The Girl: Chapter One






"You know what bleeds alot?" Logan mused, as the man looked on terror causing him to choke on every breath like it was water, not oxygen, he was inhaling. "Fingers."

He decided that that little wheeze indicated disbelief, so an adamantium claw helped drive the point home. It took only a moment, a quick nip of a blade sharper than a surgeon's scalpel. A clean cut, despite the twisting and wriggling of the finger's owner--his arms were well-strapped to the chair. The pasty digit fell to the floor, and a tiny waterfall of blood followed.

There was no need for the man to scream that loud. It was only his pinky finger.

Thomas Whitmoore appeared as innocent and blandly American as his name suggested. A clean, comfortably furnished office within a clean, comfortably furnished building. Degrees and awards hung on the walls in matching black frames. Filing cabinets and yellow pencils, eco-friendly light bulbs. A picture of a smiling couple--Whitmoore and his wife, now five years old--in front of their new house. A coffee cup with '#1 DAD!' painted on the side.

The man himself was in his thirties, slim with dark hair trimmed once a week. Dark blue suit and tie, buttery palms and a body that seemed molded at birth to sit behind a desk.

There was nothing to suggest that every certificate was purchased online, that all the names and all the appointments on the papers strewn across the table top did not exist, and never had.

Nothing to say that Thomas Whitmoore, Attorney At Law, had never had a legitimate client, never stepped into a courtroom, never once used the phone on the desk.

Nothing to tell the observer that the money he brought home came from the sale of children, women, and (the reason Logan was here): mutants.

"You're hurting my ears," he informed Whitmoore mildly. The man was beet-red, gulping and squirming uselessly against the wire that tied him to his expensive leather chair. "Relax. I was joking. Fingers aren't so bad. I can show you some other body parts that hurt a lot more when you lose them. Believe me, bub, I know."

Bright, bulging green eyes stared at him wildly. He hadn't said much, not since Logan had first stepped in the room. He'd probably never had a wound more serious than a skinned knee.

"No," he whimpered.

"No what?"

"No sir."

Logan laughed. He hadn't asked for that, but it was a nice touch.

"I got some questions for ya, Thomas. An' you have a list of names for me. I wanna know everyone who works in your branch of the trafficking."

If at all possible, Whitmoore's face went even paler with realization. Logan wondered what else he was involved in, how he could have expected this visit to be for anything else. The man looked from his face to those monstrous strips of metal, resting against Logan's knee.

"You-you-you can't do this," he said. Logan could beg to differ. "My-my wife, s-she's-"

"Spit it out."

"She's w-waiting for m-me. She expected m-me home. She'll call the police."

He shook his head in a parody of sadness, leaned forward and whispered.” Thomas, your wife never leaves the house without sunglasses and a long-sleeved sweater." A soft voice could be more terrifying than the most ferocious of yells. Especially if it was accompanied with adamantium. "I don't think she'll miss you."

Whitmoore's finger hadn't clotted, but the blood wasn't gushing quite so fast. Instead, it seemed to unwind and fall from the hole like wet ribbon.

Logan sat back in the visitor's chair he'd dragged around the desk. His was less comfortable than the other man's.

"I don't-I don't know any-anything. You've got the wrong guy."

"Know what a lie smells like? Burned rubber. And carrots."

"You're crazy! You freak! Psycho!"

"Uh-huh," Logan agreed. He placd his claws on the man's jerking leg, pushed them smoothly up, all the way to the hipbone like some bizarre caress. Not pressing hard--or not hard enough to hit a serious vein--yet. Cloth and skin tore. The flesh at the front of the blades did not bunch up, but parted like meat cooked all day.

Adjacent to the scarlet stain, another one appeared. Whitmoore had pissed himself.

"Everybody went home, Thomas. Hey-hey, bub. Nobody can hear you. But you're givin' me a headache. Stop screaming."

"I don't know what you want! I don't know any-any names!” he shrieked into the air, into Logan's face. Strings of spittle launched out, like a bulldog on a hot day. The smell of pain and fear and burned rubber. "I don't know anyone! I don't know anything!"

The other four fingers joined it's brother on the carpet. Little white pearls of bone were visible for an instant, before redness covered them. Logan let the man shout himself hoarse, get it out of his system, until Whitmoore was reduced to pants and urine. Slumped against his restraints, eyes bloodshot and weary. Clothes soaked through. It stank. Whitmoore was probably wondering why he hadn't yet passed out. And they had barely started.

"Let's keep it simple," he said, in a parody of gentleness that would fool no one. "Thirty-eight names, huh? Okay? Thirty-eight. And if they're good, if you don't lie--and I will know, trust me bub--then this will be over. We'll be finished. Thirty eight names."

The man blinked at him, tired. Distrustful. Sticky.

Hesitant--"And then you'll-you'll lemme go?"

Logan considered it. "Yeah. Sure." The pause, the lightness of his tone, let Thomas Whitmoore, Attorney At Law, know it wasn't the truth. But he eagerly grabbed the lie, took comfort in the hope of an escape he wouldn't receive.

He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them. Addressed the rug between Logan's boots.

"Enrique Vasquez. He's the guy who--"



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He saw her on the first day he moved into the grey city, the grey neighborhood, the grey street packed with tenements and garbage.

She was sitting on the stoop when Logan walked up (His truck was parked in a garage two blocks down; he couldn't afford to break the arms of any car-jackers here.). There's a tattered, crumbling paperback in her hands. A waif, malnourished and young. She lowered her head when she caught his eye, scooted over on the steps.

He only looked at her for a moment, a passing glance really. But...well, he was a man in the habit of analyzing everyone who passed within his field of vision--along with those who didn't. Yeah. Yeah. That would explain it. Useful little survival tool.

He noted that her eyes were brown like cedar wood, with splinters of mahogany and that her mouth was pink, plush. Straight brown hair, apparently cut herself. A splattering of half-visible freckles covered her cheeks, along with a glistening bruise. She was thirteen, perhaps fourteen, and judging by the faded color and rips, her clothes were older than that.

She smelled like cotton and peaches.

And when Logan went inside, he knew the kid's head lifted, twisted to watch him go.


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The building had four stories, each indistinguishable from the other except for the janitor's closet on the first floor (whose contents were only put in use when somebody moved out, and only grudgingly so then) and a laundry room on the third. The place was held together by sharp corners and mold, tiny rooms and tinier halls designed to fit as many occupants as possible. The walls were rippling from water damage and though once upon a time cheery wallpaper may have adorned them, now it hung in strips of an undeterminable color. Enough meth and opium hung in the air to give Logan a slight buzz.


He'd have to thank Chuck for the kind accommodations. But that would have to wait until after the mission was completed, for he would have no contact with the old man before then. Logan's rules, not Xavier's.

He honestly didn't mind the tenement (he'd certainly lived in worse). If Chuck hadn't picked and paid for the apartment he'd be staying in, Logan probably would have himself. It was a good place to lie low.

Logan knew which room was his--which was fortunate, because the landlord only visited once a month and when somebody was found dead. He unlocked a door at the end of the fourth floor. It had eight deadbolts and two chains on the opposite side that he never once turned during his stay. Let 'em try.

A living room and a kitchen in one; a bedroom and a bathroom so small it must have been added on by mistake. Rat droppings and torn carpet that cigarette burns gave a polka-dot design to. The apartment's sole perk--his sole perk--was that they came furnished. A bed (cloth and stains stretched over rusty springs), two lawn chairs, a fridge, and a couch that wasn't so bad, so it must have been stolen.

He unpacked. It only took a few minutes; he had enough money to buy whatever he needed here. Logan turned on the shower; let it run long before he got inside in an effort to clear away some of the grime.

The mission was simple and bloody. Locate the thirty eight men in the trafficking cell, along with anyone else those thirty eight happened to give up. Get rid of them. Quietly, permanently. It wasn't quite the task Chuck wanted associated with the Xmen, and Logan was the best choice for the job. He didn't flinch.

It had to be done carefully. Two or three deaths could be coincidence, even five or six; their's was a dangerous profession, after all. But if word got out that someone was hunting them, they--particularly the leaders--might flee, go into hiding. Logan could track them down; of course he could. But he wasn't in the mood.


Slowly, he raised his head to face the killer. Logan glared at him, cracked his neck. But then the perpetually angry expression slid off his face, and he turned from the mirror with a sigh.

He stepped under the weak, dribbling flow of the shower, finding himself--for no particular reason--thinking of the girl on the steps.

The Girl: Chapter Two















Seventeen nights into the mission. Ten men, two women dead. Eight who had families. Two "random" stabbings, four apparent suicides, three heart attacks (or injections that simulated such a reaction), and three that simply "went missing". An uncounted number of stakeouts and hasty consumption of grubby meals.



And a partridge in a fucking pear tree.



The rest of Logan's time was spent in the tenement, where the water ran in spurts and the lights flickered regardless of how fresh the bulb was. He did not buy new furniture--that would be a waste and an unspoken lie of how long he intended to remain in this shit heap-- unless a TV and clean bedsheets counted as such.



At least four radios could be heard blasting at any given time, the static grating his ears more than the music. Underweight babies screeched and were shushed by mothers who were louder—who in their turn were sworn at by their husbands/boyfriends/kidnappers. But at the same time the building was wrapped in a feeling that resembled silence, an isolation that said everyone could make as much noise as they chose because The World would not come to shut them up. The World did not hear them, did not even know, or want to know they existed. They were in a vacuum, a black hole you could call Poverty or Ghetto or Human Waste—whatever you wish, because with any name it never changes. They were alone.



Logan followed this tradition of indifference by ignoring it. He ignored the smells and sights and the noises and the floor when it dipped alarmingly beneath his feet. All in all, it was what he expected, and so: tolerable.



Except for the girl.



The girl…The girl was pissing him off.





She was there every time he left his rooms and every time he returned from a kill. On the stoop outside and in the halls and in the stairwell. She was Always Fucking There. Holding library books and wearing clothes that the Salvation Army would have laughed at. She never said a word, hardly looked him in the eye--but she was there. Watching him, stalking him. Just traipsing around this crack den like it was her palace, like it was filled with servants and guards rather than the worst of the worst. Didn’t the kid have school? A job? Something?



Only once did he fail to see the girl, and it nearly drove him mad. It was four o'clock in the morning, and he had just pushed a man’s body into the river. Logan had grudgingly resigned himself to the expectation of her. That reproachful expression on her face. As if she knew. She knew what he’d done. Judgmental bitch.



Logan trudged up to his room, sniffing intermittently though the building’s fumes clogged his airways. He told himself: she’s around this corner. Around this one. This one. And when Logan reached his door, he turned right back around because seeing her was already ingrained in his mind. He needed—he had to know where the girl was lurking. No surprises.



He tracked the faint smell of peaches to an apartment on the second floor. He stood in the hall, inhaling deeply and confirming that she hadn’t left.



And then he went away.





What right did she have to bother him when he was trying to work? All those little peeping glances and nervous smiles. What did they mean? Why was she sending them to him? What fucking right did she have to duck her head, press against the wall when they passed in the corridor. Clinging to those books like he’d steal them. As if he’d hurt her. As if that was the only thing he was good for. What fucking right did the girl have to look so hungry. And tired. And scared.



It…it was bullshit. A ploy. She was probably just trying to make others here feel guilty. Wanna feed her. Buy her crap. Touch her thin shoulders and say nice things. Ask—who gave you that black eye, honey?



It wasn’t working.



It wasn’t.



It wasn’t.



Little…little bitch.









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Logan was in the laundry room, standing guard over his clothes and the one available dryer (dented and produced sometime in the eighties). The girl was in the same room, sitting on the counter that ran along the wall, picking the fuzz off a small armful of clothes while she waited for him to finish. It amazed him how she could sit on a dirty step or in the middle of the hall like it was the softest of couches. He tried very hard not to imagine what her home, that apartment on the second floor, must be like for this to be so.



It didn’t matter, didn’t make any difference to him. But when Logan—bending down to retrieve a sock—caught sight of the books (Jane Eyre and Lord of the Rings and one whose cover had been ripped off) crammed into the space between the dryer and the wall, his…frustration…became too much. When the machine stopped rattling, he yanked his shirts out. And on the way out a twenty dollar bill somehow managed to slip from his hand to the greasy tile. If the girl knew how to stretch it, it oughta be enough for a couple meals...and maybe one or two of those dollar store paperbacks. But if it wasn't, he could drop some more. He could do that. Anything to make her--

"Hey--hey Mister."

Logan wondered how she made her voice sound like wind chimes. Timid and soft and scratchy, but wind chimes all the same. It was a neat trick.

He turned.

The girl pointed to the crumpled paper. She was closer to it than him, but did not go to pick the money up. Probably didn't want to risk handing it to him and coming into arms reach--a thought that Logan would growl later about.

"You dropped something," she said in a tone Logan refused to call either sweet or shy. He didn't use those words.

His jaw tight, Logan went back and plucked the bill off the floor. Crammed it brusquely into his pocket. He didn't speak to her. If the girl was too dumb to help herself, that was her problem.


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That resolve lasted a week--three men who cried before Logan gutted them, one who screamed for his mother. Twenty sniffles from the girl, a cough, and extra screaming from the second floor.

Kurt Stebbins had been forty five, with no wife, no children and as far as Logan could tell, no friends. Not that he deserved any. He lived in a loft behind a bar and paid his rent with the number of boys, ages five to eleven, delivered to his bosses. His claws had barely made their appearance before Stebbins started bawling. He cried, "No! No! Mom! Help! Mom! Mo-omm!"

Logan didn't understand. He'd died plenty of times without even grunting. His disgust was so great, the mans yells so irritating, that he made Stebbin's death quick. Quick cut through the heart, some gurgles but no more "Mom's". And then silence.

Afterwards, he bought a pizza from a man who seemed to have been making them since the Nineteen-Thirties. All the toppings, even sardines 'cuz didn't kids need some sorta fish vitamins?

He carried the box up Prewer street, boots sloshing through gravy-thick water, cigarette foil and beer caps. He thought about Stebbins, what a waste the day had been--no names collected at all--and people who wouldn't steal money when they find it on the ground.

Down the entrance corridor, small as a rabbit hole and twice as dank. Skeletal drug addicts who looked at Logan once then hurriedly at their feet, an acknowledgement of the Alpha that they didn't even understand.

A reedy voice on the second floor chattering out a plea, "Jus-jus-just gimme-gimme the stuff n-now. Okay? Okay? Okay? And I'll-I'll getchu the money. I will. I will. I will."

A little boy who followed Logan--or the pizza--until his grandmother shrieked at him.

The third floor was devoid of those pesky light fixtures--probably stolen--and rat droppings fell from the holes they had left in the ceiling. But his vision was sharp enough on it's own to see the girl in the stairwell.

She was on the top step, just outside the fourth floor. Cross-legged, bent over a book the kid couldn't possibly read in this nonexistent light. A moment and a stiff later, Logan realized that was true. The girl was not reading, she was merely staring at the place the book lay.

She smelled of misery.

And cotton.

And peaches.


He climbed up, skipping the steps that were green with mold, the ones that would give way if a cockroach stomped too hard.

"Hey." Logan said, with every ounce of casualness he could draw together. Everything would be alright if he--if he could just get this kid out of his way, out of his head. (The idea that she had not done anything to him never entered his mind.) Focus on the mission. "You want some of this?" He gestured with the box.

The girl looked up--first at him, then the pizza. She stared at it a long time, with a degree of want that was almost dizzying. He noted a red tint below each eye, a scarlet brushstoke of tears. Then her gaze was drawn back to Logan, forcefully. And she there she held it, refusing to let it slide back to that beautiful torture of potential food.

She opened her mouth, as if to ask a question. It was the longest time Logan had locked eyes with her. She could be kinda pretty, he thought absently to himself. Nice--nice lips. Nice chin. Slender little neck. Pale.

But wariness must have won out over hunger, because the question he sensed changed before it even touched the air. "No. No, thank you." the girl murmured fearfully--an animal refusing the bait but knowing he is still dangerously close to the hunter.

She lowered her eyes.

Smart, not to take food from strangers. Especially in a place like this. But...but...

Logan grunted, glared at her a bit--an expression she couldn't see but felt. When he stepped past she seemed to curl inward upon herself, without moving. Trying to turn invisible.

Why are you surprised?, Logan asked himself as he walked to the door that belonged to him. You're not a nice person. You don't do nice things. Stop pretending.

Fuck her, he thought a little wildly. He swallowed, seeing again her pale neck, the slim curve. Her little knuckles and the creamy palms of her hands. Too-thin wrists. He couldn't scrape the images out.

With an irony that fell flat even in his own mind, Logan thought, You could always kill her. It's what you do. Ain't it?

He swallowed. Growled, reflexively. And suddenly he was absolutely certain the pizza smelled like a corpse.

His legs carried him back to the doorless threshold of the stairwell. Jerky, angry muscles. The girl jumped, but before she could run Logan had plunked the box down beside her.

"Here," he barked roughly, furious for no logical reason. The girl flinched. "Throw this out when you're done, okay?"

And he turned away again. Logan left her confused and frightened....but standing still and listening back inside his apartment, he heard the scrape of cardboard, then tentative chewing.

He closed his eyes, not sure why he was so relieved.

The Girl: Chapter Three





Logan surveyed the room grimly. Tables were overturned, clothes were strewn about, and blood dripped from nearly every surface. He nodded slowly. It was a job well done.

He had interrupted their card game; later Logan would find the ace of diamonds stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He'd managed to interrogate and kill six men at the same time in one hour, collect the addresses of twelve members who had previously been well hidden. He had obtained five new names (they offered many that Logan had already heard), and a bottle of Molson from their fridge--a lucky find. It wasn't a personal record, but well worth the thousand Xavier paid him per head.

When the last of the men's double chins had ceased to jiggle, Logan wiped off his arms and zipped his jacket over the bloodstains. He used their sink to clean his face, his neck, his hair. Controlled movements, slow. No need to hurry yet, no reason not to be calm. Strips of flesh--like tan, gooey shreds of tire--covered the floor. His footsteps made loud squelching sounds.

Yesterday he had cut the chains binding thirteen women and two seven year olds to rails in a warehouse. He had a list (unwritten, of course) of similar prisons to give to the Xmen when he returned. And Logan told himself, that makes up for this. It does. It does.

He played with the burners of their kitchen stove--gas, not electric,--placed four cans of cooking spray and one of butane and near the flames. Then Logan slipped out, discreetly and, more importantly, quickly.

It took a long time for the fire department to put out the flames.





Nobody in the tenement appeared to notice that he reeked of smoke and death--not that they would speak up if they had. If anything, it helped Logan to blend in with the other residents. Nevertheless, thoughts of a shower (and only that, he told himself) consumed him, made his strides quicker and longer. The smell wouldn't go away--not for him, not for months. But a lengthy scrubbing could make it bearable, could turn the night into something he could pretend to forget.



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The raised peaks of her shoulder blades touched the plaster behind her. She looked like the subject of an old portrait--a peasant in rags, plucked from the fields and made to stand for an eccentric artist's whim. Logan looked at her and saw a glow, clarity, a strange vividness of her frame and her eyes and that little v-shaped indent of her upper lip. It did not seem to fit inside the real world, or at least not anywhere that wasn't under special lights and protective guards 27/7. You could even pretend that that discolored, stained wallpaper was a deliberately abstract background. Swirls and bumps to compliment, direct the viewers focus to her.


God, he must have drunk alot more than he thought tonight. Why hadn't the alcohol worn off yet?

Logan swallowed, tested the adamantium in his jaw by clenching it as tight as he could.


The portrait stared at Logan with worried eyes and a lip that quivered. What kind of trick or bribe was this? Was he crazy? Was the food he held drugged? Was he going to beat her? Rape her? Worse? She'd known girls (plenty of them), girls raised on curse words instead of lullabies, girls who couldn't read but whose eyes had learned too much before they were six years old. Girls tempted into service simply because the pimp had offered them a meal--and they considered it a good deal.

Was it her turn?

Was it good or bad for her that this man had sought her out, instead of her fa--

"Goddammit, Kid. I don't have all fucking day. Just take it."

Hands as white and smooth as frozen milk accepted the burger.

It was wrapped in greasy wax paper that she would later lick clean of any crumbs, thick with onions and pickles. The burger sat heavily in her hands, appeared twice as large to her as it probably was. Anything is mouth-watering to the starved.

Eating that pizza (which had had no medically-induced side effects that she'd noticed, but you never knew) had been bad enough. It was dangerous to owe anybody anything--especially here. Hadn't she grown up with that knowledge? But....but it wasn't like she had asked for it. Right? And now here he was, with a second unprompted, unrequested meal. As terrifying as it was tempting.

But she was hungry.

God, she was so hungry.

And the man was just standing there. Large and grizzled and glaring. A threat even compared to everyone else here. Just looking at him provided answers to questions before anybody asked them: No, you could not run fast enough; No, you did not have a chance.

He stared at her as he had been doing for weeks now. Expression irritated but otherwise unreadable, eyes challenging and intense. He made he want to turn her head, curl up into a shielding ball. But she already knew that answer. No, that would not help.

The man did not walk away, seemed to be waiting with some strange expectation of her. She thought for a moment that he wanted her to open the wax paper now, here, and start eating--but that couldn't be right. He--he must be waiting for thanks.

Verbal or physical?

She looked at his angry jaw, the tight shoulders and tight arms that ended in tighter fists, just waiting to hit somebody. Her gaze fell to the floor and his boots, which were caked in some sort of black mud.

She was so hungry.

Three doors down a woman could be heard crying as she paid her dealer his fee. Money was not involved in the transaction.

"What do I have to do?"

A whisper, but at least her voice did not shake.

"Excuse me?"

"For this. What do you want?"

You're voice did not shake, she told herself. That's good. That's good.






Goddammit.

The girls words set loose a rage--or an emotion similar--that swirled up like a tornado with all of it's restraint. Logan could feel tendrils of horror and something else that he did not examine closely enough to call disappointment spinning, twisting inside him. It must have shown in his expression, because the girl flinched a little. What fucking right did she have to say stuff like that to him? To do things like that?

"Nothing," he snapped at her with disgust. "Jesus fucking Christ, Kid."

And as habit dictated, he stomped away from her and the musty hall. Back to his apartment where he would smoke and cuss and ask himself what right she had.

It was not a spark, not what Logan would remember as the thing that started it all.

It was merely another tumbling pebble before a landslide.


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"Here," he snapped at her. A bag of pretzels in the laundry room.

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"Here," he grumbled. A turkey sandwich in the staircase.
That morning, Logan had drowned a man in a drainage ditch.

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"Here," he grunted. An apple tossed to her on the stoop. Small and bruised, but the grocer had charged five dollars.
The girl was walking with a limp.


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"Here," Logan said. Another burger, another hall.
She might have smiled timidly at him. He didn't know, he didn't look back.


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"Here," he told the girl. Chicken strips and onion rings.
She said thank you, quietly.




--And that was it. That was the extent of their contact. There was certainly no reason for Logan to wake up one morning and think, you’re training her. Those words were meaningless. They made no sense at all.


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It was something else for Logan to ignore. A solution to the distracting presence of the girl, even better than money. Her hungry face no longer popped into his head at random; he didn't think about her skeletal soldiers while he was stalking members on his hit list. He could tell himself that he was helping enough, that it wasn't his job to take care of the brat. She had no right to expect anything else. His frustration was tampered down to something barely worth mention.

And if none of that was true, who was around to disagree?


He noticed, but did not acknowledge the improved tint of her skin.

He noticed, but did not acknowledge the healthier rhythm of her internal organs.

He noticed, but did not acknowledge that her eyes were brighter, that the girl did not seem unhappy when she saw him coming.

He noticed, but did not acknowledge that she became easier to find, sometimes appeared to be waiting for Logan and his odd gifts.

He noticed, but did not acknowledge when that waiting began to take place in the door outside his hall.

The Girl: Chapter Four


"Sir?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are you...uhhm...doing this? Why do you keep giving me-giving me this-this stuff?"

"Hey, if you don't want it--"

"No! No, I-I do. It's just-I don't-I don't...."

"Gonna finish that thought today Kid? I have shit to do."

She was biting her lip, staring at him with a teenager's version of determination.

"I just....I don't know what you-what you expect for-I mean, in-in return."

She tripped over her words enough to give most people a moment of pause. But Logan was accustomed to others stuttering in his presence, and easily made the translation from Fear-Speak to English.

"Don't expect anything.’Cept maybe for you to quit askin' me that same fucking question. You want the food, take it. If you don't, then don't. It's that fucking simple."

Oddly, it was the kindest thing he'd said for weeks, and the most words shared between the girl and him.

As he shut the door to his apartment he wished, absently, that he had let her talk a little more--not enough to go back and initiate a conversation, of course...But had it been really necessary for Logan to rush through the encounter? Was he in that much of a hurry? Had he needed to snap at her?

She had a nice voice.



.....And if he wanted (not that Logan did) to spend a few moments enjoying one of perhaps five sounds that did not scratch his eardrum, then why shouldn't he? After everything Logan had been forced to put up with on this mission, all the work he had done for a team he barely believed in...didn't he deserve that? A tiny piece of something in the world that wasn't contemptible, repulsive, bad?

What the hell was he thinking?

Of course not.

He didn't deserve anything.



Logan showered quickly, pulled on a clean shirt. His dirty clothes were starting to pile up; from the looks of things it would soon be time to endure the chemical/mildew reek of the laundry room. Maybe he could take them to the dry cleaners instead. The ones here might be used to removing blood.

When he left the rooms again (to knock on the door of a man who would regret answering for the rest of his-albeit very short-life) the girl was still there. Just a few feet down the hall, picking at the box of strawberries he'd thrust into her hands. Logan found himself giving her a jerky nod of greeting as he passed.






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They fell into (what was the word?) that quicksand of daily repetition: a routine.

Logan had spent years trying to avoid them. He had wandered across continents instead of settling into some suburban niche, had made a living out of splitting his knuckles rather than donning a suit and taking phone calls in a cubicle. The quickest way to lose a limb would be to tell Logan that travelling and cage fights were routines as well, but he already knew. He was content enough with those miserable habits (smoking, drinking, fucking) that he had chosen himself--and perfected. At least those brought with them a familiar unhappiness, one that he was unwilling to relinquish for the risk of Change.

Routines were dangerous, terrifying things. Logan dreaded them more than a kick to his testicles, more than Scott Summers singing, more than an open bottle of Nair. Routines were as frightening as black holes and nearly as inescapable.

He'd always blame the girl fro dragging him into one.



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The cashier was a man in his forties, with gnarled hands and a pinched face. He resembled one of those withered heads found in voodoo shops. He used a pencil and a sheet of notebook paper rather than a machine (the store lacked a cash register, though a faded square on the counter suggested that one this wasn't true) to add up Logan's purchases. Beer, a box of matches, toilet paper, and two plastic-wrapped sandwiches that smelled fresher than anything else in the room. Between each scribbled price, the man licked his thumb, squinted, and cocked his head at the previously written number.

His prison record probably stretched as long as his scraggly ponytail--though Logan had neither interest nor right in judging him.

"Nine an' a half dolluhhs' an' we'll call it even, Suh."

Logan placed a twenty dollar bill on the counter and watched the cashier's face light up.

"Keep the change."



:::::::::::::::::::::::


His schedule was erratic; much of his "work" taking place long after the street lights (the few that worked) came on. But that depended on his victim, and the best time to find whoever it was alone. Sometimes this meant past midnight or early afternoon, or as he/she was on their way to lunch, or heading out for their morning jog. It didn't matter much to Logan. At some point he would kill them, just as at some point he would sleep. When those points were did not trouble him as much as it might others. His wasn't an average job.

However, lately--for no determinable reason-Logan found himself free in the evenings. Around dinner time. And, coincidentally, around that time he'd also find himself near a convenience store/restaurant that happened to have something he figured the kid would eat.

Logan would buy something for himself--potato chips, cigars--so that he could convince himself that he wasn't going out of his way for the girl.


::::::::::::::::::::::



The grey sheet of clouds which hung over the city eternally--like some peculiar, unwanted, ceiling--broke that evening. It thundered and poured for approximately ten minutes, then stopped when the sky grew bored and decided to return to it's sullen immobility. Logan was soaked, but somehow not angry by the time he reached the tenement. He liked the smell of rain.

As he walked, he thought about the mission. The trafficking cell was breaking up, it's members scrambling. A month, two at the very most, and he would have hunted them all down. It would be over. Some routine cleanup, a phone call, a drive that wouldn't take long. A small fortune of a paycheck, signed by Xavier--not that Logan particularly needed or cared for that much money.

But he would no longer be bothered by the girl. He would no longer be bothered with her trailing him or demanding food or giving those girlish "thank you’s”. He would no longer be bothered with the way she looked at him, as if he were actually making a difference.

Best not to get his hopes up. The mission could take longer. It could.

:::::::::


The girl took the sandwich in a delicate grip, as if it were a Sapphire and not stale bread she was holding. Instead of the customary 'Thank you', she said, "Mister?"

Logan stared at her.

She looked down, to the cover of her book. Anne Frank.

"I didn't mean to--to make you angry. Earlier. I like--I mean, I appreciate you doing...this. It's really--it's really nice of you."

She got a grunt and a scowl for a reply, but as he turned the doorknob to his apartment he growled, “My name ain't 'Mister'. It's Logan. Use it."




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As previously stated, routines were dangerous. They numb you. So sly and total was their take over that you start to think--hey, this isn't so bad. The girl might not be a complete menace. And--and if he actually enjoyed those moments spent in her presence, who was around to call him, The Wolverine, a hypocrite? Who would dare?

But the thing about routines was that when they were broken their effect could be freeing--or devastating.

The girl didn't show up the next night.

Or the night after that.



:::::::::::::::::::::::



The small expanse of floor, a little less dusty than it's surrounding carpet, was empty. Without the girl and her books to break up the lonely image, the corridor once again could have made a screenshot for a horror film.

Logan didn't go searching for her this time; he was busy. If the girl couldn't be bothered to be in her spot, outside his door, where she was supposed to be, then that was her problem. He wasn't going to chase after the kid.

It wasn't his job.

He put the taco he had bought for her in his fridge, though reheated ground beef was disgusting. There was a hockey game he had planned to watch, but he gathered his dirty clothes and took them down to the laundry mat. Walking slow, breathing deeply.

Logan wasn't looking for her. But the girl was absent from any of her usual places, so it hardly mattered if he was. She wasn't here. Period.

Upon his return, Logan took the girl's food and consumed it in three slow, childishly defiant bites. Fuck her.


::::::::::::::::::::



The following evening, Logan stood in line at one of the more sanitary Chinese restaurants in the city. The meal cost forty-five dollars and barely fit inside three grocery sacks. Logan figured that if the kid wasn't there tonight, the wasted food and money would provide the excuse his anger needed. He might even track the girl down--drag her back to the tenement, to the fourth floor hall. If he was stuck there, so was she. He could cram Singapore noodles down her throat. Make her--make her say those things she'd said before. About him being nice.

The possibility that the girl wasn't there because she couldn't be there never crossed his mind. He wasn't worried, certainly not panicked. He didn't miss her.

But all of that proved unnecessary, because tonight the girl was there. Waiting for him. In her place.

Her eyes held a little less life, a little less curiosity in the world around her. It may have seemed a cold stare to anyone without his senses, anyone who couldn't smell the sadness that kept her shoulders tense and her lips wobbly.

It was on Logan's tongue to ask, What happened?. But he kept the words in his mouth.

He wasn't someone who asked questions like that; he didn't care.

They shared a look that was both apologetic and broken and cautious--all of which belonged to her, of course.


At the other end of the hall, someone was throwing a party. Lavender-tinted smoke drifted out of the door, along with the occasional man or woman. Shaking, twitching, wiping their noses as they stumbled to the stairwell. Too thin and too stoned, they released giggles that could have been sobs or screams. The walls quite literally rocked with the music they left behind--the rhythmic base pounding made Logan queasy. It wasn't a safe place to sit near, and he was surprised that the kid would have risked it.

A Hispanic man with an upper lip rubbed into an angry scarlet passed them, and barred his teeth at the girl. It might have been a smile. His pupils were mere pinpricks, but he was still jonesing for something. He took note of the glaring man already standing over the girl and kept walking, but the next one might not.

"Let's go. You can eat in my apartment."

Her eyes widened and she shook her head vehemently.

Logan hadn't meant the words as a refusable invitation, but he decided not to tell her that just yet. Opting instead for a method Logan rarely chose without sarcasm, coaxing, he said, "I don't think you wanna stay out here, Kid."

He walked over to his door, held it open with an expression that brooked no argument. But though her gaze followed the plastic bags he held, she did not shift from her cross-legged position. Her cheeks turned pink.

"No," she said. "No, thank you sir--Logan. I don't want to."

Logan made an irritated harrumph noise, a low growl. His mind roiled with not-nice things concerning the girl, but for some reason his voice was even (some might even call it soft) when he asked again.

"Look, Kid. I don't really give a fuck what you do either way. Just don't be stupid about it. I ain't gonna touch ya, ain't gonna make you stay. Leave whenever the hell ya want, just....c'mon."

If the last word came out as something more than soft, something like pleading, Logan didn't notice.

The girl studies him, visibly weighing her options. Logan must have ended up on the better half of the scale--he even briefly entertained the idea that she believed him, trusted him.

Or maybe she was just hungry. Either way, the girl got to her feet.

She followed him in.

The Girl: Chapter Five







She stepped into the room with all the timidness of a doe but none of the animal's grace. Her eyes darted around and he knew that they were judging, judging everything, before she had crossed more than a foot over the threshold. Logan had held the door open for her, but only to make sure the kid wouldn't chicken out and run. He felt a tremor of shame over his poor lodgings, a pulse of confusion as to what protocol existed upon bringing a girl you had no intention of fucking inside your home. But the irritation he felt at feeling such emotions quickly overwhelmed the emotions themselves.This wasn't a fucking date, after all; he wasn't going to give her a tour of his place or gently guide her to a seat. She was here, and he was feeding her. He did not have to worry about anything beyond that.

There wasn't much to see, but Logan supposed the girl was placing a sick twist on everything, like all teenagers did. She'd assume that he entertained five year olds on the couch, that he kept the body parts of his victims in the little fridge. You could see into the bedroom from here, and those sheets hanging over the end of the mattress (clawed to shreds in the midst of a particularly bad nightmare) was probably rope, in her eyes.

Why had he let her in? Why hadn't he left the girl outside in the hall, let her handle the other residents herself? Better that than to lay his quarters on display for her to entertain herself with assumptions.

He shouldn't have left those sheets out, in plain sight. He should have hidden them. Thrown them out.

Shit.

This was a bad idea.



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The apartment was small (not that she had expected otherwise) and so sparsely furnished for it to be anything but intentional. Walls unbroken by photos or frames, wide stretches of empty carpet. Most of the apartments in this building (at least, the few she had been unable to avoid going into) held some trace of it's owner, fingerprints of the tenants preferences and personality. But not here. Except for a discarded undershirt and the smell of beer, this place might have been unoccupied. No personal touches, little mess. It was the reverse of those homes shown in magazines--the kind overflowing with vases and hand-knit pillows but impossible to envision a real person living there. This place was not ashamed of it's bareness, stared you in the face and dared you to challenge it's lack of pretense. Exactly like the man who inhabited it.

The girl knew even before she had given it any conscious thought that this was a temporary home for him, and a miserable one.

She wasn't sure how she felt about the former.

But it was clean, or at least more so than her (or any other) apartment. Nothing dripped from the tiny fridge; the lightbulbs did not flicker; all evidence of rodents had been swept away. She did not have to examine the carpet for broken glass or dirty needles, and place her feet accordingly. These were rare qualities that she had learned to appreciate.

It didn't seem too bad, this place.





The man--Logan, he had said--headed almost immediately to the bedroom and she could not stop the noise of alarm that travelled up her throat.

But he did not go inside the room and, more fortunately, did not force her to. He simply closed the door, cutting the other chamber and it's ominous mattress from view. He sent her a sharp look when he turned back around, his nostrils flaring and his jaw clenched as if dealing with some perpetual irritant, but did not share his thoughts.

"Well," Logan said, in the same manner she was learning to expect from him: as if each word was a precious commodity and she was making him waste them. "Sit down, Kid."

But there was something in his voice--or perhaps the way his eyes flicked away from hers, or how his hands kept changing their hold on the box of food--that suggested nervousness, despite the fact that he was not someone with any reason for anxiety.

A moment's worth of hesitation, and the girl came to perch on the couch. Just the edge of the cushion, better if she needed to stand quickly. She fidgeted, tucked and then untucked her hair, crossed her arms and then uncrossed them, folded her hands in her lap and picked at her nails. She could hear her own heartbeat, a watery pulse, and hoped that her fear was not so obvious.

Logan snorted, took a seat at the other end of the couch and set the box between them. His hands were very large, would have as little trouble crushing a skull as they would bubble-wrap. She did not take her eyes of of him, not for a second. They were three feet apart and she wasn't stupid.

He pulled off the plastic lids, ripped open the paper bags. Noodles and beef, chicken covered in glistening sauce, bread coated in sugar. She did not know the dishes' names, could not begin to identify the rest, but that did not matter. It was food.

It smelled good.

The girl's gruff companion sank his teeth into what she had thought was a mini-burrito before she saw it's contents. His teeth looked very sharp from this angle.

He nodded toward the food--indicating, she guessed, for her to begin eating or to take whatever she wanted, hopefully both. She complied without argument. The noodles were good, the beef wasn't. She took forkfuls of them all regardless. Who knew when she would have the opportunity to eat anything in such abundance?

The T.V. came to life, and the girl jumped a little; she had not seen him lift the remote. That was bad. She couldn't lose focus.
He sifted through channels until a hockey match could be made out beneath the static waves. Logan glanced sideways at her, raised his eyebrows and tightened his lips. Not questioning, but daring her to argue with his choice of programs. The girl lowered her gaze to his shirt collar.

Nothing was said when he dropped a few noodles, but when she spilt soy sauce on the couch he growled, "Damnit", and shoved handfuls of napkins her way. Their fingers touched. The girl said sorry, over and over.

The man always seemed to be waiting for a fight to start. Couldn't he see that she had no intention of giving him one? Did that disappoint him in some way?

He refused to look at her after that, and she chose to find comfort in this. Ignoring was considerably preferable to maiming.

Although she had found plastic silverware crammed into the side of the box, there were no plates and he did not offer her one. They were forced to eat leaning over the containers. It was awkward, and she felt vulnerable--too close to him, with the strong sense of one placing his head on the chopping block over and over. But she listened to the T.V., to the rattling of the fridge, to their muffled chewing, to the pleasant sounds of a place that just might be safe. And the rest bothered her less with every passing minute.

"Do you want me to help you clean up?", the girl asked quietly, when he hadn't reached for the box in some time and she had eaten her fill. Her fill did not amount to much; her stomach was as little accustomed to a large meal as she was, but still she felt guilty for what she had taken.

"No." His voice reminded her of a belt, snapping in the air.

"Oh--oh, okay then." She bit her lip. "I guess...I guess I'm going to go now, then. Th-thank you. Thank you very much."

He glowered at the T.V., on which the hockey game had not ended, but refused to acknowledge her otherwise as she stood, made her way to the front door. "Goodnight," she called back politely, not expecting a reply but pleasantly surprised when she received one.

"Goodnight, Kid."



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Entering her own home was a delicate operation, one that had to be undertaken with the greatest of care. She only opened the door few inches because anyone inebriated behind it might take the motion for a trick of the eye, while a door opened wide would alert her presence to everybody. The girl waited, listening without breathing (in much the same way, though she didn't know it, that Logan had stood weeks prior) for any indicator of Him. No sound came, or none that she could detect.

In a movement that would have shocked the man on the fourth floor with it's swift fluidity, the girl slipped inside.

Her eyes scanned the interior with all the thoroughness of a hunter but the motives of it's prey. He was no where in immediate view, but she allowed herself to neither relax or shut the door--there was still the bedroom and bathroom to check, and she might need to make a hurried escape. God help her if he was out and returned before she could hide, because certainly no one else would.

Condoms and cigarette buds and empty syringes were smashed into the grime that covered the floor--beneath which, she supposed, might be a carpet. She couldn't be sure; her memory did not reach that far. Heaps of trash and clothes (some mixed together) were strewn throughout the room, as if left in the wake of a particularly drug-addicted tornado. Rat droppings and a broken microwave, a forsaken bologna sandwich that was starting to turn a strange color. A smell that said her mother had lost control of her bowels again.

The woman in question lay in the center of the room, on a couch beaten and stained beyond shape or color. It was merely a leathery lump that took up space, sorta-brown and sorta-pale and sorta-grey. The same could be said of the woman who rested upon it, whose right arm hung off the side and seemed stuck within a bag of Frito's. She had tan-ish hair that had been washed at the same time she had changed her clothes--long ago, a face pockmarked and pasty and legs streaked with blue veins. The girl paid her absolutely no attention.

She crept forward, sticking to the left wall, except when she had to step around mess and trash bags, the latter of which had been half-filled and then abandoned in the face of a task too great.

The bedroom was on the right-hand side, rather than straight ahead as in Logan's apartment, so there was a corner, a moment when He could have been standing there, waiting for her in one of his rare, sneaky moods. And another moment when she had to check the bathroom. But He was not hiding behind the doors; His unconscious form was not sprawled across the mattress; His piss was not splashing into the toilet.

He wasn't here.

The girl took a breath of deep relief, but her brow crinkled up at a new decision. He could be back in any minute. Or He could be gone all night, and she might have time to curl up in that corner of the apartment (cleaner than the others) that was hers and sleep. Both had an equal chance of happening; the girl had no way of knowing which to prepare for. Worst of all possibilities was the scenario in which he came back before she awoke.

"Mmmmm....", mumbled a voice, fuzzy as if covered with a fine layer of lint instead of sleep. "Mmmm....Marrriee, sweett-ee? Thatchoo?"

The girl ignored her, and settled on the safest of her options.

She washed herself at the bathroom sink, changed her socks and underwear. She grabbed her pillow from its hiding place behind the trash can (the least touched item in the dwelling). It was blue, with a pattern of faded yellow stars and another set of clothes stuffed inside. She picked her way back through the living room, and left with as little noise as she had entering.





The night before last, He had caught her while she was using the bathroom, taken her to some men in a smoke-filled room behind a bar. They were in their thirties, but their beards and cold eyes made them appear older. She had cried while being made to strip, while they poked and pulled and discussed and examined. She cried while He stood in the corner, hands shoved into His pockets until the men said no. No, she was a bit too old to interest their clientele. He should have brought her earlier. But she was a good product; they might be able to refer him to some others who would pay less but....


And they went to another building, whose occupants repeated the procedure and told him the same thing. Anyone could find a hooker, but fourteen was too old for them to sell.

And again. And again. She did not grow numb to it, did not run out of tears or shivers or pleas. She did not want to listen to the bartering but could not shut the voices out or ignore their hands.

His fingers had dug into her arm as he dragged her, and then her into neck and then her hair and then into more painful places. He had fumed and stomped and cursed and turned red in the face. And when they arrived back at the tenement He had kicked and slapped and thrown, and then dug His packet of cigarettes out--while in the other room her mother called for somebody to bring her "some water or sumthin."

And afterwards--when she had only the strength to blink and run her tongue over the cut on her lip and wonder how much money He owed and who He owed it to--He forgot about her.

She had stayed on the floor for a long, long time.








The girl walked upstairs with her arms wrapped around the pillow. She thought, briefly and crazily, of going to that man, Logan's, room. But that was a stupid idea, and she discarded it almost immediately. She didn't even know him. Why would he take her in?

She went to the laundry room, at the back of which stood a thin door. Shoes with loose seams, holes in the soles covered up with cardboard, stepped over the concrete floor. The girl would have seemed much younger than fourteen, if anyone had been around then to judge. She hooked her fingers into the hole where a knob should have been, pulled the plywood towards her.

Technically, it was the boiler room. But a closet would have more apt term. The large, metal cylinder had been broken for two weeks, a fact that she was grateful for. When it was working the machine could burn you.

She squeezed her pillow inside, followed it with expertise. The space between the doorway and the boiler was slim, but behind it was about two feet of room that had seemed alot wider when she was younger.

The floor was hard and cold, but the girl did not mind so much. It wasn't too dusty, and she wiped out the dead roaches every other day. She pushed her pillow against the wall and curled around it, knees tucked to her chest in a parody of comfort. It was still early in the evening, and she could have fetched one of her books from behind the dryer. But her head hurt and her eyelids felt too warm and heavy. She was tired, always tired lately.

And the girl fell asleep pondering the week irony of being so close to her home and being homeless, of having a mother and a father but no parents.

The Girl: Chapter Six







The decision had not been made as a whole, all at once. He'd had no intention of inviting the girl into his apartment again, certainly never on a regular basis. But his intentions had never been worth much, had never changed an outcome or the misery-flavored air that Logan inhaled at the end of the day. It was worse than foolish for him to believe that intentions would matter now.

After their dinner of Chinese, and throughout the next day, Logan told himself that eating with her had been a one-time thing. A disturbing aberration he refused let happen again. Why should he share any of his limited space and patience with someone when he received nothing in return? Bad enough that he had to waste money on someone else's brat, but why should Logan's overworked senses be forced to suffer the body heat, undulations, and infinite noises--not forgetting smells--of another person? Forget the drug addicts in the hall. Letting her inside once had set a horrible precedent. Next thing he knew, the kid would be begging to move in.


Yet, that evening Logan found himself, once again, with an especially large amount of food. Too much to just leave out there with the girl, where anybody could come and take it. Hell, she was the kind of--the kind of idiot who might give it freely, to any child who seemed hungrier than her.

But it was his food. He had gone through the trouble of buying all of it, of making sure that there were plenty of vegetables because he knew kids needed that shit, and plenty of whip cream on the pie because he knew that kids liked that shit. It was his to choose who got their unwashed hands on it.

So when Logan told the girl, "You're eatin' inside here again.", his voice was firm, and would have been baffled at the idea of a refusal. He had no reason to worry--not that he had been--because the girl stood quickly enough at the order. She even flashed him a grateful, if a little tired, smile.

Logan closed the door behind her, thinking of how the food and everything that came with it was his to protect. If he felt like it.


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The next night he bought less, after throwing out half the leftovers from yesterday because they would not fit in his fridge. But Logan invited her in, because it was stew. She had already proved herself untrustworthy by dumping noodles all over his couch; he didn't want the same happening in the hall. The tenement was home to enough roaches without, her clumsy fingers providing a banquet.



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The third night was pizza, and he was hungry. Logan owned no plates and the thought of leaving her the box, and carrying his half in his hands made him growl (strangely, the thought of doing the reverse did not occur to him), so he sighed and said, "Come on in."

And she said things like, "Oh, that looks good," and "I like pepperoni the best," and "Thank you so much, Logan," and "Mmmmn." She did not seem to notice that his only replies were grunts.

Her voice still reminded him of wind chimes.

And Logan thought that it was the best, and only, payment he could expect from the girl. He was no longer satisfied with a single "Thank You" in the hall. After all, he wasn't a fucking delivery service. He'd be damned if he let the kid get away with so cheap a fee. If she wanted to eat, she was going to sit her ass inside and talk to him. Like he was normal. Like he was capable of doing a good thing. Like he was someone anybody would thank, for a service other than sex or violence.

He hardly even bothered to say, "Come in", or any version of the phrase. He'd give her a nod when he met her, hold the door open for his payment of innocence.

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One routine became another without any care for his intentions, like a new coat of paint--a different color, but the same overwhelming aroma.

She always sat in the hall until he arrived with the bag or the box or the wax paper, or whatever their dinner happened to come in. Although his door remained unlocked and though it would have been just as easy, she never entered without him. Neither felt comfortable with the thought of her being alone in his apartment and neither thought of questioning this unspoken rule.


She always stayed for an hour or so. Long enough to eat her fill (she took her time now, assured that the food would not be taken away) and watch a little TV.

She always offered to help clean up; he always said no.

She always smelled nice--underneath the sweat and dust that Logan could excuse, in this place.

She always said Thank You.

And she always left, as soon as she reached the last bite that her stomach would accept. Perhaps she did not want to push her luck, stay when his mind and hands were not occupied with his own food. She left, in any case. Left him alone in his apartment. And Logan always told himself that this was a good thing.


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She told him her name, Marie.

As if he gave a shit.

As if he'd asked, or been the least bit curious.

As if she were anyone important enough for him to think of by name.


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"What does that guy do?"

"Those are not 'guys', they're players. Which guy are you talkin' about?"

The girl pointed. Trying, he supposed, as she sometimes did, to start a conversation. It wouldn't work. He grudgingly followed her finger's direction to the man it indicated on the screen.

"That's a linebacker, Kid."

"Oh," she said, and nodded. But it was apparent that the title meant nothing to her.

Logan huffed. He preferred the honestly stupid to those who feigned knowledge. But because it was, or should be, required for everyone to know all aspects of football, he was forced to explain the sport to her, in detail.


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"You ever go to school, Kid?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes."

"Social services ever come around?"

"Sometimes."

He didn't ask if she wanted to go, if the school in this city was a safe place. Logan looked at the girl, thought of her books, and guessed correctly between Won't and Can't.


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The girl sneezed. Once, twice, three times, four times. An apologetic and embarrassed look shot to his side of the couch. A hand, cupped over her nose.

"There's some toilet paper in the bathroom, Kid."

Her knees twitched; her legs shifted as the muscles prepared to stand. But they stilled, and a bizarre expression passed over what little of the girl's face that Logan could see. She shook her head.

Fine, he thought, and turned away. There was only eight minutes left to the game, and he had no intention of missing it to fetch her a snot rag.

She took the courser, brown napkin that had been wrapped around their hot dogs, twisted her head discreetly as she wiped her upper lip.

Logan's teeth were held tightly together, as if to keep anything behind them from escaping. Yesterday, in a moment devoid of the reason he normally prided himself on, Logan had told the girl that she could read one of her books here. If she wanted. Sometime. But she had said no, too afraid of him still, too afraid now to even chance being caught in the back rooms. As if being in sight of the door mattered. As if she were any more at risk near his bedroom than here, right beside him.

She sniffled and coughed, left even before the eight minutes were up.


Much later, after he had made that night's kill, Logan bought and placed a box of tissues on the floor next to the couch; he set a bottle of cold medicine on the kitchen counter. Just in case anybody needed them.


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"What did you eat today, Kid?"

The girl looked up at him with surprise, blinking as if this question was a trick, or some game you play with toddlers. She glanced down at the food in her lap and up again at him.

"Chicken," she answered, pointedly. Was he blind?

"What else?"

Another downward glance. "Onion rings." As if it were normal to eat only one meal a day, normal to rely on the upstairs for that meal. A mercenary who might be leaving in a week or two.


Logan gritted his teeth, so--so annoyed by her reply that he found himself swallowing compulsively for the rest of the evening, keeping his jaw locked tight as he thought about what the kid would eat when he was gone.


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His first thought, when Logan saw her, was Oh shit.

The second was Who?

The third: No. No. No.


He returned early, his tasks outside of the tenement finished more quickly than usual. Logan was not particularly surprised that he reached his apartment before the girl--though he had assumed (wrongly, he supposed) that she sat in his hall for a couple of hours. Logan left the door open half-way, turned the television on and placed both the food and himself on the couch to wait for her.

But twenty minutes passed, then thirty, and when he finally heard her distinctive footsteps (perhaps a little slower? Heavier? Uneven?) leaving the stairwell, Logan jumped to his feet.

He wanted to be angry, wanted to say something rude and punish the girl for being late. He wanted to let her inside so that they could eat. Like always. Like they were supposed to. But odd scents, bad scents, pushed against his nose, and a feeling settled like a stone in his chest. And he knew, he knew without thinking what had happened, knew what was going to happen now. He knew that what he wanted would make no difference.

Logan wondered how she managed to make it up the stairs, how she managed to stand or walk at all. She couldn't have been thinking clearly, shouldn't have had the strength or will to move. Later, he thought that something in the girl remembered that she was supposed to be somewhere at this time and she had held on to that fact. Some instinct had driven her to seek comfort in the closest approximation to good and safe that the girl knew.


He noted five of the most visible bruises before his senses began to relay more troubling facts to his brain.

The girl's eyes were glassy and unfocused, her legs shaking from ankle to hip with the effort their job required. She swayed unmistakably from side to side like an infant's tower of blocks. Tangled hair, a partially open mouth that revealed skin a much darker red than any gums should be. A purple crescent moon around her left eye.

The strong scent of copper.

Dirty t-shirt hanging off of her slim frame. Backwards, and inside out. Logan could see the tag sticking out at him like an impudent tongue, it's brand too faded to read. Shoeless feet, only one sock--turning red from something she must have stepped on. Jeans worn properly, but as wrinkled as her shirt, with an alarming crimson bloom staining the fabric beneath the zipper.


The girl stopped walking (or staggering) when Logan appeared. But though she looked straight at him, he doubted that she knew who he was.

"Jesus Fucking Christ," he swore.

Her lips quavered and she wobbled; he caught the tower of blocks before they hit the filthy non-carpet, just as her knees buckled. She gave a sharp whimper at the press of his body against hers. But the girl did not, or could not, struggle as he lifted her into his arms. Beaten flesh and the curve of a breast against his chest. Her knees laying over his forearm, easily fitting in the space between Logan's wrist and elbow. Small body flinching spastically, her head twisting away from his neck.

He carried the girl inside.



.

The Girl: Chapter Seven







"It's okay, Kid. It's okay. It's okay."


Logan brought the girl to the couch, settled her (after knocking their bag of would-be dinner to the floor) with her back slightly propped against the arm rest.

"It's okay."

He couldn't seem to stop repeating the words, the useless (to him) mantra. At least it was better than the swear words Logan stored and kept on hand near his tongue.

The girl was blinking, her eyes dark and glittering with an unnamed, but not unnameable fear. As if she'd awaken to find herself alone in a forest with footprints all around her that were disturbingly bear-shaped. He hoped she wouldn't cry. He wouldn't know how to handle a crying teenager; somehow he guessed that his usual clawed reply would not be appropriate.

Logan took a deep breath. "It's okay, Marie. I'm--I'm gonna look atcha', alright?"

He really, really hoped she wouldn't cry.

He examined the injuries not hidden by clothing first. The hardened, scratchy tissue of his fingers skimmed over bruises, little cuts. They plucked small, dark slivers of glass out and pressed the little holes the shards left until they clotted. She gasped and whimpered, and whimpered more when his hands left her arms and made their way up her neck.

"Come here, Darlin'. It's okay. Ain't gonna hurt you. Just lemme see. Come here."

She submitted to him with a few tremors and a watering of eyes that couldn't imagine any more hurt, but couldn't hope for anything else. He made her turn her head, left then right, as he searched for abrasions. Gently, with a brush of his knuckles over her cheek, Logan urged her head down. He swallowed, fought to hold his face in an expression that wouldn't cause her any more fright. Near the back of her skull, the girl's knotted hair was wet. A gash lay beneath the clumped, moist strands. Not deep, not too wide, but enough troubling enough that he put in extra effort to make his voice kind.

"It's okay," he told her softly. "You're gonna be okay. It's okay." Logan felt the swollen of the wound, testing. Blood oozed slowly, rather than gushed, but his palms were still soaked when he drew back.

Logan's heart battered tightly somewhere in the passages of his throat. He thought, hospital. But no. He trusted the clinics in this city even less than those anywhere else.

He listened to her pulse, her lungs. Watched the girl watching him and tried to decide if the confusion he say was part of a concussion.

A tear trickled down her too-pale cheek.

The girl's pupils were large, but even, and no pink stained the whites around the irises.

He inhaled deeply; Logan's senses were as good as any doctor's tests. No notably abnormal chemicals in her body, besides terror. Hints of beer and smoke on her skin, but not beneath it. Dirt and cheap laundry detergent and sweat and the nostril-burning stink of other males. His thoughts bouncing around like marbles in a dryer--what he could do, what he couldn't, what had to be done--Logan left the girl and fetched a towel from his bathroom. It was one of only two that he owned; the second was wet from his morning shower.

He pressed the cloth (not too hard, but she jerked and keened) against the girl's scalp--regretting, for the first time, how poorly stocked his apartment was. Furniture, beer, cigars, food, clothes, and a few vials of poison (just in case they came in handy). Nothing, besides this fucking towel, that would help the girl. What the hell was wrong with him? How could he let this happen? He was The Wolverine. He was supposed to be prepared.

"They payed him," the girl whimpered incomprehensibly. "They payed him. They payed him."

Logan bit down on the God dammit that almost slipped through his teeth, pushed the self pity to the back of his mind and focused his attention on the more pressing realities.

The girl had to be tended to.

She shouldn't be left alone.

He had to take care of her.

He needed items not present here.

He needed to leave, to gather those necessary supplies.

He shouldn't leave her.

She was hurt.

She was hurt.

She was hurt.

Logan's thoughts fused into a grudging, fragile decision.

She was hurt.


"It's okay, Darlin'. Don't worry."

Logan continued his improvised examination, hurrying now. He ran his hands along her legs--checking for lacerations, bumps, any areas too tender. Wounds that could not be left unattended even for a brief period of time. He removed the single sock from her foot, and then the circular head of a beer bottle that had been buried into her skin. She shrieked, once, and the sound ended in a coughing fit. Logan held her ankle in his grip until the pain dimmed enough to make her reconsider kicking. He made little shushing noises, stroked her heel and any skin that didn't seem too bruised, apologized over and over again. A strip of towel was sacrificed to tie around her foot; the wound would scar badly and leave her with a slight but permanent limp. He released her leg, but it spasmed every time Logan touched it, as if stung with tiny bolts of electricity.

"D-Don't. I don't --don't want--I don't want--don't," the girl choked out, barely articulate, when he pushed her shirt up.

"It's okay," Logan said, reflexively, hopelessly.

"I don't want--"

Her bottom lip shook too much. Lack of vocal control or upset kept the girl from completing her sentence.

"I know., Darlin'. It's okay."

He touched her stomach, drew his fingertips down her ribs--one side and then the other--checking for fractures. She wasn't wearing a bra, and Logan tugged the shirt back down as quickly as possible. He looked down reluctantly, studied the juncture between her jean-clad thighs while equally attempting not to recognize it. Logan's throat spasmed in something like a swallow.

He undid the little metal button above the zipper and the girl flinched bodily, violently. She twisted, puked over the edge of the couch. Her shoulders rose and fell, gave little heaves even when nothing more dripped from her mouth. There wasn't much in her stomach to expel; she hadn't had the chance to eat her meal of the day. Logan gently pressed the girl's shoulder until she lay on her back once more. He wiped her lips with the corner of his shirt. The scent of vomit bothered him much less than the other smells in and on the girl's body.

Another glance below her hips. He told himself: that can wait. The red stain had not grown, or not so much. And the jeans--they were keeping the blood in, weren't they? Logan told himself that it would be alright, that she would be alright. He told himself that he knew what he was doing.

He didn't want to touch her there.

Not like this, his mind finished without his permission. Logan tried to forget the thought.

"Marie," he said, a little unevenly. "I hafta go get some stuff to--to take care of you. It's gonna take me a little while, but I'll be back. You'll be alright. Just stay here."

Logan got to his feet. She was shivering. He took off his jacket and draped it over her. Trying to find a blanket that wasn't torn or stained (celibacy during missions was another rule of his, one more frequently broken) would have taken too long.

"Don't move too much," he told the girl, and found himself stroking her hair without meaning to. He pulled his arm back and said, a little more roughly, "Don't fall asleep. You hear me, Kid? Stay awake."

Then, "It's okay."



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At the drugstore, Logan cut in line. He threw his purchases on the wooden table top, growled both fiercely and and at nobody in particular--which meant everybody. The cashier, a man who kept a loaded shotgun next to the emergency button beneath the counter and used it far more than the latter, seemed too relieved that Logan was not robbing him to protest.



:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


He found him by accident, on his hurried return to the tenement. Logan did not believe in coincidences; the bastard mush have lived close by. Nobody went to the police here, unless it was to deliver a bribe (payment taken more seriously than rent). He probably hadn't felt any pressing need to get away after...after.

The man--or boy, he couldn't have been much older than twenty, no matter that he drank from that copper flask like a professional--was slinging dice, in a circle with what amounted to friends in this city. He was skinny, and tall, with a rip in the armpit of his oily wifebeater. Fairly nondescript; normally Logan would never have paid him any attention, or thought twice if he had.

But his senses burned and his instincts set something chained withing him loose. Nerves and muscles burned, aflame with some angry internal firework. His nostrils flared; his eyes sought and narrowed in on the boy across the street, as intent as the scope of a sniper's rifle. His brain, unnecessarily, snarled him.

And then, just as quickly but much less agreeably, he thought, One of them.

Without faltering, without breaking his stride, Logan stored the plastic pharmacy bags behind a dumpster. He crossed the empty street, boots crushing pieces of glass and crumbling old tar.

The game of dice did not take long to finish; the players on this street lacked the attention span for long gambles. It dissolved quickly into an argument, and after sever routine threats and cursing that even Logan considered excessive, the crowd broke up. His target strutted away, twenty-eight dollars and three cigarettes richer.

Logan followed him, followed the scent of the girl imprinted somewhere it did not belong.

An alley to their left, a fake proposition of drugs, abandoned when Logan realized that nobody was watching them. His fingers dug into the wiry muscle of an arm the color of unsweetened coffee. An angry, then alarmed face. Shouts that were easily silenced.

He asked him, Where did you find her?

He asked, What did you do?

He asked, Who did you pay?

The boy stuttered, as people so commonly did when questioned by The Wolverine. He didn't know, at first, who Logan was talking about, and that would cost him. He said, "She was good, man.", and that would cost him more.

"Fi-fi-fifty dollars, m-m-man. Only--only Mac p-pay 'hundred 'cuz he went first."

Logan's claws did not so much slip, as fall, out of their sheath in his arm. He cut through the boy's midsection until not one but two halves of a person lay on the ground. Logan left the body in the alley.





:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::




"Alright, Kid, Imma take these off. Hey--hey, don't. Don't do that. Not gonna do anything to you. Just calm down."

This time, Logan steeled himself, or tried to. He slid the zipper down, listening to the cleck-cleck-cleck. The blood made it sound a bit wet, and he worried about the metal catching on any skin. Should he just cut the jeans off?

The girl was shaking horribly. Muscles shuddered and jumped beneath his palms. He had to place his hand under her knee, to keep her from recoiling. Her lips parted and shut, but she neither spoke nor screamed. Logan had worried that he would find her in a concussion-induced sleep, but the girl's eyes were bright now--almost too bright, alert with fever or fear.

He got the pants off of her, dropped them on the carpet to join the rest of a mess he'd clean up later. Logan had already opened the items he had bought earlier, set them in arm's reach. He picked these up, one by one, and gently held her legs apart.

Emotion pulsed within the confines of his skull. Little shocks of anger that made him want to punch a hole through something (blood from the boy coated his jeans; he'd have to throw this pair out). He thought something was wrong with his heart, his lungs. They didn't feel as if they were working properly--pumping too fast and then not at all.

Logan wondered if he should tell her about the boy in the alley--no. No, definitely not. What was he thinking? That wouldn't make her feel better. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to be here, hearing the girl gasp and hiss as hydrogen peroxide touched wounds she should not have. He wanted to be away fighting, growling, drinking beer and not thinking about crusted fluid--what the hell was wrong with his heart? He wanted to find the other person who'd paid to be inside her, find who had put that privilege on the market in the first place. He wanted to let his claws out--they were burning in his arms. He wanted to bury his face in her neck, say "It's Okay" until his throat gave out.

Calm down, Logan thought firmly. Focus, before you hurt her. He inhaled, sought control but there was no need. His hands were steady, never shook as he cleaned her; his jaw was unclenched; his body was loose and revealed nothing to suggest that his internal organs were not behave as they ought to. Logan's body, as it so often did, went about it's own task without him noticing.

He grunted, "Don't be scared, Kid." The command didn't seem to have much effect.

Logan's calloused hand rested on her hip, now. He made a pad of gauze and cotton, positioned it in the silken, battered space where her thighs met. He didn't know what else to do. Logan wished, fleetingly, that Jean was here, but did not allow himself to dwell pointlessly.

Absently, without giving the action a name, Logan stroked her leg. Up and down, his thumb moving in thoughtless circles. And then there was--what? Pain, like a million paper cuts on his testicles? A sudden sense of nausea, tempting him to bend over and puke like the girl had? Dizziness? Blurring of his formerly keen vision?

The girl gasped, cried out. Logan stilled, and the uncomfortable feelings went gradually away.

He leaned away, looked up to her face, to the visible strips of the clumsy bandage he'd put together for the gash on her skull. Brown eyes blinking at him rapidly, shock and pain.

What the fuck am I doing here, with this kid?

Logan stared at her for a minute, pathetically clutching handfuls of her t-shirt and trying to make it stretch down. He started to undo the buttons of his, then thought--no, a clean one. Get her something clean.

He stood, and had to use his arm to push off from the couch. Logan wobbled as if he'd gone through several rounds with Sabertooth or several crates of vodka. He was too surprised to really consider the cause. He tottered into the bedroom, grabbed the top shirt off the stack of (more or less) folded clothes beside his bed. Blue denim, long sleeve. It would be long on the girl--which was good.

The walk back to the couch seemed to take longer than usual, and when he sat down, Logan could feel every ounce of his adamantium skeleton. He felt tired, drained.

The girl was looking at him strangely, and he thought--or just hoped--that there was a little color to her cheeks now. His rudimentary first aid must have worked pretty well.

"Wanna sit up a bit, 'Darlin? Help me out a little?"

Logan pulled her forward, and there was a struggle as he tugged her last piece of clothing over her head and her resisting arms. Several panicked "No's" and even more "It's Okays". And then the girl was nothing but bandages and teenage skin and bloody dark hair. Weak thrashing, spending what energy she had--the girl would probably have kicked herself off the couch if he had let her. She curled inward on herself, trying to cover everything. Dimples and bruises and a scar on her right hip.

She wasn't listening to his coaxes or explanations, but he managed to get his shirt on her, eventually. She was hysterical, but small and hurt and exhausted and in danger of slipping into a coma, and Logan was....Logan. He fastened the last button and and found his arm was locked, refused to leave it's position around her waist. He held the crying girl carefully to his chest, felt her slump against him in resignation. The girl's spine pressed against the underside of his wrist: he could feel each round knot. Her whole body shook when she sobbed, and her fists began to rhythmically grab and release handfuls of the flannel shirt he wore.

The tears he had dreaded burned his skin like acid when it seeped through the cloth. They continued to fall even when she drifted into a miserable doze that Logan woke her from periodically, for the rest of the night. He worried about her sleeping too deeply, mentally recalled everything and anything he'd ever half-learned about concussions.

And he murmured, in a nearly unbroken stream, "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay, Kid. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."






.

The Girl: Chapter Eight







Her foot was dangling over the edge of the couch. So limp it didn't appear to possess any bones at all, pale and slender and inexplicably sad. Logan could not get the thought of glass slippers out of his mind, though he did not quite know why. He pushed the limb gently back onto the cushion, continued to scrub the vomit off the carpet. Every few seconds Logan would glance up, check how she was breathing, how fast her eyes moved beneath their lids.

When the chore was completed somewhere in the faint vicinity of his satisfaction, Logan stood (heavily, bracing an arm against his knee). He threw the rags in the garbage bin, told himself that he would take the nearly-overflowing bag to the chute later. He washed his hands (thoroughly) in the rusty sink and returned to the girl.

Her body did not tense as Logan shifted her back into his lap, made a few adjustments--but her brow crinkled and her lips twisted in discomfort and she gave little unhappy mewls.

"Hey, honey," Logan said quietly, stroking the hair out of her face. "C'mon, Darlin', wake up for me."

The girl fussed but opened her eyes. They were full of shadows. It couldn't have been less than three in the morning; Logan had been afraid to let her doze for more than an hour at a time. He was sure she would be happy to sleep without ever waking--and a concussion made that a very real possibility.

She blinked up at him and, like the other times tonight, there was no instant of forgetfulness, of sudden recognition of where she was--just hurt, unbroken by that brief and blessed unconsciousness.

"How ya feel, Kid?"

"Mm," she whimpered.

"Head hurt?"

"Mm."

"I'll getcha an icepack later. Go on back to sleep."

Her eyes showed no irritation--if she was capable of such an emotion--at being awoken, nor at what amounted to a dismissal. Just fear. Logan watched her contemplate the danger she was in, until exhaustion overpowered her discomfort. The girl tumbled back into sleep as if it were a muddy sinkhole. And an hour passed--then two, then three. And Logan sat holding her, moving slightly in a way that was not rocking, because rocking was for sissies. He stared down at the lily-white petals of her eyelids and thinking: Let her sleep. She's okay. Let her sleep. He didn't want to see her looking at him as if he was a continuation of her nightmare. Even more, Logan didn't want to see her almost-easy acceptance of this.

But he stayed there, as if the constancy of his arms might somehow transfer his ability to heal--and perhaps a little of his amnesia--to her.


The girl's next-to-nothing weight and the downy skin of her neck in the curve of his elbow. Soft breathing--inhale, exhale. The ever-so-small rise and fall of her chest and hair not damp now, but crusty with blood. Glistening lower lip, scarlet from the pressure of teeth. Twin knees peeping shyly from the hem of his shirt--Logan had the strangest urge to see how they would fit in his hands. A glimpse of pale thigh and bunched blue cloth around her midsection. The just barely audible (though this might have been his imagination) spasms of flesh made too sensitive by rough treatment.

Thin arms encircling her stomach--a package who's string had already been untied. Thick eyelashes. Mouthe parted for air. Exhale, inhale. The button's of his shirt tickling the side of her ribcage. Exhale, inhale. A cricket, somewhere. Rat feet pattering inside the wall. Shouting downstairs, a too-young somebody crying. Regular flinches from the girl in his arms, little snuffling sounds. Fluttering eyelids that stilled a moment later.

Her right cheek had a blotch of red in it--probably from laying against his shirt, though his mind raced with other ideas. A slap's bruise, just beginning to show up. Harsh lips. The hair of a jaw. Carpet burn--

"It's okay. You're okay," Logan mumbled, his lips moving so little that he might have been talking to himself, for his ears were the only ones capable of hearing the words. "You're safe."


::::::::::::::

Logan's internal clock told him that it was a little past dawn in other cities, where the sun's rising was actually visible. Her face showed both distress and nausea--he said, "It's okay," and tactfully slid her off of his lap, to the other cushion.

He busied himself in the kitchen (not that there was much to do), trying clumsily to give her privacy, breathing space, a sense of normality--whatever those pussy therapists or the Xmen would call it.They were unfamiliar concepts to Logan when they did not apply to him. He tied the ends of the trash bag together and pulled it out of the oily plastic container. He could hear the girl's minute, timid shifting, felt her wide-eyed stare and knew she was scraping together any remaining dregs of courage into something useful.

"Where are my clothes?," she asked, in a tiny voice. No stutter for a change, but a trembling whisper that was somehow worse. As if she didn't want to be heard as much as she wanted the answer.

"With the rest of the garbage," he said, more blunt than he had intended. Force of habit. He pretended to only glance over his shoulder at her, but analyzed the fold of the girl's body, the flinches--as if she were accepting an invisible punch. He turned away.The trash required his complete attention. "I'll get you somethin' else to wear later." He hefted the bag in his right hand, started for the door.

Her lips were quivering. She seemed to be holding her breath and when the girl finally let it out, it shook too. She opened her mouth in apparent preparation of speech, but a sob rushed ahead of the words, and then a moan. Logan forced to wait with something close to what a patient expression might be.

"Can I leave?" She addressed her lap.

"No."

The girl flinched.

"I don't think you should," Logan amended, with effort. "You're better off here."

He opened the front door. "It's alright. You don't need to be scared of me," he reiterated. "I'm going to take care of you."

The girl did not raise her head.

Out in the hall, Logan stood as if frozen, trying to remember why he'd thought giving her a few moments alone was a good idea. It wasn't. It was stupid of him. Screw the garbage and it's traces of last night--he should drop it now, here. Go back inside and cover her body with his own. Make absolutely sure that nothing could get at her, that she understood she was safe. Let her know that he did not toss around guarantees of protection casually and that she owed it to him to get better, be happy and strong right away.

Logan gripped the plastic tighter and carried it downstairs.




::::::::::::


He asked her, "You...ah...you wanna talk...about it, Kid? Tell me what happened?"

She stared fearfully at the top button of his shirt while Logan thought--please say no please say no please say no.

And when ten minutes passed by with no noise save sniffles from her, he said, "Okay, honey. I'm gonna get that icepack, alright?"

He got up with a sense of spoiled relief.

:::::::::::


The girl remained on the couch until the thick of the evening--a flinching, huddled mass. She kept her wild gaze on Logan without ever actually meeting his, rarely focusing anywhere above his collar bone. Within a certain distance--arm's reach--she would study the ground, only lift her panicked eyes if he actually did touch her.

She refused both food and drink, and he did not push her. Logan filled an empty beer bottle with water and set it close by, in case she changed her mind. He felt odd, orbiting around this unexpected guest who would certainly be here longer than a hasty dinner. He was constantly aware of himself, and especially her--so small but taking up so much space. There seemed to be nothing to look at but her, nothing to do but ask her You sure you're not hungry? You cold, Kid? How do you feel? Still hurt? You feel sick? That gauze too tight? Need some tissue? Think you can make it to the bathroom? Do you need to go? Want me to do anything for ya? over and over again.

He checked her bandages, replaced a few, kept her warm with any clean material he had (a pair of Logan's jeans were rolled and placed under her head), kept up his own fumbling, one-sided conversation. Tear's fell, too, any time he came within arm's reach. Hot, thick tears that coated her cheeks like liquid glass. They never seemed to completely dry away.

Logan did not stray far from the building that day, never more than thirty minutes or so, and only then to pick up items for her. More bandages, a few t-shirts, some cotton child shorts. He bought a quilt from a grandmother in the next tenement. It was the softest and smelled the least of marijuana that the woman had to sell.

::::::::::::::




He offered the girl his bed, but she shook so badly that Logan quickly rescinded the suggestion.

"Alright, then. Call out it you need anything. I'll hear you."


Sleep was a sweet temptation, one his body definitely could have used. When was the last time he rested? Two, three nights ago? He'd gone longer. What was wrong with him? And Logan touched upon it, briefly--his thoughts and breath slowing into what some might foolishly call peaceful.

But the girl's heartbeats slid between his conscious mind and that darkness with it's promise of comforting nothingness. Logan stared up at the water-spots in the ceiling, listened to that uneven pulse in the other room and told himself that sleep had never kept it's promises to him anyway.

He heard the slow squeak of couch springs, the heavy rustle of cloth. A hiss of agony. Shuffling. Little gasps.

Logan swung his legs over the side of the mattress. His skin snagged on a piece of metal poking through the out-worn weave--perhaps it was good that she had taken the couch instead.



She was upright, yes, but barely so. Hunched over like a crone, legs so shaky and awkward it was as if she was discovering them for the very first time. The air that traveled down Logan's airways were static with her pain.

A soft white hand pressed to the wall, grime clinging to her palm when she pulled it briefly away. Her other hand touching her hip, her stomach, as if that would push the burning back in, so it would not get out and become unbearable. Her hair--still clumped with blood--was far beyond the point of disarray.

Logan watched the girl make her slow, limping way towards the door, taking the long route because she needed the what meager support the wall had to offer. She was, he thought with more generosity than he usually allowed, being as quiet as she possibly could. Still, not everything could be held behind her teeth and the lip they were biting. A footstep, a shudder, another footstep. Her soles dragging along the carpet. Lower body clenched against cramps and, he supposed, to hold in the gauze between her legs. He should have taped it there. Logan stood in the bedroom doorway, silently considering, wondering if the next step would be followed with a fall.

She paused in her unnecessary escape attempt, refastening her grip on whatever energy she had. He hadn't left the light on when he retired to his bed. It wasn't pitch black, but dark enough to make him worry about her hitting something. He was never sure of the exact point where his vision surpassed everyone else's--he'd have to measure it someday.

Logan wondered if she knew where she was going. If she were used to dim light and sneaking away.

When he stepped forward his movements--unlike her's--were completely soundless. And yet she stiffened before he even reached for her, perhaps sensing a different texture in the air behind her. He took hold of the girl's shoulders, gently, and she jerked, shouted. Began crying hard when he pulled her back--more reflexive despair than fright.

"Kid," he said tiredly and not unkindly. "I'm not gonna do this shit with you. Come on."

For neither the first nor last time he brought her back to the couch--leading, and then carrying. He picked the quilt off the floor, tucked her back in and listened to her beg him to stop something he hadn't begun.




.

The Girl: Chapter Nine




Her life had become a surrealist painting--like the ones in that book she'd flipped through at the library. An abstract world, with distorted figures and agitated light and nothing how or where it was supposed to be. Horrible and petrifying and completely insane. The girl was sure that if she tried to scream paint chips would fill her mouth and she'd die choking on the chemicals.Trapped by canvas and wood and a hopeless inanimacy.

But perhaps her world had always been that way. Maybe she was only understanding now the full scope of the term 'meaningless'.

She wondered if death was any different. Dark and blank and inescapable.

Maybe she was already dead, if she couldn't tell the two apart.

Nothing was real. It couldn't be. It was too awful, too pointless. A tunnel, a cave who's exits had been bricked off. There was nothing the girl could do, so why should she do anything at all? Better just to stop thinking about it--stop thinking, period. Just stay still and let everything brush over her until the artist changed his mind and scratched her out of the picture. Replaced her with something more appealing. A bush, maybe.

Girls here had been doing just that for years. Why couldn't she?

A piece of the girl--the most important piece,she told herself, the piece that actually believed indifference was possible--remained detached even as her flesh betrayed her. When Logan came near, when he touched her, when he looked at her or the air around her for too long, when she had no reason at all to be upset--her stupid, stupid body reacted. Her muscles would contract; tears would sprout from her eyes and fear chemicals would spark alive in her blood. The girl really didn't care. But she couldn't seem to send that message to the rest of her body.

It didn't matter anyway, the girl told herself, it didn't.

It didn't matter how strangely Logan was behaving. It didn't matter that he had barely suffered her presence before and now refused to let her leave. It didn't matter what he intended to do with her because, after all, what more could be done?

Sometimes she wished he would hurry up and hurt her, do whatever he wanted. She needed to get used to it.

She was numb.

Or, rather, she spent so much time convincing herself that this was true that it became the same thing.


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The days that passed were strange ones, frantic but uneventful--a combination that nearly drove Logan insane. In the apartment (which he was spending more time in than ever before), he felt each minute as a physical presence, dragging away from him with an agonizing slowness. Time had never held so still, as Logan waited for the girl to need something. To speak; to eat a little at his pleading (and slight forcing); to look at him with something other than fear (hadn't happened yet); to use the bathroom; to have her bandages changed (six times a day, perhaps a little more than necessary--it was an excuse to be close to her, to teach her that all contact was not lecherous).

He spent most of his time struggling to keep from falling through the flimsy netting of the lawn chairs (his place on the couch was, apparently, in a state of permanent off limits after the Football Game and Hysteria incident of a few evenings prior). Logan would turn the TV on but watch the girl, wonder what she was thinking about when she stared not-quite-blankly into space. By the end of the program he could say how many times her eyes had watered, but not which team had won.

And all the while he was desperate, caught in an internal frenzy to leave. Tie the last knots in this mission and take her far away. Xavier's would surely know how the fuck to deal with her. All sorts of kids flooded that mansion, many twice as messed up as she was. Yeah. Yeah, they'd know what to do. What she needed. He'd make sure they took care of her.


::::::::::::


On the second day--the morning after her abysmal attempt to sneak out--Logan softened her hair with water and baby oil, pulled out what hardened clumps of blood he could get without hurting her. That night Logan made/helped the girl take a shower. He held her under the tepid, unreliable spray, directed her head this way or that to avoid hitting the gauze. Half-in, half-out of the tub himself because there wasn't enough room for the both of them, he was soaked. And afterward, when he changed out of his sopping jeans, the cloth pulled away moist, suctioning noises that turned his stomach. He couldn't say why, but the sound stuck in his head; he heard it every time he thought about the tenement.

Blood, with differing tints of other filth: from muddy amber to a frothy, milky pink--sluiced off the girl's body. It pooled around her feet and the much-abused drain. She trembled as his free hand made it's way over various places--over her clothes, which Logan had permitted her to retain in order to avoid a fit--loosening whatever had crusted itself to her skin. The smell--their smell--did not come away so easily.

He would always remember the way she turned her head. Pressed her face into his side. The bump of her little nose. Eyelids scrunched tightly closed. Hiding when protests hadn't helped her. Logan pretended she was nuzzling him.


:::::::


On the third day, she went almost an entire hour without crying.


:::::::


On the fifth day, she said, "Thank you", when Logan placed a steadying hand under her elbow. He kept her from tripping on her ungraceful walk to the bathroom. When they reached the toilet, the girl snatched her arm away, recoiled, looked at him sideways. But then those words came out, all the same. And they made him feel...they made him feel.

::::::

On the sixth day, the girl rested her cheek fleetingly on Logan's chest, let, for a moment his arms encircle her soft form. But she pulled away a moment later because he was obviously finished taping down her bandages.

:::::::::::::::



Soup, when he couldn't calm her enough to coax anything else past her teeth.

Slightly stale cheerios, consumed one at a time when his gentle plea, "You hafta eat somethin', Darlin'," was met with only shakes of her head. His next words were a bit sharper.

Chicken strips when she could keep them down.

Sliced apple when she spat out his attempt at scrambled eggs (offensive, until Logan had tasted them for himself: slippery rubber).

A rather expensive cinnamon bun when he'd brushed his lips across her knuckles and she hadn't pulled away.

A few mouthfuls of brisket when she seemed interested enough in food to use a fork.


::::::::::::::::


He thought she was recovering. Not in the normal sense of the word, but as those in this city recovered. Drawing into themselves, maintaining their bodies and letting everything else fall away, in preparation of the next assault. Like the farmers who set fire to their crops to defy a looting army.

The girl could stand, walk around with more ease--but continued to wobble and grimace from the effort.

She could get up for more water, a tissue, Tylenol, but could not tolerate his eyes touching her's.

She would allow him to apply neosporin, clean cotton to the now slightly-less alarming gash that marred her scalp. But she'd take the supplies and go into the bathroom to dress the other injuries herself.

The girl would say 'yes' or 'no' to questions he asked her, 'please' and 'I'm not hungry', 'don't' and 'I'm cold' and, occasionally, 'Logan'. But never without the ring of anxiety in the words.

And she never, never fell asleep without adding fresh tears to the ones already shed.


:::::::::::


Many more escape attempts followed her first, when she thought him asleep or on some outing. They were clumsy, almost half-hearted tries rarely brought her further than the hall when she was most successful.

His soft admonishments had no long-lasting effect on the girl. She'd fight him until he deposited her back within the four walls they'd both become so familiar with. And as soon as her tears dried she seemed to forget the incident--until the next time.

Logan was always struck by the expression on her face when he caught her, a little girl's baffled hurt. He worried about others finding her before him on those rare occasions when she made it out the door. What they might do when she was at her softest, most confused. Different from the girl who sat on his couch, alert enough to pretend to ignore him.The child that wandered half-asleep out of his apartment, though she had nowhere to go, was practically begging someone to take her. Her face so vulnerable and sweet and asking why without hope for an answer that anyone would want to, need to grab her. Pull her close and then closer and then--

Logan told himself that he wouldn't allow that to happen.




::::::::::::::::::



He made no noise when he left. She was in a thick sleep, the kind when the dreamer has sobbed herself past exhaustion, hugging the quilt tightly.Logan had watched her for a long time to assure himself that she wasn't going to stir for awhile. Even the door's latch seemed to muffle it's click accommodatingly for him, as he slipped quietly out.

A quick sweep of the areas he had occupied during the mission. Double checking the homes, the offices, the brothels of his victims. He searched for evidence, for incidental witnesses that Logan knew he hadn't left--but he was not the sort to grow sloppy from overconfidence. It was The Wolverine's version of paperwork, time consuming and (for him) dull. He'd do half now, the rest tomorrow. And then they would be out of here.

Logan organized his thoughts as he traced and retraced his paths over the last few months. He considered the connections between his targets, weighed the value of information he'd be handing over to Xavier. Chuck would be impressed, and Logan would be suitably compensated--and perhaps a portion of his pay could go to the girl's keep in the mansion.


::::


She was having a nightmare. Logan could hear her whimpering as soon as he left the stairwell, and his step quickened. The doorknobs turn was considerably louder this time, but the girl did not awake. His boots pressed down the already thin weave of the carpet as they stepped around the side of the couch, coming to a halt when he reached her.

The girl's hair was still wet; lately she'd taken to showering several times a day, a luxury he didn't begrudge her. Her skin was always pink now from scrubbing at what she couldn't wash away; she'd already worn down the bars of soap Logan had purchased the other day.

The quilt was twisted appallingly. A corner of it was still draped over her ankle, clinging without hope; the rest was piled on the floor. Thrashing had pushed her further up the cushions; there was room for him to sit. Her head tossed wildly back and forth; her arms pushed at nothing. Beneath her lids the girl's eyes moved with violent force.

He caught her kicking legs, and then her wrists, pushed moist brown strands out of the way of her mouth, her rapidly blinking eyes. He said, "Shh", her name, little soothing things that did not help because she still woke screaming.

The soft and not-so-soft jabs of a panicky fight as Logan labored to quiet her enough offer comfort. A knee striking--perhaps by accident--his testicles bluntly. He grunted and bit down hard enough to fill his mouth with blood, and forced back the urge to retaliate.

Eyes welling as pain flared brightly and settled into a dull, nauseating, unfortunately familiar throbbing. Logan nuzzled her shoulder. His jaw was tight. He rubbed her back, her arms, perhaps not as gently as he could.

"Baby, you're only dreaming," he told her quietly (though this wasn't so true anymore, he thought, with the irritation that always accompanied an kick to his nuts). "You're safe, wake up now. It's okay. Everything's okay."

"Get off! Stop! Stop! Get off of me. God, no, get off of me. Getoffgetoffgetoffgetoff--"

She bucked, kicked away when he loosened his arms. Maintained her sobbing, high-pitched litany even when he let her go completely. Logan sat back. The girl wound herself into a protective ball and every gesture made towards her produced a violent cringe. From the curve of her thin elbow she peered out at him, shivering and crying tears which, judging from the instant redness of her cheeks, were boiling.

"Get away," she gasped. "Just leave me alone." And this last was spoken so angrily that he acquiesced. Logan was tired, not prepared to shift so suddenly from a killer covering his tracks to a protector--at least, not the kind capable of doing whatever the kid needed. He didn't know any fucking lullabies, how to make her personal Boogieman run back to his closet. All of his pre-programed comforting techniques were those of an animals, and required the skills of his flesh.

Logan tried to shrug it off. He stood, replaced her quilt for the twentieth time. Touched her hair lightly, just once, and turned away.

He didn't see the shocked look that came over the girl's face and would have misinterpreted it even if he had.





He closed his eyes when she came in. Inhaled her nervousness, the minute shifts in her scent until she made up her mind on whatever she was deciding. Held perfectly still as her precious weight--little as it was--made the mattress dip and squeak. She stretched herself hesitantly along the edge (scooting over for her would have defeated the purpose of faking sleep and probably would have sent her running), on her side. The girl's slight breath, her shaky body. Warm. Her breasts, her knees pressed against his side mockingly. Peaches and vanilla and salt all filling his nostrils and whatwasshedoingwhatwasshedoingwhatwasshedoing? The dark quiet of the room and the sweaty perfume of the sleepless. Her wet hair and young body and what did she think she was doing here? Logan willing himself not to move. Don't move. Don't move a single fucking muscle--particularly not that muscle.

It was a test. An apology. A thank you. A whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it, from the incomprehensible mind of sad teenage girls. She remained there for the rest of the night, and Logan didn't touch her. She dozed off, eventually, and he told himself that meant trust.

He stayed awake.




.

The Girl: Chapter Ten





She woke early and alone, on a mattress torn in random places--covered with a sheet that was equally abused. Her skin was clammy and her eyes stung with a burning glaze--from fever or otherwise, she couldn't say.

The girl stared at the side of a case-less pillow, at it's blue stripes and, particularly, the speckled drops of blood. Not her's, fortunately. These were brown and old now--like freckles on the pale fabric. She ran an inventory of pain, found nothing new since yesterday, and permitted herself a slow exhale. She berated herself for actually falling asleep beside him. Falling asleep! There were few things the girl could think of, more stupid and dangerous. She could dance on a plummeting roller coaster, braided a hungry lion's mane, and not have felt the horror she did now. (Incidentally, she had never seen either of these; amusement parks and zoos were not common sights in this city).

It made no difference that her rest had been dreamless, smooth and and calm. So different from those bloody, only half-remembered scenes that had chased themselves across her eyelids when she lay on the couch. It made no difference that the girl knew she was a light sleeper, that she would have felt it if he had touched her. She had known that sort of confidence was dangerous before she'd learned to walk.

But still...still....

He hadn't hurt her, in any way she could identify right now. Not speaking of just this night, but all of the ones that came before. He'd stopped, when she told him to stop. Left her alone, when she'd wanted him to do so. And it was this astonishing, unprecedented fact that had led the girl, shivering, to the doorway of his bedroom. To the side of the mattress and to it's occupant--sprawled with the most intense look of concentration she'd ever seen on a sleeping face. His arm was hairy and warm and harder than concrete, and did not move as the girl filled what little available bed space there was with herself. Her knees, then her hip, then her shoulder, then her cheek came to rest on the slightly-oily cloth.

Staring, transfixed, at the vein in the side of his neck, a wire in an expanse of flesh-toned iron. At his pinkish lips. At the thousands of black stubble on his jaw. Thinking, that she could have a moment--please please please, just a moment--of safety. Comfort. The presence of another without the misery they usually delivered. And if in the next, Logan rolled over and spoiled the illusion, it would be okay. That would be okay, it really would, if she could just--if she could just have--

From the kitchen came the sound of the refrigerator opening. Closing. The girl blinked, sniffled. Turned over and made herself sit up. Standing was always an operation that had to be taken in tip-toe sized steps. Things tugged inside of her, threatened to rip again. How long before everything stopped hurting?

Feet on the floor. Take a breath. Look around the room: dusty and sad. Hurry up; anything could happen if he comes in here. Take another breath. Push up. Don't cry out. Don't focus on that migraine-summoning babble in your head.

Logan was assembling some sort of pancake/bacon/fruit mass on a paper plate (most of it's contents would find itself in the trash, uneaten) when she came in. An undershirt and fresh jeans (where had he changed? In the bathroom? The bedroom, as she slept?), tousled and spiked hair that had no intention of meeting a comb. The girl hovered, took an uncertain seat on the couch. (Bend your legs, don't hiss when certain areas touch the cushion).

The girl's mind was sharper this morning, and she didn't like it. Where was that thought-dulling, anesthetic fog that drifted over her so frequently? It made time speed forward so considerately, like sleep. Usually, even when it refused to come she could pretend it had. Lose herself in a mantra of 'It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter'. But now....why wasn't it working now?

Wordlessly, Logan brought her the plate and--her heart sped up; her throat spasmed--set it on her knees. Her legs jerked, and he growled when a raspberry fell off the Styrofoam edge. She could feel his eyes, silently appraising. Because the girl avoided looking at him directly--last night's close examination being an exception, since he was unconscious--she missed the brief smile he gave her. The girl looked down at the food--none of which she felt like eating--until he moved away.

He left the room, and the girl could hear the splashing of fluid in the toilet bowel. When Logan came out again, he had donned a flannel shirt over the wifebeater, and she had hardly moved. He made a few mild noises in the back of his throat until she put a forkful of pancake in her mouth. But he didn't actually speak until he began to lace up his boots.

"Gotta run a couple errands, Kid. I won't be gone long. An' when I get back, I'll change your bandages and we're gonna talk."

He stood, and this time she saw the smile, the fleeting quirk of his lips before they settled into their usual stern line. Her eyes darted away.

"Eat," Logan told her.


::::



She wanted to do something nice. For him, for Logan. (Though a solid part of her advised against any change of status quot; she had no way of knowing when or if he would do something that would make her regret any display of courtesy). Not so much a thank you for what the man was doing as for what he wasn't. A way to earn her keep so his mind would not turn to other payment.

She gathered the unclean laundry (hers lay in a small pile near the bathroom door; his lay in small piles...everywhere). Slowly, so slowly; bending hurt. Getting out of the apartment was easy this time, though the girl did not take note of this, nor did she realize the irony of being able to leave the one time she intended to return. The girl was thinking of the shower she would take, once she had clean towels. These days it was the only activity she had any true interest in, looked forward to when her mind was clear enough to think ahead. Cold and dripping did not matter; she'd never known anything different to compare the showers here to. If the girl stood under the water long enough, scraped the soap against her skin with enough force, then for a little while she almost felt clean.

She thought about straightening up the rest of his rooms. Would she have enough energy? Enough time? When would Logan return? Would he be pleased with her, or angry that she had been so...so presumptuous? What would he do? What had he meant, when he said they were going to talk? What did he want?

The girl's musings grew bleaker with every careful step, hefting the load of cloth higher in her arms. These halls seemed twice as awful since she had last walked them. A roach flitted boldly over the slippers Logan had given her (more beautiful, more clean than anything she had ever worn. Pink silk and soft on her sole's lacerations). The smells, the darkness, the threats she had been raised with and had previously considered tolerable. Now she trembled and breathed shallowly, flinched each time somebody else appeared. What a horrible, ridiculous, mind-numbingly stupid idea this was. What had she been thinking?

She told herself that she'd grown spoiled in Logan's rooms. She had to pull herself together, work on building a callous over her fear.

A dark-skinned woman with sleepy eyes and a bloody lip swayed past her, her stomach rounded with a child as hopeless as anyone else here.

Giggling teenager boys, blisters around their nose from huffing whatever was in those plastic bags. They reached for her, but were too high to stand.

A Hispanic man with too much facial hair, screaming at no one in angry Spanish.

An old, drunk blond who offered to "help carry dat shit fo' you, hon-eey", but walked away before she could tell her no.

If her mind had been focused enough, the girl would have turned back. Hurried back to the relatively safe apartment and collapsed. Dug her fingers into the leather of the couch and promised to do anything, absolutely anything he wanted, if she could stay. But that level of cognitive ability was dispersing, flowing away to whatever place control escaped to during a panic attack. And the girl's body continued to move, without any noticeable connection to her mind.




He told her to get on her back and shut the fuck up. He said she was ugly as hell when she cried.

He put a less-filthy sheet on the couch's pull-out bed, relegated her mother to the bedroom with a fifth of tequila and a noseful of cocaine. She could hear her in there, giggling to herself sleepily at some joke nobody else would understand. Soon she'd fall asleep.

He looked at the girl, His face hard but His eyes were bright, so bright. He'd pushed the grimy bills into His back pocket, and then He let them in.

She had fought, and she had screamed. Scratched bloody lines into their shoulders and kicked her way off the makeshift bed--at one point even tried to crawl under it. It didn't make any difference: not to them, not for her. And they swore and laughed and pulled her back out and threatened to call Him back in. The girl would never forget how happy they seemed, to be there. As if this was a baseball game, a concert, a game of poker and they were winning.

One of the two held her wrists above her head; she directed her screams at the tattoo on his arm, at the upside-down face hanging over her, until the other grunted cheerfully, "Naw, Man, I got 'dis."

And she was naked, and the floor--or, specifically, the numerous items embedded in the floor--scratched and stung and cut.

And they didn't care that she was crying, that she was shrieking into their faces.

And she didn't know her legs could open that far.

And his friend needed to help keep her down after all.

And she coughed and spluttered because the pain was too much for her vocal chords. A brutal rip and shards of white-hot pain. Dry flesh, harsh as sandpaper. Scraping over skinless nerves, the edges of a bloody membrane. Over and over again.

And her mother dropped something in the bedroom.

And the girl's head tossed back and forth.

And snot and tears ran down the side of her face.

And his nostrils were red-rimmed.

And his breath stank, like rotting hamburger meat.

And he was everywhere--thrashing, wriggling, thrusting.

And he was sweaty. So sweaty.

And there were things where they shouldn't be, someone else where there should only be her. The squeaky noise of rubber, the slap of her lower body against the floor.

And it wasn't supposed to be like this. Nothing was supposed to be like this. Bodies should never be able to do this to another.

And her heels kept striking the ground, and one of them hit something hard and sharp. And there was wetness but no pain that she could separate from the rest.

And there was a water stain on the ceiling, a new one that she hadn't noticed before.

And there was hair between his eyebrows.

And there were spiders on the wall to the right. One, two, three.

And there were her clothes, so close by. Dropped and forgotten after He had taken them off of her. She could see the button of her jeans, the glint of even the dullest metal seeming to wink at her.

And there was a hand, squeezing her breasts. Tugging too hard on the dun-colored nipple. Laughter.

And it hurt. Everything, everything hurt. Burning stabs everywhere. A surge of flesh and a flood of acid.

And the face above her was red--and then purple. Bulging and splotched. A monster, with distorted features.

And there was another rush of something. Something filling her mind, her self, and pushing everything else out of the way in an echo of what his body was doing. Noise louder than a train, a hundred thousand buzzing voices that all sounded alike.

And the girl lost herself. She could not have differentiated between the invasions, could not have said if one was abnormal. How could she have known?



The world was swirling around her, in her. Voices that weren't speaking out loud and images the girl had never seen, the scents of places she had never been, spinning through her mind. Gasping and red spots in her vision. Wet blurring. Light too bright and then too dark.

Crushing weight. No air in the girl's lungs and no particular desire to breathe.

A whine, childish with impatience. "Shit. Gedoff a'ready. 'Smy turn."

The heavy form above her was pushed off, rolled over. It landed beside her and remained there: an unmoving, stinking presence, and the other man took his place.

She couldn't see anything but inky-black outlines now, couldn't feel anything beyond agony. Throbbing, relentless agony blotting out even that electric tingling that had been alit in her nerves, her skin.

The girl jerked up wildly, pressed her fingernails into something soft and obviously sensitive because he emitted a shrill noise. A hand found her jaw and shoved her back with a furious force. The metal frame of the pull-out bed and a crack that she heard, rather than felt. Warm liquid and a cold sensation flowing through her limbs. Gritty fingers separating her. Nausea.

A time without thoughts, without desire for thoughts. Pain so great that her brain had canceled it, numbed her. Chilly gray mist.

Heat.

Heaviness.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ,. You gonna lay there forever, Mac? Look like you in a fuckin' coma. C'mon--fine, fine. You go on an' lay there. Have seconds if you can geddit up again. Pussy. I'll meet up witchoo later."


The unblinking eye of the man still laying beside her. Inches away. Looking into and past her.

Her fingers fumbling with her clothes.






The girl didn't make it to the laundry room (though her stupidly brilliant subconscious tried; her legs carried her even when her mind was in a place two weeks prior.

Later, Logan would hurriedly retrieve all of the clothes that were strewn over the hall's floor. It was a miracle they weren't stolen as they lay there, unguarded--though perhaps the body had distracted potential thieves.

Her more rational self had not been worried about seeing Him. When was He ever up at this time of day? Why would He be on the third floor? Yes, there were many services to be found up here--from highly illegal guns to Tanya, nine years old and forty dollars an hour, to the Benditto twins who would, for a small fee, serve as a look out for any venture. But her father usually preferred the prices in the building next door.

He was still drunk, and perhaps this was why He missed the exit off the second-floor stairwell. It had happened before; months ago He'd mistaken another apartment for his own, and had earned the beating of His life by the real owner after drinking the man's beer and squeezing his girlfriend's ass (more for the former than the latter).

He was fast for such a large, inebriated man. His fingers twined in her hair, jerked her backwards. She stumbled, almost fell. Her vision turned scarlet as pieces of gauze and her scalp came away.

The girl's shoulder blades hit the wall with a dull thwack. His fists gripped her shoulders, sank into them like putty. His lips moves in an enraged babble that terror kept her from understanding. Her palms pushing ineffectually at his arms, his chest, his neck. She found her gaze caught on a vein throbbing in His throat, pulsing rapidly--and then bulging.

That rush.

:::::::::


She was still screaming when Logan found her, found them. Louder sounds than he had ever heard her make. Her hands covered her mouth, horrified, but that did not muffle the noise. She recoiled frantically when he reached for her, wrapped her arms around her chest. Yelled hysterical things about touching.


There was a man on the ground. A familiar tint of hair, a distinct bite to his blood that was echoed in her's.

His purple, lumpy tongue hung out of his mouth in some parody of a sleeping dog.

Voices behind the doors in the corridor, but nobody stepped out. You could always rely on the neighbor's respect for privacy when it might endanger them.

Logan blinking rapidly, trying to comprehend the scene before him in an instant. A thousand questions and the obvious need to act, take charge--a responsibility that had fallen on him too many times to count. Settling for what minimal answers his instincts could give him.

He stepped towards the girl, held his palms upward to her, nonthreatening. Refrained from grabbing her when attempting to do so caused her to come unglued, made his eardrums throb with pain. Logan made shushing sounds, assurances of safety. And when those failed him he used the tone that hundreds of Xavier's students had learned to fear, sent them tripping over themselves to comply with whatever order he'd issued. It was enough to get the girl stumbling back, in the direction of his room.

Logan looked down at the man, baffled by what had started out to be a good day. His lips twitched around the lolling tongue: still alive.

With an almost pensive expression on his face, he released his claws. Drew them through the beefy neck in a soft, clean swipe. And when the blood stop spurting he stood, hurried to catch up with the girl.




.

PART TWO



.The Girl: Chapter Eleven







He closed the door to the apartment behind them. Muffled click, one of the last times he'd ever hear it. Red spots on his knuckles, his wrist, probably on his face too, though he'd ducked the spray. Carotid arteries were messy.

The girl was standing in the center of the room, where the so-called "kitchen" met the equally laughable "living room", wiping something invisible off her hands. Forcefully, desperately. As if it were she who had killed a man. Her heartbeat struck Logan's eardrums like a tribal drum, summoning the panic of war without providing him an enemy. He watched her brush at her arm, watched an untrimmed nail dig a pink path down her skin. A shovel through a snow-coated lawn.

Logan tried to hold her but she tore away, stumbled back into the wall. Swaying on her feet with too-red cheeks and eyes bright with an energy that couldn't possibly last. Those feverish eyes stared at him--at him, too terrified for the avoidance the girl cultivated over the last two weeks.

She was babbling something, jumping between subjects between the meaning of one could be determined. She said, "Don't touch me--going to wash--I didn't--stay--it's so loud--didn't mean to--he--I did--you can't--kill--killed--God--I'm--"

Her heart. Jesus, her heart was beating too fast, too loud.The bass rhythm running under a particularly harsh, incomprehensible song. It made Logan sick to his stomach in a way nothing else ever had. "Kid, calm down. Kid--calm down, honey."

He took a step toward her. Nice and easy. Another. Slow, slow. Frightened animals don't like those who move fast. You have to trick them into thinking the distance between you isn't decreasing, that they still have plenty of time to bolt.

"I can't--he--he wasn't blinking and I--I can't--my--hurts so--I didn't mean--don't touch me!"

Logan seized her arm--she wrenched back, tried to slide away toward the kitchen--and tugged her to him with all the gentleness one can afford the struggling.

It happened quickly, almost instantly--though perhaps that wasn't right. Time and it's measurements would aways baffle him. It felt like she was only pressed against his chest for a second, half a second. Logan was shushing her, looking down into hazel eyes made almost grey by their tearful flood. Convincing himself that he could help her without harming anyone else--it was possible; others could do it, why not him? Then his teeth were cracking together, locked against a strangely familiar burn. Dizzying pain, like forty kicks to his crotch. No. No, on second thought, he'd take the kicks. Logan grunted, fought not vomit all the organs that appeared to be rising to his throat with that very intention.

The girl was screaming again. Not words, but a single cry. An endless shriek that kept reverberating in his skull and the room even after--how odd--he saw her lips close. She was trying to pull away but Logan's hands had clamped down with all the strength of an adamantium-laced reflex. The kind of grip that would add bruises to those other's had made. Black welts with finger-shaped dips, even if the bone was lucky enough not to fracture.

It hurt. Jesus fucking Christ, it hurt. Wet growls, whines, half-roars broke past his teeth.

Logan saw, with the sort of mild curiosity that minds are so fond of when they're attempting to disconnect--absent wonder that cuts through the deepest agony--that the veins in his arms, his hands, were swollen. Bulging as if they would pop through the grey-tinted flesh. Pulsing, throbbing so fiercely that he could see the path the blood was taking--upward to his fingertips, toward--

He let her go. Fell back without even noticing he was moving. Standing, but barely, just barely. Bones felt like runny Jello, hardly recognizable as those things that were supposed to hold him up. His eyelids worked furiously to blink away the fuzzy scarlets dots, stuck to his vision like Velcro. Logan swallowed convulsively. He reminded himself that he was strong; he was The Wolverine; he didn't do pussy shit like faint.




The sensation faded slowly. The pain clung soggily to his nerves and refused to be wiped away by his healing factor or his sense of manly integrity. There was blood in his mouth, which he gulped down rather than spit. Cuts that took their time to re-knit themselves, on the inside of his cheeks. Lingering weakness like--no, he had no analogy for this. Nothing was comparable.


The girl was on the floor, her arms over her head. A student in a tornado drill. A devout practitioner worshiping some obscure god. He thought she was unconscious, but she gave a low whimper, a shudder. Logan bent down to pick her up, then reconsidered. (Not-so-dull pain in his head that had planted it's flag and seemed determined to live there forever).

He dove his hands into his jacket's pockets. You can always count on murderers and motorcyclists to keep a pair of gloves handy. Logan slipped them on and, just in case, grabbed up the rumpled quilt from the couch. He draped it over her huddled form (he wobbled, regained his balance at the last moment) and gathered her into an unsteady cradle. The thick fabric contained her struggles--fortunately, because otherwise he might have dropped her. Her pink little mouth moved with a string of untranslatable half-syllables, spread out amongst whimpers and hitching breaths. Her voice was soft now, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Logan sat down with her heavily, the couch's thick leather pressing against the back of his neck. Sweat making the rubbery cloth squeak.

He stared at the black screen of the TV, at the wall, at nothing. Letting time dribble away as he thought, or tried to think. Girl-weight on his lap, in his arms. Heavier than a boulder, then less so, then a pressure that was next to nothing as his strength decided reluctantly to come home. Breathing still took a bit more effort than it should. No particular urge to get up, to do anything but watch the spots disappear.

"Jesus," he muttered.

The quilt wasn't wrapped tightly. Logan could see the dip of her collar bone, the little half-moons of her her nipples under her shirt--pink, with a pair of glittery ballet slippers--the line of skin where the shirt had bunched up. He was thankful, suddenly, for his preference of layered clothing.

The girl wriggled, her still too-thin hip bone poking into his stomach, despite the numerous fabrics. Her on his thighs, her against his chest, squirming. Thoughts he shouldn't, couldn't possibly be having. Not now.

She opened her eyes and stared at him with a distress he couldn't diminish with promises of safety. And Logan pushed those other ideas back, far enough to be deniable.

A fat tear pushed it's way over her lower lid, fell halfway down her cheek and lingered there, by her nose. Logan shifted, freed one of his hands. He wiped the salty drop away. The girl flinched.

"Don't--"

"It's okay."

"They're so loud", she whimpered up at him, with a foggy beseeching in her face.

"I know," he told her, though of course he didn't. "I know, Darlin'."



The girl gave up eventually, hiccuped herself to stillness. While she dozed off--fitfully-- Logan continued to gaze down at her. Deep in a rare sort of contemplation, though they had very little time to waste. He had wanted to be out of here by noon, even before the new problem of the dead body downstairs. Logan wasn't too worried about that; the police probably wouldn't arrive for hours--would only be called when the residents grew tired of stepping through blood. But you could never be too careful, even in a place like this.

He sat until the heated red of her cheeks dulled to a softer pigment, until her eyelids stopped fluttering in an attempt to wake. Waiting. Deep, slow breaths. Considering. (Not how he had known and held many women more beautiful than the girl, but none so...so...something. Well, it didn't matter. He wasn't thinking it anyway.) He loosened the cover a bit more--to make her more comfortable, he told himself, to check those raw contusions on her arm.

But no such bruises could be found. Creamy, smooth flesh, with not even the smallest blemish to mar it. The limb--and the rest of her, Logan noted belatedly, with no small jolt of shock--appeared healthier than it had in weeks.

Slowly, with an irresistible curiosity--the kind that makes cats paw at knives and sniff the insides of washing machines--he brought his gloved hand to his mouth. He tugged it up and off with his teeth. The need to know overpowering all better judgement, all hesitance, Logan touched her. Ran his fingertips down from the curved line of her armpit to the blue veins of the girl's wrist. And he felt--

Nothing. Nothing but the wet silk of her skin.

But as he was about to grunt, about to begin a search for other rationalizations for the bizarre morning, there it was. A tickle, then a sharp, static, pull.

He took his hand away. Swallowed.


So, he thought, with an understated bluntness akin to a huh.

So. She's a mutant too.






:::::::::::::::::::



Logan put her in the pickup, closed the side door with a grunt and a tired sigh. Finally.

Retrieving their clothes and fetching the pickup from the parking garage had never seemed such time consuming chores to him before. But leaving her when he knew she was a flight risk made them torture.

After an inestimable time spent agonizing, Logan had locked her in the bedroom. Pushed the couch in front of the door and spent every second outside the tenement worrying that someone might come in and...

He told himself that trapping her, scaring her a little bit more was less important than keeping her safe. And a half hour later, when he found her in the same position on his bed, the sandwich he'd made for her just-in-case beside her untouched--Logan told himself that guilt wasn't necessary.


He'd brought her downstairs, tried to keep her quiet as he led (then carried) her through the third floor hall, around the corpse where rats were already swarming, a hideous, hairy blanket. She'd pushed her face against his jacket hard enough to give herself a bloody lip. He glowered at everyone who dared to be present, growled when anyone looked their way. All while telling the girl they were going to a good place, somewhere she'd be taken care of, it was okay, it was okay, stop crying, it was okay....

It was a different morning than the one he'd expected when he was laying there beside her. Different than what he'd prepared for as he made her breakfast. Now he was itching for a beer and a few hours of peace, his old life, just a little testosterone-packed indifference. Problems pushed into someone else's infinitely more capable hands.

Logan settled for a cigar--chewing the end of it because smoke would bother her. The cold drizzle outside prevented him from rolling down the window. He didn't want her to get sick.



The lights of the city were icy, more blue that night than yellow. A dim sky and the constant glimmer of neon signs. Grey slush on the roads, rainbows made by spilled gasoline and street lamps. Shine on the windows of buildings, falsely promising warmth within, this place has nothing to conceal. All but the most drunk and desperate would trust that the reflection of the moon on a skyscraper, forget that everything was hidden here; windows that weren't worth tinting were covered in bedsheets or tinfoil.

Yet these were the lights the girl stared at as they left the world she'd been born into. Her eyes were pinned on them, and did not turn to Logan for a long, long time.





.

The Girl: Chapter Twelve







He knew what she was afraid of, knew what sort of places and people she imagined he was delivering her to. It didn't matter what Logan told her about the school, what he promised about Xavier. With the grease-painted street, the crackle of distant and not-so-distant gunfire, the peal of car alarms unfortunate enough to be worth stealing, he couldn't blame her. His words sounded like a rosy fairytale, nice but pointless; here, even the truth tasted like a lie. Logan couldn't shake the sense that everything he wanted to do for her would vanish like the city's lights.

She started shaking again when they crossed the bridge. It must have been the farthest the girl had ever been from-from "home". Logan pointed at the water, said, "Look, Kid, ain't that pretty?"

The waves were greenish-black, blue only if you had an exceptionally powerful imagination. His sight, sharper than most, could pick out the floating masses of seaweed, sewage, plastic bags and diapers--even the brand names on some. But the girl, she--she probably couldn't see that shit. He thought it might seem nice. To her.

She was still for less than a minute, then broke into uncontrollable, gulping sobs. Logan glanced from the yellow dashes in the road to her, helplessly. He tried to touch her shoulder but she jerked out of his hold, retreating as far as the small cabin would allow. The girl put her back to him and continued to cry with a breathlessness that made even Logan's chest ache.

"Hey. Hey, Kid. There's no need for that . C'mon"

The pickup bounced over the end of the bridge, where the tar was thin and the concrete was cracked like old play-dough.Scott had offered to replace his shock absorbers, but Logan had refused. It would ruin his excuse for borrowing/stealing Scooter's personal vehicles (which he'd never admit his admiration for). But now Logan wished he had accepted.

"I--don't--want-," the girl gasped, between sobs and the roads larger bumps. Her hand pressed uselessly against the door. He'd forgotten to lock it, but she was wearing her seat belt and wasn't pulling on the handle yet. His brow crinkled at the image of her jumping out, her body striking the ground violently, rolling, strips of flesh peeling away as easily as the red of an apple.

"Stop, honey. Calm down."

Her palm struck the glass once, twice. Logan saw that her knuckles were a stark white, contrasting even the rest of her pigmentally-challenged body.

"Shit, Kid."


Then he was standing in the coarse gravel of the road's side. Trying to hold the girl's hair back and trying harder to avoid looking at whatever she was puking.

Air thick with paralyzing humidity. One of his arms curled lightly around her stomach, his fingers finding an easy place in the grooves of her ribcage as he kept her from falling into the mess. The acrid scent--which had always, bizarrely, made Logan think of the color orange--was burning a path up his nostrils.

She pushed against his knee, again and again. Go away. Don't touch me. Leave me alone. She coughed. Sputtered. And the pathetically weak shoves became a tight grip of whatever denim was loose enough to hold.

"There, there you go. You're okay. Good girl."

The girl shivered. Coughed again. And when she was still Logan eased her upright. He pulled her--carefully, didn't want either of them to step in anything--around the front of the pick up. Tears spilled from her eyes like a faucet not quite shut off.

"Sorry," she whimpered to his shirt's pocket, with an inscrutable shame.

"What for?"

Logan made her sit on the protruding fender while he fetched a few McDonalds napkins from the glove compartment--and a bottle of water, though it was hot from months of rolling around the floorboards.

The girl flinched from his hand, but accepted the napkin without any other complaint. She pressed it to her mouth, to her teeth. Replaced the flimsy cloth with a plastic rim, when Logan gave her the bottle.

"Spit," he instructed, after the girl took a sip. The girl swished the water meekly, then leaned over and did as she was told. The less-than-clean liquid was only visible fro a moment, before the parched earth absorbed it. "Again, honey. It'll help."

She obeyed, and repeated the process three more times without prompting. And when they were back inside the pickup the girl offered him a mumbled thank-you. She drank the remaining water until there was nothing left.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


They could have made it to Westchester. Gotten there a little late, perhaps, but still before the most insomniac/caffeinated residents retired. It certainly would have been no problem for Logan; his boot was used to pressing the gas pedal long after other headlights abandoned the highway.

But the girl. The girl necessitated other plans.

She'd had next to nothing to eat today--and what little had lain in her stomach was certainly there no more. Her quiet shivers now seemed those of an exhausted child's. The girl's earlier panic had burned itself out, or grown beyond the point where her mind had to temporarily shut it off, cut it from her awareness like the mind blowing agony of an amputated limb. Too much to handle.

Logan thought it might help if there was a step between squalor and the overwhelming luxury of the mansion. Something to help her cope with the transition, lest the sudden bounty decimated her starved body.

And--though this was an idea hurried through Logan's mind so he could avoid examining it--she was dirty. Wearing the same clothes as yesterday and the day before. In bad shape, ebony moons cradling. He didn't want to bring her into Xavier's like that.

He didn't want the schools resident to think he couldn't take care of his own.

::::::::::::


A Motel 6. Chosen because it was one of the first he saw, and because Logan wanted something clean--at least without visible roaches. But not so grand as to kick the girl into shock--that would defeat the purpose of not driving straight to the mansion.'

A quiet, wide parking lot. SUVs and battered old buicks. Parents ushering sunburnt, swimsuit-clad children inside. So different from the families in the city.Two stories, a metal rail painted in a shade of red that seemed plucked from the color wheel because it would be the least noticeable when peeled away. Not one of the most recently refurbished links in the chain, less likely to question a teen traveling alone with a grisled old man--of a breed for whom paternity would always be an accidental, unknown state and any night passed with a young female would not be spent in platonic pursuits.

He brought the girl in with him. She wasn't a pet, an animal who couldn't be trusted outside the car. And she'd spent enough time left in the dark, alone and vulnerable.

The place was almost completely booked. A comic book convention, explained the lady behind the counter, plus our holiday crowd. Packs of nerds walking around, sweaty masks contrasting oddly with their pale necks. Should certainly grease the girl's way into the mansion.

But there might be a few rooms still available, let me just check, Sir....The patter of the keyboard, the girl his broken little shadow...Yes, yes. Here we go. We have four left, Sir.

At his request-that-wasn't-a-request for double beds, the woman scoffed, laughed. Raised an eyebrow at the diminutive figure behind him. Who the hell did this guy think he was kidding? Trying a weak-ass cover like that when they were close to 100% occupancy, when she'd had such a long day and the end of her shift was nowhere in sight, when that pretty child had that kind of look in her eyes. When a customer's companion kept her arms constantly around herself, flinched at nothing--a guarantee that was almost as good as a verbal one that this pair would only be needing one bed tonight.

But it wasn't her place. It wasn't her place to let her lip curl at this man, this prick who was staring so coldly at her--his nostrils flared and a tone in his silence that said her input was less than welcome. It wasn't her place to do anything but look at the computer screen and tell him yes. Yes, we're in luck, Sir. One of our reservations cancelled and there is a double open in the three hundred hall. It'll be one fifty eight, if you would like--oh. Cash, sir? Alrighty. Thank you. I'll just go get you a key. Sir.

The hostess called out to their backs, a too-bright afterthought, as Logan was leading the girl out of the lobby.

"Check-out is at eleven A.M. Please have your things removed before housekeeping arrives."



:::::::::::


There was a mini-fridge, an amenity Logan hadn't expected--probably installed for the annual influx of Spiderman obsessed geeks. A collage of threatening labels, warning against taking items without paying. Frito's, peanuts, plastic-wrapped sandwiches, soda, bottled water. At least he wouldn't have to leave in search of food for her.

She hadn't spoken in awhile. Little flicks of her eyes in Logan's directions when he said something. Assessing the situation constantly--not for escape routes, no, she was beyond that kind of hope--for the best way she could prepare, numb herself against whatever she'd gotten into her head was going to happen.

The girl hadn't put up any fight on the walk to their room (easy to find, the layout of motels were painfully familiar to Logan. He could have drawn up a blueprint, if asked). But at the threshold she'd frozen, put a hand on one side of the doorway and gripped it as tight as her nonexistent fingernails would allow. Silent panic, reflexive paralysis. Her brain starting to let a little fear in, testing. Too much newness.

Logan had pressed his palm between her shoulder blades softly, wordlessly. She jumped forward, into the room and out of his way. Not frightened by the prospect of a push, but of being touched.

Two beds, both draped in a thick, vulgarly floral-patterned cover. Small desk beside the bed on the right, smaller table with a lamp and a single drawer next to the left wall's bed. The blue fridge, a closet with less than a foot of space inside, a fold-out iron and an iron connected to the wall by a chain. Mirror on the opposite wall, it's edges painted gold. Bathroom with all it's amenities; the girl was in for a pleasant surprise. He couldn't wait to show her how real plumbing was supposed to be.

"You want to shower first, Kid?" A little boy eager to show off his card collection.

The girl looked at him, and Logan guessed she heard his words differently. But she nodded, went into the bathroom quietly and shut the door behind her. The click of a lock.

He set his knapsack on the floor, took a seat on one of the beds and began to unlace his boots. He sighted, inhaled an invisible cloud of cheap detergent, sex, and lemon wood polish, the signature of inns (though two of the three were absent in the cheapest he'd frequented).

Something was nagging him, some detail buried in a pile of the ordinary, the insignificant. Logan listened to the pump of the building's pipes, the splash of the shower. The little noises the girl couldn't suppress, her clothes hitting the floor, skin rubbing against itself, water on flesh, cloth, a cap being opened. Tiny whimper. Soap's paper unwrapped. He thought about the gold paint on the mirror, a painting of angels in the lobby, a stain he'd noticed on the steps. A certain bounciness to the mattress that he assumed wasn't unique to this room--Logan pinched the bridge of his nose, shut his eyes.

He wondered--shit, yes. Yes he had. Fuck. Logan smiled without amusement. A drunk cowgirl from Arizona, who asked him if he'd ever met any movie stars and swore that she'd never done this before. Her mother would kill her if she knew. But she'd been more than willing to do things that went against her sweet Southern act.

He shook his head. Got up, fetched a coke from the fridge. Tried to stop listening to the girl's washing-sounds. He told himself that his muscles were only stiff from driving.

She was in there for hours. Two, if you want specific. Two hours and fourteen minutes. Logan counted, as he watched the ceiling fan spin around and around and around. Long past the time when a warm flow turned to liquid ice. He'd have to wait til morning for his own shower.

She might have been stalling--and that was doubtlessly a factor. But Logan knew she wasn't just sitting on the toilet seat, the shower turned on to trick him. He could hear the girl, still scrubbing and scraping at herself. Trying to clean what never would be, to her.

::::

When the bathroom door finally opened, she was wearing his black shirt and a pair of shorts--snatched with little attention from the unorganized stack in the pickup. Her arms looked raw in places, her palms wrinkled from the moisture. The girl stood between the beds. Hesitant, holder her elbows with her arms laced beneath her breasts. Water dripping from her hair, little puddle created in the carpet. Looking at him as if waiting for an order, a get-your-ass-over-here, a hand that would grab and pull her. The night before, when she herself had chosen to come into his bed as forgotten as the fact that he hadn't hurt her. Pouty lips and an amazingly clean scent and her mysterious skin glistening at Logan as if to tempt, or threaten.

"Get some sleep, Kid."

He switched off the lamp and stretched himself out. Struggled with the covers until he was more or less under them. Closed his eyes determinedly.




The girl moved much slower, shocked at a joke, a trick that might at any unguarded moment reveal it's punchline. She climbed onto the opposite mattress, slipped under starched sheets. Twisted so she could see the man across the room, keep an eye on him. Watched his unmoving body for a long, long time, until her sleepy vision blurred and burned, and finally allowed her cheek to fall on the pillow of the first bed she'd ever used alone.

The Girl: Chapter Thirteen





She opened her eyes before she was really awake, before her mind had fully shifted between the gears of unconsciousness, Asleep and Not. The girl didn't know what time it was, not where she was, or even who in those measurement-defying minutes before awareness caught up with her body. And even then she could not have provided the answer to the first two questions.

It was cold. She was facing the window, with it's generic blinds open, slicing the black world behind it into vertical stripes of visibility. The glass was so shimmery with moisture that it appeared as merely water that had merely decided to stand up. Had it rained?

How strange this place was, with it's odd absence of smell (there were scents, but the girl was too unaccustomed to the idea to call them good). No tangible feeling of danger, which in itself was enough to frighten her. She'd be unprepared when (only idiots relied on the word 'if' with pain) something happened. The bed around her, under her, was soft, whole, clean--like the rest of the room. Undamaged, a stark contrast to anything the girl had ever known. If she'd been less tired, less marred herself in places that would not mend, she might have enjoyed the concept of items that matched.

The girl blinked, and as the sticky blur of sleep cleared from her vision she experienced for the first time that peculiar stillness of motels when nobody else is awake. That sense that time had stuck, like a CD that had been scratched too deeply, leaving her baffled as to where the music had gone. No infants crying through the paper walls, no illicit deals being stricken loudly and drunkenly. No arguing; none of the screaming that had stuffed her ears since the beginning of the girl's memory. She wondered if she'd gone deaf, wondered if she had died. Then, if she was the last living person on earth--why had everyone left her behind?

She strained her ears (perhaps more poor than most, due to fourteen years of unceasing clamor), listening for anything, anything familiar.

Distant traffic, crickets--not as close as usual. Of course, that endless babble in her head--a vulgar choir whose singers lacked both tune and rhythm. Nothing else--no, wait. There. Little grunts, distressed mumbling whose pitch rose and fell as if someone were playing with the volume.

That, at least, was nothing new. The sound, if not the source.

She checked her own lips, in case it came from her. Accidental whimpering--it had happened before. But no, her mouth was shut; there was no tickling hum of suppressed pain.
The girl shifted, propped herself up enough to view her intimidating roommate--and froze. Stared.

His chest glistened--covered only in a once-white sleeveless shirt, so worn that the curly hair beneath was visible--shook with the effort of breathing. Heaved like a particularly frantic bird's. The shadows of the room played on Logan's skin like black waves eroding the shore. He was growling, then moaning, lips pinched in an agonized smile. At first, the girl thought--no. His body was wound with nothing but distress.

She watched his head toss--left, right--and considered, briefly, crazily, going to him. The girl sat up a little further. Her eyes fell to where the blanked draped across the man's waist.

She stiffened.

What could she do, the girl asked herself, defensive even in the privacy of her own thoughts. What did she think she would have done for him? Shake Logan's arm? Stroke his cheek, that chest? Touch him, and just cross her fingers that that horrible pull wouldn't start up?

Tell him it was all a bad dream?

It was was stupid, crazy, absurd enough to be funny. Almost. What book, what lie, had ever given her the idea that people do that?

So the girl remained where she was, watching him, watching over him. Arms wrapping around her knees, pulling what she could of the blanket for warmth. Her eyes carressed Logan's brow, his jaw, the overstrung wires in his throat. Mentally comforting where her hands were too afraid--and poisonous--to go, as if the force of her attention would would quiet him, cancel her need to actually respond.

It didn't work.

Did she really imagine it would?


Logan gave a particularly loud rumble. His arm lifted, struck the bed violently, furiously. As if shoving somebody away, and not simply elbowing an inanimate object. She almost felt pity, for whoever he imagined he was fighting. Would he wake up as angry? The girl's teeth found her lower lip and dug in, as if that would still the anxious shiver that went through her.

She saw his knuckles bounce slightly on the heavy fabric, heard the bizarre swish, scrape of metal and had enough time to think, what's that?

And then the girl watched, as three strips of something brighter, deadlier than silver appear where before there had been only blankets and stale air.




:::::::::::::::::::::::::


The girl had been gawking at him all morning. Nothing especially new--same timidity in the stares, ashen faced--as if the potency of her fright alone might help her understand. Most of the time she turned away, when Logan answered with a look of his own. But every now and then, her gaze would fall--not to the floor, but to his hands, and focus there with something in her expression that baffled him.

Nevermind, Logan told himself the seventh or eighth time he caught the girl doing it. It had been a bad night--visions of surgical drills and green latex gloves danced in his head like a sick parody of that Christmas poem. He didn't think he had the energy to deal with whatever new fear she'd gotten in her head, whatever possibility she was using to torment herself. All Logan wanted was to get her to the mansion with minimal drama.

After his shower (not a drop of shampoo nor speck of soap left of the complementary stock--the girl had certainly been thorough) Logan opened the travel-sized toothbrushes, called her into the bathroom with a voice whose gentleness did not mask the firmness of the command. He squeezed white paste over the bristles, handed her one of the sticks--the pink one. Gave her instructions, a demonstration of proper cleaning that poverty, rather than ignorance had kept from her. Casual, wasn't her fault, no reason to clue her in on something that might embarrass her. Nodded curtly, smiled when her eyes widened at him to say, Like this? Left her in the bathroom to keep his thumb from stroking over her mouth, wipe away that overflow of toothpaste foam.

He told her to wait in the room, that he would be back as soon as he fetched clothes for the two of them. Out the door, along the concrete walkway that circled the building. Down the stairs, the sidewalk to the space where the pickup stood--close as he'd been able to get.

Funny. All the anxiety he had felt about leaving her before, in the city, hadn't diminished. Not at all.

Strange.

:::::::::::::::::


Sitting in the dusty cab of the pickup--only slightly cleaner than the tenement. A Styrofoam box in her lap, strips of bacon and a pancake that smiled through it's whip-cream mouth. Her tears were still drying.

Though she'd been relatively calm all morning, nodded her head when he asked if she wanted breakfast, the girl threw a half-tantrum when Logan tried to make her eat inside the restaurant. Fierce little shakes of her head, round eyes and a jutting lower lip, sudden and complete panic at the suggestion of the tan booths and people all around her and no place to escape to except the pickup--so why get out at all?

She'd ignored everything he said, coaxes and threats ("C'mon, Kid. Nothings gonna bite ya....I promise you're safe. Nobody's going to lay a hand on you...Get out of the truck, honey. You're hungry--I know you are. Everyone around can hear your stomach growling. Dontcha want some pancakes? Eggs? Some orange juice?...Kid, I'll carry your ass over my shoulder if I have to. Not in the mood for this shit. You've got about five seconds to get outa there yourself. Five, four--")


Logan watched her shrink into the corner where the passenger door met the seat, pulled her knees up for a few more inches of retreat. She dug her fingernails into the cracked leather. The girl trembled, as she did so easily--like she'd just emerged from an Alaskan lake--until Logan gave in. Sighed, and spoken with rough appeasement. "Fine, Kid. I'll get us something to go. Just wait here."


He'd wanted the girl to understand, at least begin to learn, that meals were not always consumed in secret, huddling where others were most absent. She needed to know that there were places in the world, times she could rely on a real plate, a real meal. Kind--or at least, safe--company, his protection. It was hard to find words for this type of lesson, hard to explain a concept so foreign when he had trouble believing it himself. His attempts confused her at best, terrified her at their most extreme.

And nothing seemed to help her appetite. She spent five minutes prodding her pancake's strawberry nose.

"Eat, sweetheart," Logan told her, lost in worries of how she would react to the mansion.

"Do you have knives in your hands?"

Just like that.

If there had been anything in his mouth, he would have choked. Logan's throat released a surprised growl--just a reflex, he wasn't angry. His brain stuttered at the unexpected question, at the way the girl was curled in upon herself. As if that would make him forget that she'd asked, that she was here at all.

"They're not knives," he clarified, eventually--his voice a little thicker than normal.

"Oh," she said, weakly. Not looking at him or anything in particular.

Logan swallowed. "When did--when did you see them?"

She was quiet, then shrugged.

"'Salright, darlin." What did she see? What did she see? Whatdidsheseewhatdidsheseewhatdidsheseeohgodwhatdidshesee? "Yesterday?" he queried lightly, terrified at the meer idea.

Silence.

"Last night?"

A flutter of her heartbeat provided the affirmation before her soft 'Yeah'. He was relieved, but only for a moment--half a moment, really, because alarm that she may have seen his claws cut into someone was quickly trumped by the terror that he might have hurt her. Logan's scanned the girl for injuries frantically, but there was nothing--nothing, of course. Hadn't he been looking at her all morning? (Odd, how automatic the assurance of her well-being had become.)

"They're--," Logan began, thinking of the shocking memory of the once-gaping laceration on her scalp, now little more than a pinkened scratch.

"They're claws. Part of my mutation." Not quite the truth, but good enough for now, for her. "Nothing you gotta be scared of."

She sat up, just a bit. Examined her own arms with a look he didn't understand. There was a stain on her t-shirt, a little smear of whip cream on her breast from bending over. Like this morning, Logan had to restrain himself from rubbing it off.

"Is that what's wrong with me?", she asked her lap.

It took him a minute to comprehend, his mind unusually slow and focused elsewhere.
He had wondered, before, if the girl had understood the concept of mutation--or if it had been just another flavor of hate in the city.

"There's nothing wrong with you, Kid."


:::::::::::::::::





Someone had taken his parking space. Nearest to the exit, lest likely to be blocked in a quick getaway, his. A new resident, most likely, because Logan had not been away long enough for his claim--and the consequences trespassers faced--to have faded in the resident's memory.

He flashed a disgusted look at the offending vehicle, a sky-blue Prius where a real man's automobile was used to sitting. Grudgingly, Logan settled into a slot a few yards away. If the girl hadn't been with him, he wouldn't have waited to track down the foolish driver. But she was. She was, and he still had important business to address.

"Let's go, darlin'."

The girl resisted, but not very much once he pulled her out of the passenger seat (holding her as gently as an upset kitten, with less the effort). It took only the occasional hand at her shoulder, the threat of touch to keep her moving. Even her eyes--slightly wider than quarters--appeared to tremble as they took in the splendor of the room. One would expect a garage to be the most basic part of any facility, but the mansion's resembled a high-class showroom. Space for the shop class, for repairs, for the cars of both guests and employees. Polished stone floor that shined, glinted with specks of glitter. Quiet, air conditioned. It was certainly beyond whatever her mind had conjured up as their destination--she'd probably envisioned a smokey brownstone, cramped with makeshift beds and unwilling prostitutes. Logan could see her attempting to reconcile this image with her surroundings, watched her fail. Her brow scrunched up in the opposite of reassurance.

"Keep going, honey. This way. There ya go."


:::::


Though he chose the smaller, more austere corridors whenever available (and this was often--there were usually at least four paths to reach any room in the mansion; Logan was convinced that when the school was constructed, the builders threw in a few extra hallways just for fun.) the girl seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. They didn't see many student; the few that appeared were sticky with junk food and exhausted in a way that could only mean a recent field trip.

Residents did not speak when they saw Logan, offered no greeting, except perhaps a suppressed groan.
Surprise became dread in the eyes of those who had been on his bad side, or attended one of his training classes. Looks of welcome from those--no, no. It was mostly dread.

More than the rich wood of the walls, glistening with it's ever-present polish, the inch-thick rugs, the tables with their assortment of vases and mirrors (all of which her old neighbors would have been sold or traded for the most convenient drug, depending on how much of a hurry the thief was in) seeing the students shook the girl. Healthy, clean teenagers repaired by the comfort of Xavier's and acne cream. Confident that nobody's problems could be worse than theirs.

The students had always irritated Logan. But he could only guess at the reasons behind the bewildered hurt they caused to flit across the girl's face. He wondered what she was thinking, wondered why rather than comfort, the children's presence inspired more terror.

When a blond boy smiled a little too brightly at her, wordlessly threatening to offer assistance, Logan glowered until he heard the rustle of shriveling testicles.

"Turn here. Good girl. Remember the--" Logan's tongue faltered over the word "man", and he searched for a term that would alarm her less, "--Professor I was telling you about? Gonna introduce you to him real quick. He's real nice. You're gonna like him."

She didn't respond--not in ways that would be noticed or counted by anyone but Logan. But then, he hadn't expected her to.


:::::::::::


Their voices could be heard through the thick panel of the wall, even by those whose hearing was not strengthened by the X gene. Not yelling, not yet, but close. The impatient courtesy that comes right before, a sharpness at the edges of each syllable that these particular gentlemen specialized in. Logan took a deep breath and released it through his nose. Not quite what the girl needed right now. He contemplated putting the meet-and-greet off until later, taking the girl up to his room--but the idea was too tempting for it to be right.


"--think you would have learned, after all these years, that such sentiments will only bring you trouble. A bleeding heart, Charles, must either clot up or stop beating."

"I'm doing everything in my power, but we must give them more time to see reason. Publicly--"

Logan knocked--once, and only for the benefit of the one who stood beside him. He touched the girl's hair, winked at her when she didn't flinch. Opened the door and smoothly guided her forward.

"Please, come in," spoke the dry voice behind the desk. Chuck's hands were folded, his expression detached but polite--the required face of all those who believe themselves In Charge. "Logan, my friend; what a pleasure to have you back with us."

He watched Xavier nod once to himself, as if checking another thing off a mental list.

"We have many things to discuss, of course," Xavier acknowledged, always preferring utmost discretion where business with Logan was concerned. And then his eyes slid to the girl, and he smiled--not like she'd escaped his notice before, but the beam reserved only for new students. New toys. New Xmen. They all meant the same to him. Almost imperceptibly, The Proffesor's gaze flicked back to Logan, and he could see the hefty addition to his pay that this unexpected delivery had earned him.

He knew before the moment passed, that he would refuse.

"Hello, young lady." Scanning her, gathering explanations faster than any spoken words could travel. Pressing more courteously on her companion's mind, requesting entrance. Scooping up information from the two of them like a child collecting Easter eggs.

Logan told Xavier her name, provided a few verbal details that would serve as the official story.

She stared at the floor, unable to differentiate between an introduction and an auction.

He listened, as he had a sickening number of times, as the girl was given the customary welcome speech. Soothing, impressive--happy to meet you, building a world of peace and unity through the power of education, no need for worries or fears, you're at home among the rest of us monsters. The same rosy talk that every new arrival heard, word for word. He looked at the girl and, for the first time, wished he believed it.


"--and this is my associate, Erik Lensherr."

The delicate clearing of an old throat. A man, half forgotten in the office. Good at blending his colors into the paint of the background. Straight back and gray hair.

He stepped toward the girl, his tight lips perhaps the only unwrinkled portion of his body. They curved upward, twice as kind as the rest of his expression.

"How wonderful to meet your acquaintance, my dear. No doubt you will make a magnificent addition to this institution."

He extended a arm clad in the best of his favored suits, a pale hand with nails that came to a point.

The girl cringed away, but Lensherr seemed to take this as a confirmation, rather than an insult. And intrigue, rather than pity, kept his eyes on her.






.

The Girl: Chapter Fourteen







They'd barely left Xavier's office, Logan had barely the time to wonder what to do with the girl now. Show her around the mansion a little? Take her someplace quiet, let the shock wear off? He fought to understand the command his instincts were issuing--to shield her from the sight of anyone else, bring the girl to an environment he could control. It was early, but she might even want a nap. They could do that. He could take her to his room---

But the mansion's doctor was rounding the corner, and her arrival took the decision out of Logan's hands.

Her face was a little too unsurprised, her heels (only two inches high today--Jean's version of casual) clacking a little too quickly for their owner to have been anything but summoned. Her cheeks were a little red--sun burnt, or perhaps simply flushed. He wondered what she had been doing, before Chuck called her to greet their latest budding superhero.

Jean pushed her hair over her shoulder. It had grown since the last time Logan had been here, and she had it curled now into silken waves of scarlet. She smiled her hello to him before she was close enough to speak the words. Amber, clinging shirt and a tight pair of khaki pants. He flashed her a brief, low grin, a token smirk. It had been a long time. Logan absently considered flirting, tried to remember if he had before leaving the mansion--alternating seducing days made the game more fun while expectation killed it.

His glance touched the girl beside him, her chocolate locks of hair and the soft tan of the scalp beneath them, and he decided no. Maybe he'd flirt with Red tomorrow, if Scott was around.

"Well, hello there, Stranger. Thought you were never gonna come back," the doctor purred, when she's closed enough--and perhaps a little too much--distance between them. She blinked her long lashes at him; the lids were painted a dusty green.

"Jean," he acknowledged. He touched the slim muscle between the girl's shoulder blades, just once, fleetingly, but his hand continued to hover there afterwards, unwilling to fall away. "Kid, this gonna be one of your teachers."

"You'll call me Ms Grey," the auburn woman corrected, a firm edge to a voice that rehearsal had made kind, maternal. She looked his companion up and down, assessing and modifying her behavior in response to what she saw. Had the Professor taught her that trick? Or did it come easily for all telepaths? "It's nice to meet you, sweetie. And how do you prefer to be addressed?"

The girl's dark, wet eyes rose to Jean's only once before falling to study the dirty laces of her tennis shoes. A nervous, delicate fist gripped the hem of her long shirt, tugged it reflexively down.

"Maybe we'll get to that later. Would you like to take a look around the school? And then we can see about setting up some classes for you, and a room."

With all the expertise of one who had given this particular tour hundreds of times, Jean slipped her arm into the space between the girl and Logan. She swept her down the hall, urging with the same confidence that could keep a hundred unruly teens in check. The frail figure stumbled along obediently.

An odd trill of aggravation skirted through Logan's system--odd because of it's cause. Because the girl was closer to someone other than him.

"Do you have any special interests? Hobbies? Sports? Here we have tennis courts, gardens, a music room--"

"She likes to read," he said gruffly, when her silence showed no sign of breaking.

"Do you?" Jean spoke as if the question had been answered by no one but the one she posed it to. "That's great. The school has an excellent library, with over two thousand--"

He watched the frizzy ends of the girl's brown hair, studied the wrinkles in her barely-fitting jeans. Judging from her scent, she was listening to their guide only slightly more than he was. Fear would outweigh shock soon enough, and he trusted no one but himself with the task of calming her.

A few halls, turns Logan didn't take, could be excuse--written off by saying that he was only trailing the two women because they happened to be going in the same direction as him. But soon Jean was glancing over her shoulder at him, bemused smile on her red lips. He understood that grin. On those decidedly infrequent occasions when Logan had carried a new mutant--runaways, lab escapees--to the mansion, he'd rarely stayed longer than the time it took to dump them with another staff member. And even that was a stretch, called one of the more responsible actions of the Wolverine. Once, he'd left a particularly annoying boy locked in a New England shed, with a stack of playboys to keep him quiet and a phone call to Scott to "pick up this little hippie asshole before I gut him." It broke all precedent for him to still be within shouting distance of the girl.

Another corridor, another potential escape turned down, and Jean halted her own explanation of mealtimes and what was and was not appropriate to request from the cafeteria staff. "How nice. You're going to keep us ladies company, Logan?", she trilled. As if his footsteps had not been echoing theirs for several minutes. No small hint of sarcasm, but Jean could not hide her thoughts from a mutation as well as he could. She assumed, perhaps naturally, that he was following her.

"Yeah," he said, and made his expression warm to soften the suddenly anxious one that the girl shot to him. "Think I'll stick around."

They visited most of the chambers on the first floor. Classrooms, the computer lab, the game room, and various staff offices where assistance could be found only if a student was lucky enough to catch a teacher in them. "We're very busy," Jean told the girl, her voice brisk but cheerful. "There's always something to do--classes, training, field trips, errands, tasks that go with our job. But please do not hesitate to come to us with any questions."

As if to underscore her point, periodically a student would sidle up to their small group--one every few moments, almost, as if their questions had been scheduled for maximum effect. Apologetic smiles for their interruption, "Excuse me, but-" and "Sorry, Ms Grey, but I was wondering if--"

This seemed to trouble the girl at first, put a look on her face that Logan neither understood nor liked. She gravitated back to him during one of these instances, when Jean's attention was diverted. Huddled without really touching him, without, perhaps, consciously choosing to do get so near. And when the teacher's focus was once more upon her, when they moved on to the next classroom, the laundry, the TV room, Logan made certain to keep his body between hers and everyone else's.


:::::::::::::::


They took a break at noon. Jean said she had to go "keep the herd from stampeding", and he didn't consider subjecting the girl to the trauma of the cafeteria, after the IHOP fiasco. He led her to the relatively smaller kitchen, sat the girl on one of the stools that circled the marble island. Had she seen marble before, Logan mused, digging through the fridge for food that would tempt a stressed stomach. It seemed like the mansion was on another health kick. He grimaced at the numerous tofu-labelled packages.

She probably hadn't, if filthy toilets and stained bathroom tile did not count. The girl touched the pads of her fingertips to the turquoise stone. He judged the texture of her silence, the shifting emotions in her blood. Studied the defensive curve of her back, the way her eyes were both too nervous and too still. Sights like that kept striking a trigger that ran deep through the most sensitive nerves of his body. He wanted to take her onto his lap, guard her even when there was nothing around to threaten her. Do bizarre things, like lick the dry, creased skin of her elbow. Nuzzle the petals under her eyes, red and moist from apprehension. Gather every strand of that brown hair in his hands and feel the softness of her around him.

Logan blinked, just once, and set a roast beef sandwich before the girl. A pickle, and pretzels on the side of the plate.

"You want some milk, honey? Or juice?"

She lifted her head. Stared at him, but down on a lip that threatened to start wobbling if left unchecked. Her shoulders twitched in a shrug. He poured her a glass of orange juice--fresh squeezed, the school would never lower themselves to anything as pedestrian as canned. He placed it in front of her, swung his long legs over a stool on the counter's opposite side. Crossed his arms and arranged his face into something encouraging--it was getting easier, with practice, to do so.

She looked at the food as if completely unaware what it's purpose was, what he expected her to do with it, and Logan weighed the pros and cons of forcing the sandwich piece-by-piece down her throat. The route of patience won, by a narrow margin, and he sat quietly as she picked at the bread's crust.

The girl wore the expression of one mulling over something difficult. Now and then her eyes would dart around the room--to the stainless steel refrigerator, casting back a warped version of their reflection like a circus's house of mirrors. The array of kitchen appliances, most of which even Logan could not name, several unknown gadgets that appeared quite lethal. The cabinets and other furniture, their design outshining even the most ambitious models in a Home &Garden magazine.

He waited for her to speak, knew that she would even without that skip to her heartbeat, the incoming data his senses provided. She'd had the same look before asking him about his claws.

"This is a school," she said at last. Not a question, or confirmation, or even a epiphany, but as if she were explaining this to him. As if it had been Logan who'd struggled with this incredible concept, too large for a mind to wrap around.

"Yes," he agreed.

"A school," the girl repeated. Gazing at him directly, earnestly. Desperately.

"I know, honey. They've got blackboards and everything."

She studied the room around her, trying to fit an idea in her head where no space, no hope, had made to hold.

Almost absently, her pallid fingers lifted a pretzel. She put it into her mouth. Logan watched her chew, swallow, meet his eyes again. Reach for more.



:::::::::::::


"And we will get all your classes fixed up tomorrow. Settle you in as quickly as possible--does that sound good? Don't worry about anything you might be unfamiliar with. That's why we are here, to educate. Not to put undue pressure on you."

Jean led them down a corridor on the third floor, alternately spilling out whatever information she felt she hadn't already mentioned, and glaring down at a sheet of paper in her hands. A list of available beds, Logan guessed. The redhead was unhappy about something, but not enough to let it show when she addressed the girl.

Thomas Kinkade paintings on the wall, other works that hinted at older, considerably higher-priced artists. Carpet thick enough to serve as bedding. Faded, somber colors, subtle patterns of Chinese dragons amid flowers. Roses in their metal vases, nailed to the wall. Replaced almost daily, before they had the slightest chance to wilt. A reminder tacked to a board, usually ignored, for students to not run in the halls. Someone's forgotten basketball next to a table with a community telephone resting upon it, earning a sharp look from Jean. The girl's hand and it's shy grip on the sleeve of his jacket.

"Students board two to a room, unless their gift renders this unsafe for their classmate. I understand you may have a few qualms about this, but we are a little pressed for space at this time so you will be sharing with someone. Please remember to be careful, and if those glove begin to feel uncomfortable let me know; we'll find you some in another size."

Jean smiled at the girl, with just the slightest evidence of strain around her lips. "Most of the kids love this living arrangement. I'm sure your roommate and you will become friends in no time. She'll help you grow acquainted with the other residents."

It may have been Logan's imagination, but he thought the doctor only stopped at the door with the greatest of reluctance, even a vein of chagrin. It was hard to tell, hard to be objective when a thousand reasons as to why the girl should sleep in his room were running through his mind. The slightest excuse would turn the suggestions he was considering to insistance.

He remained silent.

"Here we are," Jean said, over-brightly. She knocked politely, but when no response came from behind the door she did not hesitate to open it herself.

A decent-sized room, slightly smaller than that of the motel they'd occupied last night. Bright posters on the wall, shirtless boy bands and Twilight memorabilia. A too-sweet scent that reminded Logan of cotton candy and Novocaine, laced with a strip of bleach. Clothes and CD cases and half-empty boxes of candy spilled over the floor, across both beds--one of which was made, the other a misshapen pile of covers and bright yellow pillows. An Asian girl was visible through the open bathroom door, popping the blackheads of her nose with a pair of long, glued-on nails.

"Jubilee," Jean said, and the strain was in her voice, too. "Didn't we agree that you were going to clean up in here?"

"I did," the teen replied in a bored tone, not immediately turning from the mirror. She picked at a spot on her face, studied herself for a long moment before leaving the bathroom. Her eyes flicked indifferently from Jean, lingered on Logan with an edgy sort of appreciation, landed, finally, on the girl with unhidden distaste.

But when she spoke again--mouth circled with more lipliner than lipstick--her voice was cloying in it's niceness. "Hey," she greeted. "Welcome to Mutant High. Are you sure you don't want to sleep somewhere else?"

"We talked about this, Jubilee," Jean said warningly, before her smile returned. "Clear up that bed for our new resident, and behave yourself."

She turned to the girl for a final time, might have patted her shoulder if she hadn't been told about her skin. "Get plenty of rest, sweetie. Tomorrow's going to be a big day."

The younger girl looked at the doctor, clutched the bag of new clothes (obtained from a special storage room, filled with the all the donated supplies any less-than-fortunate guest might want) to her chest. Her head turned to Logan, her eyes large as if just now paying attention, realizing something obvious and terrible.

"I'm not staying with you?" she whispered, confused and no little horrified. He told himself that it was only preference for the known versus the unknown. The lesser evil. It had nothing, really, to do with him. It didn't.

He opened his mouth, but Jean beat him. She gave a surprised laugh that was no less cruel for the fact that it's taunt was unintentional.

"Oh, no, sweetie. He doesn't--Mr. Logan has his own private sleeping quarters, and business to tend to. You wouldn't have any fun with him." She gave a 'go-on' gesture to the girl, who flinched unwilling into the room. "Jubillee is your own age. You'll be best friends in no time at all. Now, be good and go to bed early tonight. You need your sleep."

He almost growled. "My room's in the next floor up, Kid. Come find me if you need anything," Logan told her. She was supposed to hear his reply to her question in the words, but the sad expression on her face said otherwise.


Jean's expression was still amused as they walked away from the room, from the girl. She seemed to be waiting for him to thank her for something, but with each glance at his face that expectation faded away, and a thousand books worth of questions took it's place.






.

The Girl: Chapter 15





She stared at the burgundy plaster of the wall. Sometimes, when the static cloud of fear in her mind cleared enough to permit distractions, the girl liked to find shapes in the textured paint. A flame, a baseball bat, a dog's bone. Like seeking images in the clouds, though the girl had been taught the game from the stains, the burns, the dried pools of someone's bodily fluid in the tenement. On the walls, the fluid, the ceiling, the people.

The girl blinked, slowly. Picked something that resembled a four leaf clover out of the paint. The covers--so thick, so warm--were pulled up to her nose. Her head was sunken deep into the thick pillow. It made her feel shielded, almost. Hidden, at the very least.

"You'd better get up. Storm's gonna come looking for you if you miss class again."

She stiffened automatically, reflexive terror though the more logical shards of her being knew there was nothing to fear from the voice and it's owner. Not physically. The girl did not sleep in a ball anymore, cower in a corner when her roommate came within touching distance.

Surprise followed her first reaction to the words, though by that time Jubilee's interested had shifted, judging from the unstifled noises, to choosing a purse for the day She rarely addressed the girl directly, not about anything that did not concern herself.

She waited until she heard the door slam with Jubilee's own departure before moving. The bed--so difficult, still, to call it hers--was hard to leave, but she did. She pushed the blankets away, pushed herself out of the pretend-haven. Fumbled through the drawer Jubilee had reluctantly cleared out for her, removed a handful of clothes without inspection.Though her roommate's warning was dangerously possible, the girl was more alarmed by the thought of entering the classroom late. Trying to make her way between the desks and the thick air that would move like sludge down her throat...Their eyes, all eyes, on her....

She hurried.

:::::::::::



A stack of written tests and forms and half an hour's worth of assurances from Mrs. Grey that she was, "Not to worry one bit. These are only to help up find the perfect place for you." A statement repeated so frequently that it had the opposite effect of it's assuring intent. The girl was placed in advance History and English. Beginner level Algebra and Biology, because her love of reading had never extended toward these subjects. She did not complain, nor even really care. The same shy silence met ever question the teachers put to her, no matter the class or the relative age of the students around her. Soon the adults ceased calling on the girl altogether, and she was grateful for this mercy. Alone she picked away at the homework; her grades must have been fair enough to avoid the embarrassment of their attention.

The girl's mind spent most of its time cataloging the differences between this place, this school, and the graffiti-ed rubble of a prison the truant officer had occasionally forced her to attend. Making comparisons of things that could not, should not be compared--a broken florescent bulb to a chandelier, metal detectors and teachers who were armed for their own protection to smiling faces and calm lectures on the invention of the microscope.

She didn't understand why the better of these two filled her with more fear than the first ever had.


::::::::::::::



He was waiting for her when the bell rang, outside the room where the silver-haired Ms Munroe was nodding and sharing her serene beam with any student who caught her eye. A soft touch on her elbow, drawing her away from the other teens--not hard, if she did not keep a bubble of space around herself they would; the residents had been told about her skin.

"C'mere, Kid."

Her roommate was throwing fascinated glances at them, twisting her torso as she followed her friends down the opposite hall. Logan interested Jubilee in a way that was beyond the scope of her comprehension. She thought Jubilee's behavior remained somewhat civil on because of the anomaly of his relationship with the girl, the burning curiosity it inspired.

She turned her head away from their avid audience, forced herself to study the faded pattern of Logan's flannel shirt, too old and soft for wrinkles. She looked at the stubble sprayed across his jaw like pepper.

The girl shifted her eyes quickly to the carpet under her feet.

"You didn't come to breakfast today." An accusation without anger, without the necessity of a reply. He kept walking, and she followed willingly. "Let's go get something in your stomach, alright darlin?"

"I'm supposed to go to biology," she said quietly.

"You're going to eat." His voice was inflexible, but not harsh. A kind stone. She offered no other protest.



::::::::::::


Logan was always around. Not by her side twenty-four seven, but enough to raise the eyebrows of even the most aloof of teachers and had them wondering aloud over coffee and tables far from The Wolverine's earshot.

He was there at mealtimes, waiting to lead her to the quietest, furthest spot in the cafeteria (or to the kitchen, or gardens, on her shakier days). There to take her to the library, to point at cloth-bound spines that he knew nothing of an coax her, go on, pick one, Kid. There in the more traffic jammed of hallways, his body a buffer between hers and the limbs of others. There to knock roughly on the door when she hadn't left her room all day. There to force her downstairs, to watch a football game on the couch with him. There to deter the other students--on pain of claw--from any thought of joining them.

She was less surprised than the others by the constancy of his presence.The girl had already lived with Logan for weeks, acquired more months of his attention than from anyone else who'd staggered through her life. That it would continue now, in this otherwise unforeseen and unforeseeable place where she was not being judged either too old or old enough, was something she could do nothing but accept. She didn't know the reasons for his assistance, but relied on it as unthinkingly as oxygen.


::::::::::::::


"Catch," Bobby said. And she did, though awkwardly. Fingers that fumbled and then clasped the Snickers to her stomach to keep from dropping it altogether. The bright eyed boy smiled at her. She looked down, picked at the foil of the chocolate--a reward from Mr. Summers; everyone had scored a ninety or above on the Biology test--to avoid conversation.

Her cheeks felt warm.

:::::::::::::


"Come the fuck on!"

Jubilee's voice cut through the roaring patter of the shower, through the insulation the door and dense curtain provided, through the illusion of privacy that the steam and heat tried to give. She could hear her nails--tiger printed; Jubilee had glued new ones on last night--clacking impatiently on the wood between them. The girl opened her eyes, squinted unhappily at the maroon tiles she faced, now blurry with steam. Jubilee had already had her turn in the bathroom.

Water pulsed down her shoulders, her arms, her breasts. Solid, hot streams wrapping her in fluid protection and obliterating whatever her flesh had accumulated over last night and yesterday.

"You can't stay in there forever. I need to do my mascara!" A biting shriek that made the girl cringe and twist the nobs until the spray became a drip, and then nothing.

She swiped hurriedly at her body with the towel, felt the quickly-cooling moisture dribble down her spine to the downy creases of lower skin. The girl stuffed herself into her underwear and jeans, the long sleeve t shirt and gloves that Ms Grey had requested she where any time she intended to leave the room. All the while, the voice outside the bathroom was chanting, "C'mon. C'mon. C'mon."

When she opened the door her roommate muttered a "Finally." and knocked past her without another word.

The girl blinked at the stacks of Cosmo magazines on the floor, a stuffed flamingo won at some carnival the students had been taken to. Her wet hair hung against her neck like dozens of limp rat tails. She wondered if there was a point where someone who clearly did not belong in a place could get used to that fact.

She wondered if she would ever reach that point.

"--but it's not just ice, I lower the temperature too. So now I can't decide between Freezer and "

Bobby talks incessantly, sits next to her even when there are available chairs next to people without poisonous skin. He doesn't require an answer, but gives a kind pause after every question.

"What do you think? Cuz, you know, it doesn't have to be something completely related to your mutation. I mean, Professor Xavier is 'The Professor', not 'Mr. ESP' or something. Have you picked a code name yet? Everyone's doing it. The teachers are even going to put them on our graduation papers. John going with 'Pyro', Kitty says either 'Shadowfax' or 'Vapor.' But I can't decide at all--"

"I like 'Iceman'," she volunteers shyly, picks at the uneven grain of her pencil.

He always smiles so eagerly at her. There's something foreign in his expression, not cruel or lewd, which might explain why it took her so long to place a label on it.

"Really? You think so? That was the one I was leaning--".


::::::::::::::

The girl rolled and twisted the sheets into a tight ball, small enough to carry with ease. She set the bundle into the laundry basket, turned to strip the pillows of their cases.

Jubilee was sitting cross-legged on her bed. The scent of Doritos and the flip of pages; she was searching for new make up tips, dog-earing the paper with the orange dust of fake cheese. Every few moments, she sent a "Hmmph," a tut, an expression that alternated between amusement and irritation toward the girl.

"You know you don't have to do that. The cleaning service do sheets and towels."

The girl knew. She'd heard the sighs generated by the state of Jubilee's bed, the crumbs and industrial vacuum had to be brought in to collect. She'd quietly excused herself, told the kind woman assigned to their hall that she would take care of her own things, it was fine, she wanted to, really, thanks. Escaped to the library until there were fewer bodies filling the small bedroom, to marvel and cringe at this facet of mansion life. The idea of not doing what little she could to care for what she had been given here.


::::::::::::





A thin hall with paintings of flowering fields. Bubbles of air that caught and broke in her throat before they could reach her lungs. Frantic little gasps, pain in her chest and eyes from the illogical violence of a panic attack. Her feet in their almost-new tennis shoes pattering on the hard floor, somewhere between a stumble and a run.

She didn't understand. Nothing had happened, nothing unusual. Nothing that should break all reason and control and set her fleeing from a threat she hadn't even identified.

It was Friday, the last class of the day finished and two hours before to go before dinner, before she had any obligation to be around other people. The girl left the circle of choirs in The Professor's office with only thought of getting upstairs, getting somewhere quiet. Perhaps read the book of poetry she'd found in the library.

Nobody spoke to the girl, looked her her way; she didn't need to flatten herself against the wall to keep space between herself and the moving crowd. It was considerably one of her better days. It had all been fine. Fine.

She'd passed the entertainment room, caught a glimpse of Jubilee on the couch, her fake nails tracing some secret pattern on a boys neck. Younger students on the floor by the TV, arguing over the limited Xbox controllers. An irritated voice that cried, "It's my turn!"

Then, suddenly, her lungs weren't strong enough to perform the job they'd been doing for years. And she was whimpering through this narrow hallway, the walls too close and getting closer. And her room was so far, so far. Wait--where was the her room? Had she made a wrong turn? Had she ever been down this corridor, so blurry and claustrophobic?

The girl took in a deep, useless gulp of air. Her vision swam and her heart battered fiercely in her chest, a wild attempt to break free of its cage.

Thoughtlessly her hand scrabbled at the knob of the closest door. Anything could have lain behind it. Another bedroom, another person. It didn't matter, didn't stop her. She had to get out of the open. She had to--she had to hide. Frantic fingers managed to twist the sweat-slicked brass. Muted click of the latch's retreat, and the girl forced herself inside. A tiny storage room. Neat stacks of supplies for the hard working and virtually invisible cleaning staff. Perfect.

The girl closed the door, felt her knees buckle and the distance between herself and the floor diminish by a couple feet. She came to an awkward sitting position on a tub made of hard plastic. Breathing wasn't getting any easier. Her nose was running, her cheeks cold and moist with tears she hadn't been aware of until now.



It took him only moments. Two or three minutes, at most, and even in her preoccupied state the girl knew this was unusually swift. As if she'd paged him. As if this was their usual meeting place and he was simply running a little late.

One heartbeat, she was crouched in the dark closed, alone with the smell of metal and glass cleaner and plungers. Then another throb in her chest, a slim rectangle of light, cutting her down the middle. Replaced, filled almost immediately with the solid bulk of him. Loose brown shirt and jeans missing their usual belt. She couldn't see his eyes.


Her stomach clenched; her legs stiffened in some precursor to flight. But, strangely, the blockage in her throat thinned with Logan's appearance. She inhaled.

The girl knew he was taking her in, absorbing her disheveled and hysterical appearance, her unsteady squat on a container that she would later identify as toilet cleanser. He didn't speak. And then Logan took the step that brought him inside with her. His arms reached out and in some delicate maneuver of body parts among boxes and bottles that the returned darkness prevented her from seeing, the girl's tearful face was pressed against Logan's stomach. Smashed there against soft folds of cloth and muscles that lacked any give. It was not uncomfortable. His hands found her skull, her hair, held her in place. Calloused fingers discovered obscure paths through the brown locks. Stroking, letting the strands slip over and between the digits, tugging teasingly at the knots and soothing. Her features twisted up; she bawled against him, long keens that wouldn't have been so loud if she had not been so utterly silent.

Dimly, a part of her (more in tune with the expectations of normal society than the girl knew) recognized that she was embarrassing herself. That she should feel humiliated. Grateful only that the person who found her had already seen her snap many times before. Wipe herself off, apologize, and escape from this much too cramped chamber.

That part was speaking too quietly to be heard.

And he was still soundless, one of his hands leaving her hair now and again to rub her back, smooth over a shuddering spine. And she was calming now. Big breaths, gulps, one after another. And the flesh under his shirt was hot and she pressed her face harder against it, turned her head back and forth, a rough nuzzle with her nose and forehead and lips and there, finally, he made a noise. A hitch in Logan's breathing, a rumble in his chest. And his thumbs brushed the bone behind her ears, the thick strands acting as a gauzy barrier.

It took a long time for either to notice that this protection was insufficient. That he was not wearing the gloves that he often donned when spending time with her. That with her next sob his hand slipped, cupped the back of her neck reflexively. That it rested there long past when the pain should have begun, where her hair was only faintly tan whispers.

That nothing was happening.





.

The Girl: Chapter Seventeen




The days continued their ever-onward, indefatigable march. Her routine varied little, a few occasional drops of excess paint on the canvas's otherwise repetitive pattern. A predictability that she wanted badly to trust. Classes, meals, trips to the library, showers, cocoons and caves of bedsheets.

It was a week before Logan broached the topic of her skin, before he made any allusion to the afternoon in the supply closet. She'd thought about it, wondered, worried. But discussing it with him, with others, had never crossed her mind. The girl had never been taught that method of problem solving. She waited for cues from him, and did not consider that he might be doing the same.

He told her that the people here were good at helping students manage their gifts. Logan faltered over the last word, but otherwise his voice was smooth. Casual. Offhand. All the adjectives that meant he didn't want her to be afraid. Relaxed, as if this mattered to him no more than what they were having for dinner. He said that Xavier would be happy to help, if she ever wanted to better understand her mutation.

And then he'd turned back to lighting his fresh cigar, to watching the game, to waiting on her. The night after the next, when she'd examined the dangers twice from every angle, she told him yes, okay.

Logan nodded, said he'd mention something to The Professor.


But first--first, he wanted to touch her.


They were in the library, in the overstuffed chairs that matched the color scheme of the rest of the mansion, when Logan asked her. he said, "It's alright, honey. I just want to see..." He assured her, swore that it would be fine, that it'd only take a second, that he wouldn't hurt her, that she wouldn't hurt him.

He was sitting back in his chair, comfortable, elbows resting on the arms. Gaze fixed mildly on her, serious but not apprehensive. And after the usual, initial tensing, and reflexive shakes of her head that Logan waited through and recorded somewhere in his ind without comment, his lack of fear soothed her own. Made her agree.

Logan quirked his lips, pulled his seat closer to hers. Now?, she thought frantically, balking when he held out his arm--bare; he wore only his much-abused tank top. She froze, stared at the planes of muscle, the thick vein, listened to his sigh.

When she continued to make no move, Logan picked up her wrist from it's stiff position on her lap, slid one of his hands into hers in a gentle hold. As if he were going to shake it, to seal an agreement, turn it over for a gentleman's kiss.

The grip was not one she could pull away from.

The fingers of his other hand pushed her sleeve up, up. Her breath tripped over itself. Hazel eyes monitored her reaction, smiled kindly when they met hers. The girl saw curiosity in his face (nearer to her own that she would permit from anyone else). And in the instant before his palm closed over the the strip of her exposed skin--a tightening. A clenching of his jaw, slightest bunching of his brow, bracing himself. The reluctance and anxiety he hadn't wanted her to see.

Faintly creased flesh, tougher than leather, pressed around the frail bones of her wrist. Pink and white skin swallowed by brown.

And in the crucial seconds after his flesh met her own, she felt his pulse, felt her own, hammering. Felt the back of the chair, both soft and too firm against her lower spine. Felt the urge to kick, scramble over backwards, do absolutely anything to get out of his reach...and at the same time, nothing. Another part of her was almost comfortable, as calm as she ever was because of all the times he'd gotten close without pain following.

How shocking, that the latter was stronger. Much.

She felt the heat of his breath and then it's absence; he was holding it. She felt the weight of his stare, a pressure that was almost physical. She felt the cracks in his callouses. She felt every stitch and every seam of her clothing.

And after their hearts had pulsed a few more times than they should have without the interruption of that burn, that unforgettable rush and a rise in pitch to the babble in her head just when she though the volume couldn't be upped any further....After, the girl continued to feel those things.

Another handful of half-moments, and Logan smiled at her. He patted her wrist, once, and drew back. A little quickly--perhaps not wishing to press his luck.

"There, Darlin'. Good girl. Thank you." They stared at each other until the reality of what she didn't do sank through the shock.

"Oh," the girl gasped. She shivered, relieved and terrified and--what? What was that? Disappointed, just a little, that she could not rely on being able to hurt the ones who touched her? The last emotion was too fleeting to catch in the swell of others. Her lips wobbled. "What does....w-why?"

The tickle of a cold tear. If the girl had been one to cuss, she would have. Why was she always crying? Why?
Logan's hand rose; she saw the cuticles of his fingers, the swirling pattern of prints on each digit. They came toward her face and then hesitated. Too much for one day.

He touched her shoulder, briefly. Repeated, "Good girl."


:::::::::::::::::::


Jubilee dropped the bags to the floor, a crinkly little mountain of plastic. One was pink, said Bath and Body Works across the side. Restocking her supply, the girl guesses. Bubblegum shampoo and Moonlight Path body spray, Jubilee's current favorite--half of which will be gone by tomorrow evening. The mattress gave a tired squeak when she flopped down upon it, legs and arms displayed as limply and carelessly as string.

The girl tried to ignore her, keep her eyes on the trails of black ink in her book. Her knees were drawn up to her breasts, a position that had been less defensive than comfortable before her roommate had returned.

Jubilee's immobility didn't last long. She rolled over, slapped her bedside table for her phone, a perk of the junior X-team. Shrill, staccato key tones. Calling her friends after spending hours in their company at the mall, saying goodbye to them just moments ago. She could not bear to spend a single conscious moment unoccupied.

It was hard to tell which of the two girls better handled their loneliness.

:::::::::::::::::

Logan's thumb moved up and down on the girl's shoulder. A reminder: I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

Chuck's little coffee room was a nice place. As informal as the mansion ever got. Couches and bowls of popuri, a fireplace, bookshelves whose antique contents were intended for decoration than actual reading material. Comparatively one of the better, nonthreatening choices of settings for this.

Jean wanted to try.

He'd pulled her aside, when the girl was not around. Let her know that this was not something anyone would stand in line to feel. He said he'd seen its effects on someone without a healing factor, that she might not recover.

Jean wasn't an idiot; she knew when The Wolverine meant his words to be taken seriously. He'd watched self-preservation war with the curiosity that years of medical training had instilled, until Logan suggested that Scott serve as a replacement test mouse. Her eyes hardened; her lips pulled up into a smirk. The challenge was too much to refuse.

"And have her cut the house in two? Who knows how long she'd have to wear glasses like Scott's, is she draws on mutations like you think? No. No, we're at a dead end. For the safety of the students, at least, we have to understand what her skin does, if it is constant or can be controlled. We cannot assume anything based solely on what you say happened."

Jean raised her chin, smiled, proud of her own bravery and the logic of her speech. And Logan acquisited. Walked away, and left the redhead first smug, and then wondering (correctly) in the back of her mind, if Logan simply hadn't been interested enough to push the subject. The latter was not an idea she entertained for long.

She was right, though the well-being of the other teens meant next to nothing to him. They couldn't judge what the problem with the girl's skin was with the little he'd experienced and the even less he'd been a witness to.
Logan would not have cared, though the success in the library had given him a thrill too acute for contemplation. It would not have mattered half as much to him if it did not matter to her. The girl wanted to know. Therapy sessions with The Professor, some private but most accompanied by Logan. Questions, an examination of her memories that she had given permission for. Bandages from the skin sample and blood that Jean had taken, that Logan couldn't look at, couldn't think about too long. No two of these ever in the same week, because he did not want to overwhelm her.

And she still said yes, still agreed to continue. It was only this that made Logan do so as well.




Now here they were, trying to ignore the audience that this little experiment had drawn. The girl, because they made her nervous. Logan, because they pissed him off. Xavier was present, of course, an overseer of the fields, there to fill any telepathic needs. Scott, to be with Jean. Lensherr, for sheer curiosity.

He was closer to anger than worry by the time Jean offered her martyred expression and a lotioned hand, palm-up, to the girl.

"After this, we'll get ice cream," he promised the pale figure at his side. She turned her face up to him, pressed a bit closer to him--so minutely that it could barely be separated from his imagination. Her hand, tiny cushions and lines of skin, extending toward Jean. Hardly any hesitation--I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.--the girl's hand meeting Jean's. A child measuring her palm against her mother's, a bizarrely slow low-five that did not break apart. The smooth, glistening polish of the older woman's nails and the blue Y of a vein in the girl's wrist. Avid stares and Logan's nostrils twitching as they monitored the situation.

As agreed, the contact was maintained longer than Logan's test, much longer than his accidental brushes. Seconds ticked by, and the air seemed to grow only thicker, their expectations winding only tighter. Certainty that it would start now, then now, then now. Jean's face shifted from bracing, to fearful, to wary hope, and he knew all she wanted was snatch her limb away. Xavier had known from his foray into certain memories that there had been no exaggeration in the description of her mutation. But in the silence of those waiting, Logan could feel the others wondering, wondering with him, if he had been wrong. If--

The slap of something heavy striking the hardwood, a crack like a gun. Logan did not flinch, but he was the exception. He saw The Professor's gaze flash over his head, behind the couch, twisted in time to spot the innocence of Lensherr's expression , the thick book on the floor. His lips drew back in a snarl, but he had to turn back before the angry sound could be released. A hiss, a choked gasp, the utterly inhuman noises of pain.

Scott's horrified cry of his wife's name. The doctor's face, bulging veins. Bloodless lips and eyes whose whites were stained with the spider-webbed pink of breaking vessels.
Logan pulled the girl's arm down, away, roughly. She was whimpering, shaking with all the helplessness of a flag in a tornado. He wound his other arm around her, hugged her flush against him. Soft brown head tucked under his chin.

Scott was beside Jean, calling her name, touching her hair with a panic that Logan inwardly mocked, even as he stroked the girl's back. The redhead lowered her head to her knees, displayed the dual peaks of her shoulder blades. She swayed, shivered. Coughed raggedly and wetly. Moaned, but took a long time to reply to any of the groups frantic questions with anything faintly shaped like words.

Only when Scott began to talk about stretchers and calling Hank did Jean speak. "I'm okay," she mumbled. Then, as if unable to stop herself, "I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay."

She straightened up, a pallor to her face that Logan was used to seeing in bodies that had stopped moving long ago. The doctor shook off her husband's offer to help her upstairs, slumped back against the couch with the nauseous look of one not going anywhere anytime soon.

Logan ran his palm down the girl's bumpy spine.

So astoundingly little time had passed, a handful of centimeters covered by the clock's minute hand. It took longer to notice the cloth-bound tomes vibrating in their cases. The trash can, rising a few inches into the air and then crashing down, over and over. When it did come to their attention, those present were shocked-- not so much at the sight itself (on a normal day here at the academy of mutants, it would barely have caused a blink) but because of who the display of telekinetics was coming from. Four pairs of eyes flickered from Jean, barely strong enough to lift her own head--to the girl.

Logan felt odd. Like a glass wall had fallen between himself and almost everybody else. Neither an entirely new or entirely similar sensation from what he usually experienced in that now, he was not the only one behind the wall. Suddenly the situation, Jean, all held much less interest for him that it perhaps should have. Much less than the question of when the girl would stop trembling.


"The fuck was that?" he growled at Lensherr later, as they left the room.
The old man pushed the book he had dropped back into it's slot on the shelf. He held his hands up, placating, to Logan.

"Just an idea," he said.


:::::::::::::::::


Sand was getting into his clothes, though he'd laid a towel down. Each grain wet and gritty and distinct, burrowing deeper. Overly bright sun hanging in the perfect position to hit his eyes, no matter where he looked. Heat sitting smugly on his shoulders. The smell of hot-dogs and sweat and vomit. Squealing kids, the shrillest of whom Logan was busy fantasizing drowning in the salty water.

The girl appeared to be enjoying herself, though. She sat a few feet away on a towel of her own. Fully clothed and showing no intention of entering the ocean or building a sandcastle or any of the activities her fellow classmates were engaged in...But looking on intrigued, half smile and the kind of wide eyes that he liked. And that made the rest, if not worth it, at least bearable. She'd had a rough time, since touching Jean. Rough enough to make Logan say yes, for the first time, to Chuck's obligatory request for his presence on the field trip. Hopefully it would not set a precedent.

He'd coaxed, and then ordered the girl to go as well. Drove her in his pickup so she wouldn't have to sit with the others in the van.

Logan watched her trail her fingers through the little hills of sand. The sheen of sunblock on her cheeks and underneath a blossoming redness. He'd get her some Aloe Vera later. Her hair pulled back in a clip. Eyes darting to a thousand points on the beach and back to him--look, Logan, look. Neither spoke, neither felt any need to. Only a foot of space between their towels, their jean-clad knees.

Footsteps pattering on the soft, unreliable ground. Too close to their spot; if it was another Frisbee enthusiast the claws were coming out. Logan half-turned. A blond boy, running from the cluster of X-geeks and ice coolers and top-of-the-line swim apparel. It took much longer than it should have for his grin to fall, as he approached The Wolverine. He even managed to pick it back up, a nervous version, upon reaching them. The fact that the smile was directed at the girl did not help either Logan's mood or the boy's safety.

"Hey," he panted. Breathless after only fifty yards or so. Pussy. "Mr. Summers is passing out drinks and snacks. Do want a coke or some Fritos or--or anything?"

The boy included Logan in the query with only a polite flick of his gaze, otherwise the sky blue orbs remained fixed on her.

"I've already gotten her what she wants," Logan grunted. A little pile of foil and tin-wrapped treats on her towel, just behind her back. In plain sight for anyone with the bare minimum of observational skills. All the boy needed to do was to stop staring at her.

Logan didn't like how he scratched his stomach. He didn't like how the boy stuck out his chest, as if hairless was a thing to be proud of. He didn't like how he shuffled his feet, searched awkwardly for a reason to stay. He didn't like how the girl flushed brighter than her sunburn looking at him.

"Bobby," called a voice from the water. The girl's roommate on the shoulders of another boy, squealing with every wobble. More cleavage than cloth to her yellow bikini. "Bobby, come--come play--with us! We're--watch it, John!--gonna chicken fight and Kitty--needs--a partner."

The boy smelled and looked relieved for the excuse to escape. He smiled at the girl, one last time. "See you later, okay?"

"Okay."

Logan spent most of his time trying to get the girl to talk to others. Why, then, was he not happy with her speaking one word to this kid? Then he was finally gone, off to splash in the water with the other tots. He could feel the girl's eyes on him, and did not meet them for fear of what he might be found.

He asked if she was sure she didn't want to swim a bit, wade in the shallows if she couldn't. Logan said she didn't have to do it around the others if she didn't want. They could walk down the shoreline a bit, find a more private spot. He said she did not need to wear a swimsuit, didn't need to undress. He didn't care if his pickup got a bit; it had seen worse.

The girl's quiet voice told him, maybe later. She was fine here.





.

The Girl: Chapter Eighteen



The blood scared her.

Water prints, smudged scarlet roses on her thigh's most inner skin. The horrifying stain she'd wake up to, or go to the bathroom to find (What happened? What happened? What happened?). A humiliating conversation with Mrs. Grey, and afterward thick pads she had to wear for a week.

It never used to happen this often. In the city, months would pass before it appeared, weak and so thready she usually assumed she'd cut herself. This frequency scared her.

The blood scared her.

Logan was always especially kind to the girl on those days. Or it felt that way, because he couldn't possibly know, could he? Even she was not so fanciful to think he was able to tell. But Logan got her out of class, brought her chocolate muffins and fresh oranges, let her pick what they watched on T.V. (between hockey and football--to Logan, there were no other channels), spoke to her in only the softest of tones.


:::::::::::::::::


The man on the screen was yelling, his zebra-stripped shirt clingy from the sweat of the hot day and, presumably, the stress his job required. He blew his whistle furiously, made indeterminable hand gestures toward the men on the field.

Logan said the referee was being a dick, that the player who'd been hit had only been unconscious for a minute or two and could still walk afterward, so it shouldn't have counted as a foul. He said he didn't know why he continued to watch the sport--the men turned into bigger sissies every day.

The girl nodded her head, told him, "Yeah." Not sure if she completely agreed but then, Logan had been watching football for much longer than she, and so probably knew what he was talking about.

The flickering lights of the T.V. danced on their faces like the glow of a blueish fire. She studied the interesting patterns the shadows made on their laps, her hands.

Logan turned his head. She wasn't sure when this position became the norm, when his arm around her shoulder became too natural for her to fear. He was so close that she felt rather than saw the action, felt the press of his forehead above her ear. Not a kiss. Logan pushed his nose into her hair and inhaled once, twice. Breath tickling her scalp, the body beside her loosening.

He never gave her an explanation, always turned back to whatever had previously held his attention.

The girl didn't flinch anymore.



::::::::::::::



A million fire ants were chewing through his muscles, nothing but fire left in their wake. They were under his skin, invisible but there as surely as his claws, he'd swear on it. Logan tossed from his side to his back, kicked the covers all the way off but that only seemed to fan the flames.
His body was too stiff, too heavy, too present. Wound, overheated, a moment away from killing someone or dying himself and Logan couldn't anticipate which. All the things that meant it had been too long.

Handling matters himself only kept him balancing on the crumbling edge of sanity, while cold showers only pissed him off. Nights were bad, the worst. Nobody around to act normal for, few reasons that Logan could remember to stay calm and leash himself against the most base of his instincts. No distractions from the images that should not be in his head, a soft mouth and knees and a hidden, secret place in between, the owner of which he shouldn't, couldn't think of in that context. He couldn't...He couldn't...He wanted to...He needed.....needed...

He needed a distraction.

Now.



Logan was up before the decision fully was processed, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress. Simple movements made difficult by the painful tension of certain body parts.

He stuffed his limbs into clothes that were nearest in not the cleanest, left as he was still cramming the tail of his belt into the last loop. Then he was down the hall, down the stairs. Thinking with every step, of distractions. Of a bar, whichever was closest, and a pair of legs--likewise. A fuck, the quicker the better, enough to take his mind off of...off of what it was on.

Logan made it down one floor, already tasting the beer and another's tongue. At the landing, his feet twisted rather than remain straight, and the rest of his body followed. Legs pumping past vases and those Kinkade paintings, and he imagined what it will be like to find release after impersonating a monk for so long. Past bulletin boards--not too young, he decided, old enough to know what she's doing and strong enough that he won't have to worry about hurting her. Blond or redhead, anything but brunette. Doors with their posters and juvenile "Keep Out" signs, and still Logan would have sworn that he was on his way down to the second floor, to the first, out of here with his thumb pinned to the red button on the bike.

A fever had overtaken him, made his movements urgent but robotic. It was with honest shock that Logan, as he awoke to some off-brand of reason, found the door to the girl's room and not the garage before him. He stared as if transfixed by the grains in the wood, the chamber behind which fairly pulsed with the scent of bubblegum and cheap perfume and peaches and warm, female bodies.

And just like that...just like that, his plans changed. The shifting, mad whims of the ill.

Logan slid to the ground, back against the wall, the plaster cool with night air. His eyes never wavered from the room ahead, and if he blinked it was too swift for even a nanosecond of blindness. He told himself he'd only stay for a little while, just to...just until...

His hands were shaking.


::::::::::::::::



Time without unhappiness--large or small--to separate days into before and after, without goals beyond the most banal, moves quickly. Hours are only a compilation of ten minute increments, a measure too fleeting for him to register. Three meals and in between, time spent with the girl or time not (less common, and oddly longer than the former) making up a day, a string of seven, thirty, ninety and an endless more of these unraveling like a spool of Christmas lights. Friday's fish dinners, for the Catholic residents. Weather warm enough for sandals, and then trees wrapped in the flames of red and orange leaves, little holidays. Cold, scarfs and snow boots dug out of their closets, soup and cough syrup and arguments and promises that certain questionable shirts were warm enough.

The girl's body filled out pleasingly; her skin cleared; she even grew another inch He saw her smiling shyly at others beside him. Volunteering to pass out some graded essays before the bell rang, as he waited and watched through the glass wall that separated the class and the hall, him. Helping a younger student in the art room wipe up spilled glue and glitter.

The Xmen congratulated themselves, smiled and nodded in the way of parents when she is brought up and then they stop, except for Jean because it is the only subject Logan is interested in discussing with her anymore. More students coming in every week and she is put on the shelf. Nothing but one of the group, treasured but only as one of the many shiny items in an impressive collection.

Sometimes Logan felt like he was trapped in an air pocket of a volcano, the only escape through an explosion. Other times, he would swear he'd only met the girl ten minutes ago.


::::::::::::::::::


No, he said, when The Professor asked him to fetch a budding mutant from Arizona.

No, he said to the request that he break into an FOH safe-house

No, Logan said, when he was asked to track the moves of a government official preparing to soon propose some anti-mutant legislature.

No, was his reply when Xavier offered to increase his normal pay by a half-grand.

No, when the number rose to two.

Three, four. No. No.

No, he said, to any task beyond the physical training of the advance junior team. No, to anything that would take Logan outside the mansion.

Fuck you, he said, when the old man noted--rather acidly-- that he had never said no before.

:::::::::::::::::::


She thought it was a strange form of small talk, when Mrs. Grey asked if she preferred chocolate or vanilla. A random question, a conversation starter, like the daily prompts found on her English class' chalkboard.

The girl blushed, shrugged. She asked, "What's yours?" in an awkward attempt at courtesy that earned only a smile and a half-laugh from the other woman.

She gave no more thought to the incident until the afternoon that Jubilee found her in the hall. Her roommate, with all the manner of a teen roped unwillingly into the role of messenger, spoke in a tone that suggested memorization. She told the girl she was wanted in the entertainment room and to go now, quickly, because "they don't have forever to wait around on you." (Jubilee's own addition, presumably.)

She picked her way back down the stairs apprehensively, wondering who 'they' were, a clarification her roommate had not made in her haste to depart once her news had been delivered.


Pink and white ribbons, a handful of balloons and a banner that would be taken down in an hour and put back in some drawer, some box, until the next birthday. A round cake on the table, white icing and her name among the curling, edible letters. Plastic forks and paper plates, a knife to cut through the sugared bread. The teachers and those students who's desire for sweets was worth the claim of friendship with it's owner. Logan in the corner, looking reassuringly out of place in the group, trapped here by accident. Like her.

Mrs. Grey smiled and apologized from the moment she walks in. Sunnily, no expectation of complaint on the girl's part. "We're sorry we didn't do this last year, but you'd just arrived and your forms hadn't been processed yet and nobody knew--"

The realization comes slowly, that they must have found the date on the papers she'd filled out upon arriving. It's never been more than a day to her, and the girl is stunned and a little horrified. Her eyes blurred and stung, a reflex to any surprise. She was led to stand over the cake, the pale expanse of frosting and the wax shaped into the numbers one and six.

The girl's body moved at the excited urging of the others. She blew out the tear-shaped flames that sat on the candles, opened the envelopes handed to her (gift cards, five of them, for various Westchester stores), looked dazedly into the flash as someone snapped a picture.

Logan helped her escape, just as the flushing of her cheeks was becoming an actual burn. Perhaps she had an allergy to kindness and fuss, she mused, an intolerance she had not been aware of because she'd been introduced to it so late in life. He put his hand on her back, in the dip between her shoulder blades. The girl let her eyes close, pretended she was invisible. Her teachers, Mr. Summers and Mrs. Grey, glared as they made their way out of the entertainment room--but at him, not her. The rest were busy, and did not require her presence to celebrate the minor break in monotony, the addition of crumbs to the seat cushions. The rest, aside from Mr. Lensherr, who stopped her at the door and offered her his congratulations for the fact that her world had circled the sun another time. "I see great things in your future, my dear."



The girl thought she'd return to her room, reread Hearts In Atlantis before she returned it to the library. Or, if Jubilee was elsewhere, take another shower. But Logan pulled her toward the garage, said, "Come on, let's get out of here for awhile." She followed with an abruptly light feeling in her chest. This is certainly preferable to the party, maybe even the shower.


:::

They drove around and then out of Westchester, further than usual but she didn't mind. The seat behind her was warm, safe like a soft wall, it's contours, fabric, and stains from hasty meals were all familiar to her. Everything smelled like Logan.

Every now and then the girl would turn her head from the scenery rolling past her window, find her companion's hands wrapped too tightly around the wheel, his jaw too stiff and his eyes squinted as if in agony. But before she could wonder, internally or out loud, Logan's face smoothed. He gave her a glance and a grin, returned his eyes to the white lines being swallowed by the pickup, nothing but relaxed.

He pulled into a parking slot of a store she'd never seen before. Wide windows flanking the ornate door like wing-men, a collection of ancient maps in one, globes in the other. Little plaque telling the hours a customer might seek service within, hanging off the brass knob of the door.
The girl looked at Logan, and then to the sign labeling the building a book emporium. Him, to the sign, him, to the sign, as he urged her feet of the floorboards and onto the smooth asphalt. Back and forth until they were inside, and then she had eyes for nothing but the shelves, row upon row. The hardwood floor, the little tables crammed with knickknacks and discount items, the surprisingly young woman behind the desk. The books, hundreds wrapped in their hard or soft covers, offering their own invitation and making the girl's heart patter.

Logan stood by the door, smiling. Better suited to this background of thick rugs and old wood and lamplight than he would have claimed. He made her choose ten of the titles from their cases, and would not allow them to leave until she had.

"Happy Birthday, Kid."





.

The Girl: Chapter Nineteen



He should have been paying better attention. That was Logan's thought, his terror. That afternoon and later, when it mattered most.

Screaming, squealing students in the overcrowded hall--Jean said they weren't even close to full capacity but Logan didn't believe her. Overexcited by the promised trip to the movie theater. A boy who had apparently eaten too much at lunch and puked in the corridor, acrid burning Logan's nose and encouraging him to keep his mouth firmly shut. The increasingly appealing notion of the mansion, and it's relative emptiness tonight.

But he should have been paying attention, should have been listening, shouldn't have been surprised to spot Lensherr standing with the girl, at the end of the next hall.

"--active is of course the most useful."

His gray hair was inclined her way, and a growl was already shaking it's way up Logan's throat. And it did not matter that the old man was a friend of Xavier's, didn't matter that they may have simply bumped into each other, or that their conversation might be small talk based solely on the requirements of courtesy. It didn't matter, because suddenly the fact that the girl was comfortable standing close to others was no longer a good thing.

"C'mon, Kid," he beckoned, when he was close enough to the pair. His voice was a rough command that she didn't deserve, but he was pleased when she flitted to his side without hesitation, touched his arm in a brief greeting. The other man viewed this with mild speculation. Logan narrowed his eyes at Lensherr, searching for some proof of what his instincts were screaming. He'd grown a few more wrinkles since his last visit, had lost weight. However, his back was straight, his dry lips smiling bemusedly but not sharing their harmlessness with his eyes.

"Wolverine," he said, drawing out the word with a false camaraderie. "Always a pleasure to see such a finely constructed piece of metal as yourself." Then, to her, to their retreating backs as she was led away. "I'll see you later, my dear. Best of luck with your studies."





Later, when asked, the girl said, "He wanted to know how my control was coming." And then she shrugged, puzzled at a tone in the questions Logan couldn't quite mask.

It was the last time Lensherr was seen at the mansion.
He should have been paying better attention.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


The teachers were worried. She read it on their faces, the silent, anxious glances they shared with one another, the fierce way they each focused on the television, as if committing every word to memory. She'd never seen them as anything but the picture of calm. For that illusion of solidity to be broken, for their mouths to be pinched and their brows wrinkled with apprehension seemed like a small sin, a quiet betrayal on their part.
None of the other students appeared to notice. They played Foosball at the corner table, a card game on the floor, spoke in loud and louder voices, compared nail polish. Logan expected her to meet him at the front entrance but she hovered in the doorway, watching Mr. Summers hold his fiance's hand and Ms Munroe shake off a little child's request for braided hair. She listened to the newscaster, a tan woman who in a moment would be beaming as she spoke of an dog trained to escort patrons to their tables at a local restaurant, a hair brush once used by a member of the Beatles and now valued at 200,000 dollars.... Now, however, her voice possessed a calculated flatness; she frowned just enough to acknowledge the seriousness of the story without revealing that she might have an opinion on the subject herself, as she told of the conference being called to discuss the Mutant Registration Act.


"Ready, Darlin?" Logan's hand at her elbow. His gaze darted over her head, landed for the briefest of moments on the T.V. The feminine trill of the anchorwoman, "Senator Kelly will be heading the committee in favor of the new bill, which require--"

The Professor turned from his chair beside the couch, aimed at Logan a glare full of some significance she didn't understand and wasn't meant to see. The girl looked up, saw Logan's jaw go tight. She thought of hastily changed channels, overheard conversations and Ms Grey's reminder before every outing or field trip to not flaunt their gifts in public. The girl wondered if Logan would tell her the truth, if asked if she should be as afraid as well.


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::



"-us borrow one of the cars, and stay out. Being an Xmen is friggin' awesome."

"When is John getting back?"

"Don't know. Like, eight or nine, I guess. He just said, 'tonight'. Didn't want me to guess where he was by how long it takes them to drive."

"How come?"

"He--no, not those jeans. I wore them last week, remember? He's trying to be all mysterious. Acting important just 'cuz Scott picked him to go on the mission--can you believe that?"

"Over-dramatic much?"

"Bet they're just at the movies or something--how about these, Jubes?"

"No, doesn't go with the blouse. And tighter. What, you trying to make my ass look like it's made outa elephant skin?....I'll find out where they really went tonight. Pro'ly coulda cracked him already if I could have talked to him a bit longer, but Logan made me hang up."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah--hey, Kitty. See those dark pants with the gold flowers going down the side? Those. Yeah he, like, threatened to the phone up my ass if I pulled it out in class again."

"You're shitting me."

"I shit you not. That's, like, assault and sexual assault, you know? And he, like, cussed in front of a student. I'm telling you, Rogue's little boyfriend is pissing me off."

At the title, some inside joke that had not been explained to the girl nor did she wish it to be, Jubilee's friend threw a knowing glare from the bathroom doorway. Kitty, digging through the closet, did so as well, but her's held a touch of apology when the others weren't watching.

"And I swear to god, if he calls me 'yellow' one more time I'm going to, like, file a complaint. Cuz that's, like, totally racist, you know? I'm an X-woman too now. I don't hafta put up with that."

The girl pretended to focus on her book, pretended her cheeks weren't burning, pretended that her whole being hadn't perked up to listen the moment Logan's name was mentioned. Jubilee, a disembodied voice in the bathroom as she applied her make up, must have known, must have sensed it with that special power of teenage cruelty. Otherwise she wouldn't have allowed, two hours from her date with John, the conversation to stray even slightly from herself.

"He gets worse every day. You hear what he did to Bobby? That cast won't come off for five months at least." Jubilee's other friend, a Hispanic girl with the kind of hair she envied, so dark it seemed to absorb all light, take it to a secret place and polish it.

"What a jerk. Hope he leaves soon," Kitty threw in, eager to remain in the conversation lest the others forget her. Her attempt was weak enough to earn her a long look of disgust. She flushed, folded the jeans Jubilee had wanted over her arm. The girl watched her cross the room to join the others, slip through the wall when no room was made for her in the doorway.

There was relative silence for a while, long enough for the girl to expect other, less prickly subjects to arise. Surprisingly audible pops of lips that said her roommate was combining her gels into the stickiest, brightest possible mix, the sound of plastic containers snapping open and shut, a "What about this one?"

Then her roommate's voice, slow and musing. "Bet he will soon. Maybe he'll decide he can't take it anymore--cuz' this is, like, what? The longest time he's ever stayed?"
The Hispanic girl laughed. "Scott's all pissed. The advanced class was only s'pposed to be Logan's for a week or two."

"He'll go eventually . There's nothing to keep him here." Jubilee's words were spoken too loudly to be meant for only those in the bathroom.



::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


The girl was asleep when they came in. And after, other nights, this fact would make sleep unattainable. Every sundown of her childhood had trained her to be vigilant, a light sleeper, ready to open her eyes again any time they closed. That she hadn't heard the door, hadn't heard them tripping over intoxicated feet and the debris left by an exceptionally messy teenager, cleaved through the girl's marrow and whatever idea of a defense she'd thought she had.

It was Jubilee's sharp stage whisper, as loud as anyone's normal speaking voice, that snapped her into consciousness. Giggles and thuds and "Sshhh's" that sliced through the natural silence of night.

The dark pillowcase stretched out from beneath her cheek like a well-tended landscape of dips and hills and smooth expanses. Covers draped over her in uneven bunches. The bottom sheet had come loose; she could feel it knotted up beneath her stomach, the thicker weave of the mattress under her palms. Once she'd barely disturbed any surface she lay upon, left little more of a dent in the sheets of this bed that could be smoothed out the next morning, the covers pulled up only a little. Now the bed was evidence of a restlessness that held it's tongue during the day. She tensed, froze. Let the smells and sensations and familiar darkness tell her where she was and where she wasn't. The edge of the cover stopped above her ear, and the girl did not push it down--the universal instinct that not being able to see was the same as being hidden.

She listened to more shushing, the squeak of a mattress spring, the tenor of a male voice lowered. Her heart drummed with all the force of irate waves battering the sand. Like a rabbit coming shaking off the snakes hypnotic gaze, she flipped onto her back--and to her credit, the action was silent. The girl sat up, freed her legs from the tangled sheets with panicked efficiency, perhaps surprised to find they were the only things holding her to the bed. She could have been no more prepared for flight if her shoulder blades were to sprout the wings of a bird.

Strange, deformed shapes beneath the covers of her roommate's bed. A monster made of bedsheets, cotton mountains shifting, shrinking and grown gas if by the work of some unusually rapid tectonic plates.

"I can't--ouch!--see...."

"Sshh, sshh,sshh."

"Where's that hook thingy?"

"Be quiet--you want me to get it?"

It took her a moment, but when the girl understood, embarassment took the place of whatever alarm had diminished. She scrambled to get her feet on the carpet, lurched toward the door. She stepped on something that had the bite of plastic, cylintrical, perhaps the discarded cap to a bottle of body spray (the girl considered herself an expert in the identification of stepped-on objects). In the dark, everything had a purple tint.

More, louder laughter and against her will and better judgment the girl's head half-turned.

A pair of boys jeans lay in a kicked-off pile beside on the floor. Shoes and a piece of rectangular metal she knew would be painted with a shark's mouth, because she'd seen its owner flick it open enough times. The forms under the sheets were moving in a different way now, their clumsy fumbling having finally brought them to the right position. The distraction this brought must have made privacy sink even lower on their list of concerns because the rim of the fabric covering them slid down, exposing a smooth shoulder that curved like a backwards L into a neck and beneath, her roommate's taunting smile, her mirth-filled eyes aimed straight into the girl's.

She jerked her gaze away, cheeks lit with a violent flame. Slipped out of the room in her socks and cotton pajamas, trying to make as little noise as possible. The halls were cold and empty, the tables and vases artifacts left from a populated world entirely unimaginable to this one, props from a movie set when all the actors had gone home. The girl shuffled past them timidly, without purpose or destination. She fought memories of hands pressed over her ears, not tightly enough to block the sounds, eyes squeezed. shut. Nights when He was feeling angry or frisky or drunk enough to seek out her mother's body.

The girl blinked rapidly, tried to push her mind in a new direction. Where should she go? The kitchen? The entertainment room? Where would be the best place to wait out the night, dressed as vulnerably as she was? It had been a long time since she'd been forced from a place she was supposed to reside; she was out of practice with hiding.

But in the end there was only one choice, and it wasn't a choice at all. One place that months of dinners and all that had followed had taught was the most reliable of escapes. A thousand times better than a cranny in a boiler's closet.



Nine doors stood evenly spaced along the hall Logan had said was his. She stared at them, very aware and growing increasingly more so that this was her first time to seek him here, and that he'd never said where on the fourth floor his room lay.

The girl stood, wavering beside a small table and a calender that had been custom made for the school, gold lettering and enough swirling cursive to obscure even the word "May". She bit her lip and pondered the consequences, the least of which was humiliation, of knocking on one of the doors. Even if she happened to pick the number that held the prize, what would she say? What did she expect him to do? What did she want him to do? What did she say?

But like always, like a reply to an unasked question or unspoken call, she didn't have to. Didn't have to know, didn't have to ask, didn't have to worry, didn't have to do anything but be there for him to be as well. Before her mind could offer other suggestions--the library, the laundry room, that supply closet for Housekeeping--before her body could turn even a fraction away, before the girl's crippling shyness could send her fleeing for the tightest corner to fold herself into, a knob turned, a latch clicked, and Logan stepped into the hall. His was a door near the end, and later she would learn that the rooms on either side of his were only occupied in the most desperate of circumstances for Logan's sanity and the resident's safety.

"Kid?"

Her first thought was that he was exhausted. Not heavy lidded and muddled, as he might have been at this hour she couldn't name, but the pained weariness of one who has long needed rest but hasn't found it. Her hand twitched at her side, and for a second she saw herself reaching out for him, touching his chest, the stressed V between his eyebrows, other things she couldn't possible be brave enough to try.

For a moment the intensity of his expression seemed tinted with fever, with something too alert to be craving only sleep. He'd never looked at her in such a way before, so hungry. And then suddenly, among her confused blinks, it wasn't. His face held only gentle worry.

"Baby, what's wrong?" He walked towards her, bare feet and bare chest. The long corridor seemed to take Logan only a few strides to cross. She couldn't speak, her voice arrested in embarrassment's tight grip. He touched her cheek, her chin when she lowered it, the girl's shoulder when she wouldn't stop anxiously shifting from foot to foot. He peered into her face, his nostrils shrinking and flaring.

It took some time and cajoling, but amidst fierce blushes and indistinguishable mumbling, the words 'Jubilee' and 'date' and enough connecting the two became audible. Logan stared at some indeterminable point above her head for a long time, threatening with his eyes an invisible enemy. His hand, which had been so warm, wasn't touching her anymore. It lay at his side, the long fingers curled inward, so stiff the elbow might have been incapable of bending, and there was a peculiar heaviness in the girl's chest, the weight of a sopping towel. A muscle ticked in Logan's jaw; his Adam's Apple jumped in a swallow.

She knew he was angry, annoyed, was surely wondering what to do with her now as any adult when a child's problems are thrust awkwardly onto them. She was wrong to have come here, wrong to make assumptions or trust in something she didn't even have a name for, wrong to put him in this position. "I'm sorry," she heard herself say. "I didn't mean to--I didn't know..."

His eyes dropped back to her's, impassive now, only vaguely puzzled as to why she was babbling. The helpless aggravation she'd seen had either been imaginary or pushed past visibility to spare her. He looked at the girl until she was silent, her string of apologies cut off in the way of the most awkward of speakers.

"It'll be alright, Kid." Logan exhaled slowly through his mouth, jerked his head just a little. "Come here."

The girl had followed Logan a thousand times. She found only relief in doing so now.

:::::::::::::::::::::


Dying.

He was dying.

The metal, that had been heated to it's sick fluidity and drilled into each and every one of his bones wasn't , couldn't possibly have been as bad as this. He was being crushed, ripped apart, sliced with the mastery of a Deli owner, burned. And she...she...
She was just laying there, as if nothing was wrong. As if, after all this time and fear, she didn't know what danger she was in with Logan. As if she trusted him. As if she shouldn't be running.

He was an idiot.

He was crazy.

He was a masochist without limits, inviting the girl into his bed with the unspoken promise not to hurt her. That he'd managed to convince one of them was a miracle he was in no position now to marvel at.

At first, they'd both lain on their backs. Foot of platonic space between them like a sitcom from the 1950's He held onto the reigns of his need like a pet owner who knows at any moment he will be dragged through the grass by his Marmaduke-size dog. Thick scents in the air, his own arousal and beer and aromatic evidence of many, many attempts to take the edge off his want. And she kept shooting him these little sideways glances, soft and curious, as if expecting him to have as much control as he did when watching football together, put his arm around her as if he'd be capable of releasing her afterward. And what else could he do?

...Now it didn't matter that he'd tugged a shirt on before laying down. Logan could feel the heat of her skin through the material, the bump of her cheekbone, her eyebrow, the pulse in her neck--he would swear even the tickle of her long lashes. Did she need to lay her head on his chest? Yes, Logan had drawn her against him, but she--she could have pulled away. His grip wasn't that tight. He would have--he would have let her. She didn't have to relax.

The scent of her--of female hair, sweat and shampoo, of flesh , of peaches and vanilla and a few other things that must have been his imagination but were no less tormenting, was breaking him. His mind, his restraint, and surely his healing factor because Logan could feel himself falling apart. Seams shaking loose and what remained of his body was weak, burning pulp and one or two muscles already enthusiastically entering rigor mortis. He tried to keep his lower body twisted away from her, the sheets pushed down, bunched over his waist so that any uneven surface might not be immediately apparent.

The girl inhaled deeply, and with the exhale any lingering nervousness on her part seemed to be expelled, a ghost of a smell. The action nudged her breast against his side, a soft mound with a firmer tip that Logan refused to think about. He wasn't looking at her, but knew the moment she closed her eyes.

He couldn't move, not even to decrease the pressure of his uncomfortable position. Any turn of his head would be followed by the rest of his body, a future so possible he could see it, feel it as if it were actually happening. Clothes and limbs and flesh pushed aside for the sake of a special heat. Rolling onto and into her and driving deep enough that this unraveling of himself would be a good thing. He wanted to climb up inside her, curl up and live in a place she couldn't shake him loose from. Forget the Wolverine, the ancient creature unending chomping at his bit. Too long had destroyed all barriers between the two.

Logan stared at the ceiling. He didn't blink.


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::



He'd brushed away her suggestion that the floor would be fine, that she didn't mind at all, with a short refusal and a few mildly affronted looks, a raised eyebrow when she swore she wasn't even tired. His coaxing had turned to silence when she'd finally lain down, perhaps to encourage sleep. He became so still that the girl assumed he'd already found it. She looked at the walls, the glass bowl above that contained the tear-shaped light bulb, thought of the last time she'd lain beside him like this and of the mattress that had not been half as comfortable as this one. Like then, she never imagined that she would actually sleep. She expected to lay awake until it was time to leave and pretend she had never come. It didn't matter how late, or how early, it was, how much her eyelids seemed to weigh or how reassuring was the Logan-scent that encircled her like a promise.

Strange bubble in her chest as she lay there, one that had the shape of waiting and the solidity of a place that was New. The girl glanced at Logan, at the shadows that seemed to clot above his nose and made his eyes invisible, a Masquerade ball mask. At his chest, the slight but purposeful movements of breathing. At the thick green sweatshirt she'd watched him dig for in his dresser before coming to bed himself, the cotton sliding over blades of muscle and the curling, dark hair like a secret. Later she would picture that, what lay beneath the heavy material, of the bumpy muscle she could see now in his arm and side and stomach, think of them and feel her cheeks turn hot.

It was on her fourth peek at her companion that Logan moved. His arm lifted, a long, brown shadow in the non-light, went over her head and then was shoved beneath it. His other hand reached over, found her waist and yanked it toward him. Actions fast enough to sidestep a struggle, but not her sharp inhale.

"Sshhh," he said, absently. Her cheek was pushed against his chest so firmly the fuzz of his sweatshirt tickled her nose. The arm around her was iron, but the other had returned to his left side, and Logan was still again. She waited for her flight instinct to kick in at such abrupt treatment, for her hands to clench and push and scratch, for heart to race...and felt almost betrayed by the organ when it gave only a few token thuds before settling into a more lethargic rhythm . Her body wriggled briefly--his arm gave a warning tighten, but the squirms weren't against the limb but closer into the nook it created.

Although Logan did not speak to her again, the girl could hear the unceasing noises from the realm beneath his skin. His stomach, various internal organs going about their jobs without rest or need for supervision from their owner, a strong, even pulsing beneath her ear and a continuous, barely audible rumble that she could not identify but followed her into her dreams.

She was asleep before she could realize that the bubble in her chest had burst.


::::::::::::::::::::::


The girl's eyes opened when the light in the room was the tan and orange of morning--dim, because the curtains of Logan's window were drawn shut. The sunlight outlined the frame like a halo-tinted wreath. Dusty room with a warm smell and few possessions.

He didn't appear to have moved, not an inch, from her memory of his position last night. His eyes were open, and his stillness remained until she broke her own. She raised her head sleepily, shifted in the circle of his arm before it disappeared.

Logan was out of bed before she'd even registered that he was no longer laying down--cracking his neck with his back to her, scratching his stomach and then adjusting the waistband of his sweats. His body seemed to thrum with energy; he must have been awake for awhile. With the same speed, but in reverse, he sat back down on the mattress, the edge, as if he'd changed his mind or caught a case of vertigo. He took a fistful of the covers, drug them over his lap. She waited for him to swing his legs back up, stretch back out, but he didn't.

Her shoulder ached from being crushed against his side for so long, and the hand that she'd half-lain on was regaining blood flow with a vengeful prickling....but at the time, she thought the pain was from being separated from him.

"What time is it?" A soft inquiry.

"Don't have a clock," he said, without turning to look at her. Then, perhaps reconsidering the brusqueness of his tone, "Breakfast."

She felt a brushstroke of relief run over her nerves. Almost everyone would be downstairs, swarming over platters of eggs and french toast. She could slip back to her room without attracting any special attention.

"Will I...see you down there?" So strange, how he wouldn't face her. Had his anger returned? The sense of well-being she'd awoken with, never one to stay for long, wavered and began to slink away.

"Of course. Just gotta take a quick shower, Baby. You...you go get dressed an' I'll meet you. Okay?" Logan raised his head, offered her a grin she was too grateful to consider forced.

"Thank you," she told him. The words stumbled with their multiple meanings.

"No problem," he said, and gave her the same smile.



.

The Girl: Chapter Twenty


Logan was taking his time, a long time.

First he turned the T.V. on, crouching by the set and clicking through the channels--all eighty of them, manually, though the remote lay on the couch's arm. He straightened, started for the girl and then turned back, lowered the volume to avoid a headache--and then raised it again, because it was too close to mute for her ears. Then Logan had to fetch another beer from the kitchen; he didn't want to get up during the game. Returned, apologized, asked if she wanted anything. Shook his head, said she might change her mind, went and came back with a bag of Fritos and a Dr. Pepper. He pushed the coffee table back so that he'd be able to put his feet up, then pulled it back so he wouldn't need to reach so far for his beer.

Only after this abnormally fussy ritual was complete did Logan sit--slowly, lowering himself by reluctant degrees as if trying to think of other things to do, not the careless sprawl that had previously been his custom. A beat later, and he put his arm gingerly around around her.

And like it had for the past four months, something inside the girl lurched, lifted like the sensation one experiences in a car suddenly going downhill. Tightened and shivered, not unpleasantly. A little know somewhere within her, some organ that had previously done it's work in silence, suddenly made itself known. It happened again when he moved, or she, when his shoulder or leg brushed against her own.

The girl pressed her knees together and tried to keep still. When she didn't, when she squirmed too much, it seemed to wake in Logan an abrupt need to use the bathroom. He'd return distracted, sit a little more stiffly beside her--annoyed, perhaps, that she'd made him miss the game.


::::::::::::::


She secured the next slide to the microscope's stage, adjusted the lenses.

"You each have three minutes to examine your specimen, and copy what you see to a sheet of paper," Mr. Summers said, loudly. "Jubilee, the Fine Focus is on the other side. Don't touch that. When I call time, proceed to the next microscope. Those of you at the back will move to the front, until--"

"We could go see a movie afterwards. I've got 'The Notebook' and 'Two Weeks Notice'," she heard Kitty tell Bobby eagerly from a table away. "Which do you prefer?"

The girl glanced up from the eyepiece, caught his eye almost accidentally. Bobby looked away, quickly.

His crutches were propped against the nearest wall. When asked, Logan would say simply and indifferently that he'd been teaching the boy to fight like a man.

::::::::::::


"I don't know," Mrs Grey was saying to Storm. "I just don't know. Since that fiasco at the conference, no one wants to be seen showing support. And now I can't even schedule a meeting; they're all so busy organizing that Summit--honey, find yourself a bag or don't get so many next time."

"Okay," the girl agreed noncommittally, flushing as she restacked the fallen books.

Storm touched her shoulder, one. "You're too young for back problems," she told her. Her serene voice was a balm to an ache you hadn't been aware of.

The women walked around her, walked on. The girl hefted the tomes into her arms and did the same.

:::::::::::

One sheet was twined around her leg, the others a disordered mountain atop her. The room was quiet, and with her face buried against the pillow she felt her breath leave and return in hot gusts. She was sweaty, half awake and halfway back in a sleep she wasn't yet alert enough to want to leave. The next morning she would blush through her confusion, forcibly forget what images had chased themselves through her mind. But now she bit her lip, clenched her thighs together and rocked against the touches of a subconscious Logan.

:::::::::::


"Finally, right? I should have told him fuck off. I mean, he's been so busy kissing up to Summers--cleaning the practice room and the cars all week, and now he expects me to drop everything when he suddenly wants to hang? Like, Oh--Em--Gee."

One would expect Jubilee to be the sort of teen to hiss at alarm clocks and fight any awakening before noon, not perky and planning shopping trips at eight A.M. on a Sunday. The girl tugged the covers over her head, tried to ignore the light shining through the weave of the cloth.

"I thought housekeeping cleaned the practice rooms," Kitty said.


:::::::::::


The pain, the need--two terms to describe the same thing--was no longer a quality he could view objectively. It was not a sensation but a physical presence draped over his being, made him weight every action, every movement against what he what he wanted to and the consequences of what he might. The pain no longer restricted itself to night hours, to privacy, but attached itself to Logan more devotedly than a shadow.

Yesterday, after his training class (which One-Eye had taken to supervising in an effort to minimize the number of students sent to the hospital wing, or at least their time spent there), Scott had approached him. In a tone more brotherly and confidential that Logan would have thought him capable of, he suggested, "Look, buddy, why don't you go blow off some steam? Stretch your legs--get laid, for chrissakes."

Logan had stared at the younger man for a long time. He put down the towel used to wipe his chest and neck of sweat, and learned two things: yes, his fist could indeed move faster than Scott's hand to his visor, and that Jean possessed a shockingly vast vocabulary of obscenities.


Books in the crook of her arm and the purple bracelet Ororo had given her, pushing her hair from her face. A flash of pale wrist that brought saliva and a growl against his teeth. She was only halfway down the hall. He could reach her in a few steps, a few seconds. Logan looked at the hem of her shirt and imagined it balled up in his fist, the tearing sounds her jean would make.

The girl spotted him, smiled reflexively. Logan felt his body turn, felt his legs propelling him down an opposite corner as fast as they could...but not before he caught the bewildered hurt on her face, or felt the answering pang inside him--an animal who cannot comprehend it's punishment.
He wished she hadn't seen him, that he'd chosen a different hall immediately. But lately, keeping track of the girl's exact position in the school was difficult--managing to led to the opposite of avoidance, a predator attempting to stop in the middle of the hunt. But her scent was everywhere, on everything. Potent in places she rarely frequented and in those the rational part of him knew she'd never been. On Logan's clothes and attached to other students--his nostrils would flare in a crowded hallway, his head would twist sharply in search of the person who might have faintly touched her.
These days time spent with the girl had to be planned and prepared for far in advance, with a strict routine and a unforgiving leash on his baser instincts before undertaking. Meals, and T.V., like it had been when he first met her. He no longer waited for her outside her classes--doing so left Logan's hands and his mind too free, rarely surprised her with lunch outside the mansion, in any area with fewer witnesses than the cafeteria.

:::::::::::::

Xavier spoke in a low voice, as if the crippling weight of shame was too much for his voice to lift, or he was afraid of being overheard--the latter of which was confusing, as they were alone, and the former Logan knew the old man too well to believe.

He described the escalated number of threats, veiled and not, toward humans, the wistful tone those threats used to have but didn't anymore. The months that had passed since Xavier had seen his old friend and, most importantly, the time that had passed since he had fallen off his telepathic radar. The Professor did not refer to Lensherr by name, or any of those informal terms earned from years friendship, but by his code name, reserved for missions and for distancing himself from any personal association.

Xavier, without a breath's worth of humility, said Logan's own gifts of tracking might find more success than his. He told him it was crucial, used phrases like,'I fear' and 'time is of the essence' and 'unfathomable consequences of underestimating this'. He said he knew how Logan was disinclined to accept mission proposals these days, but that this--

There was something the old man wasn't telling him, but that had always been an integral part of their interactions. But there was also something else, a half-ghost of a scent that, despite the ever-eloquent scripted manner of his words, spoke of real desperation.

Logan considered Lensherr; a dozen choice swearwords sprang to his mind. He thought of the girl, of air that wouldn't taste like her, and couldn't decide if this was a pro or a con.

He told Xavier yes. He'd start looking around tomorrow.


:::::::::::::


This time the girl was awake. And Jubilee came in alone.

She closed the door roughly--loudly, but not the bang it might have been were the school not constructed so adeptly. The girl expected her to flip on the light, squinted her eyes in preparation, heard the sound of a hand sliding, scratching along the wall's plaster. But her roommate must have given up--as if the switch changed it's position according to it's own whims. Crackles and thumps as she crossed the room, a whiff of something that held an ugly familiarity. She wondered who would dare supply Jubilee with alcohol.

A crack as a heavily-beaded purse was slammed on the bedside table, then the mattress as the weight was flung onto it. The girl blinked at he dim ceiling, rolled over and shut her eyes. She thought, hoped, that would be the end of it. It was the time of night when sleep almost has a corporeal, concrete shape--in reach, and the dreamer has only to open his hands to clasp it again.

But then a giggle, a snot. Little bursts of laughter interspersed with long silences that grew shorter. They rose in pitch as their owner's vocal control slipped, or as she thought there was a chance the girl couldn't hear her.

"You must--", Jubilee started to say, before giggling overtook the words. The girl opened her eyes again unwillingly, watched as her roommate shifted with drunken grace to to lay sideways on the mattress. She bent her knees, tried to cross her legs but her ankle kept sliding off, an apparent source of endless amusement. She gave up, left her legs crooked, spread, turned her head to see if the girl was watching and pantomimed something filthy. "You must--", she tried again and failed. "You must be really good to make him stay this long," she choked out eventually, shaking with suppressed chortles. "Really fucking good."

The girl felt her face grow hot. She rolled over to hide herself as the sounds of Jubilee's laughter slowly transformed into quiet, desperate sobs--so smoothly she couldn't pinpoint when the change had taken place.

::::::::::::::


Her eyes went wide when Logan told her that he would not be there to eat with her. The chocolate orbs shifted from the strap of the backpack to his his face, back and forth as if tracking the birdie in a tennis match. She asked about lunch, dinner, the next day, and the one after that, and each no deepened the crease between her eyebrows and made him feel overwhelmingly sick for a man who could not recall having ever been ill.

If he'd been more of a coward he would have left without telling her, before dawn, claimed his old preference for an early start later. But if he'd been less of one he would have warned her the night before. She brought up timidly, hopefully, a football game scheduled for tonight and got the names of the teams right for a change.

Logan said, "I'm sorry, Kid," and could not meet her eyes. "I have some...things...to take care of." (Would everything have gone differently if he had told her of Xavier's request? Or would they simply have taken a little longer?)

And then the girl asked quietly if he would be back after the three days. His resolve faltered, and then collapsed. "Maybe."


:::::::::::

Logan left with a peculiar weight to his feet, as if after all this time his body realized the how much it took to move two hundred pounds of metal and muscle. He eased, or buried, the feeling by going over again the starting points, the places The Professor had suggested as favorites of Magneto.


:::::::::::

Time and space which was supposed to hold Logan but did not felt unnatural, passed slowly and grudgingly. Rooms seemed disturbing and off, like a supermarket after hours, like a doze that any moment will end with a sudden fall and the sleeper jolting into unhappy consciousness. At mealtimes she sat at their preferred table, alone with the heat of an almost-forgotten spotlight. She picked at what little food sat on her plate, Logan not there to urge more onto it, found herself feeling guilty for every forkful, for starting without him. She looked up each time someone entered the small dining area in expectation that it would be him and not a surge of disappointment that she would find.

Without the threat of Logan, students filled the entertainment room with their sweaty bodies and raucous laughter. The girl passed the door but didn't go in; it was a foreign land she possessed no passport to. And her roommate (to who had no more been explained the reason for Logan's departure than the girl) dropped smirking hints whenever their paths crossed.

She meandered around the mansion, a traveller who's landmarks have vanished inexplicably. Everyone carried a smile, talked a bit louder than usual, as if this were a holiday, a day for a field trip, and the atmosphere was more relaxed and exuberant. The girl wondered how something that so pleased others could make an irreparable cut inside of her--but only briefly, it was a worn-out question.

She thought of what Jubilee had said last night, and how this morning Logan's gaze had tracked the movements of well-shaped female passerby when he said he had things to take care of. The former had been been pulled back into her mind over and over, like the line of an impatient fisherman, hummed in an incessant loop now. The girl found herself in the library (where else?), the gilded titles of unread tomes withholding their usual siren call and her fingertips drawn to the spines of certain spines held before. Her roommate's words beating a drum's steady rhythm. Half-thoughts and half-plans coursing under her consciousness, not yet ready for her to acknowledge them yet.

The girl filled her arms with books, some thicker than others, carted them to a chair in a guilty corner of the room. One by one she opened their pages, sought for pages depicting romance--sections she had previously skipped with a rare, silent anger and the desire to insist, aloud, "No. That's not how it happens." She read these, and tried to understand.


:::::::::::::

It was late when Logan returned, raindrops racing their siblings on every window, and the teachers telling all the card and Foosball and video game enthusiasts, "last game" and rubbing their temples--Ibuprofen wearing off. And though he sought her out almost immediately, before the motorcycle's engine had even cooled, it was only to let her know that he was back, to refuse any television offers she might have, to ask how she was and not listen to the answer, to stare at her with a haggard face and wild eyes, to touch her hair once with a jerky hand and then brusquely declare that he had to go, he had to speak with The Professor.

She watched the back of his flannel shirt walk away, the same he'd worn three days ago, and then went to her room, to the bathroom. She closed the door and sat on the toilet, thinking of that swoop in her stomach when his fingers had brushed the strands of her hair. She bit her lip until it bled.

:::::::::::::


The girl's feet did not waver on the way to Logan's room. She wore her pajamas, in part because she'd had to wait until Jubilee fell asleep, and to help herself pretend that this would be no different than last time--at least until she got there. Her heart was beating fast; she could hear each wet throb, and wondered absently if her skin was on, if it would turn on.

Her time to change her mind dropped from the hourglass, the two last grains soundless as they struck the rest of the pile. Logan's door was before her; she stared into the eye a swirl in the wood made, raised her fist. She thought, "If it will make him stay.", and let her knuckles fall once, twice. There was no reply from withing, and the girl fought a brief battle with the temptation to run, or wet herself.

She knocked again, and after several long, torturous moments or years, the door was pulled open.

Logan's eyes were dark and pinched, and the girl discovered bizarre triumph in the notion that he hadn't found too much satisfaction in being away. He looked at her, first with confusion, and then with wariness. Some dynamic between had shifted, some change he must have been sliding toward had happened while he was gone, and she felt the crushing pressure of those unwanted.

"What do you want?", he said, and she flinched at the unspoken but very present now at the end of his sentence; the lines in his forehead tripled. "Kid? What do you need?" The correction, the attempt at gentility, was a weak and ineffectual. Too late.

"I just...I just...Would you....Do...do you think if I...."

Logan stared at her unhelpfully, an impatience she wasn't accustomed to from him. It flustered her, made her voice skip like a pebble on concrete, all the things she'd rehearsed leave her mind like they'd never been there to begin with.

"Could I...Can--can I....can I...stay?"

He was shaking his head even as she choked out the words. or a moment he looked away, as his head turned from side to side, but then his eyes snapped back up to hers. His face was not softer, nor more like the man she'd known for nearly three years now, but pained and, somehow, pleading. He was still shaking his head as his arms moved, as he drew back enough to let her in.

:::::

Logan was silent, stood by the door with his fingertips still on the knob, digging into the bridge of his nose with his other hand. She made an uncertain, nervous circuit around the room, came to the corner of his bed and touched the post lightly. Her back tingled faintly, because it faced him; she sought for her nerve but found it shivering in a corner.

His movements were, as ever, silent. She did not notice that he had left his position at the door until he walked past her, running his hands through already crazed hair. The girl felt puzzlement, but oddly little surprise at Logan's attitude...because it wasn't new, was it?She'd seen it in a moment's breath worth of looks in his eyes, in his increasing reluctance to be in her presence, in Jubilee's rarely subtle but always cruel words, in all of the whispers and not-so-whispers that fluttered around the mansion like errant moths, in the assumption that he'd been staying for her and the knowledge that she not must be enough anymore.

And yes, she was afraid. Of course. Of whatever pulled the muscles of Logan's back so taut and angry, of this lightless room, of what she thought she had to do, of that jump in her stomach and the concept of never feeling it again because he might not be there to sit beside her, to touch her, of how the place that had been her home became a stranger when he was not there. In times of the unfamiliar a body returns to what it knows best, seeks it out to help process present surroundings--and the girl was very familiar with fear.

"Are you going to leave again?"

Logan turned, his expression terse and confused, as if struggling to translate her words. It took him a minute. "I don't know, Kid. Maybe. Probably. Didn't really get done...what I needed to."

"How long will you be...be...."

"I don't know."

She thought she might cry--another Familiar, her tear ducts eroded smooth enough from frequent use to create an unobstructed, unhesitating path for tears.

Logan blinked at her, and softened, though it seemed to cost him quite a bit of exertion. He nodded toward the bed, and suddenly the girl's plan felt silly, stupid--as surely anything based off Jubilee's teasing must be. She would keep her mouth shut; the two of them would lay down and sleep, and the only difference between the last time she had come here and this would be that she would know he was only doing it from courtesy.

But she didn't move, and neither did he. The space between her eyes burned and she saw a blurry Logan swallow, take a stiff step her way and then, as if his legs contained some magnet he couldn't resist, four more. Her eyes focused on one of his shirt's pale button,s the threads crossing the four holes. She hadn't expected him to draw so near, hadn't expected his brown hand to reach for her and then return to his side, hadn't expected to see his chest vibrate, a not-so-faint tremble.

The girl's fingers curled in upon themselves, bit into her palm's fleshy pillows.

"Kid. Baby," she heard him say, "I'm sorry. I think you should--"

"Logan?" She interrupted his words with a whisper she doubted even he could hear.
"What?", Sharp, unreasonably exasperated with an even more serrated edge that resembled panic.

"You know, you...you can, if you...if you want...."

"Can what?"

"You can...you know. If...if it makes it...I mean, I'll...I don't mind...You can..."

She reached out unintentionally, touched the button she'd been staring at and then the soft fabric beneath, and underneath that, an oven, wrapped in many layers of muscle and Logan. The sensation took up all the available space in her mind.

He groaned, with low agony. And after that, things happened very quickly. His hand closed over her wrist, thumb overlapping the knuckles. She was against his chest with no recollection of having been pulled or of moving. Her vision was a world of red, the crimson stitches that made up his shirt. An arm securing her against him like a band, planes of firm, unforgiving heat, an entire landscape of muscle--the ridges and cliffs and a mountain pressed against her. The girl felt small, thin, inconsequential, her body molding itself against him like a blanket. Unable to find the mechanisms required to turn her head; she blinked idiotically at the strands of hair that had found it's way into her eyes.

She was paralyzed, limp--but how then, she wondered, could she be clutching fist fulls of him so fiercely?--and the only places she seemed to feel alive at were those touching him. A dozen previously unknown and darkened beacons scattered at various points throughout her being glowing and pulsing their light, as if with enough determination their heat could break through her skin and furrow into his. Urging her to press closer and closer, as if that were possible.

And then his mouth came down, nuzzled aside her hair, tunnelling through locks. His lips found a hollow where her throat became her shoulder, clamped there with wet strength, a brand. It did something strange to her muscles, sucked away all their strength. Tickled, pulled them up, up into Logan's mouth. She felt a long cord of sensation running from that spot (which she had never viewed as holding any particular importance or sensitivity but was, she now realized was the place where every nerve in her body was centered) down through her body, past organs and various tissues to somewhere between her legs.

The girl's knee spasmed, but she didn't fall. Logan's hand at her lower back and then everywhere, everywhere, like his scent, like his teeth. Roaming, filling themselves, and if they weren't gentle or moved frantically, she did not notice. Cords being plucked, jumping and twanging inside of her. She felt dizzy, blind, overheated and sleepy but quivering with energy at the same time. A movement of his hips that carried her along helplessly, a skilled pressure that wasn't and could never be enough and the certainty that something absolutely terrible would happen if it stopped.

This wasn't what she expected, but can't focus enough to recall what it was she did. And there was something...something about her skin, a worry, but that too was lost as his hand managed to find it's way between their bodies to do something jolting and wonderful. The girl cried out, a gasp-laced shriek, and felt Logan's chest shake against her lips with his growled response.

The sound of mattress springs scrunching down was the only thing that told her Logan was sitting; she hadn't even felt him turn. The girl's legs parted, but whether they did so with assistance or on their own she didn't know. He pulled her onto his lap, her thighs sliding easily but with a delicious friction over his own and wrapping instinctively.

Finally able to see now, the bedroom around them jarring and nonsensical in it's sameness. But black, wild eyes and the rough hair of across his jaw. The breath barrelling through her was a steam engine on rusty tracks. His head lunging forward to bite, to slip his lips across her mouth, her cheek, her ear. But Logan wasn't wasting any more time.

His palm ram one last time over her breasts--a muscle ticking in her stomach, her flesh apparently capable of doing little else but clenching an wriggling--before reemerging from the hem of her shirt. Everything moving so, so fast, and the cords beneath her skin twanging a beat too random and discordant to understand. She wondered if they were her veins, shaking free of their casings.

She watched his arm reach between them, his knuckles slide against a cloven place where the damp cotton was clinging abnormally. It freed the bottom of his jeans with a violent haste. This accomplished, it did not rest but began tugging and manipulating the edge of her pajama bottoms--enough for his intent, without her needing to stand. The elastic band made this task simple.

Swift, nimble, experienced....And it reoccurred to her, like a forgotten item on a grocery list, why she should be afraid. Her heart, already and understandably pounding, threw itself against her ribcage with the rigor of a battering ram. The dulled metal teeth of his zipper offered her a low copper grin and she remembered, she remembered...

It didn't matter anymore that this was what she came here to allow. The sheer fact of everything that was happening was cascading around the girl, burying any other oppositional voice. She blinked, turned her eyes to a space behind his shoulder.

Logan gave an involuntary, eager grunt, and she realized how badly he was shaking, his whole body, trembling with something still suppressed. He put his arms around her, the apparatus pressed so unyielding against her stomach released and no longer requiring his assistance. It would be easy, so easy, to let herself be enveloped by his warmth, by the largeness of his frame, by his insistence. She could lay her cheek on his shoulder and close her eyes and breath in the skin of his neck and ignore anything lower than that.

But before she could make this decision he was leaning back, lifting her hips, positioning her so subtly ans she felt the faint stirrings, the phantom of the tingle before her skin awoke. She felt the long-past weight of the man, motionless atop her. Panic, the drumming speed of a thousand frightened and dangerous horses. And she couldn't--she couldn't--she couldn't. And the girl forced the unintelligible noises in her throat to form the word, "Stop."

Logan's lips froze where they'd been exploring the skin beneath her chin. Instantly, and she imagined she could feel the incredulity sweeping out of him. But after a moment she realized he wasn't listening, only lingering.
Cracking protests tumbled out of her, whimpers, a string she could barely understand herself. "Stop, oh, stop, stop."

His hold tightened. He pressed light, gentling kisses too desperate to actually sooth everywhere within reach, made little humming sounds. But the girl twisted her face away, pushed though his arms rendered her immobile, let her fingers curl and scrape as much as they could but these efforts were as effective against him as they were against the ones she were really fighting. The head of something brushed against her entrance ans her entire lower half flinched. He snarled--and then whined, once, pleadingly, brokenly.

She begged, "Let me go. Let go. Let go," but they were token words now, empty of real hope until he did--all at once, the arms she'd strained against disappearing without warning and with them, her balance. The floor rose up to strike her spine with painful reproof. For a few seconds shock kept her undignifiedly sprawled there, staring at Logan's ankles and up, to the statue he'd become.

It took a lot of concentration and strength the close her legs and then to scramble back, up. Her heel touched something hard, slick, and the reflexive jerk knocked whatever it was over. A bottle, larger than and smelling much stronger than beer; she stepped in it's contents.

Logan hadn't moved. The girl's last image of him was of a slightly hunched body whose every muscle was locked--arm's crossed over his lap and ending in fists. A cold, grimacing face that did not look at her.



:::::::::::::


It took several corridors for her leg's half-run to slow; her breath refused to consider anything remotely calmer than a pant. She strode quickly, and then less so, until she thought she had the time, if not the inclination, to count the rug beneath her's ever fiber between steps.
She waited to hear Logan's heavier tread behind her, turned her head to look again and again--first with fear, then with confusion, and then with something she didn't quite understand. Something that had the agony of a vital organ being ripped from it's place among it's brethren. And every step forward was one more she wanted to take in the opposite direction.


::::::::

Logan felt like the shell of a grenade who's pin had been torn from it's casing and tossed carelessly away. Hard to the touch, but half of a heartbeat away from exploding, transforming it's exterior into nothing but heat and dust and shards of shards.

He sat as one who has never moved before and cannot comprehend how, his insides systematically being stripped and destroyed by mechanical flames that would quickly run out of fuel and begin to seek it elsewhere. Logan paralyzed himself, not even risking tuck himself back into his jeans, lest the slightest shift gave the fire a direction for that new material.

And when the smoke had satisfyingly fused itself into every pore, when the heat had thrown itself against his bones and licked every tissue beneath his skin, Logan lowered his head slowly and wearily into his hands. The flame had burnt itself out in a shockingly short length of time. He was left with ashes and a cold hurt and the memory of the girl's taste.

:::::::::::


He was waiting for her in the hall the next morning, beside a landscape painting she hated and a supply closet she was rather fond of. His hair was--not brushed, but less wild than usual. Logan wore fresh clothes and a friendly smile that alarmed her more than his presence.

He said, "Hey, Kid," cheerfully. A tone and a Logan she hadn't seen for months.

She'd hidden in her room all morning, avoiding and waiting for Logan both. Now her feet fumbled, and she froze, debated the merits of flight. The unusual expression on his face dipped, just slightly. "What's the matter?"

The girl did not reply. Thoughts like birds who'd flown into a storefront and now darted, fought amongst each other and battered themselves in search of the exit, while he waited for her reply. Her limbs were locked, like her lips.

"I...thought we could go out, get something to eat," he suggested this with a gentle hesitancy, an unprecedented hitch that could be vulnerability--but even that seemed off, somehow, not least because of who was speaking.

She was mystified, but maybe...maybe he wanted to pretend last night hadn't happened. Maybe he was sorry. Maybe things were going to go back to the way they were before. Maybe--

With such ease did her mind and emotions shift, lacking the roots to cling to one opinion for long. It was these flitting ideas, coupled with those that had kept her eyes from shutting last night, that moved her feet toward the beckoning hand.

Acidic sensation in her stomach, but the girl told herself she was only nervous. Even now it was surprisingly difficult to really fear Logan. But stepping toward him didn't bring the relief her body had been quietly insisting it would all morning, and the ache remained. She shrugged off the arm he tried to place around her shoulders. He looked mildly affronted.

"Are you mad at me?" She'd hadn't meant for her tongue to shape the words.

"Why would I be mad?" Confused for a moment, but shakes his head quickly. "No. It's okay, honey. But we do need to talk. So let's go, okay?"

The girl stared at him, at his urging eyes, at the plaid shirt she'd thought grease from the garage had ruined weeks ago. She nodded, jerkily.

Logan grinned, ushered her though the corridors and the stairs at an even greater pace than his usual--but he did not try to touch her again.

::::

They bypassed the garage, and the car he led the girl to outside, though probably one of Xavier's spares, was unfamiliar to her. It sparkled in the sunlight, a pleasant if nondescript silver, but up close one could see thick clumps of dirt, grass in the tires and grill, unfortunate insects on the windshield. For a brief moment, as she pulled up the metal handle, the girl felt a spasm of panic. She imagined Logan taking her back to the city. She'd failed. She wasn't worth all this, wasn't worth him.

She shook the thought away--how stupid. She opened the passenger door, folded herself inside. Creased seats with bits of foam poking through and a strong stench, fast food and something rotting; the girl pretended not to notice. Logan was faster than her already shoving a key into the ignition. Impatient and apparently annoyed with the engine, though it had started up almost immediately.

"Put your seat belt on."

The girl opened her mouth, asked a question she wouldn't remember later.

It happened smoothly, in a matter of heartbeats. She'd been looking out the window, at the climbing ivy on the school's walls and Jubilee's pretty, Hispanic friend entangled with John by the soccer fields, when she felt the pinch in her neck. The fleeting, but sharp pressure and the wave of vertigo that followed.

The girl turned her suddenly sluggish head, but that was the last voluntary movement her body made. She gaped at the hand that dropped the now-empty syringe into the cup holder, felt herself slide sideways and shoved when she got in the way of the gearshift.

Perhaps because she'd been staring at the driver, things did not go black, as they say, but blue.


:::::::::::::::::



She woke to cold, and a hand on her ankle.

Thought came to the girl slowly and in useless, blurry fragments, like words of a letter left out in the rain. Swirling darkness and fog and an upside-down world. Damp, hard surface beneath her and drool on her cheek. A chill of open air, more biting than any she'd felt before, and the girl shivered convulsively. Her breath appeared in clouds like the smoke of an atomic bomb. Her feet were blades of ice--she wondered if she were wearing shoes....and then forgot the reason for the question, her mind drifting away from the question, a rowboat undocked.

Black space above her, beyond the misty half-clouds. The openness of Outside Beautiful and nauseating in it's endlessness. A moon, but no stars.

Something hurt, but she could not assign it a location or severity. The cold...the cold was worse, because it was strong enough to return to her attention again and again. Sharp enough to slice through the numbness and, she feared, intensify the pain if she woke too much.

The cold....

A face above her's, grandfatherly and familiar, distorted like a reflection in rippling water or an surrealist painting.

The cold....

The hand at her ankle, her socks, playing with her toes....

Yellow, bright eyes and an azure nose....

Cold....

The moon, emanating grey and depressing light. A stain on it's surface like blue blood....

The older face again. Wrinkled, elongated. Xavier's friend, the one who had used to visit the mansion so frequently. The girl felt a brief spurt of happiness, pride in identifying something more local than the sky.

A bizarre complacency suffused her nerves like a rich paste, making it difficult to wonder or worry about where she was and how she came to be there. Sounds came next, slower and less interesting to the girl, usually garbled because she was rarely inclined or capable of focusing. . But sometimes the noises accompanied a face floating in her vision, and the motion of lips helped shape them into recognizable patterns, though the phrases themselves remained meaningless.

"--used perhaps a little less--" Eyes slanting from her to something or one she couldn't see; a touch of ire in--what was his name? What?--their rheumy orbs that made this fragment of statement more accusation than suggestion.

"Three guards, I told you--"

"--should be making it's circuit past--"

"Toad, put that down----a job to do---all shot to hell because you were playing with yourself," This heard without the benefit of lip reading. But a throaty female voice, honey dried into sticky crystals, and her heel striking the ground distinguished the words.

Something wet was dropped on her face in splashing handfuls. It ran into her fluttering eyes, her nose, her mouth. More liquefied sock than water, a taste gleaned perhaps from the palm that cupped it, perhaps a flavor indigenous to the fluid itself. She was faintly aware of her body, particularly her throat reacting--gasping and spluttering--but was more concerned with the sudden clarity. Cutting through her, waking her to things she wasn't sure she wanted to be aware of.

The girl turned her head. Reality was dizzying. Dark tile beneath her, booted feet--one pair of which ended at calves the moonlight lent a sick, mossy tint to; these sprang to some edge she couldn't see, and away--a flash of movement and a swish that implied distances further than human ability.

Dark, indistinguishable shapes, a cramped space that rocked back and forth--less like a cradle than a branch about to snap.

The elderly man again, crouching over her. Asking if she was okay, how she was feeling, but though the girl tried to remember how to answer, he continued speaking without pause. Things she couldn't understand: "pivotal moment in history" and "unduly harmed" and "most important moment in your life". But though he was looking in the girl's eyes, it was somehow not her he--what was his name?--he addressed, but himself.

She blinked, shivered, wondered where Logan was. He'd been sitting on the bed, looking sad....No, in his pickup, driving them to the city for lunch....Wait, that was wrong....He was in a car, Xavier's, about to leave for...for....No.....

The old man--Lensherr!--was still talking, but she knew suddenly and completely that his words were not something she wanted to comprehend. She craned her head away--a boat? Were they on a boat?--and found a mountain, a monster of a man. Though she appeared to be laying down, she couldn't imagine he would be any less enormous from a stand's perspective. Perhaps he'd just sat down,though the girl had not felt or heard him move. Long, greasy locks hanging around his head, a mane of indeterminate color from dirt and darkness. His features a visible if not clear profile, lumpy and distorted, a caricature of a beast that faintly resembled man.

And the odor that had previously been ignored or blocked from her mind swarmed every possible airway now, like frenzied ants into their hill. Spoiled yeast, and sour meat, potent enough to coat her throat like water about to fill her lungs. He'd been staring off in brutal contemplation but turned as she gaped and placed the weight of his eyes--dull, sneering, a yellow cast to that not covered in hair--on her's. He smiled, or snarled.

"The other is ready to be loaded."

The girl's head followed the sound, if only in a cringe away from the feral man's purposeful teeth. Her gaze found a creature that studied her with detached revulsion--some cross between female and feline. Naked, lithe even when still and (aside from that bob of slicked back and immobile) utterly, unfathomably blue.

Something clicked into place in the girl's mind like a drawer sliding shut. She rolled onto to her side, and quietly puked.


::::::::::::::


The small pool of sick was not cleaned up, though it was complained about in vulgar tones--chiefly those of Lensherr, from whom swearwords sounded very unnatural. She lay beside it for several minutes (the smell rather dim compared to that of the one sitting beside her) before she felt herself being grabbed. Swept up unceremoniously, as if she were a box whose contents were neither fragile nor valued.

Arms too strong to be gentle, even if they were remotely inclined to be. She was jostled up beneath a face of nightmares, of fevers, of screams. Pointed teeth behind stains or mold. Up close his skin was papery, old though not wrinkled. He viewed her with amusement, with hunger, with vicious promises she was not unfamiliar with.

She cringed, but felt, besides fear and nausea, an odd sensation she did not have time to recognize as anger. The girl struggled as fiercely as she was capable, which wasn't much and had even less effect, but stopped soon after. He was moving, taking a step and bending his legs and then jumping. She saw several feet of dark, green water churning beneath them, the side of another boat--yes, these were boats. It's edge was considerably taller than the first, and he was surely too ungraceful heavy to do anything but plummet. The air she'd just expelled retreated quickly into her lungs as if it could take shelter there. She shut her eyes, braced herself....But there was a thump instead of a splash, the pain of her body being jarred against his forearms, not the slap of water.

Where he'd landed, a crater of splinters was made in the wood. She could see a little better here, though it came only from a flashlight that was quickly turned off, from the reflective white paint (on which in several places were inscribed the words "National Coast Guard"), from her adjusting eyes. Crates, items covered in cheap tarp, were being shifted from the other boat and she must have lost an integral part of her sanity, because they seemed to be floating on their own.

The monster carried her into the cabin, a small shed for office space and the steering wheel and various radar equipment. Her heart lurched, and a place in her mind that had always been prepared to shut down in an emergency did so at the site of the cot in the corner of the room.

He did not whisper, but she heard him as if from a great distance. "You're going to scream for me."

She reacted with violent resistance, but he merely laughed--if the sound could be called such. He tossed her to the floor with ease and amusement. She could not control the fall, struck the marble with a solid crack to her elbow and head--the latter of which elicited a ringing like a church bell, peeling without hope for a reprieve. She hardly noticed when the feral man left, still chuckling with his own private joke, too distracted by by pain and by the sight of the body, a few feet away. An army cap that that fall off a head dark hair, still thick in middle age. A neck twisted in a way one never should be. The life vest, on which she could make out the letters "NATI" and "GA".

The girl closed her eyes, and wished for Logan.


::::::::::::::


When she came to again--from an unwilling doze she hadn't even been aware of falling into--the girl was a little less drugged, a little more aware of the danger she was in, that tonight would be another one of those monuments in her life (however short that might be) that would separate all time into Before and After.

An hour, or perhaps only a few minutes, or perhaps only a prolonged blink--had passed. Like the space between shifting dreams to the sleeper, it could have been any length or none at all.

Lensherr was standing beside the cabins little window. Through it they both could see the famous statue, adorned in twinkling lights and over a hundred years of supposed liberty. "Magnificent, isn't she?"

There came that feeling again, peculiar only because it stirred so infrequently in her blood. Fury. Hate. She pulled herself into a sitting position, staring at his back and imagining ripping his spine from it.

She asked if he was going to kill her, and Lensherr turned.

"Yes," he said, with deep and slow satisfaction.


:::::::::::::::::


Atop the torch, wind and those blades of metal whipping around her in unnamed colors that lived at the far end of the spectrum.

When the pain obliterated every other thought, the girl found herself thinking, musing, that when this was over she would go up to Logan's room. He was waiting for her, and she would be safe there.


:::::::::::::::


He heard her heartbeat sputter and fail even as he landed on the uncertain platform--three feet in diameter, any misstep guaranteed a fall over the edge, to an ocean so far below it was merely a faint grey tint, lost in distance. But his healing factor, his heavy metal skeleton, and most importantly the horrible silence that followed the last of her heart's pulses made the height a thing that barely registered.

He broke the monstrous shackles that made the girl the filament, the power source to Lensherr's machine, gathered into his arms.

She smelled of fear, of vomit, of pain, of peaches and vanilla and ocean and of things dying and dead and his. Her lids were closed, her lips slack; he'd seen her sleeping and less peaceful. Soft, unresisting against him in any way. And something inside of Logan roared until he thought his eardrums would shatter.

The hand he pressed to her cheek was pointless, because her skin did not react against his, did it? It became a caress. He pulled up the corner of her lip, a parody of a smile, stroked her neck. Already she was stiffening. The soft and smooth skin against his palm, which he exchanged for his lips. He kissed her cheek, her eyelids, breathed, "Marie," into her ear like a secret, like a password. What he wanted now, to hear her organs shift and gurgle and pump, to feel her move, breath, made all other pain that had ever touched his body or his mind nothing, as if they were erased from his body's memory to fit this new colossal agony. All previous desires were gifts, now offered to replace the rejection of this one.


And the pull of her mutation, when it began, was less than worthy of mention compared to the absence of her pulse.



.

The Girl: Epilogue



Jubilee sat on her bed of crumbs, stains, drops of nail polish, innumerable missed laundry days and far beneath, presumably, wrinkled sheets. She stared expressionlessly as Marie moved around her side of the room, packing her shockingly few possessions--they're absence would leave no dent in the turmoil; every minute space cleared by her would be filled in immediately, like a child's hole dug too close to the shoreline.

"Well, bye," her roommate of three years chirped, an overly bright voice with an edge, as if insulted by her failure to speak first, exasperated by the thought of such hopeless rudeness. In the past months Jubilee had not said a word, courteous or otherwise, to Marie (and somehow this was inexplicably connected to the sense of cautious awe attached to her since the night with the boats, the statue.)

And though later she would be loudly expressing her glee at being finally free of the younger, stranger girl, of having privacy and "space to think" for a change, after the door closed Jubilee would gaze at her lap, blinking and swallowing and not really in the mood to talk to anyone.

Marie did not reply.


::::::::::::

All of what was Marie's was crammed into a box and two brown grocery bags--the latter balanced rather doubtfully on the former. Flimsy, snagged from the kitchen and still smelling of the peanut butter and oranges it had once contained. The requisite bathroom items, books, a few binders, clothes, an empty picture frame, a handful of pretty shells found at the last beach trip, a music box, a pair Carnival-won stuffed kittens, and the pair of gloves Jean had asked her to wear but which Logan had commanded her not to. Heavy, but that was okay. She wasn't going far.

Up the stairs, each step taken slowly without the benefit of being able to see her feet or grip the handrail--fingers curled around the outer corners of the box, nails digging into the cardboard. Reaching the landing of the fourth floor, wobbling but managing to steady herself. The fourth floor, past maroon doors with their empty anonymity and polished handles. Step by step to the one whose bore a smudge, a perfect oval of blackish goop from a pickups engine--a stamp of deliberate defiance against the cleaning staff...and then past Logan's, down one further. The room beside his, empty since his stays at the mansion became more than brief. The door looked no different than the other's along the hall, but stood out with the shining contrast of being Hers.

She shifted the load in her arms enough to precariously free her hand, ignored the bag that had slid and was currently crushing itself against her cheek. The knob was icy to the touch, smooth, free of even the slightest groove, as if it had never felt the eroding touch of another's hand, as if it had been crafted yesterday, or not at all--as if the metal had shaped itself into perfection. Marie bit her lip, decided that the thoughts were hers, not the admiration of another's.

So strange, that the door should swing open with such ease--not blocked by errant clothes or teenage debris. The Professor had said she was reaching the age in which a shared living space was no longer quite appropriate--though few of the other students had single rooms. He'd told her that she deserved it--Marie doubted there was any statement she could disagree with more--and that with the weight of upcoming college courses, she would need somewhere to retreat to, to study and rest. Although his words were spoken as if being read from a prompter, Marie had felt as nearest to real excitement than she'd been in a long time--and puzzled as to why Logan considered Xavier so cold.


All she saw at first were the seemingly endless stretches of carpet, flat as a prosperous farmer's fields before plowing, their sharp ends at the sides and corners of the room. Burgundy snow, too pristine to be left alone. Marie noted the bed--large, it's floral sheets lacking even the most petite of ripples--and was momentarily thrown by the fact that there were not two of them. A chest, a large armoire in which her small collection of shirts and jeans would hang shyly, alone and engulfed by too much free space. A bathroom where she could spend as much time, as much water, as she pleased. A clean, astonishingly scentless atmosphere waiting for enough of her presence to imprint itself. A new world, more than anything she'd had for herself.

And against the far wall, something that did not blend in with their color-coded surroundings and not built to. Three bookcases whose head would reach her waist, sitting close to the bathroom door in a not-quite straight line. Unpainted and unadorned, save for the artistic trim of bark left running along it's side. Marie set her belongings down with a carefulness she didn't really feel, approached the shelves slowly, as if they might awaken and shift into an animal's crouch--or flop onto their backs to be pet.

The wood was thick, sturdy. A deep interior that promised silently to be filled. Creamy tan, with whirls of chocolate lines. A hello, a welcome, a link whose chains would not snap regardless of the pull on either end, a Familiar. Marie ran her fingers over the top of the closest, stirring the scent of pine and voices in her head that wanted to talk about cabins and raw animal flesh and how a tree sounded when it dropped it's weight to the Earth. Marie felt the corners of her lips rise, crinkle unaccustomed flesh. She looked to the right, not at the level gaze of the wall's blank plaster, but beyond it. She wondered if Logan would be home--and knew even as she did so what the answer was; she didn't have to ask it.


:::::::::::::


He built them entirely from scratch, eschewing even store-bought lumbar in favor of a tree, plucked from the well-stocked supply on Xavier's property. Pine, chosen for it's strong, pure smell as much as the fact that it had already been toppled in a recent thunderstorm--Logan did not believe in waste. Cut with an axe, and his claws when the former showed the slightest signs of dulling. Hewn into rectangles, nearly all of the bark peeled with easy twists of a blade. Each block trimmed, again and again, until they looked identical even to Logan's eyes--and then sanded, every inch, rubbed with his hands to catch the splinters before they could bite a softer palm. The last step was completed with a small handful of nails and a half hour; bookshelves were simple things. No paint, certainly no varnish--even the thought of such a scent lit a flame in his airways like he'd swallowed a torch.

When he was done there were three. Medium size, with pleasing swirls and shifting tints in the wood like a natural mosaic. Sanded again, the sharp edges made round, scrubbed with pine needles to enhance the aroma. Freestanding, though Xavier had given him (unrequested) permission to build them into the walls of her new room...But that would make it difficult to change it's position--or move it into another's.

The job took him two weeks of those rare moments away from her, an hour or two on nights when Logan could convince himself that she was safe enough and asleep enough to risk slipping out to the wood shed. But that wasn't often, because she might be struck with insomnia, a nightmare, a sudden and simple need to find him...that she had not so far did not factor in Logan's reasoning.

Logan set the shelves up in her room, the one he'd told Xavier to offer Marie in order to ensure her acceptance. Lately the need to watch her, have her close at all times, would not negotiate terms for anything less than a few feet. He did it early in the morning, so she would not intercept him as she brought up her things--which he'd promised to help carry, but had known in the same way he'd known The Professor, not him, should be one to suggest her moving next door to him, that she would refuse. Perhaps because the idea of him and a bedroom were still too raw to connect, perhaps because of the alarming complexity her moods had taken on, as reliable as dry sand since the night Lennsher had dealt her a nearly irreparable blow--or was it the night before? Which of the two men had been the one to hurt her, change her in a way that could not be forgotten with a few words and a happy ending?

---It was okay. He didn't have to be there to see the look on her face, hardly wanted to anyway. Only pussies bounced, hovered around the receiver of a gift to be gratified by the reaction...Besides, the walls were thin and his senses like razors. No reason he couldn't be relaxing in his room when she found them.

For the first two weeks after the nerve-shattering flight to Liberty Island and the mostly unconscious one back, Marie had seemed okay. Not good, but not off enough for Jean to listen to his concerns. Tired a lot, and distracted, visibly upset even panicked if Logan was out of her sight for even the barest of moments (and, in a secret part of him, gratifyingly so), but spoke aloud no protest or reason for such fear. Each morning red-rimmed eyes poked out the door of the room she'd shared with the girl who favored banana-tinted attire, sought him out frantically and seemed wildly relieved to find him in the same space on the hall's floor.

And then things had begun to change, shift like a kaleidoscope being slowly twisted in the viewer's hand. She looked at everyone else with tepid suspicion, now that whatever image she'd held of the mansion had burst like an infant's spitbubble. Logan would find Marie with her head in her hands, or pinching the bridge of her nose, or rocking to a tune he couldn't hear, whose soothing properties were apparently not potent enough.

Every inquiry as to whether she'd gotten any sleep was met with the same response, and when asked why she replied inexplicably that it was, "too loud." Occasionally her mouth would open in a reply to a question or one of her own, and what she had intended to say (evident in the widening of her eyes, the stunned set to her lips even as they moved) became something unfathomable about camps, about back alley deals and improperly cooked meth, about waterfalls and gunshots. She spent a lot of time in Xavier's office, working through some side effect of touching him that she could not or would not discuss with him.

And reassuring herself with his presence became a gaze that would not quite meet his, a strange-sounding voice telling him one morning that he could go back up to his room, she was fine, she didn't need him there. Classes skipped and she didn't come to find him. Hours, even days when a wave of hurt or apathy would unexplainedly wash over what had been a more neutral or even happy mood. Afternoons of shutting herself in the library, requests to be left alone. Demands for him to stop following her and lost, broken expressions when he didn't know he still was.

But she still met him for every meal, still sat beside him to watch a football game--or hockey, or wrestling, or any sport he could feign enough interest in to propose--and there were fewer inches of couch leather between them with every passing evening. When ill, it was still Logan's hand allowed to linger on her forehead to check for fever, her throat for swollen glands. And his face was still the first searched for upon entering a room.

And, after all, Marie had been very excited about moving in next door. She hadn't shown the slightest misgivings when she'd told him and surely...surely that could not have been pleasure merely for getting away from her roommate.

Logan could hear her footsteps now, brushing past his door as if a caress rather than a sound. The swish of denim moving against itself, the turn of the knob. He sat on his bed, his back against the headboard and those precious inches of plaster and wood and insulation. A whisper of something being set down, perhaps on the floor. The fibers of the carpet bending down like stalks of wheat, rustling. And then, finally, what Logan had been waiting for.

An intake of breath--not too accentuated, but enough to set itself apart from its brethren inhales-exhales. A petal-soft palm stroking silky wood, the unique swirl set in her fingertips catching on the pine's grains, creating music for Logan's straining ears like the friction between grasshopper legs, like a rosined bow on a cello.

Logan shut his eyes, alone and hence less abashed at the notion that she had altered him, chopped and worn him down to something a distant kin to what he had once been--like the pine tree. He filled his lungs with the scent of her delight.

And someday, he thought, that aroma would not be so rare and elusive. Someday it would be up-close, like the smoke of birthday candles just blown out.

Someday, somenight, there would be a knock on his door--quiet, her knuckles grazing against the wood rather than rapping, as any others would. Someday her eyes would be shy, but not afraid--or at least not unbearably so. Someday she would ask again to spend the night in here--or perhaps Logan would offer first. And she would lay with as much space between their bodies as anyone could without falling off the mattress. That curve of dark hair, or perhaps a pale cheek, cradled by the dip made in the pillow, failing in her efforts to be unobtrusive as she stared at him.

Logan would be still, a special sort of exhilaration fluttering against the confines of his skin but months--hell, years, and two crucial nights had made it a beast he'd never been more in control of. She would ease toward him with little encouragement from him--perhaps a "here, Kid", a lifted arm, a cozy nook her body could fill, and a "good girl". A peaceful expression that would promise more safety than words could.

Soft muscles and softer mounds would fit and feel so perfect against him. Little motions she couldn't help. They would rest like that for as long as she wanted, as long as she needed. And his chest would rise in slow, even waves.

And then his head would dip down. Nose, nuzzle, nudge away her hair. A kiss to her forehead. Light, testing, a little hug. He knew what he was doing. Rub her back to brush loose the tension in her flesh, let his fingers find and tickle the underside of her elbow until her arms unwound from their tight knot across her chest. Logan's knuckles would slide up and down her stomach, perhaps ease up or ease open her shirt, stroke away any shivering. He would lean back, so she wouldn't feel smothered, that she had an escape route, that he was only on one side and not everywhere at once, not yet.

And Marie would feel the cords, not twanging staccato but stroked with low, vibrating notes--the palm of musician following, gentling the created tremors before the next measure.

Logan thought he would use his hand first, then his mouth, kiss his way down her throat, her chest. Find all those places where sweat and nerves accumulated, and make friends with each. Let her wriggle, buck against him and her legs fall open with a biological understanding. He would whisper her names against damp folds until she was in a place beyond thought or fear. And then he would slide into her, take root like he was scraping away strips of his being to replace the lining of hers. They would move like continents, breaking and drifting away and into each other.



Logan opened his eyes.

It hadn't happened yet. But you never know. Someday.