DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
thatcraftykid
track one // “MONEY”
MONEY, GET AWAY / GET A GOOD JOB WITH GOOD PAY AND YOU’RE OKAY
“You’re right, it is just money. There’re more important things.”
She rocks up on the sides of her feet. Grins. “Like friends.”
– Rogue –
Rogue slouches over the stove, a mostly-eaten package of crackers to her right. Her mouth waters at the heavenly smell of frying fish.
When the bubbles burst like that, it’s time to flip it, her momma instructs her, and Rogue complies gratefully. How could it be that she ever took her momma’s cooking for granted? Her daddy used to call her his spoiled little Mississippi princess. She took that for granted, too.
“Hey,” Logan says from somewhere behind her, making her jump and about knock over the frying pan.
“Sneak up on a girl!”
“Where’d you get the trout?”
“I got it from the pond. Make a noise or something, jeez.”
“You fish?”
Not very well, until good old Guff. “Me? I’m a fly-fishing champ from way back.”
“That supposed to be a pun?”
Rogue’s lip quirks. “No. I caught these two beauties the old fashioned way. Your rod was out on the back porch.” She gives the meat a push with the back of the spatula. “Five more minutes ought to do it. Mashed potatoes and green beans are already done.”
Logan leans back against the counter on the other side of the stove. He’s wearing just a white cotton shirt now, so she can’t help but eye his muscles as he folds his arms across his chest. “Say one thing for you, you’re resourceful.”
She twists around. “That was a compliment.”
He shrugs.
Rogue’s surprised, but she’ll let it lie. She flips the fish in silence.
Taking out two plates from the cabinet over his head, he hands them to her. Skin brushes fabric.
A slow itch spreads beneath her protective layers, beginning with her fingertips, clasped tight around the plate and the spatula. Rogue hasn’t forgotten how the first sight of him in the cage absorbed her interest, how his keen senses impressed her, how his life-threatening injuries healed without a scar. She wouldn’t need money, if she had –
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip. No. Stop it, she tells herself fiercely. Worse than the dark, this is the mutation, the monster.
Beside Rogue, her oblivious almost-victim rolls out the flatware drawer. “All I got is water,” he says.
She uses the time it takes her to set the dishes out on the table to find her voice again. “Sugar, I think we both deserve something a little stronger.”
He grunts and pulls down the half-empty bottle of whiskey, which he brings to the table along with two fairly large glasses.
Good stuff.
Guff is less articulate already. Soon he’ll be speechless, just a set of skills she’ll have to struggle to remember. Rogue picks up her glass after Logan pours and, with a swift toast, pounds one back for Patrick Lee Guff and his impressive ’stache. She’ll miss the conversation, just a little; she’ll miss the way it fills the dark and feeds the monster.
Logan sips his own whiskey, his stare evaluating. Rogue doesn’t care. As if he could even begin to guess at her thoughts.
She gingerly takes a seat – muscles she didn’t even know she has are sore – and rearranges the food on her plate. Hungry as she is, Rogue doesn’t want to start the meal. When it ends, she’ll have to make a liar out of herself. She won’t leave. He’ll try to make her, she’ll fight him and win. She’s already sick over it.
“’S wrong?” Logan frowns around his fork.
“Nothing. Is it good?”
He grunts again.
Rogue smooths out an aged paper napkin over her lap. Fiddles with the frayed edges. She can’t deny herself any longer and cuts off a piece of fish. Savors it.
“You got an end game?” Logan asks suddenly.
Rogue nods as she chews. Puts up her hand to cover her mouth. “Anchorage.”
“What’s in Anchorage?”
“Alaskans…Sorry,” she shrugs. “I figure if I dye my hair, change my name, I can start on somewhere as a waitress. If I hoard my every paycheck, maybe I can eventually open up my own bar and restaurant, like my Uncle Nuts has back in Meridian. Mississippi, that’s where I’m from.”
“You could do that anywhere. Why Anchorage?”
Her mouth turns up wryly. “Because a long time ago, a little girl had a big map on her wall with pins stuck in it, and the destination didn’t sound like an adventure unless it ended in snow.”
“Little girl, huh? Couldn’t have been that long ago.”
That’s right. You’re seventeen years old, young lady, so don’t you be inviting Trouble of his sort.
“I’m twenty-one,” she sasses, because it’s about as far as she can pass. “How old are you?”
Oh, that eyebrow does not look pleased with the question.
Sipping on whiskey, she has enough pluck to ask, “What’s the matter, sugar? You afraid I’m gonna think you’re too old for me?”
There it is. Reluctant humor. “No doubt about that. I stopped aging a long time ago.”
Neat. “So how old are you really? A hundred?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” he says briskly.
Please. His hedging is getting ridiculous. “What, are we talking amnesia? Government conspiracy?”
The stare he fixes her with makes her want to crawl under the table.
Slowly, apologetically, she says, “Someone…gave you those claws. Didn’t they?”
A little of the hardness leaves his eyes. “What’d they do to you?’”
“‘They’ never laid a hand on me.” She murmurs, “Too scared to do it for themselves.” Rogue wipes her mouth with her napkin. Scratches at her plate with her fork. “How come you don’t know how old you are?” A desperate question. She doesn’t want to talk about Southaven. She wants him to trust her.
Voice clipped, Logan answers, “Woke up in the ass end of nowhere. Didn’t even know my name, let alone my birth date.” He scoops up a forkful of green beans. “That was fifteen years ago.”
Something’s happening here. She doesn’t understand why, but she knows from their conversation in the truck – “Every time,” he’d said – that if she asks the right questions he’ll give her honest answers. Quite a concept.
“You remembered, though? Your name, at least.”
“No.”
“So, then you must’ve met someone who knew you – ”
“‘Logan’ was on the tag, before.”
“Before what?” Rogue tries to get a look at it again, but it’s tucked where he seems to like it. Inside his shirts and out of everyone else’s business.
“Sliced it in half. Thought someone might be tracking me.”
Grimly, Rogue shows him the small, lumpy scar on the inside of her wrist where she’d fished out a flat microchip. She wouldn’t have known it was even there, if she weren’t –
A memory-suckin’ leech!
Rogue slams down hard on Eugene Macomb’s unexpected yelp, and focuses instead on the raised hairs on Logan’s left arm. He brings his fork up to rip off a piece of meat.
She looks down at the tabletop. It occurs to her that he must not know a single person who remembers him or any of the things he’s forgotten. The awfulness of that droops her shoulders. Which is worse? she wonders, because plenty of people know her, know what happened to her, only none of them have offered any understanding.
Rogue searches for something else to ask, hitting on the cabin since she knows this, at the very least, he likes. “How long have you lived here?”
He looks around, nodding slightly. “On and off, fifteen years.” He adds a shrug. “Maybe.”
“Does that mean you might’ve lived here before?”
“No one else has claimed it. It was run down when I found it, but there were clothes here.”
“And they fit.” Through a bite of mashed potatoes, she says, “That sounds hopeful.”
“You think,” he replies in a way that makes her doubt it. “What about you? Gotta lot of hope after that clinic?”
“What do you care? You hate me,” she spits back, startled by her own nastiness.
“Jesus, kid, I never said I hated you.”
“Yes you did. You said, ‘Hated knowing you,’ when you tried to leave me in the woods.”
He doesn’t have a reply.
“Look, either talk to me like a person or treat me like dirt. I can’t take your mood swings.”
“My mood swings? One minute you’re docile as a lamb, next you’re rarin’ for a fight. Case in point.”
“In response to you.”
He jabs his knife in the air. “Huh-uh. That shit’s internal. You’re off your rocker, kid.”
“Yeah, well you would be, too.”
“I am!” His mouth is open so wide she can see the hunk of fish and potatoes between his molars. “Look at this fuckin’ place, claw marks everywhere. Like an animal lives here.” Abruptly, he falls silent, all his focus on his whiskey.
Rogue recognizes “animal” as “monster” and swallows heavily. If wanting his mutation upsets her internal balance, she’s clearly no less guilty of upsetting his. So she tells him what she wants to be told herself: “For what it’s worth, I like you.” She tries to laugh. “Whether you deserve it or not.”
She’s barely had time to get that out when he says, “This is good fish. I’d pay good money to eat fish like this in a restaurant.”
“I’ll send you a postcard from Anchorage. You can be my first customer.”
“If you get there in one piece.”
“Very nice. Thank you.”
“What would you call a meal like this in your restaurant? Fifteen bucks? Thirty with tip, since you did the fishing yourself. We can agree on that, right?”
“Not following, sugar.”
“You’re gonna stay here for a while. Cook for me, clean, fix up the place. Split firewood with your bare hands. Whatever chores I ask, you’ll do them. And I’ll pay you. When you earn back that two thousand dollars, you’re free to go.”
Relief hits her in dizzying waves. Rogue’s not even aware she’s crying until she feels wetness dripping from her chin. She glances up at Logan, who’s looking at her in abject horror. She bursts out laughing.
“What’d I say about mood swings?” he complains.
A snort bubbles up and she puts her napkin to her nose to keep snot from going everywhere. That makes her lose it further, leaning forward and bouncing her fist off the table.
“Watch it! You’re gonna break the last decent piece of furniture in this place.”
Rogue shakes her head, still crying and laughing at the same time. No adrenaline spike, she could tell him, meaning right now she’s about strong as she looks.
He raises his voice to be heard. “Knock it off already.”
Steadying breath. Calm. She sits back heavily, wiping a finger under her eyes. “Whatever you say, sir.”
“Deference ain’t gonna stick, is it?”
She snickers. “Probably not.” Her tummy aches, and it’s from fullness as much as from laughter. A few more giggles, another deep breath, and the fit passes. Rogue’s left relaxed. It’s a strange feeling. She flashes Logan a smile. Twirls a finger by her temple, mouths, “Cuckoo.”
Ankle resting on his knee, Logan leans on the back legs of his chair. He’s lit another cigar, which he holds between two fingers when he gestures to her. “You didn’t sleep at all last night, I forgot. Finish eating, and I’ll show you where you can rest up.”
“Orders worth following,” she toasts, picking up her fork again.
When she’s done, she talks him into another eight bucks for doing the dishes quickly.
“You’re a hell of a haggler. Come on, I got sheets in the closet back here.”
“Learned to first day in Fallujah,” she tells him, falling into step. It doesn’t feel like lying, adapting Carol’s history as her own.
“How’d you end up the Air Force, anyway?”
“My parents didn’t want me anymore when I turned out to be a mutant. Military or bust.”
A half truth, only Carol’s was prettier. Even though she was an adult when her mutant gene surfaced, her parents took it upon themselves to care for her while she was in Southaven. The Danvers loved their daughter unconditionally. Not exactly what Rogue feels for her own parents or they for her.
“Shit parents.” Logan dumps a pile of torn up blankets into her arms.
“Kind of. I…hurt people. Accidentally. The boy next door. My momma. Just from a touch. I couldn’t be at school – Or, you know, in the barracks. That’s why I had to go to Southaven. As far as mutations go, poison skin’s no healing power.”
Logan reaches up to pull on a string hanging from the ceiling, revealing a set of wooden stairs. “You can fly, super strength. That part’s not too shabby.” He motions her to go first.
No, not too shabby, but stolen at the highest cost she’d ever paid. She won’t tell him that. He already thinks she’s crazy, and he doesn’t even know a thing about the inside of her head.
The loft is one room, unpainted wood like the rest of the house, with a mattress tucked into one of the corners. It slants up with the roof, which has been cut out for a panel of glass, sort of like a skylight.
“I can get something to cover that up.”
“Don’t. It’ll be nice to sleep in the sun.”
He clears his throat. Looks around. “Right. I’ll leave you to it.” He starts back down the stairs.
“Logan? It was two thousand two hundred dollars, actually.” It’s not what she meant to say. She hopes he gets the message behind it – a willingness to work and a desire to stay as long as possible.
“Marie, it’s just money.”
Before, she would’ve argued, told him that money makes her world go ’round. Now, Rogue stands in the first real home she’s been inside since her parents packed her bags for Southaven a lifetime ago.
She looks at Logan. Really looks at him. Mutton chops, Indianhead belt buckle, veined arms, and dry knuckles – if he could be typed, he would’ve been exactly the type she’d have never known in that other, privileged life. Where the toughest part about getting money in her pocket was putting up with that minute or so of her daddy grumbling that they’re house poor, with her momma taking up her cause by calling him stingy and demanding he provide for his daughter’s caprice.
Yet, it’s this man, her momma’s Trouble, to whom Rogue has done much more harm than good – it’s this man who gives her the benefit of the doubt and lets her stay under his roof. An incredible turn of events just devastating enough for her to embrace.
“You’re right, it is just money. There’re more important things.” She rocks up on the sides of her feet. Grins. “Like friends.”
His eyebrow elevates slowly. “Take that nap, darlin’. You’re still loopy.” But there’s a hint of amusement in his smirk as he disappears down the stairs.
By herself but not alone, Rogue flops on the mattress like the carefree teenager she might’ve been. The bundle of sheets in her arms smells like dust and pine, and a little like Logan. She hides her face in them, embarrassed by her whimsy but pleased all the same. She’s got no right to be feeling so good. Not in the face of all the very serious problems in her life, ones that have only escalated in the past twelve hours.
Through aches and exhaustion, Rogue grins. Nope, no right at all.
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