It was dark again, she had learned to live for the night the way she had once yearned to feel the sunlight on her bare skin. She had that now, could run free and wild, no gloves, no long sleeves to cover once deadly skin. It had been her salvation, and her excommunication.
She'd been 'cured', but she'd still been a mutant *inside*, she still wanted to fight for their rights, wanted to see her friends, the people she'd thought of as her family, living without having to hide. She just hadn't wanted to be a poison dart walking around, waiting to strike someone unsuspecting.
It hadn't been enough, her beliefs, her devotion to the team had been ignored, cast aside. She'd been ordered to leave, and she'd packed up her things without a word, and done so. Logan had fought tooth and claw, with Storm, Bobby, and even Marie herself over it. She'd tried to make him see reason, with all the new arrivals, she wasn't going to be a beacon of how to be a good mutant, and they could probably use the room.
He'd stormed off into the night on his bike, as was often his answer since Alcatraz. Just run, and spend the night doing who knew what, and coming back the next day, still barely reigned in. Marie knew her leaving would hardly help that part of the situation, Logan had often come to her, to spend the night drinking, or on the roof just... watching the sky move, before the decision to excise her from the team and the mansion had come down.
She hadn't gone far, she'd promised him that. A few miles, minutes on his modified motorcycle, a reminder of Scott that Logan treated with an odd sort of reverence. A quiet respect for the effects of the once leader of the X-men. She grew to listen for that sound, until she swore she could hear him when he fired it up down on Greymalkin Lane. A sound she only heard in the dark.
As full dark descended, she lit a few candles through her apartment, kneeling before one table holding one thick one, crossing herself for a brief prayer. Logan may not believe, but she did. She had been delivered from her skin's curse, a miracle as far as she was concerned, the years trapped in fabric and frustration just a period to help define the fierce woman she had become.
The amusing fact was she now worked from home, doing data entry and customer service for an insurance company. It didn't matter if her skin was lethal or not, with her job, but it paid the bills, and let her stay close to Logan and a few others who would come to see her, defiant of Storm's declaration that she was no longer one of them, and might as well be considered the enemy. One of their own, whose loyalties had turned, branded a traitor to the cause of mutant acceptance. It would have been funny to see their faces, if they knew when she took certain calls, recognizing procedures being done to determine mutant genetic traits, that she subtly talked about this great school for 'gifted' kids. She had sent a good dozen families their way within a few months.
But that was the daytime, just hours that must be filled and waded through, until the sun dropped from view, and set her free. Mahogany and white hair were brushed out, tumbling down the bare skin of her back, before silken robe was wrapped over her. Crimson and gold, Logan's favorite colors on her, though she was aware those had been *Jean's* favored colors as well. Lotion rubbed over her skin, down freshly shaved legs, worked into her feet. Making every inch of once forbidden, untouchable, inviolate flesh, soft to the touch, inviting to the senses with soft scent, and the glimmer it gave the surface. A shimmer that would be rubbed away by rough, calloused hands touching, taking, mindless of the efforts.
She didn't care.
The first time, it had happened almost as if by divinity. One of his contacts in Europe had sent him a crate of absinthe, as a thank you. Storm had hit the roof, so Logan and his bottles had come on down the road to her place. She'd watched him drink the supposedly dangerous liqour, only growing concerned when he mentioned the increased wormwood content, the ingredient that *was* dangerous.
But instead of watching him go into seizures or hallucinate, Logan had poured everything out to her. Head on her knee, sitting on the floor while she was curled in her favorite chair in the screened in porch, watching the night move on by. Fingers stroking his hair had led to rubbing his neck, his shoulders. When his head had turned, grief still plain in his eyes, mouth claiming hers while a single fingertip held her chin, the night had seemed to slow it's waltz to let the moment linger.
Kisses evolved to touching, his fingers running over her skin, places his own claws should have marked her, the battles they had been in, murmuring his admiration on it's perfection. Touching led to holding, led to needing, until both of them were laying on the wooden floor of her porch, sweating and speechless. That night had lasted forever, and was over before it seemed it had started. He'd left in the morning with a kiss to her forehead, leaving her twisted in her sheets, heavy lidded with sleep deprivation. Night came, bringing him back, an angel of the midnight hour. An angle that was not avenging or offering absolution, just perfect oblivion.
Everything seemed to move so fast, the transition from friends to lovers. They used every alibi, every turn of phrase, to deny love exisisted, that this was just an extension of their friendship, and was therefore safe, and secure from failing as so many romances did.
It should have been perfection, the culmination of every fantasy and dream she'd had about him. He'd come around, bringing dinner, wine, or a movie. Trying and failing to draw her out into the outside world she no longer felt she belonged in. Neither mutant, nor human, she had no place in their currently polarized society. She tried and failed to draw him out of the darkness of pain, guilt, and grief he held himself in. For not saving the Professor, not being able to even find Scott's body, for having to be the hand that had snuffed the flame of Jean's life into darkness.
She took him into her arms, her bed, her heart. Further than she had thought she could ever dare to allow anyone, even Logan. She accepted his surrender, time after time, his dreams, his tears, his grief. She was his light at the end of the darkness, but she no longer knew which way her shadows would turn, and leave her in darkness or in light.
Then nights passed, when he wouldn't come, wouldn't call. Nights she spent hours listening for the sound of a motorcycle engine, or heavy boots on the pavement leading up to her door. Those were the nights that didn't pass too fast, those were the nights spent in endless agony, wondering and worrying. He was letting her go.
Fingertips smoothed over paper, a letter from Worthington Labs... a death knell in its content.
He could let her down easy, but not tonight. Tonight it was his turn to let her be the midnight angel, and he the shadow's light. Time was too short now, every day another day closer to agony and defeat. A miracle turned to pain in her heart.
Tonight, they would offer each other the oblivion, and the healing it held inside of it. Tomorrow, she would tell him. Tomorrow, she would set him free into the daylight, and retreat back to the shadows that her life would become again. A life wrapped up in layers, never again free to run free in the night, the core of her, her very heart, singing out to the stars.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to a Pat Benatar greatest hits cd I bought on impulse, and a shot or two of Jack Daniels.
No beta, all mistakes mine, you know the drill.
No beta, all mistakes mine, you know the drill.