybe especially here, with Xavier’s school so close, it was just calling attention to what was better left hidden. She hated the lies, but she hated revealing herself even more.

So she’d simply explained away her scarves and gloves as the necessary accoutrements of a skin condition, without specifying what that condition was. She’d left most of the planning up to the gallery manager, but there was no getting around this meeting. The opening was tomorrow night.

Julia offered her coffee, tea, sparkling water. Marie turned them all down and continued to watch as the men lifted her title painting into place. She allowed herself a little smile as the large, colorful canvas was placed and its protective covering was pulled away.

New Orleans was her last project, the one she’d completed the most recently, so she was still getting acquainted with what she’d made. People who weren’t artists never really understood that feeling, the idea that you had to meet what you created, had to learn your connection to it all over again every time you saw it in a new light.

She imagined it was something like giving birth, though that was something she’d never know about.

“Marie?” Julia was calling her, and she turned, forcing herself to look bright and pleased. “Come here. I’ve got something special to show you.”

Julia led her through the gallery space, the white walls sparkling in the morning sunlight. Marie loved this space, and she was fond of the bright Southern woman who’d carved it out of a shabby building on an unfashionable block in New York long before it became trendy. A real firecracker, they’d have called her back home. It was one of the reasons she’d wanted to show here.

In the back there was a tiny alcove, almost a private space of its own, it was so isolated from the rest of the gallery. One wall was covered with a sheet. Marie felt her heart drop when she saw it and her carefully-schooled expression slipped. “No.”

“Just look.” Julia stepped forward and pulled the sheet away, turning back with a smile, which fled from her face when she saw her client’s reaction. “Marie—honey, I just wanted to—”

“Take them down. I told you, Julia. I don’t want them shown.” Mechanically Marie turned away from the three paintings, from the connections she didn’t want to make. “I swear, I’ll cancel the whole show. I mean it.”

“All right. All right.” Hastily Julia recovered the wall with the sheet and came around to face the artist. “I’m sorry. I thought maybe when you saw them—”

“I’ve seen them.” Almost unwillingly, Marie glanced back over her shoulder. The sheet, hastily and imperfectly hung, didn’t cover part of one of the pictures, the one on the right. The portrait. Marie jerked away from Julia’s hand and walked to the wall. Slowly, methodically, she straightened it so that it obscured the painting completely. Her black-gloved fingers smoothed the white cloth into place.

“I’ll take them down.” Julia’s normally cheery tone was muted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I know.” Marie’s hand lingered over the outline of the canvas under that blank cloth. “It’s all right. Just please put them away. I don’t want to see them up again.”

“I’ll store them. In the back. All right?” Julia took Marie’s elbow gently and led her away from the alcove. “I’ll put up some of the other portraits here—it’s a nice intimate space for them.” Artists could be odd about their work, but this was such an extreme reaction, and from such a young painter—it wasn’t even as though the works were particularly disturbing, though they were certainly powerful. But now clearly wasn’t the time to argue about it.

Marie let Julia lead her back to the front of the gallery. Up until a few days ago, she’d had every intention of showing those pieces. Somehow, though, the idea of putting that part of her self-journey out for everyone to see on opening night was just too much. She didn’t want to answer the questions, couldn’t face everyone seeing what those paintings revealed.

Besides, they really weren’t her secrets to tell.

It made her angry, for the first time in years, because it wasn’t following the plan. And the plan was all that mattered now. She forced herself to relax as Julia brought her a cup of coffee, skillfully turned her attention to discussion of what to expect the next night.

Once this was done, the rest would be easy. She let go of the thought of what she was leaving out of the show. She knew the rest of what she had done was good.

It would be enough. The show would be a success, Marie knew it somehow. She felt a strange thrill in the knowledge, and a smile touched her lips as she looked at the program Julia was excitedly handing her, the list of invitees, the menu from the caterer.

There was a mirrored glass sculpture on Julia’s desk, an abstract little object with swirls and curves. In it were reflected the rich colors of New Orleans on the spare white wall behind her, waiting to speak.

When the Bow is in the Clouds…Genesis 8:16

Wow.

I’ve never been to an art-gallery opening before. This is really cool. Everyone looks so chic and sophisticated. I smooth down the skirt of my new dress and make sure my hair is staying up where I put it. Curly hair is in this season, that’s one small comfort. And I came with Peter Rasputin, which is really pretty exciting. I’ve had a crush on him since the day I arrived at the School, but this is the first time we’ve sort of been on a date. He’s kind of shy, and he’s still learning English, but god, he’s adorable. When he asked me if we could come to the show together he turned red when I said yes, he really did.

And he is such a gentleman. Peter brought me a glass of champagne earlier, and now he’s across the room, courteous as all get-out, letting my grandmother lean on his arm while she looks at the paintings.

All of them are amazing, but the ones Rogue did after she met Bubbe are the ones I love the most of all. My grandmother is something else. Everyone loves her; she’s like what a Central-Casting Jewish grandma is supposed to be like. Being near her is one of my favorite things about going to school in New York; my whole family may have moved to Illinois, but you couldn’t get Bubbe out of this city with a crowbar. (Or so she says.) Rogue used to spend hours talking to her when she came to visit me at school, and Bubbe just adores her, calls her a shayna maideleh and has tea with her every afternoon she visits. Rogue actually went out and bought special glasses to serve it to her in.

I wander over and listen as Bubbe explains the paintings to Peter.

“This one, this is like a monster movie. Like you kids watch. This is the dybbuk, very old Jewish story. He is a soul condemned to wander the earth for its sins.”

“Da? I did not know you had sins.” Peter is trying manfully to keep up, and I hide a grin. He’s the sweetest thing ever.

“Don’t be silly, boychik, everyone has sins. What we don’t have is confessions.” Peter looks a little shocked and I just bet he’s never been teased like that by an eighty-three-year-old woman. Well, he’ll live. “He sometimes tries to take over pious men and women to escape his torment.” She leans closer. “No heaven, but no hell, either. So it’s not so bad.”

“Um…what about this one? I like this one better.” Peter’s an artist himself, very talented, but his style is very different from Rogue’s. This one, though, is a little closer to something he might have done. A lot of her work is on the abstract side, but this at least has some recognizable elements, a building like a temple and some bright figures in the sky, almost like a Chagall. Bubbe leans close to read what the card pinned to the wall next to it says. Then she turns to me with a delighted smile.

“You see this one, mauseleh?” I nod. “Leshem shomaim. This big goyische, he speaks every language there is except Hebrew. How is that?” Peter gives me a desperate glance and I just shrug. “Tell him what that means.”

“It means…for the right. For the sake of heaven.” Bubbe pats my arm approvingly.

“Such a smart girl, my granddaughter. And she can cook, did you know? I taught her my recipe for brisket when she’s eight years old.” Now I’m the one sending desperate looks; there’s no stopping my grandmother when she’s playing Yente the Matchmaker. Just then, thank god, the star of the evening comes by.

Rogue leans down to embrace Bubbe. She looks absolutely stunning. The gloves and scarf she always wears look perfectly in place, for once, with the chocolate-brown satin gown she’s got on. I’ve been pestering her for weeks about skipping meals because she’s been so busy preparing for tonight—honestly, Bubbe would have been proud of me—but I have to admit, she looks incredible. The dress is demure and daring at the same time; of course it covers her all up, but it’s like a second skin with the way the silk moves. She’s even wearing makeup, which she never does.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Mrs. Rosenstein? I’m so glad you were able to come.” Rogue is smiling and it occurs to me that I haven’t seen her looking so calm and centered for a very long time. Maybe ever.

I always thought ‘Rogue’ was an inspired choice for a name. She’s never quite seemed like she belongs, like no matter how long she stays at the School somehow she’s just a visitor, someone passing through. I don’t know if it’s just her history or what—there are a lot of kids whose families haven’t really accepted their mutation, but she’s one of the very few whose parents won’t even speak to her. She never really talks about that.

“The paintings are gorgeous, Marie. Gorgeous. Such a wonderful talent. And such a wonderful store. So clean.” Just as Bubbe says that, I see Julia, the gallery manager, appearing behind us. The look on her face at hearing her ultra-fashionable New York gallery described that way is priceless.

Bubbe is latched onto Rogue’s arm now, chattering away cheerfully, so Peter and I circle the room, looking over the different paintings. They’re grouped loosely by times in Rogue’s life, I think—there’s a group that seem to be of her childhood memories, a set that are from the Mansion, and there are a few over on one side called the Church series that I don’t particularly like. The ones in the center are from New Orleans. The big central picture is on a wall of honor by itself, and we pause in front of it.

Peter leans down. “You like this one, Katya?”

It’s so cute when he calls me that. “I love it.” I’d absolutely love to go to New Orleans. I’m amazed at how vivid an impression the place must have made, because I know Rogue was only ever there once, for a few days before she came to the School.

“It is herself, da?” Peter gestured at the painting. “And the Wolverine.”

“What?” Startled, I look at the picture again. It’s not really clear, but now that he suggests it…

“Hey, you two. Cool party.” Jubilee appears beside us, ducks under Peter’s elbow and holds out an overladen plate. She’s balancing two glasses of champagne in her other hand. “You want one of these fish things?” That’s an interesting way to describe blinis with Beluga caviar, but I won’t argue. We help Jubes demolish the hors d’oeuvres she’s collected, and wander some more looking over the gallery.

Eventually Peter and I rescue Rogue from Bubbe and he goes off to collect our coats. Jubes is hitching a ride back to the Mansion with us, so she’s with us too, and while Bubbe is making a lengthy goodbye speech to Julia I lean close to Jubes. “Hey. Did you ever think those two figures in the New Orleans painting were Rogue and Wolverine?”

“’Course.” Jubilee is chewing gum and I don’t even want to think about the possibility that she’s been combining Bubble Yum with caviar all night. “I’m sure of it. Didn’t you ever see those pictures?”

“What pictures?” I’m confused. “Other paintings?”

“No, pictures. You know.” She mimes taking a photograph. “She had a whole pack from her little road trip.”

Now that she says it, I do remember that, vaguely. Rogue roomed with us for a while when she first got to the Mansion, and she did have some photos from her, well, ‘road trip’ is as good a term as any, I guess. But I haven’t seen any of them for years. “I totally never thought of that.”

“She did other paintings of him too.” As usual, Jubes is a font of information. “They’re not here, though. Guess she didn’t want to show ‘em.”

“How do you know that?”

“Saw ‘em. I was waiting for her one time in her studio and I was looking around.”

“You snooped?” I don’t know why I’m even bothering to be shocked. What, Jubilation Lee snooping? And the sun came up in the east, too?

“They were in this whole stack of paintings, up against the wall. How would I know she didn’t want me to see them?”

“But she didn’t.”

Jubilee actually looks uncomfortable. “No. She was pretty pissed off at me. I don’t know why she painted them in the first place. He was a total asshole to her.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s true, Jubes.” After Wolverine disappeared, Rogue was pretty cut up for a while. I wasn’t there the night the accident happened, but when I got back—well, it was a lousy time to be around the Mansion. I came home from a visit and all this stuff had happened while I’d been gone—Mr. Summers and Dr. Grey were fighting, Rogue wouldn’t talk to anyone, and that was around the same time that the Congressional hearings on the Mutant Act were happening. None of it was a lot of fun, and Rogue moved into her own room not too long afterwards. She said she didn’t want to take any more chances with her skin, but I was never sure if that was all it really was.

Jubilee shrugs, her momentary discomfiture easily shaken off. “Well, whatever you want to call it. She painted the things, I dunno why she doesn’t want to show ‘em. They were good, too.” Peter comes up then and hands over her yellow leather jacket. “Thanks, Petey. I’m gonna grab one for the road. See you out front?” She disappears in the direction of the bar.

“Katya, before we go…” Peter steers me back towards the Bubbe paintings, as I think of them. “I never had a chance to ask. Can you read what it says in the last canvas?”

I’m still turning over things in my mind, and I stare blankly at the painting he’s indicating for just a second before I can shake myself out of my reverie and answer him. “Oh—sure. It’s a Hebrew phrase.” In this one, Rogue worked the Hebrew characters right into the artwork itself. “Shaineh raineh keporah. It basically means ‘nothing to regret’.” Peter nods and moves a little closer to examine the brushwork.

I stand still, looking at the painting. It’s true, what I told Peter. Languages are funny, though. So often, the way you translate something isn’t exactly what it really means. That phrase translates to what I said it did. But literally, it’s a little different—‘beautiful clean sacrifice’.

I can’t help wondering who the central figure is in this one.

Bubbe is next to me now, taking my arm, tucking my hand into hers. “Ready to go, mauseleh?” I nod. “I’m glad you invited me. Such a nice girl, your friend. So strong, so pretty. Such a shame her family couldn’t be here.” She pats my hand, and her familiar and oh-so-beloved face suddenly looks different to me. “You should always be grateful, sweetheart. The loss of a family—you should never know such a thing.” I feel a lump rise in my throat. “That’s why this government Act—we won’t let it pass. Never again, Katherine.” My heart is pounding now. She turns to me and her eyes are serious, more serious than I’ve ever seen. “We will never forget.” She reaches up and touches my cheek.

I know Bubbe’s really smart, and her cheerful old-Jewish-lady demeanor is largely an act. But I never had a clue that she knew about me, about all of us, about the Act. I hug her tightly. “I know, Bubbe. I won’t forget either.”

“Yashir koyech.” May your strength be increased. It’s what you say to someone who’s just done a good deed, a mitzvah. She smiles through her own tears and we move toward the door as Peter comes to collect us.

I turn to look over the room one last time before we leave. I see the Professor and Dr. Grey in one corner, talking with Julia—thank goodness, she’ll get to talk to someone tonight who’ll praise her gallery properly. A knot of young people I sort of know are Rogue’s art-school classmates are talking very seriously in one corner; they’re wearing so much black they look like a flock of ravens. Bobby and St. John are here, and Ororo is surrounded by a pack of men who are probably all hoping she’ll pose for them. It’s such a happy scene.

I’d like to say goodbye to Rogue before we leave, though, and my eyes slide over the room in search of her slim figure. Finally I see her; she seems to be coming from the back of the gallery, and I can’t catch her attention through the crowd. She doesn’t stop or speak to anyone; she just goes to stand in front of her featured painting and looks up at it.

She doesn’t turn, and reluctantly I decide I’ll just have to see her later at the Mansion to tell her how much I loved her show, because I’ve got to get Bubbe back home. She’s still looking up at the painting when I let the door close behind me, almost like she’s seeing it for the first time, just standing there staring while people move around and past her, talking and laughing, as though she’s completely alone. Rapt.

I wonder what she sees.

Tarry Till I Come…John 21:23

I don’t really know what I’m doin’ here.

I’ve never stayed in one place long, but in the five years since I left Xavier’s little play school, I haven’t been in the same place longer than a week. It’s exhausting, and right now I’m as tired as I can ever remember being.

I’ve circled the entire continent, over and over. North of the border, south, all the states and provinces. I always wind up back here eventually. Never any closer than Manhattan or Brooklyn at most, but here. And every time, there’s this one moment when I actually forget that I’m not here for any particular reason. Sometimes I wake up and get through a whole hour before I remember that I don’t have any place to be. No one’s expecting me.

Strangest thing, but it happens every goddamn time. At that point I usually go and start drinking. You can do that in New York.

It’s pretty fucking ironic, really. I spent fifteen years wishing I could remember my life. The last five years I’ve been trying to forget it. Never thought that would be a problem. I never had to try before; people and places I left behind me just faded into the past and I lived in the here and now.

It doesn’t seem to work that way any more. At least, not when I wind up back here.

So ‘here’, at the moment, is a bar in the East Village. It’s almost two in the morning, but bars in New York can stay open till four and I figure I’ll be here until they close. It’s pretty dark and grungy, but it’s Manhattan grunge. There aren’t very many really seedy places left in this yuppified neighborhood and the place has a consciously grimy feel; its atmosphere is created, on purpose, for style rather than substance. The other patrons are mostly young kids who are playing at being avant-garde and dangerous. They’re not like me.

I finish my beer and signal to the blonde bartender for another. She brings it, leaning over to give me a view of her tattooed chest, which I ignore. She hitches up her leather pants over hips that are a little too fleshy to wear them well. “Six-fifty.” That’s Manhattan for you, charging more for a beer than you ought to pay for a six-pack. I toss a ten on the bar and she gives me my change; I let it sit there.

The door opens and a group of five or six people come in. I don’t look up, until a slightly familiar scent reaches me. I place it just before I see her and just before she spots me too, as she heads for the bar to order.

I forget her name. Some things I do manage to get rid of, but I lived there, and scents I don’t forget. She’s Asian, petite and pretty, and she’s older now than I remember her, of course. She’s dressed in black with a bright yellow scarf tied around her neck and I dimly recall that she used to wear nothing but yellow. I guess some things don’t change. Much.

Her eyes narrow when she sees me and she changes direction immediately, coming to the end of the bar where I’m sitting. I consider getting up, brushing past her, walking out before she can say anything, but I don’t. I’m tired, I just started this goddamn overpriced beer, and from what I can remember, she’d be unlikely to let me go without creating a scene anyway. Then as she gets closer I can make out another scent on her, instantly and viscerally recognizable to me, and I pinpoint it to the scarf she’s wearing. Then I can’t leave even if I want to, because I can’t move away from that. I know who touched that scarf, who probably gave it to her.

And fuck if even with all this introspective bullshit, I hadn’t realized how much that still mattered to me.

“What are you doing here?” She doesn’t bother with greetings or small talk, which doesn’t really surprise me.

“Why? There a law against sitting in a bar?”

She leans up against the bar, her eyes fixed on me. “So what, you mean you’re not here to visit?”

I snort. “I’m not exactly the houseguest type,” I point out.

“She isn’t mad at you, you know. Not any more, anyway.”

And my lips tighten at that as I try not to let her see the lurch my stomach gives at just the reference, however peripheral, and how the relief that her words inadvertently give me washes through me. “So?” I can’t let her know the importance of those words, and I make my voice deliberately cutting.

She doesn’t appear to notice. “You shouldn’t have left,” she opines, and cracks her gum loudly.

“What was I supposed to do? Wait to get thrown out?”

“They weren’t going to throw you out.” She shakes her head, looking disgusted. “You might try giving us a little credit for sense.”

I snort and take another sip of my beer. Us. Yeah, it was definitely an us-and-them mentality at that place, with me firmly in the them category. “Yeah, right.”

“Whatever you thought, you could’ve at least stuck around long enough to say goodbye to her.” That’s brutal, and this time I don’t think I hide my reaction too well. She softens her tone a little, if not her words. “She was really devastated when you didn’t come back. She thought you cared about her.”

Typical female, going for the knife right in the gut. “I did. That’s why I left.” I really do want to get up and leave now, but as bad as this hurts, I want to hear more—no, need to hear more, like an addict needs a fix. “I almost killed her.”

“You didn’t, though.” She tips her head to the side and looks at me curiously. “Look, everyone knew it was an accident. I knew it was, anyway. What did you care what people thought?”

I cared what people thought about her. “Accident, hell. She still almost died. I wasn’t about to wait around for it to happen again.” I should have stayed. I know that, but at the time, seeing in everyone’s eyes exactly what they thought was going on there…it was just too much. And what Xavier told me, that absorbing my sick mind almost made her insane, that didn’t help any. “I didn’t have a choice.”

She’s still staring at me with this curious, sort of questioning look. Then she reaches into her jacket pocket and drops something onto the bar in front of me, onto the crumpled dollar bills and coins next to the beer bottle. Involuntarily I glance at it, and then I can’t look away.

“I don’t know, Wolves. Seems to me if you made a choice, you had a choice.” She taps the card lying on the bar. “This’s her show. It opened last week. You should stop by, take a look.” She starts to turn and leave, hesitates for a second. “Just because you made one bad choice doesn’t mean you have to stick by it the rest of your life. Get over yourself and take a chance.” Then she’s gone, and I’m barely aware of what she’s said or when she’s moved away, because of that postcard lying in front of me. I don’t need to reach into my inside pocket for the picture to compare it to, because I know that scene as well as I know my own face in the mirror. I pick up the card.

The postcard has the name and address of a gallery on the back. On the front—it’s a reproduction of a painting. It’s done in deep, rich tones that swirl and blend into each other, creating an opulent, almost dizzying impression even in this cheap replica. It feels like New Orleans, exactly the way I remember it.

It isn’t exactly like the photograph. The storefronts are just blurs, the lights scattering over the street, and the two figures are undefined. The one in the front—it’s seen from behind, as if the painter was looking over its shoulder, almost through its eyes. The focus is on the other figure, barely recognizable as a girl, probably not specifically identifiable to anyone but me, turning back to look at the other figure, or at the painter.

She made this. She remembers. That’s all I can think as I stare at the scrap of paper in my hand. If she could do that, she must be all right. The painting is beautiful, and I know I can’t leave without seeing the original. Just a glimmer of something like hope is rising, and I get up to leave. That was it, you know. The reason I left—I just couldn’t take the idea that after everything, I was just one more person who’d hurt her. Who’d broken their promises and a little more of her spirit. By the time I’d cooled off, I figured I’d pretty much trashed whatever there was between us.

I can’t have destroyed everything. Not if she could still create something like that, not if she could put that much life and joy into oils on canvas. It’s not much, but it’s damned well more than I had ten minutes ago. I slide the postcard into my pocket, next to the photograph, and walk out into the crisp October air.

The Asian girl is nowhere to be seen, and I wonder if she’ll tell Marie she’s seen me. I’m half-tempted to head for Xavier’s right now, see if she’s there, but it’s late and the gallery is here in New York. I want to be able to tell her I’ve seen her work when I see her again.

When I see her again. I haven’t let myself think that in about five years, and I turn it over in my mind as I walk away from the bar, down the darkened street.

It’s a good thought.

Strive To Enter…Luke 13:24

“Okay, Julia. That’s great.” I’m standing in the lounge, holding the phone, and I feel an incredible sense of calm. She’s telling me that six of my paintings have already sold, even at the frankly-unbelievable-to-me prices she put on them.

“There’s another appointment tomorrow, with Gillian West—you remember, you met her at the opening? She’s very anxious to buy a piece, and she might very well be interested in being your sponsor for another show. What do you think? Did you like her?”

I can’t tell her the truth: that just thinking about starting work again practically makes me want to vomit. I guess all artists go through that feeling in the aftermath of finishing a big project, but right now having to muster the energy to even listen to a critic or to Julia is terrifying. There’s just nothing more I have to say, no more memories I want to commit to canvas. I can’t imagine beginning anything else. And I didn’t like Gillian West. But I make my voice sound interested. “Wow. That would be great. She sponsors a lot of young artists, doesn’t she?”

“Only the really good ones,” Julia tells me. She lowers her voice a little. “I was wondering if I could show her the other canvases. You know—”

“No. ” I interrupt her sharply. “I’m sorry, Julia. Just…don’t show them.” I didn’t want to make a big deal before the opening, but those canvases are coming back here. Immediately. The idea of her showing those pictures to that skinny socialite arty wannabe—

Cool it, I tell myself.

“Marie.” She sounds gently reproving. “You’ve got to believe me. Those are incredible pieces. You don’t have to sell them if you don’t want, but you have to let people see everything you can do. I want to show them what a great range you have.”

“I know.” I take a deep breath and get it all back under control. “I don’t want those shown to anyone unless I’m there. They’re personal.” Which is as much as I can admit to her.

She sighs. “All right, sweetie. Just keep it in mind. And congratulations again. This is a huge first step for you.” She sounds ecstatic, thrilled, so happy for me.

I wish I felt the same way.

“Thanks. So…do you need anything else?”

“Not right now, since you got the notes I sent from the opening. Those are the most important patrons to respond to, and the buyers are on top. Although if you should happen to be in the area tomorrow…I’m sure Gillian would love to talk to you again, more personally.”

I rub a hand over my face tiredly. “I can’t tomorrow.” I just want to get off the phone now.

“Okay. It’s fine—we can always set something up later, lunch or something. I’ll let you know what she says.”

“Great.” We say goodbye and I hang up the phone. I stand for a minute, looking out at the grounds. It’s sunset, and there’s a beautiful pink glow on the horizon. I push down the automatic tendency to make a note of the color. I don’t need to mix paints today; wouldn’t have time even if I wanted to.

I hadn’t quite realized how much there would be to do. No one told me about thanking patrons for attending your show, no one told me about buyers wanting to ‘meet the artist’ before they write a check. Makes you wonder what’s really for sale here. Julia’s sent me a special delivery envelope of notes, clippings, I don’t even know what all she put in here. Most of it I shove back into the envelope unread; the notes from the buyers deserve an answer, I guess. I flick through them, wondering what anyone would feel like they had to say to me.

Most of them are congratulating themselves more than me. ‘So glad to have been among the first to recognize your talent.’ ‘Looking forward to introducing you to the Uptown Art World,’ complete with unnecessary capitalization. One claims to have purchased from the first shows of seven artists who are now in MoMA.

I remember most of the buyers. Some guy from Wall Street bought two of the Church paintings. They were the most expensive; I don’t know why, Julia did the pricing. I also don’t know why anyone would want them, but he says they’re “powerful” and he’d like to speak to me about a special commission for his office. That one I don’t answer. I’d never make anything on purpose for someone who could actually want to look at those things day after day.

There’s one note I like. It’s from a woman who bought a small painting, not much more than a sketch really, from the New Orleans series. She starts out kind of stiffly by saying she’s never bought anything from an art gallery before, but she’s the only one who really tells me why she bought the painting.

I love the colors. I love the warmth. I’m from Baton Rouge and it reminds me of home and it reminds me of a night I’ll never forget.

I don’t remember her. I wish I did. I guess she wasn’t an Important Buyer to be squired around by Julia and introduced. I wish it were her that Julia wanted me to meet tomorrow; then things might be different. Just for a moment, as I re-read the letter, I feel my throat tighten up.

It’s good. Somebody did understand what I made.

I spend the rest of the evening at a writing desk, working. Kitty looks in at some point and tries to drag me off to dinner. “It’s the Jewish mother in me,” she says, and I smile. “Come on. You haven’t been eating nearly enough lately, and the show’s open—you can’t still be stressing about that.”

Stress is only part of the reason I haven’t been going to dinner. “I’m not. I’m just tired. I’ll get a sandwich or something when I’m done here and have it upstairs, okay?” I feel bad lying to Kitty; she’s only being nice. But after all this time, lying about something so small is easy. Kitty frowns at me but I turn back to what I’m writing. Then suddenly I feel her arms around my shoulders, giving me a hug—and I tense, automatically. Even after all this time, I don’t like being surprised by touch. Nothing has happened, but it could.

She lets go quickly. “I’m being careful,” she says reprovingly. And at that I feel a flash of anger so strong it surprises me. Who asked you to come in here? Who asked you to try and fix things?

Oh, god, that is not fair of me, and from the look on her face some of what I’m feeling must be showing in mine. “I’m sorry. You just startled me.” I stand up and put my arms around her—it’s easier for me that way, so I can be sure of where their exposed skin is. She hugs me tightly for a minute, and though it’s awkward for me and unfamiliar, I’m glad she won’t go away thinking I’m mad at her. I close my eyes just for a second. Her curly brown hair smells sweet and I recognize the scent of the shampoo I’ve borrowed a dozen times.

“Thanks, Kit. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” And I let her go. She squeezes my hand briefly and steps back.

“Okay. I’m going out with Peter tonight, but I’ll be home early. If you want to talk.” Her brown eyes still look a little concerned, but I’ve reassured her. And that’s not a lie. I will be fine.

She leaves and I finish up my writing. I pick up the envelopes lying in a little pile and bring them upstairs with me. I avoid going past the noisy rec room, and walk quickly past the common area on my way to my room. I don’t want to see anyone else—Kitty’s concern was hard enough to face. I hate it when people worry about me.

I close the door of my room with a sigh of relief and look around. For once, it’s clean. My painting supplies are all neatly packed away in the closet, I’ve vacuumed, the bed is freshly made. My dresser is spotless and tidy; all my various gloves and scarves are folded into their drawers. It’s nice to feel like everything’s where it’s supposed to be.

I set the stack of letters down in the center of the dresser and go to take a shower.

I take my time under the water, letting its heat sink into me, running my hands over my naked body—the only hands that will ever do that, and even though they’re ungloved, they move clinically, impersonally. I scrub myself all over, making sure no traces of paint are left under my nails. When I begin to feel sleepy, I turn off the shower, get out and towel myself dry. I dress myself in a soft shirt and silk pajama pants, a pair of socks. I hang my towel up on the rack, and the last thing I do before I leave the room is to toss the empty container that’s standing on the sink into the trash.

I sit on the edge of my bed and pull on a pair of gloves. I don’t usually wear them to bed, but tonight is different. I’m feeling slightly dazed now and I have to concentrate to get the gloves over my fingers. I lie down, then remember something.

I meant to burn that last photograph. It’s lying across the room, on the dresser, and I try to sit up, to go and complete that final task. But it’s too much of an effort, and I sink back down. Everything is dulled now, but I feel a pang of regret; despite what I’ve written, that picture lying next to my letters is going to give the impression that he was what I was thinking of when I did this. And he’s not. He’s not.

I won’t think about him. I can’t. I roll to the side and find the plastic bag I left there, ready for me, but my fingers won’t work any more and I can’t get it over my head. I’m dizzy with the effort and I close my eyes, feeling my consciousness spiraling away.

I find myself in my room for the last time. It’s utterly silent, or maybe I just can’t hear anything any more. I don’t even glance at the other doors, and I can’t be walking, but suddenly I’m at the golden door and it’s opening, it’s open and there’s light coming from it, and I’m falling into the light—

Marie is waiting for me.

A Vision In The Temple…Luke 1:22

Julia Barrister locked her car and hefted the stack of papers she was carrying under one arm as she walked briskly towards the door of the gallery. The early morning sunlight sloped down through the buildings as she fumbled for her keys in her Coach attaché. She stopped short when she saw the man standing in front of the door.

It was probably because his back was toward her that she recognized him, if one can be said to recognize someone they’ve never seen. He was standing, leaning against a lamppost, his head slightly down, and it was exactly the pose in one of the three canvases she still had in the storeroom upstairs, the ones her client had refused to show. She hurried even more and her heel caught on a cobblestone as she came up to him; he turned and caught her arms to keep her from falling.

“Oh—thanks.” The man was tall, unshaven, and looked like he hadn’t slept in a week; he was dressed in worn jeans and a battered leather jacket. If she hadn’t been so certain that she knew who he was, she might have been alarmed by his appearance. But he set her on her feet gently and then let go of her. “Are you—were you waiting to get into the gallery?”

“Yeah. Says it doesn’t open till eleven.” His eyes were the most intense she thought she’d ever seen.

“It doesn’t, officially, but I’m the manager and I’m on my way in. Would you like to come up now?”

Those hooded eyes turned slightly suspicious. “Why would you do that?” He was obviously used to being distrusted, especially by women like her, and if she hadn’t seen Marie’s work, she might have felt frightened by the barely-leashed tension and raw power he radiated. She hesitated before answering. Something about him touched her deeply. She put a hand on his arm, feeling as though she was reaching out to a wild animal, asking for its confidence.

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

She unlocked the front doors and led the way upstairs, into the studio. Lights weren’t necessary; the huge windows let in the morning sun and the gallery was lit by nature. She went to put her things down on her desk and the man walked slowly into the room, his eyes darting to each canvas in turn. Julia let him make his way around the gallery in his own time. Normally, if she was in the gallery with a single client, she would walk with them, but now she stood back to watch silently as he made the circuit of the space. But she watched intently to see his reactions to the work; that was what fascinated her about art. It was the reason she loved what she did.

The man took a long time in front of the Meridien paintings, and even more with the Church series. Julia saw one hand open and close reflexively, as if he were trying to crack his knuckles. Those paintings definitely evoked a feeling of discomfort in most people; the art-school part of her mind approved of the attention the man was paying to what he saw.

Then he saw the signature painting, the one the show had been titled for, and he went to it as though drawn by a magnet. Julia waited a minute before moving to join him; somehow it felt like an intrusion.

“That’s you, isn’t it? In the foreground.” He looked down at her as though startled to remember her presence. He gave a short nod.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Wait here.” Julia walked through the studio, her heels clicking on the clean polished wood floors, and when she returned carrying the three smaller canvases he was still in the same spot. Silently she set them on the floor, one at a time, leaning against the wall under New Orleans. She heard his intake of breath, but didn’t look up at him. It felt wrong to look at his first reaction to those paintings. She thought she understood, now, why Marie hadn’t let her show them. “You see how I could tell. I didn’t realize you were the same figure in this painting, but now that I look at them together, it’s obvious.”

“Christ.” She dared a glance at him then; he was staring at the paintings and she wouldn’t have thought his gaze could become any more intense, but it was. It almost took her breath away. She stepped back and returned to her desk, giving him time and space to look at the artwork.

Logan looked at each of the three canvases the woman had placed in front of him. Jesus christ almighty. They were scenes from his life, he knew that. The first was from the Mansion; it looked like she’d done the sketch in the library. At first glance, it seemed like a simple portrait, himself near one of the windows, looking out. It seemed like an ordinary enough moment, but there was something uneasy about the pose, something about the way she’d drawn him with one hand raised toward the curtain, that made the figure look uncomfortable. Then he realized. It was the day he’d left—no, the day before, after the argument they’d had, when he’d finally gone back to look for her. She’d been gone, and the book lying on the window seat in the picture, he knew what that was. Only there was no way she could have known about this moment, unless she’d been hiding somewhere in the library after all?

It was when he looked at the next painting that he finally understood. He’d half-forgotten about her having the same nightmares he did, and she’d touched him again that night. The whole idea of her knowing what was in his head had been too disquieting for him to consider at the time; he certainly hadn’t known her absorbed memories were as specific or far-reaching as this painting proved. It was from Canada. Blinding white, with slashes of red crossing the lone figure at its center, it was almost abstract in its simplicity, and yet it radiated anger and desolation. It was one of the earliest moments he could remember, waking up in the snow, alone, naked, with no idea of who or what he was, only fear and pain and horror at what had been done to him. She’d painted it exactly as he would have, if he’d had the ability or the desire.

But the third—his gaze kept returning to it in wonder. This one she must have made up. It seemed idealized, a version of himself he didn’t know. It was an outdoor scene, a field somewhere with a mountain rising in the background, and the way she’d painted him, leaning up against a tree, made him look younger, less guarded than he ever remembered being. He didn’t know why his heart was thudding so painfully until it suddenly burst over him.

She hadn’t made it up. This was a memory too, an older one than he thought he’d ever have again. It was barely there at all, just the faintest ghost of remembrance, but he’d been there, wherever it was. He could almost smell the breeze, almost hear something in the distance, a sound he knew—

Church bells. He got a flash of the church, tiny and ancient, tucked in a natural niche under the mountain. And that was all.

He turned to the woman who’d let him in; she had gone back to stand behind her desk. “Is she—does she work here?” She shook her head, but answered the question he hadn’t asked.

“She lives in Westchester.” He nodded and Julia knew he’d know the address. “Would you like to—I could call her.”

He shook his head. “That’s all right.” He started toward the exit, then paused. “Thanks. For letting me see the pictures.” Julia nodded and the man left. Her hand went to the phone, then drew back. She didn’t understand exactly, but she didn’t want to overstep her bounds. She was sure she’d hear from Marie in due course. In the meantime, she had a full day of appointments and work to do before the gallery opened, and she focused her attention on that.

Behold, A Pale Horse…Revelations 6:8

There isn’t much traffic, and I’m grateful for small favors. It’s not quite eleven when I draw up by the gates and see the plaque: 1407 Greymalkin Lane. I roll down a window, feeling faintly ridiculous, and wait to be acknowledged by whoever is manning the security system. It takes an unreasonably long time, at least it seems that way to me, but eventually a tinny voice emanates from the black box attached to the gate. “Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. May I help you?”

I don’t recognize the voice, but damned if I would anyway through that system. “The name’s Logan. Xavier knows me.” There’s a pause, and then the gates slowly swing open.

I don’t bother to knock. The hallway is deserted when I enter, which seems strange; then in the rec room off to the left I see a bunch of kids in a somber knot, talking quietly. One girl is crying, another has her arm around her shoulders; that one raises her head as I approach and I see it’s the Asian girl from last night. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying as well, but when she sees me her face changes to an absolute mask of fury. She drops her arm from the other girl’s shoulders and runs straight at me.

“You fucking bastard!” I have to catch her hands to keep them away from my face; she kicks out at me and I have to dodge fast to keep her from landing a blow to my crotch. “Son of a bitch—I should blast you into next week—”

“What the hell is your problem?” I twist her around, trapping her arms against her body and holding her still. I don’t want to hurt her, but she’s fighting me like a wildcat. “Cut it out.” She bites my arm. “Christ!” Now I remember why I left. Everyone in this place is fuckin’ nuts.

“Jubilee, stop it.” The girl she’d been comforting when I came in is standing in front of us. “That won’t help.”

“It’s his fucking fault.” She gives one last vicious jab with her elbow and then unexpectedly just stops fighting me and clutches onto my arm instead. I’m startled, but I just hold onto her, or she’d collapse to the floor. “It’s my fault—I should have gone in last night, I should have known …” Her tiny body is heaving with sobs, and she can’t seem to decide whether to continue the assault or not. The other girl comes up to us and catches hold of her hand before she can hit me again.

“It wasn’t your fault, Jubes. You didn’t know. None of us knew.” She looks up at me. “Do you remember me? I’m Katherine Pryde—Kitty. I’m a friend of Rogue’s—I mean Marie’s.”

Rogue? What the hell is that? But I remember this girl too, vaguely, and I nod. The other students—or full-fledged X-Men by now, for all I know—are standing silently, just watching. I’m beginning to have a seriously bad feeling about this. “I remember. What the hell is going on?”

“It’s Marie.” Kitty hesitates. “She’s—Dr. Grey is—”

“What?” I need to know what the fuck is happening. Now.

The Asian girl detaches herself from my grip, shoves me away as she turns to face me. “She tried to kill herself. Last night. I went to her room this morning—to tell her I’d seen you—and I found her.” She’s giving me an accusing glare, and she looks ready to scratch my eyes out again.

For a second I can’t move, can’t speak. The words hang in the air: She tried to kill herself. Finally I manage to force a few words out. “Where is she?”

“She is downstairs. In the medical facility.” I turned blindly towards the new voice; Ororo Munroe stands there, surreal and beautiful as ever. Her silver-cast eyes are steady but sorrowful. “Jean is with her.”

“Is she all right?”

Ororo looks down and I feel my heart constrict in my chest in the second before she answers. “She’s alive. Jean is doing what she can.”

She’s alive. The words aren’t spoken with any degree of optimism, but they’re something to hang onto, a lifeline, however thin. “I need to see her.”

Ororo nods. “Come with me.” Kitty puts a hand on my arm as I start to follow her.

“Jubilee didn’t mean what she said,” she tells me quietly. “It wasn’t your fault, we know that. We’re just upset.” I want to shake her off, but she’s just a kind, sweet little thing, and she’s trying to be nice. “Tell her we love her, all right?”

“Yeah.” I touch her hand briefly and then go with Ororo. She knows how to be quiet, I’ll give her that much. She takes me in silence through the hallways, into the elevator and down several levels, and I know where we’re headed. As we near the lab, my senses are assaulted by a thousand unpleasant stimuli—chemical smells, fluorescent lights, monitors whining at high-pitched tones only I can hear. Behind it all I pick up her scent. I brush past Ororo and into the lab.

Jean is leaning over a table, listening to her patient’s heart, and as she turns, I see that it’s Marie lying there. Tubes and wires are running into her everywhere; her mouth and chin are ringed with black. Jean looks exhausted; her hair’s a mess and there are dark circles under her eyes, which open with surprise when she sees me. I register all this even as I’m moving across the room, and she lowers her stethoscope to her neck and comes forward to meet me, taking hold of my arms.

“Logan—calm down.”

“Like hell. Is she gonna be all right? What the fuck happened?”

“We don’t know exactly.” Jean’s voice is composed, collected; this is the doctor speaking, the one who knows how to talk to friends and family. “She’d been planning it, obviously. She had pills saved up and she knew exactly what she was doing—she took an overdose of Tylenol and Valium. Jubilee found her—”

“Is she going to be all right?” I space the words out clearly. I don’t need the goddamn details.

Jan falters for the first time. “I don’t know. She wasn’t breathing when I got there, and I had to intubate her. Earlier she started fighting the vent, so I took her off it. She’s breathing on her own.”

“So that’s good.”

“Yes. It shows she has some brain function intact. But there are other signs…” Jean’s hand tightens on my arm. “There may be brain damage. I don’t know how long she wasn’t breathing before we got to her.”

Okay. Then I know what I have to do. “Let go of me.” I don’t think I’ve ever been more deadly serious.

“Logan, right now there’s nothing we can do except wait.”

“Let the fuck go of me. Now.” Startled, Jean steps back and I stalk past her.

The girl on the table looks heartbreakingly fragile. Her eyes are closed; a tube runs into her nose and the charcoal smudges on her face make her look like a child who’s been playing in the mud. I slip out of my jacket and drop it onto a neighboring table as Jean comes up beside me, holding out a pair of latex gloves. I push them away. “Don’t need them.”

Jean speaks in that reasoned doctor’s tone again. “You can’t touch her without—”

I turn and grab her wrist. I’m planning to make myself real goddamn clear here. “You listen to me, Red. I’m gonna touch her. It worked before and it’s the only thing that might be going to help her now. Your job is going to be to pull me off her if I can’t let go, you got it?” Looking slightly shocked, Jean nods. I look past her, see Ororo still standing near the doorway. “You too. I’m pretty heavy.” I let go of Jean and turn back to look down at Marie. I take a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. I remember what Xavier told me before, and I don’t want there to be anger or fear in the forefront of my mind, not this time. Jean puts a hand on my arm.

“She’s stable right now, Logan. You should wait—you look awful.”

“You look pretty bad yourself,” I snarl. “Either get ready to help or get out of the way.” I don’t need a fucking medical degree to know Marie’s lying there dying right in front of me. I don’t think I realized until this minute how important it was to me that she was okay, that she was safe. She’s not, I can do something about it, and I’m going to. I have to.

“We don’t even know if your mutation works for something like this. Or if—”

“You just finished telling me there’s nothing else you can do. So it fucking well can’t hurt to try.”

Jean gives up, or gives in, anyway. “All right. Just—be careful.” Her hand strokes my forearm gently.

Be careful. Yeah. She’s right. I reach a hand toward Marie, steadying my thoughts. New Orleans. A warm mountain field. Your face. I brush a tangled lock of hair away from her pale forehead. I’m sorry, darlin’. I should’ve been there for you. Then I lay the palm of my hand against her cheek, memorizing the feel of it as I wait for the pull.

Nothing happens. Seconds tick by, one after the other. No. Baby. Take it. I reach for her hand with my other, hold onto it tightly. Maybe it doesn’t happen as quickly as I thought.

Still nothing. I look around at the two women, hoping against hope that I’ll see an explanation there, some answer, some chance. But Jean looks stricken and as I turn to Ororo, I see twin tears spill from those mirror-bright eyes and run down the perfect oval of her face.

I turn away from them and lift Marie up in my arms, ignoring the wires and tubes that pull away. They don’t matter any more, not if she’s too far gone for this to work—I can see that in Jean’s eyes. I smooth her hair back, gently pull the oxygen feed away from her nose, and I sit down, cradling her against my body. I don’t even care that Jean and Ororo are still standing there watching this; I press my lips against her forehead. “I’m sorry, darlin’,” I mutter. “I’m so sorry.”

Christ, she’s warm. She can’t be gone. She can’t be. I should never have left her—alone—

It isn’t until I feel Jean’s hands on my shoulders, hear Ororo cry out, that I realize what’s happening. Then darkness is closing in around me, like falling down a black tunnel that doesn’t end. I think for an instant that Marie’s lashes flutter and renewed hope bursts over me even as my vision starts to grey out. But I hang onto consciousness desperately, trying to stay with her, trying to give her more, because it needs to be enough. Then Jean is tearing my hands away from her and now I really am falling. My head hits something hard.

It hurts. And somehow I can’t seem to catch my breath. I know Jeannie’s yelling to Ororo about something or other, and I try to move but I can’t. Things seem to be slowing down.

Something jolts my whole body. And that’s all I remember. The world just goes black.

By His Wounds…1 Peter 2:24

Flashes of light. Color. Sound.

Ororo knelt beside Logan, trying to staunch the blood trickling rapidly from a cut where his head had hit the examination table. “Jean!”

The doctor was leaning over her original patient, holding her down with gloved hands. “Rogue! Calm down. It’s all right.” The girl fought her wildly for a few seconds, then her eyes seemed to come into focus, even as her face contorted into a grimace of pain.

It’s me. I’m here. Stay with me, darlin’.

She cried out, bringing her hands to her head. Her vision cleared and she felt Jean’s hands on her shoulders, holding her down. A tidal wave of sensation flooded her—scent, noise, colors—and she knew what had happened. It was too much, and she pressed her hands against her eyes, willing it all to stop.

“Jean, he’s seizing.” She felt Jean’s hold on her relax and instinctively let herself go limp as the doctor’s attention was drawn to the new emergency. She opened her eyes as Jean’s hands left her entirely and then squeezed them shut again quickly, trying to integrate the sensory onslaught. Things were on her, running into her, and she clawed at her face, yanked at a tube that fed into her nose. She choked and coughed as it came out, and a putrid greenish-black liquid spilled out over her chest. She flung the object away from her and tried to recoil from the smell.

It’s okay, Marie. You’re gonna be all right.

“That’s it. Just keep pressure on it. Don’t worry about that. Scalp wounds always bleed like crazy.”

She turned toward Jean’s voice and forced her eyes open. She saw Logan, lying on the floor, blood trickling down one side of his face as Jean and Ororo attended to him. She reached toward something that hurt her arm and her fingers found the IV. She pulled it out, wincing, and a trickle of blood ran down her arm. She stared at the bright red streak.

Jean looked up. “Rogue—don’t move, please. It’s all right. I’ll be right there.” The girl didn’t respond; she was looking at Logan. “Just stay there. ‘Ro—over there, the defibrillator. Quickly. It’s just the one button right on the front. And give me that bottle.”

It’s all right. I’m gonna take care of you.

She couldn’t stop a whimper from escaping. Make it stop. I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to know.

“Turn the dial to two hundred.” There was a tearing sound as Jean ripped Logan’s shirt open, squeezed something from a container onto his bare chest. “Clear.”

Marie could feel the sharp crack of electricity from where she lay and her own body tensed as the acrid scent of ozone and singed hair reached her sharpened senses. She closed her eyes again, squeezing them tightly, willing the world to stop spinning.

“Three hundred. Clear.”

She couldn’t get away from it. Another lancing jolt of electricity, another blow to her senses, and she curled up on her side, trying to make it stop. Her skin tingled and she rubbed hard at her face with the back of one bare hand. The sensation made her wince again and she must have made another sound, because Jean’s voice called out to her again.

“Rogue, it’s all right. You hear me? He’s all right. There’s a pulse, a strong one.” Her attention was clearly pulled between her two patients. “Just take it easy. I’ll be right there.”

It isn’t all right. Marie blinked, wincing against the lights. She sat up, dizziness washing over her, and she held up a hand when Jean started to return to her. She shook her head. Her eyes fell on Logan’s jacket, lying on the table next to hers, she moved quickly, snatching it and in the same movement retreating into a corner of the lab. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up and she sank down, hiding her face in the worn leather. Its scent was comforting, familiar; it blocked out some of the acrid chemical stench that surrounded her.

Jean didn’t approach her. The girl looked like a trapped animal gone to ground, and she remembered all too well what had happened the first time she’d touched him. She reached out mentally towards Xavier instead.

Professor?

Yes? How is she?

Logan’s here. He touched her. Healed her. Can you come down?

There was a pause.

I will be there immediately. What about Logan?

His heart stopped and I had to shock him. He’s unconscious, but his vital signs are strong now. I think he’ll be all right. Marie is awake, but I’m not sure she understands what’s going on.

Is she calm?

Yes. She’s just— Jean sent him a mental image of the girl.

Don’t disturb her. I’m on my way.

************************************************

Please, god, don’t let me have killed Logan.

That’s all I can think at first. I didn’t expect to wake up at all, much less to colors too bright and sounds too loud to be natural. I didn’t want to wake up. I crouch in the corner and bury my face in the jacket I’m holding; I’m just trying to escape the smell of my own vomit and urine clinging to me, the antiseptic and strange odors of the lab, trying to avoid retching up anything my stomach still holds. I realize I know who’s in the room without looking, just by their scent. Jean, under the chemical smells, is warm and musky, like sandalwood and roses, and Ororo is there, smelling like grass and rain and sunlight. And then Logan—I can’t describe it, beyond the tobacco and leather and whiskey that are just the edges of his scent. It’s something I’d know anywhere, among a million other people. It’s intoxicating, and I close my eyes, the better to breathe it in. I don’t understand how he can be here. But I don’t really care about the whys and hows.

You’re not alone. I’m here. It’s his voice.

Without conscious effort, I’m in the room in my mind. The first thing I see is that the church doors are hanging open, torn off their hinges, the wood splintered. I don’t want to look inside, but I do.

What’s lying on the floor in the otherwise empty space isn’t complete enough to recognize as anything that used to be in human form. It’s scattered in bloody bits of pulp across the floor, and even as I look on in horror, they melt away, leaving only a bare oaken floor in a room with white walls.

I turn. The spot on the wall where my bedroom door used to be is smooth and unmarked. It’s vanished completely. The room whirls and expands around me, the walls shedding their grey hue, stretching into blinding whiteness as I look on. I start to run, and I have to go what seems a long way before I reach the third door.

It’s open as well, the bars retracted into the walls, the polished metal door standing wide. I’m shaking as I step over the threshold for the first time.

It’s a huge, vaulted chamber with walls of rough stone. There are two figures in its shadowy depths; I squint towards them and they become clearer. One is crouched over, naked, more animal than human, and he growls at the other, glaring suspiciously.

Logan’s back is to me. He glances over his shoulder and I know he sees me standing there. Then he reaches towards his double and I can’t quite see what he’s doing for a moment, but then he’s turning to face me and—there’s only one figure now.

I want so badly to run to him, to feel his arms around me, but it’s like that dream where you can’t move, where your limbs feel like they’re moving through molasses. He comes just a step closer, he stops, and I think for a second he’s going to speak, but he doesn’t. He just looks at me for a long moment, and his eyes are sad. Then he lifts his head, indicating that I should look behind me. I turn.

The door is melting away, and a golden hue is spreading outward, enveloping the whole room. The last door is there, moving towards me because I can’t move myself, opening wide even before I touch it. I look inside, and it too is bare, nothing there except white walls being washed with gold even as I look on. Nothing’s there. No, I’m wrong.

I’m there. Me.

I look back one last time, and the vaulted room is shimmering away into shadow. Logan’s form is barely discernable any more, but it’s there, and before the gold swallows everything up I do feel a touch, not quite physical, like the kiss of the summer breeze.

I should never have left her—alone—give me one more chance, darlin’. I swear I’ll never leave you alone again. Come back.

I gasp and open my eyes, and when I look up the Professor’s kind blue eyes are gazing back at me. He looks worn out and somehow older than usual, as though I’ve been gone for years. But I haven’t, I’m still crouched in the corner of the med lab, Logan’s jacket clutched against my chest, though his senses have faded enough that I’m no longer overwhelmed. The Professor smiles at me.

“Welcome back, my dear.”

“What—did you do that?’’ If he didn’t, that isn’t going to make any sense to him, but I can’t think straight just yet. He seems to understand the gist of what I’m asking.

“I saw no need to assist you, Rogue. I would have calmed you if you had appeared to be in distress, but I dislike entering anyone’s mind without their knowledge.”

“Logan—”

“Logan’s fine,” Jean says, and I look past the Professor’s chair to see her standing beside an examination table. Logan is on it, and she has her hand on his pulse. “He’s still out, but I’m sure he’ll wake up before too long.” Her lab coat is stained, covered with black smears and streaks of other things I don’t really want to think about, and I feel a rush of remorse for putting her through that.

“Can you tell me what happened?” The Professor holds out a hand to me and I crawl to him, putting my head in his lap like a small child. I don’t know why it’s my instinct to do that rather than to stay away, but somehow I just want him to make this all go away, and he looks so calm and quiet. He doesn’t shy away from my touch; I feel his hand stroke my hair gently.

“The room you made—all the people I absorbed were there, and then they all went away. The room went away. Did Logan do it?” I know I sound like a five-year-old.

“You did it,” he tells me. “The things in your mind are entirely under your control. I always told you that.”

He had, but I’d never really believed it. “But he was here.” I touch my forehead.

“Logan is over there.” Somehow the Profession understands what I mean, and his fingers on my head are soothing. “It’s difficult, dealing with the minds of others. But they are only thoughts, feelings. They aren’t real.”

I raise my head, look up at him. “Why did they go away?”

His expression is tired, but he tries to smile at me. “You integrated them, accepted them as part of yourself. Your experience of the world.” He touches my head again, reassuringly this time. “We’ll continue to work on it, of course. I had hoped that you realized—” He breaks off. “Come and see me when you’re ready, my dear.” I nod and get shakily to my feet, automatically wrapping the jacket I’m still holding around my shoulders. It’s cold in the lab. The Professor reaches up as though to take my hand and then stops, as though he’s afraid I won’t let him.

But it’s me who always worries about that, and he’s just been holding me in his lap as though I were his own daughter. Impulsively I lean down and hug him, and his arms close around my shoulders. He isn’t scared of me, and I gulp back more tears. At last I stand up, and somehow he doesn’t look so exhausted any more. He looks pleased. Almost proud. Maybe I’ve done something right tonight.

“I’m sorry, Professor.” I can’t even remember why this seemed like a good idea. “I guess I wasn’t strong enough.”

He shakes his head. “You were too strong,” he corrects me. “It isn’t easy to conceal something so powerful from people like Jean and myself, I assure you.” Jean looks up with a little smile at that, but the Professor’s eyes are serious now and locked on me alone. “I wish I had known.”

I didn’t want anyone to know. “I thought it was something I had to do by myself.”

“No one needs to be strong enough to do everything alone, child.” He reaches out, then, and he does touch my hand, just for an instant, just long enough that I feel the pressure of his fingers on mine. “I hope you understand that.” I nod, and he wheels himself back, maneuvering himself out of the lab.

Almost in a daze, I go and stand beside Jean to look down at the man who just saved my life. Again. Logan looks like he’s just asleep. Jean has a sensor attached to his chest, where she ripped open his t-shirt when she had to shock him. I can still see the red marks, and Jean reaches to smooth the torn shirt over the burns. She nods toward the monitor that sits at the head of the bed. The colored lights and numbers don’t mean anything to me and it must show on my face.

“His pulse and blood pressure are steady. His temperature is a little high, but as I recall that’s normal for him.” She offers me a pair of latex gloves and I shake my head.

“I don’t think I should.” Jean gazes at me in silence for a moment; I can’t tell what she’s thinking. “How did he know?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “He knew. He didn’t say much—he came in and just ordered us out of the way, told us he was going to touch you.” Her gaze turns thoughtful. “It didn’t work for a few minutes and we thought—then it kicked in.” She turns that analytical doctor’s stare on me. “Did it feel any different than usual?”

What’s ‘usual’? , I want to ask her. It’s not like this happens every day. “It was—I don’t know. He was different this time. It was calmer.”

She nods, and I can practically hear the wheels turning in her head. “The first time you touched him, he’d just had a nightmare, right?” I nod. “That’s always scary, dealing with a mind that isn’t fully under control. And he’d hurt you. He was terrified for you, I’m sure.” It occurs to me for the first time—and I can’t believe I’ve never realized this before—that what I do isn’t really all that different from what she can do. Only she doesn’t have to be in direct contact with people to hear their thoughts. I remember, suddenly, something she said once about how hard it had been for her to learn to block other people out of her head. If I’d listened, maybe I would have understood this sooner.

“Logan made sure he was very calm before he touched you this time. I’m sure that made it easier for you to assimilate.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Tell you what. I know you’ll want to stay with him. Why don’t I get you some fresh clothes to change into? I have some scrubs that you can borrow, and I could get you some gloves, if you don’t mind my going into your room again.” I know she’s finding a reason to leave us alone, and I’m so grateful that my throat closes up and I can’t speak. I just nod. She squeezes my shoulder briefly. “I’ll be right back. Don’t worry. He’s going to be fine.” She leaves and I swallow back my tears.

It’s utterly silent in the lab once she leaves, so silent I’m aware of the sound of my own breath. I reach for the gloves after all. I can’t not touch him, even if it has to be through latex. I pull them on and put my hand on his face; I can feel the roughness of his beard through the glove. Oh, I remember that. He looks even scruffier than usual and I can’t help just a little smile breaking through. I feel like such a selfish little brat, but it’s just so good to see him. I move my hand down to his shoulder, letting myself remember the way his arms used to feel around me. No one else was ever so easily accepting of me, so careless of my poison skin. When I was upset, when he and I would watch TV together, sometimes for no reason at all, he would always make sure I knew someone wanted to be near me. When he left, I thought I’d finally made even him afraid of me.

He left. Just like that, anger burns through me, and for once I don’t push it away or force it down. Maybe I really am going insane, because I don’t understand how I can be feeling so many opposing things at the same time. I’m furious with him, and I’m worried about him and I’m ashamed of what I did. I don’t try to keep myself from feeling any of it.

I tak a deep breath once the worst of it has passed. Mostly, I think, I’m just glad he’s here. The silence in the room is still deafening, and I suddenly realize why.

I should know why he’s here. I should be hearing his voice, like I did before, only now—I don’t even know if what I heard a few minutes ago was really him or just my imagination, because it’s all gone, the rooms, the voices, everything. Jean was right, it’s different, and now when I try to sort through what I must have absorbed, I can’t get to it. It’s not the same. With a shock, I realize I’m alone in my head for the first time since I manifested. Without the voices, I’m more alone than I’ve been in five years. They must be there somewhere, if the Professor was right and they’re part of me. But I can’t hear them. I can’t hear him.

The only way I’ll know is if Logan tells me. So now he has to wake up.

I may have a lot to answer for, but so does he.

Strength Out Of Weakness…Hebrews 11:34

Jean called me tonight.

I still can’t quite believe that. In the last four years, since the divorce, I don’t think she’s spoken more than ten words to me that she doesn’t absolutely have to, that aren’t related to official business.

Not only that, she called tonight to tell me that Logan showed up at the Mansion again, and I was not, in point of fact, raging mad about it. I mean, I wouldn’t have been after I heard the whole story. I hope. What I meant, though, is that when she first said it, her voice all choked up with emotion, naturally I figured he’d come back for her. Jean, I mean.

I’d assumed I’d hear something like that one day, and for the first six months or a year I expected it at every turn. I was primed for an explosion then. But you can’t stay at the boiling point indefinitely, and after I moved back out to the West Coast and got some distance, I calmed down. Eventually.

At that point, if I’d heard he was back I’d have been angry, hurt. But I still expected it, the way you expect the lock to turn after the door is closed. I didn’t think about it constantly, but I still assumed it would happen. And after a while longer, I figured if I did hear about it, I just wouldn’t care. I’d spent enough time waiting for the other shoe to drop and it was time to move on.

But when I heard Jean stumbling over those first words, when she said his name, I damn well never expected to feel what I did. I wasn’t completely free of all the things I’d expected—it still hurt, it still made me angry, and it was still sort of a relief that at least I wasn’t going to have to wonder any more. But honestly, I was happy for her.

Look, it sounds crazy to me too. Even when I interrupted her to tell her it was all right, that I was glad to hear it, I felt like I was kidding myself. I know how much of an asshole I was during our marriage. I’m not proud of it, and I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out exactly what it was that I couldn’t handle. But there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss her, and even though they always say it’s never just one person’s fault, she never did any of the things I thought she did. She always tried.

So I stopped her—I’m not a saint, I really didn’t need to hear all about it—and I told her I was happy for her, that I hoped things would work out for her this time. At which point she started laughing and said, “You never did listen to me, did you?”

So I listened. For about an hour. She kept having to put the phone down and go to check on Rogue and Logan and it took a while to get the whole story straight. Eventually she finished talking about them and then it seemed natural to ask after her own work, and before we knew it we were talking about us. About what went wrong, about what we hadn’t said to each other that we should have and what we had said that we were sorry about. I could hear that she was crying part of the time, although she pretended she wasn’t, and it was hell knowing I was three thousand miles away.

Finally she came back after another brief absence and told me she had to go. Logan was awake and she needed to check on the two of them. But she said she’d call me again, and before she hung up she told me it was really good to talk to me, and then, the last thing, so quick I almost missed it, she said, “Love you.” And then she was gone.

So I’m still sitting here in my office, it’s about three in the morning out here, and I’m thinking. And the main thing I’m thinking is, I was wrong. I was wrong about Jean, and I never really let myself consider that before. It’s always been my job to be right, to be in control, to make sure a decision gets made quickly, because that’s what the leader of a military operation does. It was her job too, and I think neither of us really wanted to give up that role. Part of the problem, undoubtedly—the soldier and the doctor, always was kind of an unholy alliance. And we never dealt with that.

Funny how a divorce, a few years and a few thousand miles will put things in perspective.

I was wrong about Logan too. I went with first impressions and I never really looked back. Kind of funny to realize how much that gives me in common with him. I really think he was wrong about me, too, but it’s going to be up to me to prove that.

And the blame game—it’s always been someone else’s fault. Jean for not ignoring the looks of other men, the Professor for not putting a stop to it and throwing him out, Logan for being an asshole who’d chase any skirt he saw. But—and if you quote me on this, I’ll deny it—he’s not like that, really. I know that now. It’s been five years. He may not be the kind of man I’d necessarily want to go out and have a beer with, but he was always straightforward. If he’d been after Jean, it would have happened by now.

It was the girl he came back for. And thank god for that. I’d have condemned him for that too, once upon a time, but from what Jean told me, from what I finally listened to, it was never that kind of thing. It’s a damn shame, what happened. I haven’t heard much of what’s been going on with the students in the last few years, but I had thought she was doing well.

I suppose I should get over the idea that I know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I wasn’t the only one fooled about Rogue. Marie. Whatever she’s been calling herself. I’d heard about an art show in Chelsea, all sorts of good things about her work. And now this.

It’s been a long time since I was around for the day-to-day issues at the school. I have to say, when I left, it was kind of a relief. I prefer to deal with adults, all things considered, and ‘junior headmaster’ was not a favorite part of my job description. I wish I could say that I think I’d have been aware of what was happening, but unfortunately I don’t really think that’s true. So many of our kids had so much to deal with, and it was hell trying to figure out who we could trust to help them. Jean worked herself half to death trying to be available at all hours, I know that. I should. I used to complain about it enough. I think the more mundane problems tended to get overlooked, anyway, in the midst of all the larger, more universal issues.

That was always a dilemma, running a school and all. Damn, you’d think we’d be better at this by now.

Anyway, Jean didn’t know much about the details. She only knew what had happened last night, when Marie tried to kill herself. And that’s when Logan showed up. Have to hand it to the guy, he does have a sense of timing.

I know the Professor will take this hard. It might be a good idea if I went back for a few days, just to make sure everything’s all right.

Yeah. And if you believe that one, I’ll sell you the bridge I’m going to take on my way from the airport.

This Present Time…Romans 8.18

It’s hours later, and I’m still standing in the same place. I haven’t moved, even to change, in case something happens. It’s so tiring, and my mind has circled around a thousand things and still comes back to the same two thoughts. Logan came back, and Why?

I never expected to see him again, and I have no idea how I feel about either the statement or the question. The rush of emotions I felt earlier has drained away, and I just feel exhausted. But I can’t leave, not after what he did.

Jean has come in from time to time, checking the monitors, taking Logan’s pulse. The last time, she lifted the bandage that covered his left temple and I could see that even though there was blood on the gauze, the skin underneath it was now smooth and unmarked. It was eerie. Jean smiled at me.

“It was even stranger when it was you,” she told me. “So much blood, and not a mark on you.”

I stared down at the place where the wound used to be. “Why isn’t he waking up, then? Did it take this long before?”

Jean laid her hand on my shoulder. “No. But it’s going to be fine, I promise. All his vitals are steady. Maybe he held on longer this time. Or maybe—he looked tired even when he got here. Maybe it just took more out of him this time.” She seemed to realize that she wasn’t being very reassuring. “Just stay with him, Rogue.”

And I shook my head. “It’s—you don’t have to call me that.” I felt her hand rubbing my shoulder, soothingly, as if she were my mother, my big sister.

“Marie. Just wait. He’ll wake up soon.”

He’ll wake up soon. And then what? “Dr. Grey? Can I ask you something?”

“Just Jean, okay? And of course you can.” She kept her hand on my shoulder, and her voice didn’t change, but I could feel her fingers tense a little.

“Okay. I was wondering…is it true people never try it again?”

There was a pause before she answered. “No. It’s not,” she said evenly. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t mean I want to. I just don’t know what to do. Now.”

She waited a minute to see if I was going to say anything else. “About what?” she asked finally.

“Everyone.” I could barely manage a whisper. All my carefully-crafted control was gone, and I didn’t know which was scarier—the idea of having to go upstairs and face the others, or staying here. I rubbed a hand under my nose. The latex of the gloves smelled funny and made my hands clammy; I peeled them off for the twentieth time and rubbed my palms dry on my shirt before reaching for the box again for a fresh pair.

Jean took my shoulders and turned me around then, and even though I didn’t want to look at her I did. Her gaze on me was like a spotlight, and I felt like she could see right through to my soul. “I know this is going to sound blunt. You’re going to have to deal with what you did.” she said at last, and I winced. “But I think you already know that. I’m not trying to make you feel any worse than you already do. I just hope, if you ever find yourself feeling the same way, you won’t keep it to yourself again.” Her voice changed then, and I think she had been going to say something else. She glanced down at Logan again before she continued. “I think that’s the main thing they’ll want to know. That you’d let them help.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t have said anything. I wanted to hate her for saying that, for being the grown-up doctor and making me feel like a stupid little girl again. But I couldn’t. She was only telling me the truth. I think she always had. She’d always known I didn’t like her, but she’d never tried to avoid me. If anything, she’d always gone out of her way to give me the opportunity to say anything I wanted to, even when that had been the hardest for her.

And the thing is, I’d always admired her, however unwillingly. I used to tell myself it was just Logan’s reaction to her that I was feeling, but it wasn’t. Not all of it.

Jean waited a minute before she let go of me and made a bit of a pretense of adjusting the blanket she’d put over Logan, giving me a chance to pull myself together. And when she did speak again, she’d changed the subject.

“You should go ahead and change. I put that clean set of scrubs out on the other table,” she said briskly. “And I had one of your friends get you some of your own gloves. I know those examination ones aren’t that comfortable.” She slid out of her white coat and made a wry face. “I think I’ll change too. There’s a sink over there, if you want to wash up a little.” She started out of the room, and she didn’t turn when she spoke. “Logan didn’t know until he got here, what had happened, you know.” I held my breath, waiting for what she’d say next. “Just listen to what he has to say when he wakes up, okay?”

And then she left again.

So now I’m standing here. I’ve washed my hands and face, changed out of the stained, soiled pajamas I’d so carefully chosen, and still nothing has happened.

I’ve been holding one of his hands in both of mine, and now I lift it, turning it over in my hands. It’s softer than I would have thought, smooth and unmarked like the healed wound on his forehead, and I think how odd it must be to go through life that way. Unscarred.

He looks so familiar—and so strange. And I have no idea what I’m going to say to him. I’m not the girl he knew before he left, and in many ways I never really knew him well at all. Three weeks, five long years ago. That’s all.

I try for the thousandth time to find any part of him in my head. Not even anything new, maybe just something I already know, just to tell me he’s still there. I know I heard him earlier, but all that is gone like a dream you remember clearly in the morning but vanishes by afternoon. But even the memories I painted from are faded, as though they’re only things someone has described to me. I feel vaguely uneasy as I sort through them. Something tells me that he is still there and that he wants to be heard, and god, if anyone should know how strong he is—

There’s a sound, and then his head moves slightly and his eyelids twitch. He mutters something I can’t quite make out and it takes me two tries before I can force even a single word through my closed-up throat. “What?”

“Did it work?” Now the words are clear enough to understand, but for the life of me I can’t answer. Then his eyes open, focus, and I catch my breath as his hand moves, jerks free of mine and then closes around my wrist.

“Logan—please—” I try to free my wrist, to no avail. He keeps his eyes locked on me and tries to sit up; I shake my head. “Wait—don’t try to move yet.”

“Don’t go.” His hand tightens even more, if that’s possible, and I wince.

“Ow—Logan, that hurts.” Instantly he lets go of my arm, but at the same time he manages to roll himself to his side and swing his legs over the side of the exam table. Instinctively I reach to steady him. “Be careful—you hit your head before.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He lifts one hand to his head, but there’s nothing there, of course. He’s obviously still dizzy, still fighting for control. “Are you all right?” His eyes, blazing, are inches from mine, and I can’t answer; it feels like all the wind is knocked out of me. “Marie!” One hand comes up, reaches towards me—then falls back to his side.

Something in me breaks when I see that, and a welcome fury starts to fill that empty hole in my stomach. “I’m fine,” I snap. “You’re the one whose heart stopped.”

His head comes up then, and even though he still clearly isn’t fully recovered, he shoves himself off the table and onto his feet—then has to put a hand back down on the exam table for balance. “What’s the matter with you?”

“What do you care all of a sudden?” I know how unreasonable I’m being, but it doesn’t matter. “What the hell are you even doing here? Why would you do that?”

“I—christ. Will you calm the fuck down? I had to.” His hand comes up again, but he just reaches for the sensor that’s still attached to his chest and rips it off. “What was I supposed to do, stand there and watch you die?”

“I didn’t ask you to do anything. It was none of your goddamn business what I decided to do.” I take a step back. “If you were so worried about me, where the hell have you been? You only show up for the hero opportunities?”

Logan doesn’t say anything for a minute, just stands there. His chest rises and falls as he breathes, the burns that marked him now completely gone. I can’t meet his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he says abruptly. “I fucked up. I know that. But you can’t do this again. I won’t let you.”

And that makes me even more unreasonably angry. “You won’t let me? You don’t get to tell me what to do. It’s still none of your business.”

“I mean it, Marie.” Logan does reach toward me now, and I knock his hand away angrily before it can reach my face.

“What the hell is the matter with you? Don’t you get it? I almost killed you earlier. Is that what you want? You prove you’re the big hero, and I have to live with knowing you died because of me?” I back up again, to get out of his reach.

“Just stop it.” Logan seems to have recovered nicely, because he takes a step towards me and lets go of the table. “Okay? You can be as pissed as you want at me, but not for that. I didn’t die.”

“Neither did I. So good, we’re even. Now get the hell out.” I turn and get about two steps before he grabs my arm and yanks me back. I don’t wait to hear what he’s going to say; I don’t even think. The arm he’s not holding moves before I can stop it and I slap him across the face. Hard.

He lets me go so quickly I stumble back, and only the fact that I’ve backed into the other exam table keeps me from falling. Logan turned his head away from me at the blow, and when he turns back he twists his neck and I see a look in his eyes I don’t have to search to remember. I’ve seen that look before—during cagefights. I open my mouth, I think because I want to scream for help, but nothing comes out.

Then Logan takes a breath and his hand drops back to his side, and I didn’t even notice his clenched fist until he opens his hand and flexes his fingers. He looks away from me.

My throat tightens up when I see that. “I—Logan, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to stay alive.” He sounds as exhausted as I feel, but after a moment he looks at me again. “You understand me? People care about you. You can’t do this again.”

Irrationally, I remember sitting in his camper that first night, watching him as he drove away from Meridian. He had that same intent look then he has now. And he’s telling me the same thing he kept telling me then: Don’t apologize. Back then, I believed everything he ever told me. “I won’t. I promise.”

“Christ…” He shakes his head. “What were you thinking?”

Again I open my mouth and nothing comes out. But suddenly he raises his eyes and I see his nose twitch. “What do you want, Red?”

“Sorry,” Jean says guiltily, and behind him, I see her standing in the doorway. “You know. Doctor. Patients. All that.” I turn towards her, too exhausted even to think about what to say, what’s going to happen. And then she smiles, a genuinely delighted smile, and her eyes light up. She’s incredibly beautiful when she looks like that. “I’m glad you’re back, Logan. You had us a little worried.” And then she glances at me, including me in that statement.

“I ain’t the one you should be worried about,” he grumbles. But Jean’s smile doesn’t waver, and she comes briskly across the room to us. Logan steps away from me as she approaches, and I tug at my gloves a little self-consciously.

“I’ll make you a deal. Let me check you over really quickly and give me a blood sample, and you don’t have to spend the night down here.” She casually waves a hand and a tray floats up beside the table.

He gives her a suspicious look. “What for?”

Jean arches an eyebrow at him. “Because I’m a doctor, trying to do research on mutations? Because I’m anal about complete records?” He still isn’t looking receptive. “Because I’m asking nicely?”

Even I smile at that, and Logan relaxes a little. “Fine. Make it fast.” Jean reaches for a test tube and a syringe from the little tray and I can feel myself turning a little paler than I probably already am. Jean notices.

“Rogue—I mean, Marie. This will only take me a few minutes. Why don’t you sit down over there and wait for us?” She nods towards the far side of the lab, where there’s a chair.

Jean knows I can’t stand needles. She should; the couple of times she took blood from me I nearly fainted. I nod and turn quickly before I can start feeling dizzy at the idea of that metal spike going into Logan’s arm, but when I get there and sink down onto the chair I see that Jean has gotten a screen and she’s opening it up, pulling it across the floor to block my view of the two of them.

She doesn’t want me to see. A spark of that intense jealousy I thought I’d lost a long time ago comes up, but I squash it firmly. She is a doctor, after all, and even I can’t quite make myself believe she’s doing anything by sending me to sit down except trying to make sure she doesn’t have another unconscious patient on her hands. I do wonder what she’s going to say while I’m out of earshot, but if she does want to say something to Logan without my hearing it, she doesn’t really even need me to step away, now that I think about it.

Logan gives me a little nod just before Jean pulls the curtain into place and I can’t see him any more.

It really doesn’t take more than a few minutes, and then the two of them come out from behind the curtain to join me. Logan’s pulling a grey sweatshirt on; Jean must have given it to him to replace his torn shirt, and for some reason I’m a little amused when I see it’s got an X-Men logo on the chest. He’s got his leather jacket, too, slinging it over his shoulder as he comes towards me, and he looks oddly thoughtful. Jean puts an arm around my shoulders, and I’m still suspcious enough to wonder what it is she’s trying to distract me from. “Come on. I had your friends clean up your room from…well, they cleaned up.” Ugh. One more thing I’ll have to apologize for.

As she leads us towards the elevator, all I’m wondering is what in hell we’re supposed to do from here. It’s late, which I didn’t really realize downstairs in the lab, but when we get out of the elevator the hallways are deserted and silent. The tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife and I’m damned if I know what Logan is thinking. Until Jean gets to the door of my room and opens it.

“So everything should be—” She flips on the light and stops short. “Oh, my goodness.”

Logan shoves her out of the way. “What’s wrong?”

For a second no one moves. Then I start laughing and Logan grabs my arm. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s—” I gesture helplessly. I can’t talk.

“It’s a disaster.” Jean’s dismay is just adding to the comedy. “What on earth…”

Even before I see the note pinned to my easel, which is now standing in the middle of the room, I know. I manage to choke back my laughter long enough to produce one word. “Jubilee,” I say, and go off into another fit of giggles. Logan glares at me suspiciously, undoubtedly thinking I’ve gone completely insane.

Because the room is a wreck. Paints and clothes are scattered everywhere, the top of my dresser is dusted with talcum powder, a bra dangles from my easel—I pull away from Logan and go retrieve it, and that’s when I see the note. I pull it free and bite my lip as I read it. Then Logan is beside me again, and he takes the note from my hand, reads it, and hands it to Jean.

If I ever see your room looking like that again, I’m going to come sit on you till you snap out of it. Don’t make me do it.

“She’s nuts,” Logan mutters, and that sets me off again. He’s looking at me like I’m some sort of unsecured explosive. “Jesus. You’re as crazy as she is.”

Jean still looks vaguely upset. “Are you sure you can stay here? I can put you in another room—”

“It’s all right. Jubes just put it back the way it usually is. Honest.” Somehow, the tension has dissipated, and I’m grateful to Jubilee for that, for making this all a little less earth-shattering. But oh, god, she’s going to kill me for this. And that thought is blackly amusing too. I can’t stop laughing, but I try.

Jean looks a little uncertainly at Logan. “I was going to…I mean, I asked the girls make up a guest room for you, but maybe I should check to make sure they didn’t do anything silly in there. Though I don’t know if…” She clears her throat. “I’ll just…let me know what you want to do, Logan.” And with that, I suddenly realize what the problem is.

Me, again. As usual. Because I’m a baby who can’t be left alone without a sitter. Except there isn’t one. God, I hate this.

Logan puts a hand on the door. “It’s okay, Jeannie. Give us a minute, all right?” Jean steps back into the hallway and Logan shuts the door. And now it’s just the two of us. And now that I’m not laughing I feel shaky, fragile, empty inside. I don’t know what to say to him.

“What do you want me to do?” Logan’s voice is gentle, and that surprises me somehow. “I mean, tonight.” Again, it’s awkward between us; the relief I felt over Jubes’s mess has melted away. It’s not going to be that simple.

I wish it could be. I wish I could ask him to stay and just pretend everything could go back to the way it was, to be sixteen again and have everything taken care of for me. But I can’t. I don’t even want that. I stare at Logan, and suddenly I know I’m going to come apart if he stays here one more minute. I have to calm down, get myself together. “I’m tired,” I say finally, and I force my voice to remain level. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” If my answer disappoints him at all, he doesn’t show it. He just gives me a searching look, and now I’m writhing inside. Just go. “You gonna be all right here?” I nod. He still looks a little hesitant. “Okay. I’ll…I should get some sleep too. I’ll be…” He shakes his head. “Somewhere around. We’ll talk tomorrow. That sound good?” I nod again. Doesn’t he get it? I’m exhausted and filthy and I am about to burst into tears and throw things and I can’t do that. It wouldn’t be polite. Logan waits for a second, the longest second I’ve ever lived through, and then at last he reaches for the doorknob.

“Logan?” It comes out before I can stop myself, but I don’t say what I was about to. “It’s good to see you.”

He finally smiles at me, just a little. “You too.” And then he opens the door and he’s gone.

Except that this time I know it’s not for good. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, what I’m going to have to do to explain myself, but at least he’s gone for now. I’m too dazed to care. I stumble towards my bed, and then I realize I’ll have to clear half my wardrobe off it unless I want to sleep on top of my jeans and shirts. Mechanically, I start pushing things out of the way, trying to clear a space.

The room and all the things scattered around it are making me dizzy. I don’t even try to put things away, but I can’t seem to stop moving them around, making piles, setting things in different places. Part of it is my mind still churning with everything that’s happened. Part of is that my senses, still absurdly sharpened, still won’t ignore the acrid stench that still clings to me. At last I force myself to just stop picking things up and head for the bathroom, shucking off the blue scrubs Jeannie gave me, and I leave them lying on the floor as I turn on the shower as hot as I can stand.

I wish I could wash today away completely, let it run down the drain and vanish like a bad dream. I can’t. What I did—I have to deal with that now, myself.

At least I can feel clean first.

The Conviction of Things Not Seen…Hebrews 11:1

Boihze moi. What a terrible day.

I came out tonight to walk in the woods, to be alone, to think. The woods are quiet, but never still. Many things I do not know, but I grew up on a farm, so the woods I understand.

I am Russian. Sometimes it seems strange to me, the things I have seen. I do not mean just things of the world, or of men. I have been lucky enough to see much more. On a farm, one has little time for learning or for art, for anything except the soil, but I am Russian, and all Russians have the love of beauty in their hearts, whatever their work. And I have had good fortune. I am not anything more than what would have been a peasant, in another time, but I have traveled more than my ancestors ever dreamed of, I have the power to become living steel, and if there is much I do not know, then there is so much more still to learn. I would never turn my back upon the world that has given me so much.

I think it is this that makes what I have seen this day so hard to understand. I have seen what Rogue could create and wonder how she could want to give that up, to walk away from life and love and everything there is.

I do not understand, and I hate the thought of what she caused. I cannot forget the look on Katya’s face when she heard the news. And then the hours of waiting, of watching grief and anger and blame being shared among us all.

To leave such pain behind you—I cannot understand how anyone could bear the thought. It angers me, the cruelty of it. And then I think how much pain could be endured before one ceases to care for anything else, and I know I must find the strength in my heart not to condemn.

I did not know Rogue well. Perhaps none of us did. I have not much experience with understanding women. My own sister is only a child, and I have not seen her since I came to America. When I think of her, she is always laughing, as young girls do. I think perhaps Rogue was not always like I have known her, calm and serene and serious. I think perhaps she was a laughing child herself once. Only there is no one to remember it. That is a sad thing, for no one to remember.

So I will try to forgive her. Kitty came to me and cried when she heard Rogue would live. She is good, Katya. She should never know such pain.

Her grandmother knows that. Her grandmother is the sort of woman I understand. She would have been no different if she’d been born in my own village—I knew a dozen women like her, women who had lived a long time and raised families and seen the best and worst that human beings could be. Nothing surprised them, nothing upset them, and always, always they had a word of advice for the young ones. And their bright eyes saw everything.

The more you live, the more you see. Never did I think I would see the things I have seen. Some I did not want to see, but this we do not always choose. Some things I have seen are beautiful. Katya is beautiful—a fairy princess. So American. So funny. So kind. When I came here, barely speaking English, feeling big and shy and foolish in this strange country, I used to look forward to seeing her smile every day. Some days I felt there was nothing else.

If there was nothing else…

So.

So now I should understand. I should. I am not sure I can. But I can see, yes, to be surrounded by beautiful things one cannot share in…

If I had been born a hundred years ago, I would have worked the soil and my hands would now have been callused and hard with work. I would not have been able to teach them to use a pen or a brush. I wonder if I would have hated the world for being held away from me.

There is a clearing here, where one can stand and look up and see the stars. The stars are beautiful, but cold and far away. They are so very far away. They do not come and stand beside you, and take your hand, and smile. You can look at them and wish, but that does not bring them closer.

I wish one of us had been there for Rogue. To make her smile.

Katya began to hope again when the strange man arrived. I was not sure she should. I did not understand what he could do. And Katya explained, and we prayed together. She taught me words in the language of her grandmother, and of her ancestors, v’niv’a she’ah, hoshi’e-nu, v’nerafe, Adonai, refa’ei-nu.

Through untold generations, though the words change, I think the plea remains the same. Save us, and we shall be saved, heal us and we shall be healed. Katya has always said she does not believe, and yet she spoke those words in the ancient tongue in her grief.

I have faith. I know my poor English makes it hard for me to explain what that means to me. I do not mean the simple faith of my own forefathers, the trust in a God who knows when each sparrow falls. I grew up a Soviet, and I think that kind of pure and childlike belief can be truly achieved only by children. But still I believe. I believe that joy is better than sorrow, that love is better than hate, that life is better than death. That there is a greater good, whatever one’s own troubles are. That one has no right to add to the pain of the world.

That is not what many mean by faith, and perhaps I express my thoughts badly. I cannot say. I do not know that it matters what you believe. Only that you believe.

I will go in now. Katya and Jubilee went to put Rogue’s room in order, in hopes that she could return to it tonight, at Dr. Grey’s request. There was such relief on her face when she came into the common room, to tell us that Rogue would live. To be a doctor is to see more suffering than most. It was good to know that her efforts were not in vain.

I will go inside, and find Katya, and see that she smiles for me tonight. That, too, will be good.

To whatever gods may listen to us here on earth, spaceeba. It was well done of you.

Many Waters…Song of Songs

I won’t look. I won’t listen.

Before, I was trying to hear the voices, frightening but so familiar. I didn’t know what to do without them.

But here, alone, in the shower, I don’t have to try. They’re there. The steam around me clouds my vision, and the water pounding on the smooth ceramic echoes in my ears, but it doesn’t matter. Everything seems sharpened, every sense I have. They whisper and mutter and want me to listen.

And in the back of my mind I hear them, but I concentrate on the rhythm of the water hammering on the tiles and ignore them. They aren’t real. They aren’t here. I’m alone.

My hands move over my body, washing away vomit and urine and blood. My arm stings when the hot water streams over the place where I pulled out that tube. Black swirls of water are washing down the drain; I don’t even know what it is that’s making the water so murky. But that’s not what I notice.

It’s like I’ve never touched myself before. It’s like someone else’s hands are washing me, like I’m a child again and someone else is running the washcloth over my stomach and face, cleaning me up, taking care of me.

No. Not like I’m a child.

I don’t know why, but that’s even more frightening.

I lean back against the wall of the shower stall. It’s so glossy and pristine—I’ll bet it hadn’t been used more than a few times before I was assigned to this room, and even with Jubes’ little tirade in the other room and my usual habits it’s immaculate, the maids’ standards of cleanliness around here being what they are. There’s soap, there are fluffy white towels and washcloths, everything I could possibly need.

I duck my head under the water and soak my hair through. When I toss it back, it falls in heavy strands over my shoulders and neck. The water is so hot it doesn’t even feel liquid. It feels like something molten flowing over me. I can feel the water streaming down over my breasts.

I move the washcloth up and run it slowly over that part of me.

For she is dark and yet lovely…

I won’t listen. God, whose voice is that? Not mine.

My hands feel so good there.

It’s been a long time since anything has felt good on this skin. I run my hands over my breasts again and again; I feel my nipples tighten into hard little peaks under my fingers.

So this is what they were warning us against, all those strange lectures they gave the teenagers in Sunday School. They must have known it wouldn’t do any good. This can’t be wrong—or maybe it has to be, because it feels so good. I don’t care which.

I slide my hands lower, gliding over my body, rediscovering the feel of it. In all the time since my mutation manifested, I don’t think I’ve ever let myself do this, never let myself just discover the sensation of my own skin. Or even before. I was scared of its being wrong, being a sin, being evil. I hated my body too much, for all the things it wouldn’t let me do, for all the things it had stolen from me, for all the corrupt and frightening and dangerous things it was and for the way it made other people act.

But it’s mine, and now I want to know it.

My hand slips between my legs, and I feel a thrill go straight through me, starting deep in my belly. I don’t know how I know how to do this, but I press the cloth over myself and begin rubbing softly, in slow circles, and I can feel something rising inside me, something wonderful.

Do not gratify the desire of the flesh.

I gasp, and I want to stop, and I feel sick with remembering that voice. But I can’t stop. I can’t. I won’t look, and I won’t listen, but I can’t stop. I’m the only one here. He can’t hurt me now.

I want to feel. I want to know.

I will not listen. Not to him.

That’s it, darlin’. Let it happen.

I know it’s only me. I know it, but it doesn’t matter. And somehow I’m not scared any more. My breath is coming quick and fast and I feel it building in me, this force that’s part of me but not, and I move my hand faster and the water cascades down over every inch of my oversensitized poison flesh and—

Oh, God.

When I can see again, when I have the ability to think again, I push my streaming hair back from my face and realize the water is mixed with my tears.

I turn off the water and get out of the shower, reach for one of those soft towels. I catch a glimpse of myself in the almost-steamed-over mirror, and then instantly I’m gripped by a wash of emotion so strong it staggers me. It’s so intense I can’t identify half of what it is—I just know it’s not coming from me, because I’ve never felt anything like this. I reach out and grip the cool porcelain of the sink, sending more tactile sensations through my nerves.

Desire. Fear. Loneliness. And surrounding it all, need. Enough need to make my own hollow emptiness fade in comparison.

No. No. Not all that. I can’t.

Church bells.

The memory whips through me, too powerful for me to block. The memory from my painting? That—it meant something to him, something important, I don’t know why. And that seems to break some kind of dam and suddenly I hear him again.

Christ, she’s warm. I’m not moving, it’s his hand I’m sensing, it’s reaching toward—oh, god, toward my own face, chalk-white and smeared with charcoal—

She can’t be gone. She can’t be. It’s pure raw anguish I feel, and I don’t know if it’s mine or his.

I can’t move for a minute; I’m not sure my legs will hold me up if I let go of the sink. But I can’t look into the mirror again. I jerk away and turn, grab one of the towels and try to wrap it around myself, but my hands are shaking too much. I just have to get out of here. I manage to get the door open and stumble out into the other room.

And then there’s a knock at the door.

If I Make My Bed in Sheol…Psalms 138:8

I don’t sleep much at the best of times.

Tonight, there’s no chance.

Somewhere in this school, there has got to be some teenager with enough guts to stash some beer, and I’m about five minutes from going and looking for him. Or her.

I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t have the first fucking clue. Christ. I thought it was all right. This morning, when I saw the paintings, I thought she was all right. I have never felt more like running in my entire life.

But I can’t. That much I know. What Jeannie told me, in that few minutes she stole for us in the lab—that would keep me here if nothing else would.

It’s good you came back. She needs you.

I just don’t know what to do about that. In what fucked-up universe am I supposed to know what to with a suicidal teenager?

That’s another thing. She’s not a teenager any more. She’s not the same girl I left here. And I don’t know her. I don’t know anything about what’s been going on here, what she’s been going through all this time. I never thought when I left that this would still be following me around, five years later. I don’t know anything.

But she does. She knows more about me than I do.

Don’t assume you know what she was thinking. What she is thinking.

Jean must know about these things, right?

I know you want to talk to her. Give her a chance to catch her breath, all right? Just take it slow.

So I try. But patience has never exactly been my strong suit. I last maybe an hour before I can’t take it any more. The walls of this room are closing in on me and I have to get out of here. I left the truck out front; maybe I’ll go drive for a while, or if someone moved the damn thing I can walk. I grab my jacket and head out into the hallway, but there’s one thing I have to do first.

Marie is not waking up and thinking I walked out on her again. I have to talk to her first, at least let her know that much. If she wakes up, if she comes looking for me…I can’t let her think that.

It’s more than that, if I’m gonna be completely honest here. After what just happened…I know she needs some time. But I can’t leave it like that, even for tonight.

Yeah. Trouble is, I still don’t know what to say to her. Christ, I’m still going in circles and I haven’t even gone anywhere.

Jean put me in a room down the hall—the first one that wasn’t being used, she told me, and she was a little embarrassed when she said it. She came in for a minute, she said to make sure everything was all right, but that was bullshit—it was just an empty room, you could see from the doorway nothing was wrong. She just looked around, and then before she left she came up to me and said a couple more things, real fast.

Those are what are still spinning around in my head now, as I’m standing in front of Marie’s door. I knock, which is kind of awkward. I mean, she’s probably asleep. When she doesn’t answer, I knock harder, and then when there’s still no sound from inside it starts to worry me. I should wait, I know. She isn’t going to try anything stupid again tonight.

But before I can stop myself I reach for the doorknob, and the door isn’t locked, and I open it. And she’s standing there, dripping wet, in nothing except a towel, which would just be embarrassing except for the look on her face. She doesn’t look shocked, or angry, or even surprised. She looks like something bad just happened, and I have to shut the door because she’s standing there half-naked, but somehow by the time I do I’m standing on the other side of it. And it’s just the two of us.

“What’s wrong?” That’s all I can think of. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t even move, and I take a step towards her. “Marie!”

A startled look does come into her eyes then, and she holds the towel more tightly around herself. “What do you want?”

“What?” I shake my head. “I just—are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be all right?” Now her voice is stronger, but there’s an odd note in it I’ve never heard before, and a new look in her eyes as she adjusts the towel again.

“You didn’t answer the door,” I point out guardedly. Her head tilts a little, and then she comes a step closer to me. “What’s going on?” Somehow I’m the one off-balance here.

“I don’t have to answer your questions,” Marie snaps. “You answer one of mine for a change. What do you want?”

She may act out. She may be angry with you. Just remember…

She was angry with me before, in the lab, and this time I make sure my tone stays level. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I was going out for—”

“You leavin’?” That strange note in her voice is still there, and she shifts her weight a little from one foot to the other. “That the idea? I should ask you to stay? I won’t.”

It feels like the breath is knocked out of me. There’s something so cold and calculating about the way she said that. “I wasn’t leaving,” I tell her. “Just going out. I couldn’t sleep.”

“So? Just go. You don’t have to give me an itinerary.” She takes another step towards me. “Unless this is what you’re going out for.” And she lets go of the towel with one hand, and it falls a little, and thank god her other arm is still holding it in front of her. “That it, Logan? Is this what you want?”

I look away. I can’t help it. It’s not that nudity bothers me, but this—

“Look at me,” she demands, and I start to turn back toward the door, because if this is what Jean meant by acting out, I’m not playing into it. “Am I that bad? You can’t even look?” I stop, and when I look back she’s let the towel slip even further. Her eyes are too bright and her words come out as if they’re under pressure. “What do you want? Just admit it, Logan. You came back for something.”

“Get dressed. Then we’ll talk.”

Marie laughs, a shrill, forced sound. “You don’t want to talk. I know. I know what you want.” And she lets the towel fall to the ground entirely, and she’s standing there naked in front of me, and all I can do is make sure I don’t look away from her face. I can’t leave, not now.

Just remember. Don’t let her throw you, whatever she does or says.

“I’m not here for that. You gotta know that.”

“God, you’re such a liar.” She laughs again, shakily this time. “But you can’t have it. Because I’m poison, Logan. Untouchable. You can look but you can’t touch.” She’s shaking, but she doesn’t move to cover herself, and she even takes another step forward. I have to force myself not to back up.

Fuck. Just…fuck. And just like that, here I am, smack in the middle of what Jean warned me not to let happen. “Just…calm down, will you? I never—” I never wanted that, is what I’m about to say, but I break off, because something finally occurs to me, something from what Jeannie said and from what I never really thought about and that Marie never told me, because I didn’t ask. Because I didn’t want to know.

She’s never talked to anyone about what happened to her.

I thought Jeannie meant about what happened when I touched her, when the Professor had to fix whatever I did to her mind. But that’s not what she was talking about.

This time I take a step towards her. “What’d he do to you?”

Marie goes completely still, and she doesn’t answer.

You can apologize for leaving, but you can’t let it all be your fault. Because it’s not, Logan. I know it would be easier for you, but if you let her blame you it’s going to be worse in the long run. Find out what’s really going on.

I keep my gaze right on her face. “I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you. But this ain’t all about me.” Her eyes change again, one more time, and the hard, cold look melts out of them. “You gotta talk to me. That preacher—he touched you too, didn’t he?”

Smoething in her gives way then, and I see it, but then she realizes what she’s done and what she isn’t wearing, and instead of answering she scoops up the towel and clutches it against herself, stumbles back and reaches for a pile of clothes that’re still all jumbled up on her dresser. The pile just falls to the floor and she kneels down, scrabbling through it frantically. Her shoulders are shaking, and she has one long black glove in one hand and she’s searching through the pile for the other.

Maybe I should back off, let her get dressed and pull herself together, but instead I move toward her. I slide out of my jacket and drop it on the floor, and by the time I get to her I’ve gotten my flannel shirt unbuttoned and I kneel down behind her, put it over her bare shoulders.

Marie goes still again as soon as I touch her, but I see her hands move, pull my shirt closed around her body, and I let my hands rest on her shoulders. “Easy there.”

“Logan…” She shifts nervously, almost shaking my hands off.

That hurts a little, but I just stay where I am, try and let her feel that this is all I’m going to do. “This okay?”

“Just go,” she tells me, and then she doesn’t move at all. Except one hand, and that just tightens on the glove she found.

I ignore that. “Tell me. Tell me what happened.”

She takes a deep breath, and I feel her relax just a little. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says weakly, but I’m not letting her get away with that and I think she knows it now. I don’t answer, I just slide my hands down her arms and help her get into the sleeves of the shirt, and I even wait while she finally finds the other glove and gets them onto her hands. Then she’s covered enough to lean back into me a little, and at last she breaks the silence herself. “It’s stupid. Nothing really happened.”

“Tell me anyway.” I squeeze her shoulder a little. “It’s okay, baby.”

“I don’t want to,” she repeats, but I don’t think she means it this time. She does want to, she just doesn’t know how after all this time keeping it inside.

I know how that is. “It’s okay,” I tell her again. “You can tell me.”

She doesn’t answer again for a long time. “Then can I ask you something?” she says finally.

Offering me a deal. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours? What the hell. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

There’s another long pause. “He didn’t rape me. He couldn’t. He just—he touched me.” Marie raises a hand and lets it fall again. “That’s all.” That’s not all, and I wait again, giving her that chance to breathe. “He thought I could stop it if I wanted to,” she whispers at last, and I hold her a little closer and wait some more. “He said he was doing it to save me. But he didn’t. He wanted to make me do things, he wanted to fuck me, and whenever he touched me I knew he’d wanted to do that ever since I was a little girl. And he thought it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, but—”

“It wasn’t your fault.” She shakes her head and I tighten my arms around her even more. “Listen to me, baby. It’s not your fault.”

It takes her a couple of tries before she can speak. “You don’t understand.”

Just remember. Don’t assume you know what she’s thinking. And don’t tell her you understand if you don’t.

But I do.

“I understand.” I swallow hard myself before I can go on, and it’s a good thing she isn’t looking at me right now. “Don’t you…you know that, right?” She shivers and I lean in closer, my mouth brushing against her ear. “You still got me up there too, right?”

“I don’t know.” She sounds so miserable. “It’s so strange, you know? I hear people, in my head, but I don’t really know if that’s what they’re like in their own. I don’t know anything, I don’t know whether it’s them or me.”

Them. I’m just one of ‘them,’ I guess, but it doesn’t matter. “Like what?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Anything. I think I know things but I don’t know if they’re what you really…” Marie breaks off that thought. “It’s just voices. And they all hated me.”

“I never hated you.” That much I’m sure of. “Never.”

“It wasn’t you. It was—someone else.”

Oh, christ. When she touched me, I know what she got. I know him, I know that voice, I know exactly what he can do. I should. I’ve dealt with him for twenty years now, and I can’t live with him. She’s been fighting my demons for five years, and I left her to do it alone. I want to get up and leave, because I can’t fix that one. But then she’s talking again.

“No. No. That’s not right. It was you, Logan. I thought it wasn’t, but it was. When you touched me to bring me back, I realized—there was so much anger there, and I thought he was angry at me, but he wasn’t. He was angry about being held back, and I thought if he got out he’d destroy what was left of me, but he wouldn’t. He wanted to protect me and I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t know.” This really isn’t making any sense to me at all, and I just want her to calm down.

“Shh.” She’s trying not to cry now, and trying to hide it. “You do know. I know you do. Remember, back in New Orleans, you had that nightmare?” She nods, so quickly it tells me something. “Still have it?”

“Sometimes,” she admits.

Shit. “That...I told you, that was real. That happened. I do understand. I know it’s not the same thing, but…I get it.” I can’t really find the words. I can’t say it. “I know what it’s like. The worst thing is when they get in your head.”

And somehow, that was the right thing to say, because she turns in my arms and just dissolves. She’s forgotten all about being careful, so I just try and make sure she doesn’t slip and nothing bad happens, because she doesn’t need that right now. And it doesn’t. She just cries herself out and finally she’s quiet, just still and heavy against my shoulder.

And then she remembers, and she pulls back, making sure she isn’t touching me anywhere she shouldn’t. I hate that—always did, but I let her, loosen my hold on her and let her sit back. She sniffles and rubs one hand under her nose. Christ, she’s a mess. Her eyes are all swollen and she’s trying to keep snot from dribbling down her face and my shirt from coming open across her chest. This is enough of a start, right? Jean said not to push her too hard. “You want to go wash your face? I’ll wait here.”

Marie nods, accepting the out, and she fumbles through the jumbled clothes to find something to wear before she gets up, still clutching my shirt around her, and disappears back into the bathroom. I get up too, and go get my jacket from where I dropped it earlier, put it over the back of a chair. I look around.

I guess she couldn’t sleep either, because the place isn’t quite the wreck it was when we left her here a few hours ago. The paints and stuff are straightened up, anyway, and there are other piles of clothes and junk, but it looks sorted out.

She looks more sorted out, too, when she comes back out. Her hair is still damp, but it’s combed back, and her eyes and nose aren’t as red. She’s buttoned up the shirt and put on some sweatpants, and she has gloves on again, adjusting them as she stands there in the doorway. “You still going out?”

“No.” Simple question, simple answer.

She nods, and wraps her arms around herself like she’s cold. “So what now?”

Fuck if I know. “What do you mean?”

She doesn’t look at me. “I know you think I should already know, but I don’t. I don’t know why you came here in the first place. When I woke up downstairs, I could hear…all these things from you, but I don’t know if that’s…” She swallows hard and then, finally, she looks up. “I’m not hearing you now. You said I could ask you whatever I wanted. So please, just tell me.”

I knew—goddamnnit, I knew I was going to pay in blood if I came back here, but I just didn’t count on having all the chits called in at once. And you know what? Fine. I turn towards the dresser.

“Logan—”

“I’m gonna answer. I just need to show you something.” Sure enough, she follows me over. I pick up my jacket and dump the items from the inside pocket out onto the dresser in front of her. “This. Look.” I pick up the picture and the postcard and hold them out.

Marie takes the things I’m giving her, and I can feel her hands trembling a little. She slowly sets down the postcard and the picture on the dresser, her gloved fingers tracing over both of them. “You remembered that.” It isn’t a question. “In my head, too, I mean.”

Every fucking day for five years. “Yeah.”

“You saw it? The show?”

“This morning.” Christ, it seems like a week ago already. I watch her face, and her brow knits a little as she compares the two pictures.

“Was it like you remember?”

I’m not sure, but I think I get why she’s asking. “Yeah. Exactly like I remember.” She’s still staring at the pictures like they’re a puzzle she’s working out.

“Is that why you came back? You saw the show?”

Jesus, she’s not making this any easier. “I came back to see you. The show was just a good excuse.” She’s so close to me, and I want to put an arm around her again, but I don’t. Marie sets the picture and the card down carefully, side by side, and then one hand goes toward the other thing that fell out of that pocket. I pick up the tag and put it into her hand, close her fingers over it. “Hey. This is yours.” She draws her hand back from mine. “Sorry. I shouldn’t’ve taken it back.”

Marie opens her hand and lets the chain slide along her fingers, and for a second I think she’s going to put it down. I don’t want her to.

She doesn’t. She looks down at it, dangling from her hand, and then she takes a step back, and holds it against her chest. “You have to tell me,” she says firmly. “Just…stop trying to get me to understand without saying it.”

“Sorry.”

“And stop apologizing.” Her mouth is trembling a little, and I can’t tell whether she’s trying not to smile or trying not to cry.

Personally, that smartass tone in her voice makes me want to smile. Because that’s all her, just like I remember, for the first time tonight. “I won’t if you won’t.” I reach towards her then, but she backs away and the fear comes back into her expression.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t touch you,” she says bluntly. “I can’t touch anyone.”

I close the distance that’s left between us slowly, and this time she doesn’t move. “I know.” It does give me pause to think. But it doesn’t matter, not really. There’s no way I can stand here and let her think that would matter. I reach out and brush her hair back from her face—carefully, but without making any big deal out of it. “That never worried me any.”

“It worries me.”

“Shh.” I brush a finger over her lips. “It doesn’t matter.”

She wants to believe me. I can tell she wants to. I’ve seen this look before, when she was a kid and I’d just told her something she’d never heard of before. Not in my town, must not exist. But she’d get that look on her face, and then I’d tell her again whatever-it-was was true, and she’d accept it, just like that.

Guess I gave up that level of credibility when I walked out on her. Just as well, too. I got no interest in having the answer to everything. She’s going to have to decide whether she can accept that or not. I just wait to see what she’ll do next.

What she does is to challenge me. Figures. “Why’d you leave?” But even as she says it, she brings one hand up and rests it against my side—almost like it’s an accident, maybe even almost so she could push me away if I try anything. But that’s not what it means. Not with her.

For her to reach out, even with gloved hands, means she wants to so badly she can’t stop herself. I still know that much, and I know enough to take my time before I answer, to make sure she knows I’m aware of how much it means. Almost five years—you’d think I’d have the answers for her by now.

“I don’t know.” That’s not what she wants to hear, I know, but it’s true. “Listen. I know you probably thought it was about wanting to get rid of you. That wasn’t it.” I reach down, casual as I can, and get her other hand in mine, and I can feel the way she’s gripping that little piece of metal. “I figured you’d think that, and I thought that’d be the best thing, for you to just get mad at me and get it over with. I couldn’t stay here, and I couldn’t take you with me.”

“Why not?” It comes out petulant as all hell, just like it used to when she used to argue with me all that time ago.

You know why not. I almost say it, and then it sinks in, what she’s been saying all night. Maybe she doesn’t, or maybe—like she said—she just needs to hear it. For real, not filtered through whatever happens when she absorbs my thoughts. And this is going to be tough, because I’ve never said what I’m about to say, even to myself. “Because. Look, you know and I know that there was nothing going on between us, not like…not like some people thought. But if I’d taken you with me, there would’ve been.” Probably sooner rather than later, too. And I see her expression change as she takes in what I’ve just admitted, breathing on the edge of hope that it’s true. “I couldn’t do that, not then. But I shouldn’t’ve left without talking to you. I screwed that up.” Okay, that’s the understatement of the year. “You got to try and understand, this wasn’t a real great place for me to be, back then. I thought it was the right place for you. That night—I just had to clear out. By the time I realized maybe not talkin’ to you first wasn’t such a great idea, it was too late. Already done. Figured you wouldn’t even want to talk to me.” And hell if I’d ever know what to say to someone on the phone, anyway. This is bad enough.

“I would’ve.” There. Little bit of pressure back, her fingers against mine, little motion of her other hand where it’s resting against my shirt—that’s good.

“I know.” Very deliberately I move even closer, and she gets nervous again.

“Be careful.” She tries to pull back, but by now I’m too close for her to get by me, and I bring the hand I’m holding up to rest with the other against my stomach before I put my hands on her shoulders again.

“I just got through telling you. I don’t give a shit about that. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to.” I watch her, and finally she nods that she understands. “What this was about, baby?”

She takes a long, shuddering breath. “I don’t—it was all so clear, in my head, when I did it, and now it just seems so stupid. Pointless.” Another quick breath. “It wasn’t because of you.”

“I wasn’t here.” There’s nothing she can tell me about wishing it were all over, that’s for sure. But she’s not me. I know this had to be about me, in some way. “Don’t tell me that wasn’t part of it.”

“Not just you,” she whispers, and I feel sick, even though I’m the one who pushed her into admitting it. “It was—I didn’t feel like me any more. I thought if I could just record it all…all the good things, then it wouldn’t matter so much when I…”

“It mattered.” I still can’t believe how near it was.

“I know, but it didn’t then,” she says tonelessly. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, and there just wasn’t anyone else who knew me.”

That doesn’t make any sense. “That’s not true. Everyone here knows you.”

“Not me,” she insists. “Not really me. Not Marie. She was alone, and there were just the voices.” She looks worried. “I’m not crazy.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think I can explain any more. Not tonight.” She sighs, and lets her head fall forward so it rests against my shoulder. “But I’m glad you came back. I mean, here. Tonight. I mean—”

“I know what you mean.” I tell her, and I feel her relax just a little. “Me too. Nothin’ on TV anyway.” And thank god, she laughs, and a little more tension goes out of her. Christ, she’s skinny as hell.

“Logan?” she asks. She tilts her head to look up at me, and she looks different now. She doesn’t look scared. “Am I like you remember?”

I study her for a long time before I answer that. “Yes,” I say finally. As soon as I say it, I’m sure it’s true, but I really didn’t know that until then.

She just keeps looking at me questioningly. “Are you sure? Because I think I kind of forgot, for a while.”

“Yeah. I’m sure.” She is. She’s the same girl, just not quite as young, not quite as innocent. I guess I had my part in that.

“I don’t know how much I really knew you. I knew things about you, but…” She kind of trails off. “You look tired,” she tells me.

No fuckin’ shit. “Yeah.”

“Me too.”

“Okay.” She reaches up, and one silk-covered hand brushes against my face. And just like that, it is okay. Not all of it—I know that’ll take a while. But it’s okay because I’m here, and she’s still here, and she knows why I came back. As long as she understands that, the rest we can figure out later. “Come on.” I take one of her hands and tug her towards her bed.

She’s practically asleep on her feet, and she lets me pull back the covers and gets itno bed without another word. I settle the blankets over her, but when I come around the bed and sit down next to her she raises her head from the pillow. “Logan…”

I don’t want to go, and I know she’s about to tell me I have to. “Just go to sleep,” I tell her. “I’ll stay till you fall asleep.”

She’s too tired to argue with me, or to bargain, or to warn me off. After a second she puts her head down again, and I lean over to unlace my boots before I stretch out beside her. I put an arm over her, over the covers, and she sighs a little and moves just a little closer to me.

Yeah. Good decision. It’s not five minutes before she’s fast asleep, her breath coming soft and even and her body relaxing under my arm, and I know I’m supposed to go now, but I don’t. I lean in close enough to catch her scent, under the perfume of soap and shampoo, and I breathe that in for a minute before I lie back next to her.

I can be careful with her without leaving.

I don’t want to leave.

Bear Witness To The Light…John 1:8

This is the first thing I remember. This is the first part of the rest of my life.

I didn’t know where I was. It was dark, and there wasn’t anything around me. I wasn’t cold, but I just felt like there was nothing there for a long way. It wasn’t frightening, it was kind of peaceful, but it was strange.

I was dreaming. Somehow I knew that, and somewhere I knew that I could wake up if I tried, but I didn’t think I remembered how. I wondered if this was one of those dreams where you feel like you’re flying, or falling, and then I knew it wasn’t, because something was keeping me on the ground.

I wondered if knowing that I was dreaming meant that I wasn’t any more, and then I knew I was almost awake, because I could feel the pillow under my head and the blanket over me, and I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to go back. But I felt like someone was taking my hand, pulling me up through the layers of semiconsciousness, and I squeezed my eyes shut harder, trying to make it all just go away.

“Hey. It’s all right, darlin’. Go back to sleep.”

My eyes opened then, and Logan was still there, and the reason I couldn’t move my hand was that he had it in his, holding it against his chest. I wanted to tell him something, but I couldn’t remember what. Logan turned onto his side, moving closer to me, and he lifted my hand up and held it against his face.

“It’s all right,” he repeated, and then I remembered. He shouldn’t have still been there. I’ll stay till you fall asleep, he’d told me, and that meant he should have left, because I’d been asleep. I was going to tell him that, only it was so hard to think what I should say.

Then I felt him press his mouth against the back of my hand, through my glove, and then he put that hand back down against my own chest with the other, and I realized I was still holding onto his dogtag. Logan tugged at my fingers, and it made me sad that he was going to take it away with him again, but I still couldn’t wake up enough to stop him. I just opened my hand and let him take it, and I closed my eyes again so I wouldn’t see him leaving. So I only felt it when he slid an arm under my shoulders and raised my head, and I barely even realized what he was doing until he’d gotten the chain around my neck and was tucking the tag, still warm from my own hand, into the shirt I was wearing.

I was fading back into sleep, but I still knew what was happening as he wrapped the sheet back around my shoulders and settled back, keeping me pulled tight up against his side. I could feel the cotton of his t-shirt against my cheek and his chest rising and falling with every breath, and his arms around me, and I knew no matter how important it was, I wasn’t going to be able to tell him to go. Maybe I was selfish, but even knowing how dangerous it was, I wanted him there. At least this once.

I don’t remember anything else, except that I felt safe.

I still felt that way the next morning. It was light. I remember the light.

I woke up with a terrific pounding in my head, and Logan’s arms still wrapped around me. The latter sensation was so powerful that it took me a minute to realize that the pounding was coming from the door.

I struggled up from the layers of sleep to realize Logan was awake too, and looking grimly amused. “Wha—” I ducked my head back down against his shoulder. I’m not good in the morning at the best of times.

“You better wake up, darlin’,” he told me. “I don’t think that lock’s gonna keep ‘em out.”

“Rogue, are you awake?” I heard from the other side of the door, and I groaned and shoved a hand through my hair. There was more knocking. “Come on. Open up or I’m coming through.”

Kitty. I sat up groggily. “What time is it?”

“Early,” Logan told me. There was another bang on the door. I stumbled to my feet and he stood up too. “Hey. You want me to—” He nodded towards the bathroom.

It took me a second to figure out what he was suggesting, and then I shook my head. “No.”

Logan gave me that half-smile I remembered so well, and then before I could protest, before I could even think about it, he reached out and caught my shoulders, and his mouth came down over mine in a brief, nearly-chaste kiss that ended too quickly for my mutation to pull at him. He released me and gave me a little shove towards the door before it really had time to sink in, before I even had a chance to react.

When I opened the door a crack, I saw Jubilee and Kitty both standing there, but only Kitty pushed forward. She caught my hand in hers, squeezing hard; Jubilee was standing a little further back, and she just crossed her arms and stared at me. Then somehow I was out in the hall and Kitty had her arms around my neck.

“We gave you till eight,” she said into my ear, and I can hear the relief in her voice. “Sorry if we rushed you.”

“I’m sorry,” I choked out. Her face was too close to mine and I tried to pull back a little. “Wait—”

“Shut up,” Kitty said fiercely. “You scared us to death, Rogue.” She held on tighter, if that was possible.

“Yeah. You don’t get to pull this crap with us anymore.” Jubes was still standing back, but she held up one hand semi-threateningly towards my face. “We don’t care. You might like sending up sparks for a change.” She was being her usual self, I guess, but there was something brittle about the tone of her voice. Then, deliberately, she looked over my shoulder and arched an eyebrow. “Mornin’, Wolves.”

Kitty let me go and stepped back, finally, and I knew from the way she turned red that she hadn’t known he was there. And then I felt Logan’s hand on my back, and it surprised me a little, that he was there so quickly, and I shivered. And I didn’t look back, but for some reason Kitty’s eyes suddenly turned a little watery and Jubilee glanced away, and when she looked back she seemed older than I’d ever seen her before, strangely stern and forbidding.

“Morning,” Logan replied. “Didn’t get your name the other night, but your friend here told me. Jubilee, right?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but Jubes nodded, and that might be the first time I’d ever seen her at a loss for words. I was more aware of Logan’s hand, warm against the small of my back, than anything else, but he was talking to me when he spoke next. Explaining. “Ran into her at a bar a couple of nights ago. She told me about your show.”

It took me a second to put it together, and then I could barely breathe. Jubes told him…which meant…and before I could do anything else, Logan moved past me, just a little, dropping his hand away so he could hold it out to her.

“Never had a chance to thank you,” he said, and then Jubilee’s expression changed. She didn’t look old any more, she looked like she was about five years old, and then she just took a step forward and threw her arms around him. She’s so tiny, she barely came up to Logan’s waist, and he had to lean over to hug her back. I think he whispered something to her, and when she looked up at me and put a hand up to push her bangs back, she didn’t say a word. But she still looked like a little girl. Like she’d just seen the first bad thing she’d ever seen in her whole life, and she couldn’t quite believe it. It was heartbreaking, both because I knew that wasn’t true, and because I’d done that to her.

I wonder if I ever looked as young as that.

I reached out to touch her cheek, and I wished I could feel how soft and warm it must be. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, just for her. “Thank you, Jubie.”

Jubes stared me for another second and then took a step back, away from Logan, and now she looked like herself again. “Breakfast, downstairs. Ten minutes,” she said, and walked away without another glance. Kitty looked like she wanted to say something else, anything else, but nothing came out. Finally she just took my hand again. “It’s okay, Rogue. She just…we wanted to make sure you were okay. We really did make breakfast, in the kitchen, not the dining hall. Come down whenever you’re ready.” Kitty, with those manners her grandmother must be proud of, remembered to include Logan with her tentative smile. “You must be hungry too. There’s plenty.” She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and disappeared in the same direction.

I stared after them, feeling a little dazed, until Logan pulled me back into my room, closed the door behind us. “Something I said?” he asked wryly.

“She’s mad at me,” I said quietly, and Logan ran a hand up my arm.

“Yeah.” He didn’t ask who I meant. I looked up at him, and I could tell he wasn’t sure whether to continue, but eventually he did. “She was the one who found you. Don’t worry about it now,” Logan added gently. “She’ll get over it. Go on. Get dressed before they come back lookin’ for you.” I knew he was trying to make it easier for me.

Somehow I made it to my dresser, gathered up things I needed from the messy piles of my belongings, and automatically I started towards the bathroom. Logan had sat down on the end of the bed to pull his boots back on, but he looked up when I paused at the door to give me a nod. “Go on,” he said again.

I wish I’d had the nerve to stay, then. It might have—but I didn’t, and I changed quickly behind the closed door. I peeled off my gloves and bathed my face and hands over and over—I don’t usually sleep in gloves, and my palms felt clammy. The gloves I’d worn were damp, so I left them in the bathroom when I’d changed and went to my dresser to get another pair.

But Logan stood up and crossed the room, taking them from my hands before I could put them on. “No gloves,” he said firmly.

I reached for them, but he wouldn’t give them back. “Come on. That’s not funny.”

“Who’s joking?” He folded them over and stuffed them into his back pocket. “I’ve got ‘em if you really need them. But you won’t.”

“Look, I know what you’re trying to do, but I can’t. I could kill someone.” I wanted to put my hands behind me, in my pockets, anywhere they wouldn’t be in the way—and then Logan reached out and took my arms. He held me still, and then he moved one hand, closed it into a fist. And placed it against my chest.

“So could I,” he reminded me, and both of us were silent for a moment before he dropped his hand away self-consciously. “Come on. You saw.” He jerked his head back towards the door. “They’re not worried about it either.”

There are a thousand things I could have answered to that, but for some reason I didn’t want to. I wanted that magical morning to go on and on the way it had begun—I didn’t want to think about practicalities and for once I had permission not to. I hadn’t had time to think about anything more than that.

And it did go on. For just a while longer.

Logan put his arm around my shoulders as he led me down to the kitchen, and it really did seem like things were all right. Kitty and Jubilee were waiting, and I didn’t have a chance to feel uncomfortable before they attacked the both of us with eggs and burnt bacon (Kitty’s work) and coffee worthy of one of New Jersey’s finest truck stops (courtesy of Jubilee). They bustled around and played waitress and fussed over me, and Logan watched it all and seemed to think it was funny as hell. Eventually they apparently decided they’d done enough for one morning and left us alone. The last thing Jubes said was that they’d warned all the other students to leave us alone too. I still remember her pausing in the doorway, tossing that out as her exit line. “Don’t worry. We’ll establish a perimeter.” She winked at me, and I started to get up but she just vanished through the doorway.

Logan was standing by the kitchen island, leaning against it with his coffee in one hand, and I came over to slide onto one of the stools across from him. He set down his cup and held out a hand, and I almost took it before I remembered. Then I crossed my arms so I wouldn’t forget again, and shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Told you to stop worrying about that.” But he changed direction, put his hand on my shoulder instead. “How’re you feelin’?”

I shrugged again. “Okay.”

“Hey.” Logan tapped me under the chin, and I looked up reluctantly. “I told you. She’ll get over it.”

I wanted to believe that, and for the moment his reassurance was enough. For the moment, everything felt—safe. Logan studied my face for a minute and then came around the island to stand behind me, sliding his arms around me, and if I tensed my body in fear of my bare hands touching his he pretended not to notice until I relaxed and leaned back against him.

For that moment, I was sure nothing would ever hurt, ever again.

This is the part I wish I could change. The part where everything changed.

“Oh—sorry.” Jean was in the doorway when I looked up, and I was really shocked when I saw her. I’d never seen her looking so, well, plain. She was still wearing her scrubs, the same ones from last night, there were dark circles under her eyes and her hair was pulled back crookedly. She barely glanced at us at first. “Coffee. Thank god.” She made a beeline for the coffeepot, poured a cup and took a gulp without pausing. Then she made a face. “Oh, my god.”

I laughed. “Jubilee’s special blend.” And I almost never got to burn my mouth on it, ever again, I thought. It seemed funny at the time. Ironic.

Jean made a wry face. “Well, perfect for right now.” She took another sip, refilled her mug. “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting, but can I talk to you for a minute? Both of you?”

“Sure.” Logan answered, and she came to stand across from us. I started to sit up, to draw away a little, and Logan’s arm tightened firmly around my waist and held me where I was. And I didn’t resist, in fact I enjoyed that mark of possessiveness. “What’s up, Red?”

Jean didn’t really seem to notice; she just reached out to add some milk from a carton Kitty had left out to the dark brew in her mug before she answered. “I’ve been running some tests.”

“All night?” I asked, but the answer was obvious. “Why?”

“Well, you know how it is…when I’m onto something….” Jean spaced her words between gulps of coffee. She was wearing her glasses and at that point I noticed that she was holding a folder under one arm; she set it down on the counter in front of her as she spoke. “I don’t mean to sound nosy, but I’m too tired to be tactful right now. Rogue, you remember the experiments we tried when you first got here?” She really must have been tired, because she’d forgotten she didn’t have to call me that any more. Maybe she was just too used to it. Also because she should have known not to say that to Logan.

“Experiments?” I could feel Logan tense up—I knew that word held very different connotations to him.

“Jean was trying to figure out how my mutation works,” I told him quickly. “To see if they could help me control it. It wasn’t anything bad.” It was mostly just swabs of the inside of my cheek and a couple of blood draws, and then—after—she just stopped asking me for them. “What about them?”

She addressed Logan more than me at first. “All we found out was that her mutation works chemically,” she explained. “Something in her skin that infiltrates other people’s systems. We tried to find out what it was, hoping we might be able to inhibit it.” She took another sip of coffee and gives me a little smile. “We weren’t successful.”

“So what about it?” Logan still didn’t sound like he liked it. I hadn’t really liked it either, as innocuous as it was. It always felt strange, knowing they were trying to figure something out about me I didn’t even know myself.

“So I’ve been running some more experiments based on the old data and the blood samples I took last night. From both of you.” That didn’t make sense. “There’s something I’ve isolated.” Jean looked directly at me. “Have you touched Logan since you left the lab?”

I felt my cheeks redden. “A little. Not enough to—” God, that was embarrassing. “Not enough to affect him.”

“I’m not gonna hurt her,” Logan added, slightly menacingly.

Jean threw up the hand that wasn’t holding her coffee. “Look—can both of you understand, please, that this is a medical question? Rogue, I’m not trying to take Logan away from you. Logan, I’m sorry my ex was an jerk to you, but that was never my idea. Now can you both please stop treating me like I’m the enemy?” I heard Logan give a snort of laughter behind me, and Jean dropped her hand to the counter, where it landed on that folder. “Thank you. For heaven’s sake.” It was funny, honestly, but I was too keyed up to be able to be amused. I knew there was more coming.

Logan shifted a little behind me and leaned forward. “Okay. Truce.” He reached out and touched her hand, briefly. “So what’s with all the questions?”

Jean’s expression grew serious. “I probably shouldn’t say anything before I know more, but I don’t think the samples are enough to continue with. Logan, your mutation counteracts all kinds of chemicals, right? Drugs, anaesthetics, poisons.”

“Yeah. So?”

She looked at me with a clinical gaze. “Last night, when Logan touched you, it took a long time for your mutation to affect him at all.”

I couldn’t breathe, all of a sudden.

“Because she was hurt,” Logan said impatiently, and I knew he didn’t understand, and it couldn’t be what Jean meant. It just couldn’t.

“No,” she told him. “That shouldn’t matter. In fact, the more significant factor was probably your health. You were tired, and you hadn’t had any contact with her in several years. Any immune system is less able to fight off toxins when it’s stressed, or when it lacks exposure.” Jean took in the obvious incomprehension that was facing her and translated into layman’s terms. “There’s a good chance you can touch her now without being absorbed.”

When she said that, right out loud, my hands started shaking, even pressed against my own body. “Are you sure?” My voice sounded strange in my own ears. I made myself sit forward, away from Logan, and I reached out to hold onto the edge of the counter in front of me. I needed something more solid to touch; I felt like I might faint.

Jean shook her head. “No. I only know that right now, Logan’s blood sample is unreactive to yours in vitro. In the test tube,” she clarified hastily. “But I’m sure enough to suggest the possibility. We can set something up in the lab where—”

Before I could even think, before she even finished the sentence, I felt Logan’s hand come down over mine, where it was gripping the counter. I don’t think any one of the three of us took a breath for at least a minute. Then he lifted my hand, and just like he had the night before, I felt him press his lips against the back of it. Only this time, I could feel it. I could really feel it. Then he let my hand back down, but he didn’t let go.

Finally Jean reached up and took off her glasses. “Theory confirmed,” she said, and she really sounded shaken. “Logan—are you sure—”

“It’s fine,” Logan answered her, and he didn’t sound like himself either. Jean looked at me, and I don’t know what she saw, but she started to say something and then changed her mind.

“I’ll just…we can talk later,” she stammered, and gathered up that folder and her coffee mug and glasses and just left us there.

It might have been better if she’d stayed.

I pulled my hand free of Logan’s and brought it up in front of my eyes. It looked the same as always. I felt dizzy. I remember thinking I needed to wash my hands, and then thinking that that didn’t make any sense. I was starting to hyperventilate; Logan was saying something but I have never had any idea what it was. I wanted to move, all of a sudden, but I couldn’t. Then Logan’s hands were at my waist, turning me around, taking my hands away from where they were covering my mouth—and I hadn’t even realized I’d moved them—and taking my face in his hands. I felt his lips against my forehead.

“Take it easy,” he told me. “Take it easy. It’s all right. Take deep breaths.” His fingers stroked my cheeks, my neck. Then—I think mostly to try and make me calm down, get me to snap out of it—he kissed me again. Just like he had that morning in my room. It was quick, gentle, almost innocent.

Almost.

This is the part I can hardly stand to remember, the part I wish I could forget. It used to be easy, forgetting.

No. It wasn’t easy. I just got good at it.

I shoved him away.

I still, to this day, don’t know why. All I knew was that I had to get away from him before he…I still don’t know. Before he saw something? Did something? I remember thinking I was going to fall apart again and I didn’t want him to know that. I think I wanted to tell him that, to tell him I needed a minute, but I was afraid to open my mouth because I thought I was going to be sick.

It was when he reached out to me again that I slid off the stool and onto my feet, stumbled back away from him. Logan jerked his hands back, and I turned and ran, pushing through the kitchen’s French doors and out into the grounds. I ran past the tennis courts and the soccer field, towards the trees. There was a trail that led into the woods and a sort of clearing there where there was a picnic area and I followed that without thinking, but I didn’t stop there. I just kept going. Following an instinct, I guess, maybe even one of his. To get to ground. To hide.

Then something knocked the breath out of me, and I was flat on the ground, and even then it took me a second to realize that the wetness on my face wasn’t only tears, not anymore. I’d just caught my foot and fallen hard, and I could taste my own blood where my teeth had driven into my lip. I sat up as soon as I could, crawled toward the tree whose root had tripped me, crept around into its shade and waited there, pressing my hand against my wounded mouth.

I expected him to come after me, expected him to appear any second to drag me back to the house, to make me wash my face, to demand what the hell I thought I was doing. I curled myself into as small a space as I could manage and waited for that to happen.

It didn’t.

The leaves that carpet the ground were damp under me and I could feel the bark of the tree rough against my face and hands, still strange to feel them uncovered, oh God, and the rustling I heard was only the wind through the branches of the trees around me. I could smell the earth.

I breathed. In and out, I breathed, and waited, and tried to tell myself that the way my heart was pounding was only because I had been running so hard, because I’d fallen, because of the pain. I stayed there for so long that it felt like I would never move; everything seemed to be standing still. Maybe I slept, but I don’t think I did. I just stopped noticing that time was passing. The next thing I knew it was much later, even though I really wasn’t aware of having done more than blink my eyes. The sun had moved despite my efforts to make things just stop, had started its downward journey across the sky, and the shadows slanted differently across the ground. I was stiff with the cramped way I’d been sitting and when I raised my head I could feel the pattern of the bark etched into my cheek.

The terrified, incoherent feeling in the pit of my stomach was finally gone, and I didn’t feel nauseated any more, so shakily I got to my feet and brushed the dirt off my hands and jeans. I rubbed my palms against my sweatshirt again as I made myself walk back towards the house, and I still remember thinking how odd it was for my hands to be dirty.

I wonder if I’ll ever learn the trick of living in the center of things, not so much all or nothing. It’s exhausting.

And then I got to the little clearing, and Logan was sitting there, his back towards me, on the bench of the picnic table with his arms resting on his knees. He didn’t turn, though I knew he must have heard me coming.

I could see a little trail of smoke rising from where he was. Then he moved, but not much; he dropped his cigar and ground it out with the heel of his boot.

Slowly I came into the clearing, step by step, and I thought I should say something, but I didn’t. He was more patient than I was, more patient than I’d ever realized, and I knew it didn’t matter how long it took for me to make my way across those last few yards and sink down onto the bench beside him, near but not near enough to touch. I knew he wouldn’t leave before I got there, and I was pretty sure he’d been there all the time I’d tried to hide from him. He wouldn’t leave. Not yet.

We just sat there for a while, until finally Logan dropped his head forward a little, not really looking at me but almost. “Feel better?” My throat felt too dry and tight to answer, so I just nodded, and he nodded back, just once, raising his head to look back off into the distance. “Yeah. Sometimes you just have to get away from everything.”

I stared off in the same direction. He didn’t say it as though he was angry, or hurt. He didn’t say it with any emotion at all in his voice. Just a statement of fact. He might not even have been talking about me.

I knew should apologize for behaving like that, or for shoving him away, or I should try and explain that it wasn’t because of what he did, not really…only I didn’t know how to start, and somehow I didn’t really think Logan wanted that anyway.

“I wanted to ask you something.”

My shoulders tensed as I braced myself against whatever was coming.

“That picture you painted of me, near the church. You know where that is?”

It was so unexpected, and it didn’t even make sense for a second, and then I realized what he meant. I shook my head, and then I realized something else. I still remembered the things I painted, although now they seemed more like stories I’d heard than real memories. I knew the painting he was talking about. And I knew there was a church there, I just didn’t paint it in. But I had known it was there.

Where that is? I didn’t understand how he couldn’t know that. How else could I have known?

My expression must have given away my confusion, even though he still wasn’t looking directly at me, and he hunched forward over his knees a little more. “You don’t, huh.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t really seem to expect a response. “Okay.” He was quiet for another minute, apparently considering things. “There was some stuff you probably should’ve known about me, back then. I knew you were having the nightmares, but I didn’t know how much…” He sighed. “I still don’t know.” He glanced over at me, just for a second. “Don’t suppose you feel like telling me anything much now.”

I wanted to, and I hated myself because I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I stared straight ahead, and I saw him raise one hand briefly before letting it fall back to his side and sitting up, twisting his shoulders. He must have felt as stiff as I did, if he’d been there all that time. Then he told me.

“I don’t remember anything about my life before what happened in those nightmares,” he said bluntly, and I recoiled a little at the shock of that brutal statement. “Nothing. So I don’t really know what I would’ve told you, anyway. I just don’t talk about myself. To anyone. It wasn’t just you.” He shook his head. “Hell, I don’t know. Sometimes it seemed like you already knew. I still don’t know why you came with me. I never thought about it, not then. I just figured…” Logan seemed to get lost in his own thoughts for a minute. “Three weeks,” he said suddenly, and I caught my breath. “It doesn’t seem like that was all it was.” And now there was something in his voice, something I couldn’t give a name to, something I didn’t want to acknowledge, even then.

But I did move, closer to him, and I caught hold of his arm, pressed my face against his shoulder, and it felt as strong and as unyielding as the tree. I wanted him to touch me then, anything, even just to pat my hand or my knee, but he didn’t. He didn’t move away, though, and I held on, and waited for him to go on. To say something else. To make one more miracle. This time, I swear, I’ll be different. I tried to take it back.

It doesn’t work that way, and I knew it even then. Logan brought his hands together and laced his fingers through each other, very deliberately, and I could feel the tension in his muscles go all the way up his arm. “I don’t know how to help you,” he said tiredly, and I choked on a sob. “I keep doin’ the wrong thing.”

And I didn’t know what to say. Because I didn’t know either, and Logan giving up on me was the last proof of what I already knew: it was too late. Somewhere inside, I’d already decided that I was just so broken that nothing would ever fix it, and I’d kept thinking that so long that it became true. Logan was just a half-forgotten dream to me. I’d ground that dream over my poison skin like broken glass until it finally, finally stopped hurting me, until it was as dead as everything else. He wasn’t real, and I knew he’d never want to touch me even if he could.

Now he was real, and I could feel that he’d wanted to. He wasn’t just pretending, I had felt it, and if I’d had the least ability to make words I would have tried to tell him it was all my fault, all just me letting everything twist inside me until the good golden things I’d thought I was keeping safe had withered away, had turned out out to be as unreal as my demons. I wanted to ask him to understand that I would try to fix it, that I would try so hard. I wanted to tell him it would be all right.

And I couldn’t, because I wasn’t sure it would be, and I couldn’t lie to him. How could I explain it to him when I couldn’t even explain it to myself? He’d not only wanted to touch me, he’d risked doing it when he’d thought it could kill him. But as soon as I knew he could, I didn’t want him to.

Not in the way he wanted.

Logan reached up then with the arm I was holding, cupped my cheek in one hand and held my head against his shoulder, just for a second. Then he let it fall away and he turned, tipping my chin up to survey my face, and I didn’t care what I knew I must look like. I didn’t care if he saw me looking the worst I ever would. I didn’t care.

“What happened? You fall?” he asked gently. I nodded, and Logan touched one finger to my lip, for just one fleeting second. “You should put some ice on that.” He tried to smile, I think. “Come on, let’s go in. People’ll start worrying about you.” He stood up and took something from his back pocket, held it out to me.

I closed my hands around my gloves and looked away as I pulled them on, covering up the dirt and the scratches and my skin. Then I felt his hand on my shoulder, just for a moment.

“It’s okay, Marie. It doesn’t matter. I’m here for you, you understand?”

Yes. I understand.

Logan took me back to the Mansion, and he made sure I got upstairs without anyone seeing my scratches and bloody lip. He brought me something cold to keep down the swelling and he made me wash up, and he stayed with me that day and again that night until I fell asleep, stroking my hair back and rubbing my shoulders through my blankets. He told me over and over again that he was sorry. That it was all right. And I never said a word, that whole time. I couldn’t.

When I woke up he wasn’t there.

He’s never left, and he isn’t there. He talks to me, and he sees me every day, and he even puts his arms around me when I’m upset and comforts me when I have bad dreams, even though my dreams are all my own again. But when I wake up, he’s always gone.

I would never have thought that would make me feel safe too.

A Voice is Heard in Ramah…Jeremiah 31:15

Let’s have a little chat, shall we? Because there’s a few things I want to set straight.

I get the image, all right? I get how I’m supposed to be this gum-chewing, permanently-adolescent wiseass who flits around being a busybody and poking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, with questionable fashion sense and a temper. I know how I come off. It doesn’t help that I’m short, Asian, and goddamnit, cute.

But here’s what you need to get through your head before we go any further, and what I would have thought my best friends already knew. I’m not the comic relief. I have fun with how I dress or how I talk, that’s my choice. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that’s all there is.

This place makes me sick sometimes. I tell you, the drama around here is better than a movie—everyone running around acting like their problems are the center of the universe. And guess what? They’re not. I know some stuff sucks for everyone. I should.

Pause for reflection. You with me?

Good. So after I saw my parents murdered in front of me, in case there are any stragglers in the group, I made a personality out of being a mall rat. There’s a nice piece of constructive sublimation for you. Take away everything I have? I’ll make a life where you go for things you don’t need. Take that, motherfuckers.

Don’t look so surprised. You should’ve known I had it in me. And on some level, I guess I judge people by my own standards. You want unconditional love? Get a puppy. Or Kitty. She’s good at that.

Okay, that’s not fair. Kit’s a nice girl—one of the best, she’d do anything for a friend. The thing is, half the time she has no idea what that would be. Nothing really bad’s ever happened to her. Not that I hope it will, I just mean she’s still at this place where the bad stuff just shocks her.

People like me, we’re not like that. We expect the worst. It’s safer that way, doesn’t take you by surprise. But so help me, I never saw this coming. Maybe I got soft, living here, but I wouldn’t have believed I wouldn’t have seen the signs. And Kitty didn’t understand why I was so angry. She kept asking how I could be mad at Rogue when she was hurting so much. “She needs us,” she kept saying. “She needs us to be there for her.”

Yeah, right. Because that worked so goddamn well in the first place. If she needed us so badly, why the hell was she always pushing us away? And don’t go reading any subtext into any of that. This is not about someone needing someone else instead of me or any other crap like that, so put your collective tongues back in your mouth and get your minds out of the gutter. Believe it or not, I was not oblivious to the way Rogue felt about the Vanishing Canadian—certainly not half as oblivious as the rest of the School seemed to be, anyway. And I tried to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t. And when I say wouldn’t, I mean Pentagon-level-security, pretend-I-don’t-exist, silent-treatment-for-a-month kind of not talking about it.

You’re gonna be as stubborn as that, you ought to use all that inner strength towards some reasonable goal. Like staying alive, say, so people who thought they were your friend don’t feel like your attempted suicide is all their fault.

So okay. Maybe it was me I was mad at as much as Rogue. Congratulations, you led me to a little self-discovery there. Still. I was there for her. I was. Whoever still thinks I’m just an airhead? Fuck you. It wasn’t like that.

I admit, I took it out on Wolverine too, that morning he finally showed up. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. It wasn’t really all his fault for being the biggest asshole on the face of the earth when he walked out; genetics must’ve had something to do with that. But christ. Pick up the phone. They have them in Canada, I’ve been there. Write a postcard. Stop being so goddamn self-absorbed and do something useful. And Rogue was being no genius either. That was no spur-of-the-moment act she pulled. She planned that. How mean do you have to be to not even think about who’s going to have to walk in and see the mess you left?

That’s the thing, you know? All this analysis, all these reasons, but what it boils down to was that it was just all so unnecessary. That’s what pissed me off more than anything, especially once we knew Rogue was going to be all right—the pointlessness of it. You want your big brooding Canuck with the bad attitude? Fine, I can help you with that. But I can’t help when you swallow half a pharmacy and I find you breathing what you just vomited up, because I’m trying not to hurl myself from all the puke and the shit and the rest of it.

Not a nice picture, is it? Remember that. Most suicides don’t die pretty.

Sorry. I still don’t like to think about it. I mean, I was coming to tell her he was coming back. I was sure of that. I was going to tell her how I’d seen him. I had it all planned out. I wanted to tell her how he’d looked when he’d seen that postcard, how he knew about her work.

I’m not supposed to be angry? Fine. Why don’t you tell me how I’m supposed to feel when instead, I just got to tell him the next morning that she was lying downstairs with her brain fried from not breathing. For nothing. For no reason.

Listen, my family’s dead. No one’s ever going to be able to give me a good reason for walking away from life on their own. If it took me a few days to get over the shock, sue me. It’s cool now, me and Rogue. Really.

So on that note, let’s review the status quo, shall we? Rogue tries to kill herself. Wolves shows up at the eleventh hour and saves her life. Admittedly the whole thing about how her skin and his mutation short-circuited each other, or whatever the hell it was, sort of strained belief, but I don’t even know why anyone was surprised. After everything else that had happened that week, that seemed like the most reasonable outcome there could have been. I didn’t actually know how the whole exchange-of-mutant-powers thing worked in the first place because Rogue had never let one of us so much as brush by her skin. She never told me about that. If I had known…I don’t know. I wouldn’t have been so down on Wolvie when he came back, at least. I’m still getting shit about that, by the way. Kit keeps calling me ‘the only woman to bite the Wolverine and live.’ Ha frickin’ ha.

But whatever, it worked. So there we all were, still kind of reeling, but there was a sense of relief. Everyone was happy, right? Except…not so much. Rogue really was better in some ways, but she was also guilty and embarrassed and kind of overwhelmed, I think. A lot of people avoided her. It did something to the kids our age, seeing this happen right in our own home. Bad things happened to us on the outside. Not here. It wasn’t just me; everyone was a little shell-shocked. Then there were the upper echelons. They didn’t quite know how to react either. First the Professor, of course, who really is a good guy, but when it comes to talking to kids, he’s better with advice on homework problems than personal ones. Then there’s Ororo, who just doesn’t exactly understand any of us mere mortals. And don’t get me started about Jean and Scott.

What, you hadn’t heard that yet? Christ, yeah, our former Fearless Leader showed up the very next morning, commandeered a plane and flew himself cross-country or something. Seems like the whole lesson about pointless waste of life! hadn’t been lost on him, at least. I saw him come in, because I was sort of in the hallway at the time. Well, on the stairs. See, I was on my way to the kitchen.

Yeah, all right, to tell the truth, I saw Scott getting out of a cab from a window upstairs and snuck down to watch. Sterotypes have to have a basis in fact, all right? Anyway, you want to know what happened or not?

Okay then. Jean was on her way through to the lab, I guess, and she was carrying a cup of coffee, and she almost dropped it right in the middle of the foyer when Scott opened the front door. Scott didn’t even blink—well, okay, I can’t swear to that, but let’s just say he never broke stride. He just dropped his bag and crossed the hallway and picked her up and kissed her, and when he stopped kissing her and started telling her how sorry he was she was crying. So I exited, stage right.

I have some scruples, yes. Thank you for asking.

I know Jeannie was still worried about Rogue, but the two of them kind of went off the grid for a little while there. Understandably, but still. So that was them, wrapped up in fixing their stuff, Xavier and ‘Ro fumbling around trying to be helpful and not getting anywhere much. And then there was Logan.

I definitely have a soft spot for the big idiot. I really thought he did good, those first few weeks. He was with her a lot. It didn’t surprise anyone, obviously, especially after it filtered out about how he could touch her when no one else could, only he was also not with her when I figured he would be. Do I need to spell this out? Good. Figured you couldn’t be that slow on the uptake.

I wondered what was going on there, when I saw him going out night after night and only coming back to the Mansion in the early hours. He looked like hell. It wasn’t like he talked to me or anything, god forbid, but I’ve got eyes. Anyone could see he was crazy about her, and anyone could see he was slowly going absolutely nuts trying to do the right thing by our Nell. Anyone who bothered to look, anyway.

I watched that going on for a while, and then I checked in with Rogue. Found her in her room, which was about the only place she ever was.

She wasn’t doing much better. I didn’t get it, to tell you the truth. I just thought she was feeling guilty about the whole suicide thing. I talked to her about it, and she cried prettily and apologized all over the map, and then…

I still don’t quite get this, but then, she tried to tell me Logan was really hanging around the School for me. She was pretty convincing, too. She told me it was something she knew, because she’d absorbed his thoughts when he’d touched her, or some crap like that. She was starting to scare me, tell you the truth. Because seriously, any time Logan and me had been in the same room? She knew about it. Which actually amounted to a couple of games of pool, catching a rerun of The Right Stuff on TV one night and maybe winding up in the dining hall at the same time once a week, but by the time Rogue got through with the details, you’d think he’d been haunting my every step. It was so surreal even I almost started to believe her. And she was saying it like she had to spit it out or die trying. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, which if you know me, is saying something.

So what could I do? I went to find the other stubborn idiot. He was harder to track down, but I finally ran him to ground out back, behind the garage. He was smoking one of those stinky phallus-substitutes of his. I walked up to him, planted my hands on my hips and waited till he acknowledged my existence with a nod. “Good thing Rogue’s wrong about you having the hots for me, because I’d eighty-six those cigars first thing.”

Logan practically choked on the big-league cancer stick. “What?”

“So now that I’ve explained the situation, you want to quit dicking around and do something about it?” He didn’t quite know how he wanted to react to that, but eventually he threw down the cigar and stomped on it.

“Where’d she get that idea?”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “Gee, thanks.”

“Cut it out.”

All right, I’d gotten his attention, so I eased up. “She doesn’t really think that, dimbulb. She’s just trying to get your attention.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“So I had this bright idea. We play into it, see? Flirt a little, let her catch us in a clinch maybe, get a rumor going around the school. Snap her out of it a little.”

I am telling you, anyone as humorless as Logan is a living incitement to practical jokes. He actually sputtered. Man did not know whether to shit or go blind. I dropped my arms-akimbo pose and let him off the hook before he imploded. “I’m kidding, you big dope. I was just trying to get you to listen to me.” Ah, wounded male ego. A lovely scent. I kept going, before he could get it together enough to stalk off in high dudgeon. “I really do have a good suggestion. If you want to hear it.”

He chewed that over for a second or two. “What is it?” he finally said, reluctantly. Which told me just how frustrated he must have been, poor guy.

“Get her away from here. Take her on a trip. A long one.”

He wasn’t expecting that, I could tell. For just a second it was all out there in the open, just how much he wanted to do exactly that, and then his expression closed down. “Not gonna happen,” he said briefly. “But thanks for telling me. I’ll make sure she knows it ain’t like that, you and me.”

“You really aren’t paying attention, are you?” I had to move fast to get in his way again. “She already knows that. And why not? It’s a good idea.”

“It’s a fucking stupid idea.” He brushed past me and kept going towards the house. I had to step up my pace to keep up with him.

“Why? Give me one good reason you can’t.” Long-legged son-of-a-bitch, I was falling behind.

“Give you three. She lives here. They got doctors here, and she needs ‘em.” We’d reached the back door near the kitchen by now, and he turned to look at me with one hand on the doorknob. “And she’s not ready.” Damn, he looked torn up.

“That’s not true.” He opened the door anyway. “Will you give me two minutes here?”

“Beat it, squirt. You done enough.” And then Logan stopped so short I plowed into him, and I had to dodge around him to find out why.

Listen, it may seem funny now, but I’m trying to set the stage, so just take my word for it, this was a tense moment. We had come across a Dark Secret of the Mansion. We had walked in on something we were never meant to see. It was horrifying.

Scott Summers. No shirt, no shoes. Fridge door open. Drinking milk straight from the container.

Oh, the humanity.

Like I said, it was pretty nerve-wracking there for a second. Basically, I wasn’t even really sure Logan knew Scott was back; Jean had been pretty much holed up in her lab or her quarters for weeks and Scott had presumably been down there with her. If he did know, they certainly hadn’t been shooting pool or sharing beers and sob stories. For all I knew, this was the last moment of someone’s life with all four limbs. I saw Logan’s shoulders go all tense and his fists balled up. I saw Scott’s hand go to one side of his visor.

I had to do something fast. So I did what I do best. No, not that. There were enough sparks flying already. I just got in the middle. “So now that we know who’s responsible for that nasty cold that’s been making the rounds, Scott, don’t you think it would be a good idea for Rogue and Wolverine to take off for a while?”

Scott almost dropped the milk carton, and had to catch it with both hands. Then he set it down on the counter, shut the refrigerator door and hitched up his sweats before crossing his arms over his bare chest. “Matter of fact, I do.”

“It ain’t any of your business.” Scott might have dropped his shootout-at-the-OK-corral pose, but I could tell even without looking that Logan hadn’t.

“You’re right about that.” I held my breath, but Scott didn’t make any fast moves. In fact, after a second he sighed and let his arms fall to his sides. He didn’t even look at me. “But Jubilee seemed to want my opinion. For what it’s worth.”

“Which would be what? Fuck all or jack shit?”

“Whichever.” Scott looked away for a second, then straight at Logan, over my head. “I owe you an apology.”

There was this long, uncomfortable silence, and then I felt Logan shove me in the back. “The hell kind of act were you setting up here?” Oh, shit. Take my word on this, kids: you do not want the Wolverine speaking to you in that tone of voice.

“She didn’t set anything up. Believe me, this is not how I would have wanted to have this conversation.” Yeah, there was a reason Scott used to be the leader around here. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I should have talked to you as soon as I got back. I just…” It’s hard to tell with the glasses and all, but I think he was actually blushing. “Had some other stuff going on.”

“I bet you did.” Did mine ears deceive me, or was that Wolverine’s version of amusement? “Barely tearing yourself away for some…liquid refreshment?” Phew.

Scott crossed his arms again. Can’t blame the guy. “Look, Logan…” He hauled himself up short and took a deep breath. “Goddamnit, you don’t have to like me. I’m just trying to tell you, I know I was wrong. About everything I said about you, all right? Five years ago, I wouldn’t listen to anyone, and I made the biggest mistake of my life. You got half the brain I think you do, you’ll learn from that.” He waited a second, and so did I, but Logan didn’t answer. “You won’t listen to me, so listen to Jubilee. She knows more about what goes on at this place than anyone short of the Professor. If she says it’s a good idea, it is. So take Rogue and get her out of here for a while. If it makes a damn bit of difference, I can’t imagine anyone would look out for her better.”

I was impressed. Granted, Scott kind of ruined his big exit line by taking about three steps, then coming back self-consciously and reaching for the milk carton to replace it in the fridge.

No. Honest. He did. I could not make that up if I tried.

I waited just a minute after Scott finally did make his belated departure, and then I thought maybe it would be good if I left too. I mean, Wolves could handle this on his own from here on out, right? I’m small and quick. I thought maybe I could scoot out unnoticed.

Fat chance. I got about three steps before I was lifted off the ground and deposited unceremoniously on the kitchen counter, where I was eye-to-eye with trouble. Of the whiskered, growling type.

“You got your two minutes. Convince me you didn’t tell that uptight pretty-boy exactly what to say.” I tried to think of something to say. For once, I couldn’t. I really thought he might smack me.

“I didn’t even know he was in here. I swear. I haven’t even seen him since he got here. I just didn’t want you two to kill each other and then there’d be all kinds of new shit to deal with. And then Rogue’d be pissed at me again, and so would Jean. And she’s a telepath. She’d know it was me.” I knew I wasn’t making any sense, so I took a breath and checked to see how he was taking it.

“Payback’s a bitch, short stuff.” He was smiling, the big bully. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

I punched him on the shoulder. Gently. “You…you…you scared the shit outta me.”

“Good.” He reached up and messed up my hair. “So…you still determined to be helpful?”

“Soon as my pulse gets back under two hundred. What’d you have in mind?”

“You go talk to her. Have her packed and out front in half an hour. Do whatever you have to do.” Action very definitely suited him better than waiting around. “I got a couple people to talk to.”

Stringing out the rest of the story would just be overkill. I could go on about how I went upstairs, walked into Rogue’s room and just started hauling stuff out of her drawers. I could tell you how she went from sitting there moping at the window to laughing so hard I could hardly get her down the stairs. I could tell you how hard she hugged me before she opened the front door, and then how Logan was already out there, leaning on his truck and waiting for her. I could tell you how she got all teary again, and how he came and got her and just kind of wrapped her up in his arms while I hauled that big old duffel bag of hers down the steps and muscled it into the flatbed of the truck.

But I can’t tell you what he was saying to her, because as soon as I did that I got the hell out of there and left them to it. So too bad to all you nosy parkers.

They’ve been gone over a month, and I could tell you where they are, because she called me last night.

But I won’t.

You’ll just have to wait for her to tell you herself. Then maybe you’ll see some real fireworks.

Peace out.

When I Awake…Psalms 139:18

I open my eyes, very reluctantly. Mmm…too early to get up. The sun is barely slanting through the windows.

I roll over. Logan’s gone.

I sit up, and push down the covers. The other side of the bed is cool, although the pillows and sheets are rumpled. Sometimes they aren’t, and I’ll know he didn’t really come to bed at all that night, even though he always stays with me until I fall asleep. Always stays until he knows I won’t have nightmares.

Until he knows I won’t need him. Then, sometimes, he must get restless, and he goes out. Sometimes he drives, usually the old motorcycle he picked up in West Virginia and fixed somewhere in between there and here. Sometimes he just walks. I don’t really know where he goes, because I don’t ask.

I don’t know why I don’t ask. He’d tell me. Maybe that’s why I don’t ask. He didn’t used to leave at all. I didn’t have to ask why about that.

I slide out of the bed, which is an old-fashioned iron-framed monster with brass knobs on each post, unpolished of course. The bed is high enough that my feet dangle over the edge without touching the floor until I get up, and it makes me feel childlike and tiny. The old oak floor is cool in the early-morning chill, but it won’t be in a few hours, I know. The heat comes up quickly once the sun rises.

In the bathroom, I take a minute after taking care of the usual bodily functions, brushing my teeth quickly and giving my hair a little less of an honestly bed-tousled look. The mirror over the sink is mottled around the edges with age and more than a few generations of humidity, giving everything it reflects a patina of antiquity. Still, I lean into it, studying my reflection carefully. It’s only partly the tarnished mirror that makes me look a little unfamiliar to myself. I like my new look, even if Logan isn’t quite sure about it yet. I stop on my way back to bed and push the window open to let in the scent from the garden, and I can’t resist leaning out to take a breath of the dewy air.

We’re in New Orleans. This is Lynn and Toby’s house, or rather, it’s the guest house behind it. The house itself is a huge rambling old place they got cheap, and Toby’s been fixing it up ever since—he says the big storm was just the last straw for the former owners and that it’d been falling down for as long as he could remember it, which is Longtemps, chérie. They bought it about a year after we were here, and someday when more of the house is ready they’ll take in paying guests, as Lynn puts it. Lynn does the garden, and she likes it wild and overgrown. She’s let old roses and honeysuckle take over the wall of the guest house, and it smells wonderful in the mornings.

I set the old windowframe about halfway open and scamper back into bed to escape the cool morning air. The guest house isn’t finished either, but it’s going to be beautiful when it is. Right now there’s still work to be done—this bedroom is one of the only finished rooms. So it’s almost camping, but with running water. I’m not that much of a country girl, not any more.

The bedclothes on my side of the bed are still warm when I snuggle back down into them. Old linens scented with lavender, and I’m wearing the green silk chemise I got down on Decatur Street a couple of days ago. Lynn still loves shopping.

It’s been a strange trip. It took us more than a month to get this far, mostly driving down the coast. I think Logan wanted to avoid any question of going through much of Mississippi, and I wanted to avoid asking any questions. It’s not that he wouldn’t answer, I know that. It’s just…I’ve been trying so hard not to plan anything. I spent so long doing nothing else. I just wanted to go with things, for a while.

I roll onto my stomach and reach over for the alarm clock. Five-thirty. I sigh, and put the clock back down on the nightstand, and adjust one green strap over my shoulder.

I decided when we got here that maybe a little planning was in order. I just don’t know exactly what I’m planning. Or maybe I do, but it’s just hard to figure out how to get there. There are things to be overcome. As usual.

The first few days we were away were hard on both of us. I don’t think Logan was as confident as he’d seemed before we left the Mansion, and I don’t blame him. He didn’t want to be there, but he wasn’t sure I was going to be all right away from, well, from medical help. Some days I wasn’t either. But it was the right thing to do, bless Jubilee’s interfering heart. I didn’t realize how much atmosphere matters, when you’re trying to get a new perspective on things.

I cried a lot. I’m not even sure why, exactly. I would be okay all day, kind of giddy even while we’d be travelling, and then at night I would crash and burn. I’d have these crying jags, or I’d get angry over stupid stuff, and I would take it out on him. And then the bad dreams, so he couldn’t even get away from me when I slept. He started out getting us separate rooms, and that lasted exactly two nights. It wasn’t worth the explanations when I would wake up screaming. Ugh, I don’t want to remember this, and I pull a pillow over my head to block out the memory.

He’s been so patient with me. After what I pulled at the Mansion, and after what I finally told him about Father Fallon, just the fact that he stayed, let alone still wanted to take me away with him, was pretty incredible to me. And the rest of the stuff I’ve put him through since then…and all he’s gotten out of it is to be back on the road with the same problem he started off with five years ago. It’s funny, in a sick way.

Although really, getting away from the Mansion was a relief for Logan; at least he has that much.

I wish I could say the same for myself. This whole lack-of-planning thing has a way of turning on you. I don’t know when to do anything, or what to do at all. Half the time I feel like I’m pretending to be sixteen again, and the other half I’m being a complete bitch.

It doesn’t seem to bother him. Most of the time. I don’t know if I should just be grateful for that, or worried. Nothing I’ve done makes him angry, not since…

I keep telling myself I won’t be that way any more, and then the next thing I know I’m acting out again, wanting to stop, but I’m not sure how and I’m already in the middle again and...and I guess if there’s anything good that’s come out of that it’s that no matter what, I know I can depend on Logan being there for me. I do know that now. Because this, the fact that he’s not here right now? That doesn’t mean anything. He’ll be back. Not that it makes me feel any better about him having to leave in the first place.

I don’t know exactly when he thought of coming here or why he thought it was a good idea, but I think it was a good choice. Back to the beginning, in a way, only maybe a different ending. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t anything that premeditated. Maybe it was just force of habit, a familiar destination. Maybe he just figured I’d fit in, another crazy woman in the South. Dime a dozen.

I can hear an engine coming up the street, even from under my feather-packed barrier to the world, and I put the pillow back under my head where it belongs, turn on one side to burrow further into its softness. I wish I really were still asleep.

Because I do love it when Logan wakes me up. It’s only another couple of minutes before I hear his boots on the paving stones outside, and the door opening in the next room. Logan always takes off his shoes near the door, so it’s quieter as he comes into the bedroom. He leans over and slides one hand along the back of my neck. “Hey. You awake?”

I think he knows I am, really, but he doesn’t mind playing along. I stretch and let my eyes open just a bit. “Maybe.” I wait till he sits down, stretching his legs out along the bed and leaning back against the headboard, and then I roll over. “What’d you bring me?”

Logan’s opening a paper bag and pulling out a cup of coffee. “What do you think?” He hands the rest of the bag over, and I push myself up on one elbow to take it.

Before we leave this city, I swear to god, I’m going to force him to say the word beignet. Better yet, I’m going to make him eat one. “Ooh…still hot.” I pull off a piece, savoring the sugar and the crispness. “God, these are so good.” I sit up and unwrap more of my breakfast, using the bag as a napkin. “Sure you don’t want some?” Logan just raises an eyebrow at me, and I take another sugary bite and then lean in to kiss him. “Thanks.”

“Careful. Coffee’s hot too.” But he leans over to set the cup down on the nightstand, and now his hand is free to run along my bare arm, up to the thin strip of satin over my shoulder. I take another bite, just taking in the feel of his hand on my arm.

It took a while to convince him it was all right for him to touch me, more than just holding my hand or maybe stroking my cheek. Not his fault. I don’t blame him; I acted pretty crazy that first night, and it was a lot to take in, all at once. I was so careful all those years—I never had an accident, not once. No one ever got hurt because of me. Well, except for him.

It was exhausting, more than I realized. I know it was more than that for Logan. He doesn’t want to rush me into anything I might be scared of, or that I might regret. He still isn’t too sure about what’s going on in my head, I understand that. Neither am I, really. And part of it is my own fault, too, for ducking back into pretending I really am sixteen again and that this is just a do-over. That won’t work, and every time I catch myself being too childish, I remind myself that Jubilee would kick my ass for acting that way. And then I do it again. Idiot. I don’t know what I’m playing at, as my daddy used to say.

But I do know this much. I want him. And I wish Jubes was here right now to tell me, step by step, exactly what I need to do to make that happen.

I lean forward and kiss him again, and this time his tongue runs along my lower lip for a second, making me shiver. “You do want a bite,” I tease, and damn it, I’m doing it again, laughing it off instead of going with the feeling.

“You taste good without the sugary stuff,” Logan says, and that seems encouraging. So I break off another piece and hold it up to his mouth, and he takes it, wrinkling his nose a little. But I can’t help laughing again. He swallows the bite. “What’s so funny?”

“You’ve got powdered sugar. Right there—” I giggle again as he swipes at his chin, missing the dusting of sugar entirely. Some of it’s even in his beard. “Here. Let me.” Logan slides his hands up further as I lean in again to wipe his cheek clean, and then I change my mind halfway and kiss him again instead. I can feel his fingers against my hip, stroking gently.

I didn’t have any nightgowns of my own to bring along. I never wore one again after…well, after. I used to wear t-shirts, pajama bottoms, sweats. The first night after I got this chemise, though, I wore it to bed and I knew he’d notice. Logan was in the bathroom, and I just let him get into bed beside me and realize it for himself. He’s been wearing jeans or these loose-fitting pants he wears for meditation to bed. (Yes. Meditation. There was a lot I never knew about Logan.) Anyway, he liked it. I think he likes it now too, and from where his hand is I also know he realizes that I’m not wearing anything else.

Logan smooths the silk garment back over my hip and raises his hand to tug at my hair. Lynn and I went on a little girl’s night makeover spree the other night. She put green streaks in her hair and I did platinum in mine. Toby thought it was hilarious, but I think Logan was a little unsettled about the whole thing. “You still don’t like ‘em, do you?”

He tilts his head, considering. “Might be gettin’ used to it.” Then he grins. “Long as you like it.”

Logan handles change pretty well, usually. When he slid under the sheets beside me that night, though, he didn’t do anything. He always holds me at night, but when he felt the silk under his fingers he just stopped moving. And I knew I had to say something, make sure he knew it was all right for him to go further, so I asked if it was just my imagination that he wanted to touch me. ‘Imagination’ was the right word to use, I think.

He just shook his head when I asked him that, and then he pulled me closer and he kissed me, and I hadn’t realized until that moment how scared I’d been. Not of him, but that he’d never kiss me again the way he had just after we’d discovered he could touch me. But that was all he did—he kissed me, just a little carefully. But until then he hadn’t kissed me on the mouth at all, just my forehead or cheek or on the back of my hand.

But then he stopped, and damn it, I let him stop. Pretended to fall asleep, and eventually I really did. I don’t think he did. And when I woke up in the morning he was already up, outside, doing something to the truck that had him covered in axle grease.

Logan’s hand has moved from my hair back to my neck, and he’s giving me a searching look. “What’s goin’ on in there?” he asks.

That’s a deal we made. Either of us asks, the other one answers, no matter how hard it is. Which is why I don’t always want to waste that on the small stuff. I lean over to put my beignet down next to his coffee. “Wondering how long you’re going to keep being this careful with me,” I tell him, and hold my breath a little.

Logan doesn’t answer, not directly. But he doesn’t look away from me, and after a second his hand on the back of my neck draws my head down to his, and my heart speeds up when his lips touch mine, the familiar-strange almost-panicky feeling starting in the pit of my stomach. Butterflies.

More like hornets. Buzzing.

I close my eyes and try to relax, just go with it, forget about everything else but him.

But I can’t forget me, not ever, and I am not at all sure about what I’m doing. Oh, goddamn neuroticism, I never listened when the girls talked about making out. Am I even doing this right?

And then his hand slides around to my cheek and he lifts my face away from his, and I know I’m not. Damn!

“Hey.” Logan’s trying to make me look at him, and I don’t want to. “The hell is going on with you?”

“I’m trying to seduce you,” I snap irritably. “Only I’m no good at it.” And then I want to fall through the bed and the floor and hide in the dark, because he starts laughing. I try to pull away, roll over and bury myself under the covers, but he won’t let me.

“Hey,” he says again, and tightens his arm around me. “Sorry.” He still sounds amused, but he doesn’t let me go. I feel his mouth against the top of my head, not exactly kissing me, but it’s almost more intimate. I can feel his breath even as his chest rises and falls against my cheek. Then he says something I can’t quite hear, and I raise my head.

“What?”

He looks away for just a second, but then he meets my eyes, and I see something there, something slightly wary but new. “I said, you don’t have to try that hard.”

Oh.

I reach for the buttons of his shirt. I’m not sure he’ll let me, but he does, just watching as I undo them one by one, and when I push the shirt down over his shoulders he shifts a little to help me get it off. It’s so warm here, he doesn’t wear more than one, and I run my hands over his bare chest. Logan just watches me, until I lean down to press my mouth against his shoulder, and then he lets his head back against the pillow with a short puff of breath that isn’t quite a sigh.

I feel his hand brush lightly against my back, then come up to gather my hair out of the way so he can run a finger along my exposed neck, and I shiver. It’s just not fair, what that simple touch does to me. I catch my breath, and duck my head against his shoulder so he won’t think it’s too much for me and stop.

I love the way he smells. Maybe it’s a little bit of him and his hyperactive senses left in me, I don’t know, but I could lose myself right here, in the scent of his body that rises from the hollow of his throat, and before I think about it I dart my tongue out to taste him there, salty-musky and warm, and his head turns to one side as I work my way up his neck, to where that scent is even stronger, behind his ear. And when I kiss him there, his breath hisses out between his teeth, and I feel a little thrill of power. It’s me, making him feel that. Me.

I gather my courage and let one hand—ungloved, still so strange—move down his chest to the waistband of his jeans. I fumble just a bit with the first button, and get it undone. Then the next, and I’m so focused on the mechanics of what I’m doing that I almost forget what else it is I can feel under my hand until his hand comes down over mine. Not stopping me, not moving it away, just holding me still, there, for the moment.

“Marie…” He half-whispers my name, and my lips are against his ear so it’s easy to whisper back.

“I want this,” I tell him, and I can feel his fingers close harder over mine, where they’re clasped together. “I just don’t…know what to do.” I press my lips against his temple, just above those ridiculous sideburns, and breathe out my last request. “Show me?”

Logan’s grip on my hand tightens again, and then he moves, so quickly it takes my breath away, and suddenly he has me on my back, and it’s his mouth against my neck now, making me squirm with the sensations running through me. He knows what he’s doing, so much more than I did, knows just how to use his teeth and his lips to find the most sensitive spots. And nothing happens to him. That still amazes me, but I can’t think about it, not now.

Logan captures both my hands in his and raises my arms over my head, and then his mouth finds mine again, gentle at first but then more demanding. It startles me just a little when his tongue slicks between my teeth, and he must sense my tension increasing, because he lets go of my hands and pulls back just a bit. But I bring my hands to his head to keep him there, and now I’m aware of so much more, the shift of the muscles in his arms as he holds himself up over me, the rough fabric of his jeans against my legs, and the slow heat building in my belly. I recognize that feeling now.

He meets my gaze for a second and the look in his eyes is almost too much. I want to tell him it’s okay or don’t stop or anything coherent, really, but he doesn’t wait for that. He bends his head back to my neck and then I feel his fingers on my breast, molding and caressing. His thumb flicks over my nipple and I gasp with that sensation.

God, his hand there is a thousand times better than my own. A million.

Then he brings his mouth down over the taut bud of flesh, so hot over the cool green satin that I almost scream. His tongue teases me through the fabric, and without thinking I arch my back up into that contact. But he raises his head and I open my eyes—I hadn’t quite realized I’d closed them—and he’s half-grinning lazily at me in a way I’ve never seen before. “You like that,” he tells me.

For answer I reach up and pull the strap of my chemise off that shoulder, baring my breast, and that smug grin of his disappears in a hurry. I don’t have long to savor that little triumph, though; a second later his mouth closes over my nipple and it’s so much more intense that all I can do is try to remember to breathe. He doesn’t stop there; his tongue slicks up my breastbone and his mouth closes over the base of my neck just as his hand slides between my legs.

I cannot move a muscle. His hand there is heavy and warm and the pressure is making a pulse begin to throb inside me, but for the moment it’s only his tongue and teeth that move, working against my neck, suckling and scraping against my skin. When he finally, so slowly, eases that pressure against me, dragging his palm up towards my stomach, one finger moves deeper, separates me, somehow slides into me.

Logan’s mouth leaves my neck but his other hand doesn’t leave my body. I open my eyes again and he’s there, no trace of amusement left in his expression. I manage to raise one hand far enough to touch his face, my fingertips running along his jaw. “You okay?” he asks, and I just nod. “Good.” He leans down and his lips touch mine once. Twice.

Then his hand closes around my wrist , pulling it away from his face, stretching it up above my head, dragging me along the bed. It’s so unexpected that I let out a little shriek of laughter and start to sit up, and Logan catches me by the hips and pushes me back down onto the pillows at the head of the bed. “Don’t move,” he says, and then his hands slide up to my waist, taking the hem of my slip with them, and I’m still giggling like an idiot as he leans forward to kiss my stomach because his beard is tickling me, and he licks at my belly button and that tickles even more.

Logan’s hand closes over my ankle, and my laughter dies away as he pushes my foot up along the bed, towards my hip. The hornet-butterflies are back as his mouth moves lower, lower, my toes are curling under with the tension in my muscles but his hand holds me still, and when I feel his breath over me there I hold mine.

His tongue flicks against me, tasting me, and blindly I raise my arms and grab onto the iron frame of the bed with both hands. Don’t move, he told me, and the only way that’s going to happen is if I’m holding myself down with solid metal. And then he’s kissing me, licking at me, driving every thought from my head except that he can’t stop what he’s doing or I’ll just die, right here and now. And he doesn’t, but he seems to know just how to bring me to the edge and then back, changing his pace, the pressure, teasing the most sensitive places until I’m practically writhing under him.

My anchor, his hand, leaves my ankle. My eyes are open but I don’t think I’m seeing anything and I know I’m making sounds without making sense. Logan makes a sound of his own, deep in his throat, and I feel it all the way to the core of me. His tongue curls against me and then one finger is sliding into that deep part of me and the throbbing in my belly comes together and…

Holy Christ. Hallelujah. World without end.

When I can see again, when I’m gingerly forcing my cramped fingers to detach themselves from the frame of the bed, the first thing I see is Logan. And that self-satisfied grin is back on his face.

A New Thing On Earth…Jeremiah 31:22

I guess I should get used to not knowing what’s coming next.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed all the new behavior Marie had been up to over the past few weeks. Hell, I was all too aware of it. The first night she stopped coming to bed dressed like a kid at a slumber party, it was damned hard not to take things to their natural conclusion right there. She probably thought I would, and I guess in a way it would have been a relief. So to speak.

But she tensed up when I kissed her, and I couldn’t do it. I knew she wanted me to take it further, push the limits. I could’ve done that, and I’m pretty sure I could’ve made sure she enjoyed it. But I didn’t. I probably should have tried to get her to talk about it, at least, instead of just letting her go to sleep and gritting my teeth for the rest of the night. Again.

What can I say? Talking still ain’t my strong suit. I figured if she wanted to talk about it, she would. She’d been talking about enough else that bothered her, and I’d already fielded enough hard questions that week.

I’d told her she could ask me stuff, right at the beginning of this trip. It was kind of a bargain, like we’d had that first night I came back. I really just wanted to make her promise to answer me honestly if I asked if she was all right, or whatever. We were getting further away from the Mansion, probably somewhere in Pennsylvania at that point. She was sitting there next to me staring out the window, not really saying anything when I talked to her, and it was worrying me. So I told her we had to make a deal: if I asked a question, she had to answer, not just pretend nothing was going on. Otherwise, I wasn’t taking her anywhere. And as soon as I said it, I hoped like hell she wasn’t going to make me follow through on that.

She didn’t say anything for a good long time, long enough that I was starting to wonder whether I was supposed to turn around and take her back. She waited till I was stopped at a red light, and then she finally looked at me.

“Does that go for you too? Or am I the only one who has to agree to spill my guts on command?”

That’s not what I meant. I bit back that thought and just nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

A car behind me honked then to let me know the light had changed, and it was about a mile further onward that Marie took advantage of that deal for the first time.

“Logan?”

I braced myself for something. I wasn’t sure what, but I could tell she wasn’t about to ask me what time we were stopping for dinner. “Yeah?”

“Are you glad I came?”

“Hell, yes.” I’d been so keyed up for something hard to answer that that just came out, no forethought. She made a strange noise, and it took a minute for me to be able to look over at her, what with the traffic and everything. When I did she had her face covered up with her hands, and all I could think was Shit, I’m going to have to take her back.

Then I realized she was laughing so hard she almost couldn’t breathe. She tried to catch her breath and wipe up her eyes after a minute, but as soon as she looked at me again she started in again. Finally she calmed down, scooted over and kind of latched onto my arm. She didn’t say anything. Not then. She just sat there, watching the road go by. I guess.

What she came up with over the next few weeks, though, more than made up for it. I only ever asked her to tell me what was wrong when she was actually crying. She would wait till I was thinking about something else entirely and then come out with these sudden changes of subject that would catch me completely by surprise. Where did I go when I left the Mansion? Was I ever in the army? What did I think about her paintings? What was my favorite color, for chrissakes. Not that I had one. And in between the crying spells and the surprise interrogations, she was getting pissed at me for the strangest things. I left my jacket hung over a chair. I didn’t ask her where she wanted to stop for lunch. It was raining.

It was like living in a minefield.

Then we got to New Orleans, and she and Lynn started having what she called ‘girls’ nights’ together. It was a good thing, don’t get me wrong. Lynn’s great lady and yes, I’d been in Louisiana during that five years and she’d never been shy about asking after Marie. When I brought her back, it was like she was getting a second chance to do the makeover of the century. Lynn took Marie out shopping for makeup and clothes and one night the two of them even both dyed their hair. I was starting to think I wouldn’t recognize Marie the next time I saw her.

I tried asking Toby about all that stuff, if it didn’t bother him. Once. He pulled me a beer and just shook his head at me. Dumb Cajun bastard.

Marie also started picking up on other things Lynn did. Lynn tended to be, well, hands-on around Toby. And any other man that happened to come through the bar. She’d flirt and lay a hand on a guy’s arm when she brought him his drink and generally act like she was everyone’s best girl. Toby did some more head-shaking when I pointed that out. Then he laughed a lot.

And Marie? She watched Lynn like there was going to be a final exam. I started noticing she was doing the same kinds of things with me that Lynn did with the customers. A hand on my shoulder. Leaning in to whisper something she could have just said. Veiled comments in that Southern drawl of hers that had suddenly re-emerged in full force. She did it just with me, though, not with random guys in the bar.

That, let me tell you, was pure torture.

And then she started dressing differently. What she’d brought with her from Xavier’s was mostly jeans, long-sleeved shirts, sweaters. Lynn would take her out shopping and then suddenly she was wearing little skirts, tops that showed off some cleavage. Even her scarves got to be see-through.

Then this one night, like I said, she came to bed wearing that slinky green thing, with nothing underneath it. And when nothing happened, when she didn’t seem to want anything to happen, I decided that was enough of that. I was going to face this head-on, get it out in the open, let her know I knew what she was doing. I got up and went out for a while, walked around the streets. When I got home she was lying there asleep, and I stood there watching her for a while before I lay down next to her. I figured we’d talk in the morning.

Of course, we didn’t. I caught a couple of hours of sleep and then got restless again, so I wound up doing some engine work. She brought me out a cup of coffee when she finally got up, and she looked like she was waiting for the axe to fall when she handed it to me. I’d been going over it in my head all night, trying to figure out the best way to get her to talk about it without sounding like I was accusing her or something, and I couldn’t come up with anything. She sat down on the steps outside the front door of this house of Toby’s we’re using, and she drank her own coffee and chattered to me about nothing much for about an hour.

I kept thinking she’d bring it up. Hey, Logan, about last night… But she didn’t. What she did do, though, before she went inside, was to come over behind me and wrap her arms around my waist. She held on for about a minute, her whole body pressed up against mine. Then she let go and went to get ready for some other shopping trip or whatever it was she had planned.

I got it. She already knew what she was doing, and deals about answers aside, trying to make her talk about it was just going to make things worse. What was I going to do, add guilt onto everything else she was dealing with? It didn’t take an empathetic genius to read the relief in that hug she’d given me. So that was going to be my job, to let her do whatever it was she needed to do and take her time doing it. Even if it took her another five years.

Assuming I lived that long.

And that night she was back to wearing the t-shirts and pants to bed. I just kept telling myself she knew damn well she could talk to me, ask me for anything she wanted. It had to come from her. Right?

I was getting kind of resigned to it maybe being a really long five years. Plus I was going to have to take her back to Westchester eventually, and who knew how that would change the situation again?

About two weeks later she wore that green thing to bed again, and she had the nerve to ask when I was going to stop being so careful around her. And then announced she was trying to seduce me. Well, that did it. I showed her a thing or two about seduction.

Or so I thought.

****************************************************
She’d completely forgotten about being afraid of being touched. Or anything else, by the look of her.

Marie was sprawled across the bed, and I could feel her still trembling as I moved up along her body, smoothed the silky fabric back down over her stomach before settling down on my side next to her. She blinked at me for a second and then winced a little when she peeled her fingers off the framework of the bed and reached up to stroke my cheek. I leaned down to kiss her and her arms wound around my neck.

All in all, pretty ego-boosting.

Then she broke her mouth away from mine and settled back against the pillows, hair all messed up and her lips looking a little swollen. She glanced up at me, and I thought she might be feeling a little awkward. That wasn’t it, though. She was working up to say something.

“Logan…” She kind of whispered my name, but she got the next few words out at full strength. “I want to do that to you.”

It took me a second to be able to breathe after that. She didn’t mean it that way, I knew that, she just meant she wanted to make me feel good too, but in that second an image went through my mind of her…christ.

Marie, the real one, touched my arm and brought me back to the here and now. She shifted onto her side and her hand slid down my chest. She was staring intently, like she’d never seen me before, and she reached toward where my jeans were already half-open, and she pulled her hand away from mine when I went to stop her. “Why not?” She almost whined that at me.

The actual answer to ‘why not’ was that I was so painfully hard at that moment that if she’d touched me any more, I’d probably have come right there. Which, although that might have fulfilled her recently-stated goal, was not exactly how I wanted this to happen.

“Just take it slow,” I suggested, and Marie gave me the kind of look you give a backward child.

“I have been,” she pointed out. I didn’t exactly have a good argument for that. She narrowed her eyes at me and then rested her head on her hand. “Okay. But take those off.”

I didn’t have an argument one way or the other on that. She definitely had me on the ropes.

“I want to see you,” she said, and she was enjoying the power shift just a little too much, in my opinion. “Come on. I’ll be good.”

I could have thought of a good answer for that, but it seemed like the best way to get back the upper hand might just be to do what she was asking. So I stood up and got rid of the jeans. The relief of peeling off that denim was beyond belief, and I began to think I just might survive the morning with at least a vestige of dignity intact.

And it worked, as far as shutting off the smart remarks was concerned. She took a breath, and her gaze was like a physical thing raking over me. I’m not shy, but that was damned uncomfortable. When she finally looked back up at me, she was trying hard for that arch attitude again and not quite succeeding. “It’s not—I have seen naked men before, you know.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t move.

“Yeah. In figure-drawing class.” Marie moved then, getting to her knees and coming a little closer to the side of the bed. She reached out and traced one finger along my side. “They had us study anatomy,” she informed me. “So we’d know how to draw what was underneath.” My nerves were tingling everywhere her finger moved. “Pectoralis major. External oblique. Rectus abdominis…” Her finger ran down the line dividing my abs, which I guess I’d just learned the full name for. “This is called the linea alba,” she said.

“Interesting,” was all I managed, because she didn’t stop when the linea alba ended. Her finger touched me, ran down the length of my shaft very gently. Once. Twice.

“I could draw you better now,” she murmured, almost like she was talking to herself. Then she brought her hand up against my stomach again, full contact this time, splaying out her fingers. Then she looked up at me again. “Come on.”

“What?” My brain had kind of disengaged during the whole exploration process, and her being on her knees in front of me wasn’t helping any.

“God, Logan.” She let out kind of a nervous giggle. “What do you need, an engraved invitation?” She ducked her head down against my body, hiding her face, and automatically I put my arms around her. “Don’t make me keep asking.”

Well, damn. What do you say to that? I tightened my arms around her, just held her for a minute. Then I took her by the shoulders and raised her up on her knees, made her look up at me. She was a little teary-eyed, but she didn’t look scared, just emotional. “Okay,” I told her, then I kissed her, as long and hard as I’d been wanting to for weeks, and by the end of that I had her back down on the bed, laughing and wrapping her arms around my neck again.

I stroked my hand down her body again—I was never going to get tired of that—and then up over her hip, bare under that little slip. My hand moved down to her thigh, and she’d stopped laughing by then and I could feel her relax into my touch, shifting her hips a little against me. Her arms loosened and her head fell back as I slid a finger along her folds, into her.

She had her eyes closed.

I didn’t like that.

I know, it makes me a manipulative bastard. But I stopped. And I waited until she opened her eyes and looked at me questioningly, and no matter how fuckin’ insensitive that makes me I’m never going to regret it, because that’s why I could see the surprise in her expression when it wasn’t my hand anymore, when I shifted my own weight and it was my cock entering her, opening her, and she kept her eyes locked on mine because she knew I wanted her to.

Until I felt something give and she winced, and I could feel that she was fighting to keep from making any sound that would mean I’d stop.

So I didn’t.

She didn’t close her eyes again. She kind of caught her breath, and she even clamped down on that so it wasn’t quite a gasp, and then when I didn’t move again for a few seconds she relaxed a little. Then she gave me the questioning look again. And said it.

“Is that all?”

I almost collapsed on top of her, trying not to laugh at her. It did have the advantage of taking the edge off a little, because damned if any man could stay focused after that. I think Marie was worried at first and then she realized what she’d said and, well, she’s not as innocent as all that. She turned pink. I had to let myself down on the bed next to her, just so I could put my arms around her to hold onto her without crushing her to death, even while she was getting mad at me for laughing. Because I was, by then, but not so much I didn’t keep an arm around her so she couldn’t pull away from me. She covered up her face with her hands, and I let her get away with that for a few seconds before I pulled them away.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. Very seriously.

”I know.” Nothing. Nothing she did was ever going to be what I expected.

Marie shifted her hips under me and just like that, the edge was back. Her lips brushed mine again. “So what do I do now?” she asked, and this time she was using an expression that I didn’t think I’d ever seen on Lynn, kind of half a smile with more than half a promise in it. That one was all her own.

“Whatever you want,” I told her, and that was about all I could say. And this is where it gets hard to remember. I know I tried to take it easy. I remember rolling onto my back, putting her on top, thinking that way she could take it slower, figure out what she wanted to do. I wanted to make it good for her.

I remember her hands on my chest, her leaning down to kiss me and her hair falling over my face, smelling like those flowers outside the window. I didn’t want to touch her because I was afraid I’d get rough, and she took one of my hands and brought it up to her face. She just wanted to be touched so much, and she turned her head to nuzzle against my palm as I stroked her cheek.

Then she started to move her hips against mine, showing she was learning fast again, and I just let that hand slide down her neck to her shoulder so I could hold on without hurting her and then…

The next thing I really remember I was sitting up, clutching at her hips, with her legs locked around my waist and her holding my head against her chest as I gasped for breath. When I could finally raise my head and look up at her she was all teary-eyed, and then she shook her head and wrapped her arms around my neck really tight.

“Don’t. Don’t you dare say you’re sorry.” She whispered that into my ear. So I didn’t. I just held her, and it wasn’t just because I was still inside her that it was as close as I ever remember being to another person.

Finally she raised her head from my shoulder, looked up at me, all messy hair and still half sniffling back tears, but already that new smile of hers was making a comeback. She loosened her arms a little and I saw one of the straps of that green silky thing she was wearing had torn. Marie noticed it too and automatically adjusted the material where it was falling down. Then she stopped.

“I’ll get you a new one,” I told her, since that’s all I could think of without apologizing for tearing it, which she’d just told me not to do. She fidgeted with the edge of the silk for another second.

“Don’t bother.” She raised her arms over her head. So I peeled it up and off her. And took it from there.

****************************************************
The things I’ve learned, if I’ve learned anything at all in my life: you got to take what you can get and not look back. Traveling light makes the most sense if you’ve got to travel at all, and home is where you hang your hat.

Fuck if I know anything at all, because the girl I’m traveling with now has a history that would keep six psychiatrists busy for a career, adds another tote to the duffel she started this trip with every time she goes shopping, and I’m the one trying to convince her to head back to a settled address. Strange thing, life.

She’s happy. Most of the time. I think. I was worried for a while that she was too happy, that this was some other kind of act and she was just going to crash hard when she couldn’t do it any more. Be pretty arrogant to think I came back, bang, there’s the answer to all her problems. She’s still going to have to go back and finish facing up to what she did with everyone else. And yeah, I do see the fucking irony of me being the one to point that out.

She called the Mansion just before we left New Orleans. We’d been there almost six weeks, I thought maybe that was long enough. I’d promised Xavier I’d have her back in a month in the first place, for one thing. Marie got real quiet when I suggested heading back and told her that. So she called to find out what the old man thought. It wasn’t my idea.

They talked for a couple of hours. She was crying again through some of it, but I managed to stay out of it. At the end of it apparently he told her he wasn’t going to set any deadlines. She was old enough to make her own decisions, but he hoped she would call if she needed anything, even just to talk.

So after she got off the phone, she told me she wasn’t ready to go back, and she gave me a whole string of reasons. I didn’t need a whole lot of convincing, to tell you the truth, but I let her explain it all before I agreed with her. She thinks it’s all her incredible persuasive skills, and if it makes her happy to think she’s got me wrapped around her little finger, fine. I just told her it was her call.

I think that was the point where she realized she really did want to go back. She did have a life there, a good one, even if she did have herself all twisted into knots about it. But those other kids I met, they really do care about her, and she needs that.

Just not quite yet.

She wanted one more stop on this little road trip first. She told me she’d always dreamed about going to the beach when she was growing up, seeing the ocean. And she still never had; even though the School can’t be more than half an hour from the Atlantic, she’d never gone. She said it didn’t seem worth it when she couldn’t even wear a bathing suit and enjoy it.

So I took her somewhere where she can. This isn’t exactly tourist central, this part of Mexico. It’s quiet and we’re about fifty miles from nowhere, so it’s basically her own private beach. She thinks it’s pretty, too—been drawing stuff ever since we got here. She got real serious about it—says she owes it to her gallery to make this a working vacation, since she isn’t around to meet with buyers.

She’s sketching now, down on the beach, and I’ve been watching her from the house for half the morning. I crack open a cold one and head down to join her.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and roses since New Orleans. She still cries sometimes, and she still has nightmares, but they’re her own now. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. She always wakes up crying and they’re always about the same thing—she says she was lost somewhere and couldn’t find me. I never know what to say to her when it happens and I don’t even know if she realizes what it does to me, hearing that. I just hold her and wait till she goes back to sleep, and hope maybe if she wakes up enough times and I’m still there, it’ll stop. Because what can I say?

Marie looks up when I get close, and pretends to pout. “You didn’t bring one for me?”

“Here.” I hand the bottle over, and she takes a drink and hands it back. “You tryin’ to turn yourself into a lobster out here?”

She cranes her neck trying to look down her own back, and fails, predictably. “Am I pink?”

She’s not, actually. She had an umbrella up until about half an hour ago, but I have my own agenda. “Maybe a little. You got some of that stuff you put on?”

Marie gives me a look as she puts down her sketchbook and digs into the bag she’s got sitting next to her, comes up with a bottle. “It’s called suntan lotion, Logan,” she drawls as she hands it to me. “That so hard to say?”

I know what it’s called. I also know what it’s for. I stick the beer bottle into the sand and take it. Marie reaches to pull her hair over one shoulder as I get a handful of sunwarmed lotion and smooth it over her shoulders. She sighs as I knead her muscles a little, and relaxes into my touch.

I don’t really need an excuse to put my hands on her, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take advantage of an opportunity when I see one. She doesn’t object when I untie the knot of the top of her suit, behind her neck, so I can slick the lotion across her shoulders in one long sweep. She shifts a little as I work her muscles a little harder, and then she unfolds her legs and turns to lie down on her stomach.

Nice. I shift my own weight to straddle her , and there’s one more tie on that swimsuit to get rid of so I can run my hands over her whole back, long strokes that let me feel every breath she takes and the way she lets her body settle and relax. She’s created a monster, here; there’s not one inch of her I don’t want to make sure I touch every day of my life.

Marie moves a little under me and I raise up a little, afraid my weight is too much for her, but that’s not it. She just wants to roll onto her back, knowing damn well she’s leaving that bathing suit behind when she does it.

Every time I see her breasts it takes me straight back to that morning in New Orleans. I ditch the lotion and spend some time making sure she doesn’t get sunburned there. You know, by keeping them covered up. Manually and orally.

When she’s squirming under me and panting a little I raise my head. “Want to go inside?” I’m not against spontenaiety, but there’s a time and a place for sand.

Marie opens her eyes and squints against the sun. “Swim first?” She hitches up onto her elbows. “Last chance this trip.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t retrieve her top when we get up and walk down the beach towards the water, so all she’s wearing is the bottom of her bikini.

And the chain around her neck with my tag on it. When the waves start to catch at her feet and she squeals and grabs my arm like she always does, I scoop her up and wade into deeper water. “Swim” is kind of a misnomer for what Marie does in the water. She loves the ocean, but she never learned to swim, and her reaction to the waves is pretty funny. I keep telling her all she has to do is get out further and she won’t keep getting knocked down, but instead she just makes me take her in and winds up clinging to me and shrieking every time a wave breaks.

A wave splashes over us now, and the tag around her neck chinks against the other thing she’s got on that chain, which is just long enough to keep them right between her breasts. Her nipples are puckering up from the water, nice and tight, and I’m considering how good they’d taste all salty, when she decides that’s not what I’m staring at.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

I honestly don’t know what she’s talking about, and she loosens her death grip on my neck long enough to brush against the necklace.

She bought this little charm at a street fair and added it to the chain at some point—I’m not sure when I noticed it. It’s a cross, kind of fancy, made of iron or pewter or something. It’s not till right then, when she’s just asked me, that I remember yelling at her for wearing one once before.

“No,” I tell her. I guess it hadn’t really hit me like that—seemed like half the population of New Orleans was dressed up Gothic, and crosses went with the costume. But even if that wasn’t what it meant to her, I wasn’t about to tell her what she was allowed to believe in again.

Marie smiles and lets the chain fall from her fingers again, and then she lets out another predictable squeal as another wave comes in. She clutches my neck again and shifts to wrap her legs around my waist, and when the water recedes again she kisses me. Salt tastes good on her lips, too.

When she breaks away I can tell she’s got more to say. “I didn’t know if you wanted to say something about it, but it doesn’t mean…” She shakes her head as if to clear her thoughts. “It just means…did you ever just have faith in something? Like, something bigger than you? Something good?”

I never did. Until this one night in Mississippi. And as twisted and fucked up as everything got, I want to believe she’s right about this, because maybe that would mean that it might be okay, that this isn’t going to go bad, that there is such a thing as a happy ending. Guy gets the girl. I want to believe that like I want to keep breathing. No, more than that.

And while that’s all crashing over me like a tsumani, she scrunches up her nose and starts to shake her head again and I don’t want her to stop, to take it back, to think for a second she has to hide thoughts like that. “Yeah,” I say, and she looks surprised. “Everything that happened, all the stuff that went wrong, but in the end I still got you, right? Whatever made that happen. That’s something I believe in.”

And I guess that’s the right thing to say, because she kisses me again and doesn’t even notice when the next wave breaks over us, or the next. Or the next.

So now I’ll carry her back up to the house and maybe we’ll rinse the salt off before I take her to bed, and I hope she’s not hungry because I’m planning on keeping her there a while. And maybe we’ll leave tomorrow or maybe I’ll find an excuse to keep her here a couple more days so I can have her to myself while I finish finding the words that’ll tell her what she already knows, now. Or at least the guts to say them out loud.

I love you. I’m yours. Scary as shit. But I’ll do it.

Can’t fight fate.