He stood against the wall of the school, enjoying the balcony which was attached to his office. No, no don’t get shocked yet, but not only did he have his own office, but it was his official teacher’s office. Yep, Logan was a teacher of self defense at the school for mutants, had been ever since Xavier’s death. Technically he had always been on the pay role, at first as a traveling…agent for the professor. Xavier always gave Logan tips on where he could hunt down leads to his past and in the mean time Xavier would send Logan off on missions with the intent of gathering information on various things. Sometimes it was finding people; looking for certain mutants or hunting down leads on information for the professor. The professor always understood if Logan needed to check up on a lead that seemed fresh or useful where his past was concerned and the Professor compensated him and even paid for his gas and lodging fees. When Xavier had died, Ororo had become head master…errr… Head mistress of the school. At the time they hadn’t known Scott was an option because they all assumed Jean had killed him and truth be told even after they got him back he wasn’t really up to the task of running the school.
Logan hadn’t left though, not immediately in any event. He stayed long enough to make sure Ro’ got a feel for the school and supervised as she got a handle on things. He was there when Scott turned up and stayed long enough to realize that Scott was living in the wake up a deep depression and of course he’d stayed long enough to redefine one of the most important relationships of his life- but he wasn’t going to dwell on that right now- this was his outdoor cigar time, he wasn’t supposed to waste it thinking about shit he couldn’t change.
Eventually he did wonder off and he found it both ironic and eerie that he was most at peace at the mansion. Logan had retreated from the mansion shortly after having a sexual encounter with Rogue, which had both shocked and scared him for various reasons. He’d actually only just recently returned as the weeks rolled on towards July. He’d missed Rogue’s graduation and he knew that was a sore spot but he hadn’t even realized, he never thought of her as a student.
He left to escape but something nagged at him when he was on the road, he’d lost track of time those dark months after the Alcatraz Island incident but he thought he was gone most of Rogue’s senior year. He resumed living the life he had before Professor Xavier had recruited him, hopping from bar to bar, fighting in the circuit and earning a living doing odd jobs. He lived out of a backpack and off his Harley. He didn’t speak to anyone on the road and he never called the mansion because who really wanted to talk to him? It wasn’t until he decided he wanted to see how things were going, it wasn’t until he couldn’t push the pain down any farther, until he could no longer drown in whiskey or bourbon and couldn’t afford anything stronger, that he decided to head back.
Of course when he arrived he told himself firmly that he was here to pay his respects to the graves out back (Jeans and Xavier’s) and see how Ro’ was running the school nowadays before hitting the road again.
Of course things never go as planned. When he walked in the mansion and smelled the familiar smells of the Institute he felt a peace he hadn’t felt in months, when he saw Ororo and hugged her too him and felt her hug him back, he knew there were people here who had needed him. Still he thought to himself, best not to settle somewhere that he had caused misery. He knew he was no fan of Scott’s, although the troubled man seemed to understand that Logan didn’t have a choice.
The days past quickly but Logan’s hollow empty feeling retreated and he was ready to hit the road again, but then Emma Frost showed up. Logan hadn’t believed in coincidences and this was no exception, but there she was on their doorstep days after Logan’s return boasting about being able to resurrect Xavier and her dreams which revealed that he was indeed around but on another dimensional plane. Then they had Xavier and they had Scott and the only person they didn’t have was Jean and Logan was to blame and here he was unable to face the music while Scott had lost the love of his life and Xavier had been dead for a year- who the hell was he to talk about problems in the face of these men? To make him feel worse Xavier welcomed him with open arms and told him to join the team, and the staff and that was exactly what Logan did.
All of this seemed a lifetime ago, but it was going on a year now. He surveyed the grounds in front of him with a stoic face, his office was located in the teachers wing and like all the rooms in this part of the mansion, it was located in the East wing of the building giving him a balcony which over looked the lush green gardens of Xavier’s Institute. He leaned casually against a wall, his cigar perched between his teeth. He loved sunny days with clear skies, the taste of smoke on his tongue and the sun on his face. From here he could clearly see the graves located in the back of the building, across the garden. He couldn’t help but marvel at the amount of changes that had occurred here in such a short time and he was even more surprised to find that not only did he care but he was a part of them. It was different for him now, he was no longer the silent observing fluttering along the outskirts of society, seeing but never participating. This school stood for something else other than a safe haven for mutants; it was a home for him and the one place in the world where his face was recognized, where he could claim he belonged…where he had a job to do.
It stunned him that the man who had brought him into all this, the same man who had created the single place which benefited so many other mutants, was considered to be dead by the rest of the worlds standards. Logan had never been a great fan of the telepath who had helped them rediscover Charles Xavier’s telepathic residue, or whatever. He was grateful to the frosty women (whose name did her justice) because she had been able to bring Charles Xavier back into their lives; the man had been at the end of his life and living in a body which refused to work at 100% efficiency, he was confined to a wheel chair. The months after his death had been long and arduous even after Scott was found and moved back into the mansion. Emma Frost showed up one day and wham bam alacazam! The man who they all knew and loved as Charles Xavier was back in their lives, taking up residence in a body of a man who had been coma-stricken for a great part of his life. Charles powers of course were ever present, as was his British accent, which was odd, but getting him back had been the one bright spot in the darkness that had hovered over the mansion after Alcatraz Island.
He exhaled the smoke of his cigar; the sound came out more like a sigh because even to him it was unacceptable that Jean was never coming back. People needed to understand how he felt about Jean, how it wasn’t just a man who loved a woman, although killing her under those circumstances was tragic enough. Thinking about her was painful but not thinking about her hurt more, it felt as though he were betraying her memory when he tried too hard to forget her.
Jeannie was a beautiful woman in his eyes and being a man and partly an animal he could never turn down a good looking woman. Sure, there were women out there who made his skin crawl even if they were attractive, Mystique for one and that crazy Asian bitch with the claws like his, she was a solid second on his list for women he could never bring himself to touch without being repulsed. Evil was a turn off and maybe that was ironic because Logan knew he wasn’t a upstanding member of society, but he tried to do what he felt was right and hey shit happened, he had killed but in self-defense and he had hated but wasn’t he justified if the person he hated was, for example, trying to kill him slowly from the inside out? Striker came to mind and he repressed a growl and wondered about the logistics of leaving a man to die, but Striker was more beast than man and more of an animal than even Wolverine could claim to be. Striker had been a savage.
If evil was a turn off to him was it any wonder that Jeannie had been such an appealing piece of ass? The women was nearly a saint, she wasn’t only a fighter for mutant rights, speaking before congress and petitioning against the mutant registration act, but she was a good person, a sweet and dear friend. She was a powerful mutant, and Logan cringed at the realization of her true power… at the memories associated with it. Jean was an intelligent woman who gave her all fighting on and off the battlefield. You just didn’t meet women like her every day, women who could fight with words and still dressed up in leather jumpsuits so they could fly a jet half way around the world to better aid a stranded mutant or to defeat a bunch of bad guys who couldn’t get a grip. Logan didn’t have to think twice to know that something that drew him to Jean was her personality as a fighter, both in the Political arena and the war arena. A woman who would give her life for the greater good, and had on more than one occasion risked it for that very thing. She may have been responsible for Xavier’s death but that wasn’t the Jean that Logan knew, the Jean that Logan knew was best remembered as the women who locked the entire crew in the Jet and sacrificed herself to doom of a watery death when the dam broke at Alkali Lake. She gave up her life, her love and her future just to save her fellow team mates.
That was the way Logan chose to remember Jean, the way he wanted to think of her now and always. Her bravery and her grace and not the damaged part of herself that had destroyed so much; Jean was the first woman in Logan’s life that he could honestly say he admired. Did he love her? Of course, he loved her the way he loved anyone, and since he only had 17 years worth of memories there weren’t many people who fit the bill. He had loved so little and known much pain, but the love he felt for Jean was not borne out of the desires he harbored for the sexy red headed doctor. He loved her as a team mate and a friend. As a women who stood up against the bad things that went bump in the night and a women who risked her life for the benefit of others. The Jean he knew, the one who he loved and admired would never have wanted to be responsible for the death of her lover or the destruction of her mentor and his principals.
That night on the bridge, when they were on Alcatraz Island Logan knew that with the professor deceased the only option to save Jean was to shoot her full of the cure. If he did that then she would still be Jean, but she would never be the same again. The Jean he knew could not and would not forgive herself for what she’d done. She may have been harmless without her powers but what would she have been like with the knowledge of what she’d done? The people she murdered and the lives she’d ruined? That night Logan had told Jean that he loved her and what he’d done was both an act of love as well as an act of mercy, he’d set her free. He would have done the same for any of his other team mates.
His cigar, being spent, was flicked into the wind and he watched as it fell below to the plush grass, the smell lingered in the air and he inhaled deeply taking what clam he could from the soothing familiar scent. His eyes fell to the grass where the cigar landed, he didn’t know why he choose to look down but he did and he rested his eyes on the small brown stub before flashing them over the rest of the grass and surveying the general area of Xavier’s Institute. That was when he saw her, sitting there on the grass, face shoved up towards the sky soaking up sun, he’d bet good money that her skin was warm. Her hair was loose and it flowed around her, hanging down past her shoulders and falling gently against her back. Her hands were spread out behind her and she seemed to be...in pain?
Logan had a fleeting thought in the back of his head that it was slightly creepy the way he was watching her, intently without her knowledge, but hey he couldn’t help being observant could he? He stepped forward slightly, leaving the security of the wall behind him. He was pretty sure from Rogue’s vantage point that she couldn’t see him when he was standing against the wall, if he leaned flush against it he was gone from her sight, but he could still crane his neck to see her from there. Walking to the edge of the railing though, which is exactly where he was, left him wide open to her gaze, if only she’d turn his way. He hoped she didn’t, he wanted this opportunity to study her face.
Her eyes were closed and the sunlight that peeked through the trees ran in speckles over her features, kissing her cheek bones and spilling into her hair, highlighting the color. He could see every detail so distinctly, almost as if he was standing in front of her and he silently thanked his mutation. Even though her eyes were shut Logan could tell that her expression was far from peaceful; as a matter of fact she seemed to be wincing. He wondered what she was thinking about and he could almost swear that he could see something glittering in the corner of her eye. Was Rogue crying?
Just as suddenly as her eyes were shut, they opened and Logan took a precautionary, if not instinctual, skip backwards trying to avoid being spotted. He craned his neck as far as it would go as soon as he deemed it safe and he was relieved to see that Rogue had not noticed him or if she had she wasn’t giving it away. She sat undisturbed on her spot on the grass and he realized she must have been crying because he could see her wiping at the corners of her eyes. He wondered what was on her mind and he walked purposefully off of the balcony, back into his office and headed toward the back of the mansion to see what was up.
As Logan walked towards the back door which would take him outside he realized how little he and Rogue had actually interacted since he’d left. They hadn’t spoken much since his return either, but he attributed that to his missing her graduation, he hoped it didn’t have anything to do with the incident that had happened after Jean’s death.
Logan could still remember that night; he could recall it with painful clarity. The feel of her skin and the scent of her on him, it was odd for him to remember a passionate interlude that hadn’t even been brought to fruition, after all they hadn’t actually slept together. Still, he realized that night that he could lose himself in that moment; he could surrender all the pain and ache he carried to the untouchable girl with the sad brown eyes. He realized, and it frightened him, that he wanted too. What he felt for Marie he couldn’t put into words and that night on the couch had meant more to him than any other sexual experience he’d had in the last seventeen years. He had to confess he had felt something almost electric sitting there in the dark touching her and he itched with the sensation of want, the need to feel it again.
After they had argued and after she had ran upstairs, he had the urge to do a thousand different things. He wanted to run, he wanted to scream, shout, cry, kill, fight, fuck and…fade. He wanted to fade away; he wanted the alcohol that failed him to be replaced with something that was capable of sinking him into a new level of numbness, a level where he could be shielded from the intense regret and pain that was pressing in on him. The pain of being Jean’s murderer and waking up the Phoenix and not being able to save the Professor, all the impossible tragedies that seemed to overwhelm him and all he wanted was to escape from it all.
He didn’t have the best handle on reality at the moment, but he knew that the only outlet he’d gotten all day had been on that couch with Rogue.
The biggest secret he kept, the darkest little lie he ever did tell that he kept locked up tight in the back of his mind that he didn’t think even the most powerful of telepaths could wrench from his mind, was this. He was staying for her, for Marie, she was without a doubt the only reason he wasn’t a million years away, she was the only shred of sanity he had left. He was lost in Canada with no memory and nothing to his name before she crawled in his trailer and she had saved him from that agony, because when Magneto sought them out, sought her out, so did the X-men. That was how he’d come to be here, how he’d started a life here to begin with and formed connections with the Professor who actually was a decent guy trying to help him. Logan was no fool, he knew it was an entirely different situation, but truth be told he was sticking around because he wanted to see if she could do it again. He wanted to know if she could drag him out of the hole he’d buried himself into and he firmly believed she could, Marie could make him feel better about anything, even murder.
He couldn’t stand the sight of the couch in the REC room, the rumpled pillows and disheveled cushions seemed to mock him with the memories of what almost happened. He went to his room because he needed a shower; he needed to get the smell of her off his skin. If Logan tried and he knew it wouldn’t be that hard he could get right back into the mood of him and Marie finishing what they started. He smelled her every time he breathed and he needed to remedy that. He took a long hot shower and while he turned under the relaxing spray of the water he thought of any way he could make this better.
He thought of his memories contaminating her mind wondered what she thought of him, really thought of him. He scrubbed furiously at his skin all the while until all he could smell was his skin and soap and a light trace of blood from his efforts. He thought of how she must have every memory and how she still looked at him like he was the center of the universe. Was he a selfish bastard for wanting her? For wanting to taint that too?
He thought of her on top of him, breathless and bucking against his hand. Was he wrong to want that? To need it? He’d never thought of Marie as a kid, “kid”, not since Magneto, not since she’d told him about some of her road stories. He was clearly aware of when he started thinking of her a woman and not a girl or a child. When her hips widened and her hair grew long and her eyes grew wise, he’d looked at her as a friend and the fact that she was undeniably fuckable didn’t hurt either. Standing there in the shower his thoughts of Marie’s body led him down a different path. He scrubbed furiously and when memories of previous moments in the REC room invoked and unsatisfactory reaction in him he turned the water to frigid cold, as icy as he could bear and stood under the spray until the heat from his skin evaporated.
Getting out of the shower and toweling off, he put on a fresh shirt and sweats, he was himself again. No alcohol remained in his system and right about now he had a hankering for a beer a cigar and…well a little Marie time. He needed to set things straight with her, hell if it killed him he was going to swallow his pride and face up to what she said. If she had memories of him carousing with other women it was no wonder she thought he was going to fuck and discard her. She needed to know that he didn’t feel that way about her and that he had every intention of helping her get over the grief that was drowning her because it was drowning him too. Maybe she had friends and Bobby-that little ice stick to help her but Logan only had Marie. Maybe if he got desperate he could talk to Ro’ as well but Marie was his girl, he wanted it to be her he went through this with. And as he left his room he realized he didn’t have a chance in hell of expressing this to her in words without screwing it up. He had to try though.
He strode confidently down the hall, very intent on marching up to her door and refusing to leave until she came out. He’d even camp outside her door if he had to but he was going to talk to her and those little roommates could probably be used to his advantage if he annoyed them enough they might even hassle Marie into dealing with him and she’d be forced to talk to him. He was only a couple of doors past his own when he caught a familiar scent and heard a very familiar whimper. Where was that coming from? He sniffed again and followed the smell to the guest bedroom, he put his ear to the door and he could hear Marie...sobbing? He was hesitant at first, should he knock? Tell her he was here? Was she crying over their argument?
Of course she is you asshole she was crying when she ran away and she still is
The little voice inside his head made him feel even more like shit and his hand automatically raised in the shape of fist ready to knock when he smelt it. Fear. Absolute, pure and undiluted terror. He was opening the door before he knew what was happening and it was just fortunate that Marie hadn’t bothered locking the guest bedroom-not that it would have stopped him but he figured this wasn’t the time to be running up bills at Xavier’s because he’d torn the door to shreds. Wasn’t like the headmaster was around to spring for the financials anymore. Charging through the unlocked door he ran into the darkened room and followed the sounds to the bed, salty sweat hit his nose and he grimaced, even if it was Marie, it wasn’t a bad smell, but this sweat was laced with fear, it was a cold smell and as he approached the bed he could see the shiny sheen of sweat settling over her skin. She whimpered again and he rushed closer, kneeling on the bed with his knees and grasping her shoulders. He shook her, lightly at first calling her name. When that had no affect he shook her harder, he heard her teeth chatter lightly but he didn’t care, she needed to wake up.
“MARIE!”
Her eyes burst open, but she was so disoriented that she started scratching, biting, squirming and…growling?
“Darlin it’s me! MARIE, its LOGAN!”
He crushed her body against his own all the while whispering soothing please for her to calm down, and muttering reassurances. He could hear her heart stammering against her chest and the beat was so frantic and the smell of fear so intense in the air that he wondered what she was dreaming about, she couldn’t be dreaming what he thought she was…
Marie had told him once that she had nightmares, but the terrors she described to him had more to do with the idea of being the forever untouchable…she’d never mentioned anything like this though.
Then she was sobbing into his chest, big salty tears soaking through his wife beater and leaving him at a total loss of how to handle the situation, he tucked his chin against her soft hair and kissed the top of her head.
“Shhh, shh, it’s over just breathe.”
She could hardly catch her breath and he rubbed her back to coax her into calming down.
He wanted to get up, get her a glass of water or something but she had a vice like grip cutting into his shoulders and arms.
She was still panting heavily but the tears had stopped, Logan knew he was going to hell. Seriously if he had ever doubted it before this moment, he now had confirmation. Marie was in his arms, she smelt heavenly, fear smell aside, and he was on a bed, holding her and she was breathing heavy and clutching at him. Immediately his head filled with the only other situation that would have her against him, clutching him, breathing against him. He was going to hell, but he cast those thoughts aside and concentrated on doing the right thing, the nonsexual thing.
He muttered some more reassurances before whispering against the shell of her ear.
“Tell me about it?”
His hands were around her back, and her face was buried in his chest, one tiny hand was on his shoulder and the other was clutching the bicep of his upper arm. She wasn’t crying anymore but the fear smell lingered and she was panting still, unable to catch her breath.
He felt her head shift as she pressed her ear against his chest, he immediately smelled the salt that was probably staining her cheeks in the form of tear tracks and when her breathing evened out he figured she was being soothed by his heart beat, and he found that kinda cute. He stroked her hair and waited it out, trying to be calm for her sake. He prayed with every fiber of his being that she wasn’t about to tell him a summary of his own nightmares.
When she spoke her voice was weak and very faint, it sounded like someone had washed the life right out of her and Logan was actually scared when he thought about it that way.
“Do you remember when we first met and I asked you if it hurt when they came out?”
“Yeah.”
His voice was rough, course with his own anger and fear.
“I never thought about how much they hurt when they put them in…”
She bit her lit, and Logan heard a muffled sob choke its way out of her. He didn’t smell fresh tears though and she was trying to get her breathing under control.
“I guess you got those too huh? The nightmares…”
She pushed away from him suddenly and it nearly killed him to think she didn’t want him holding her, but when he saw the way she looked at him he realized she wasn’t disgusted by him…not yet anyway.
“Logan, about what ah said, I’m so, so-
“Shh shh, shhh,” he hushed her with gentle fingers against her lips and brought his hand up to cradle her face.
“You never told me about any of this kid.”
He knew she wasn’t a kid but he had to keep telling himself he wasn’t the one who corrupted her.
“You never asked. Don’t call me kid, either.”
Her tone wasn’t angry but the weak voice she had a hard element to it, almost gruff, almost like him.
He ignored her tone; he wanted to help her, even if she hated him.
“How often do you have them?”
“Oh they’re not so bad, its worse when I dream about concentration camps and Nazi Poland.”
If she was trying to make him feel better she really sucked at it.
“I’m sorry.”
It hung in the air like the depressing wet blanket it was, she looked down at her hands, she was sitting up and he was sitting across from her on the bed, studying her.
He was so busy looking at her face he didn’t see her hand when it went for his.
“Ya mean the world to me Logan, Ah didn’t mean to hurt ya more.”
He tried to focus on the moment but he was sidetracked by her accent reappearing, it seemed to pop out more when she was talking about him and her. She squeezed his hand and he understood in that moment that he would never risk their friendship for the sake of his arousal. He’d meant it when he told her it could never be random with her, but he also realized that she wasn’t ready. Despite the decades of knowledge she carried around in her mind and despite how that knowledge seemed to soak through her robbing her of her youth and leaving behind an ageless soul in a young body, she was not ready for a physical relationship with him; honestly he’d walk through hell barefoot before he forced one of her.
“You should sleep,” he squeezed her hand back.
If she needed his friendship he could give that too her, his heart still ached for Jean and his decision to set her free, he still felt raw pain when he thought of the professor and he knew things were never going to be the same again. Even between him and Marie, not two hours ago he had fingered her on the couch in the REC room, but clearly it wasn’t meant to be. He only hoped they could go back to being what they were before, more than friend and less than lovers.
“Stay with me?”
Pleading, leaking out of her voice and her eyes, soaking into him, he wanted to laugh, didn’t she know he wouldn’t ever leave her if she needed him?
“Always darlin.”
They cuddled up together, it was platonic as a man and a woman sharing a bed could get. He stretched his body out behind her’s and draped a casual arm over her waist, curling his other hand under his pillow. She clasped that hand in both of her’s and he kept a slight distance between their bodies, a gap between his chest and her back. After all he was still a man and the last thing he needed was for her to rub up against him in his sleep and for mini-wolverine to get all slap-happy.
The next day when Logan woke up him and Marie continued their same friendship, and he was relieved that she seemed willing to forget about their interlude the night before. Truth be told when your grieving, when’s someone’s died, you instinctually reach out to another person so you can feel alive again. In the wake of their grief, and in the depressing months to come they buried what they’d done together under excuses and kept up with light friendly touches and talks over the next few weeks.
When Logan couldn’t pass the REC room with feeling himself stiffen, and when he couldn’t sit on the couch without getting hard he knew it was time to leave. Whether or not Marie felt the same way was irrelevant because he couldn’t stay and force himself on her and whether or not she wanted him to stay he couldn’t comply, at least for right now.
He needed the air of the open road in his lungs and he needed his head clear because if he stuck around he was going to take advantage of her and he truly didn’t want to overwhelm her. She didn’t deserve to warm his bed because he felt heartbroken over killing fellow X-men. When and IF he took her into his bed he wanted it to be on her terms and because she wanted to be there, not because he was broke and drunk one night. Truth be told he still wasn’t over the guilt and he still kept a bottle of whiskey handy at all times, he couldn’t let her see him like that again. The point of those dark moments was to lose control, he couldn’t afford that luxury at her expense, after seeing what happened the last time he obviously couldn’t be in that state again with her within five feet of him.
So he left, told her was leaving, said he’d see her soon and wished her well. Told her not to worry and gave her back his tags to hang on to, she didn’t seem mad, but sad. Not heartbroken but quietly defeated, almost limp with the knowledge that she couldn’t have kept him here even if she wanted to, she was depressed with his departure but she accepted it, accepted him. His heart burned when he left because he knew damn well what an idiot he was being and knew that she was forgiving him for it before he even got out the door. He bucked up though and told himself he was leaving because it was the only way to get back to being himself.
He was walking through the garden now and Rogue was only five feet from him, she was lying down now in the grass. One arm was bent at the elbow behind her head, her feet were crossed at the ankle and her shoes were lying neatly next to her.
Looking back over the last couple of months he had been right to leave when he did. Those five months he spent on the road were some of his darkest moments and they made him realize that he was grieving the death of a loved one and it was normal to be anguished. He didn’t need to throw away his life in the pit of a fighting cage in Canada just to function. Truth was that time away from the mansion made him realize his misery had nothing to do with this place or the people here, it was him. He needed to straighten up himself on his own and he knew the best place to do that was here as soon as he walked back through the door.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Whew! Very long chapter, lots of Logan reflecting and the flashback finally finishes with Logan and Maire in bed in each other's arms! lol I may be slightly misleading