IT’S LETTING PEOPLE IN



The next time they fuck, he says he wants to do it from behind again, and when he looks at her back, he does not even realize what he is looking for until he notices that the scratches have completely and totally healed.


*


Another day, she is sucking him off, and he groans, “Oh, fuck—Marie—”

And she pulls away so fast he hears himself actually whimper, and absolute self-loathing crashes upon him.

“Yikes,” she says. “I did say, ‘No cheesy lines,’ right?”

“It’s your fuckin’ name,” he says, and his voice still sounds too close to a whimper, but her mouth is still incredibly, unbelievably, world-endingly far away.

“You never call me it, so it’s kind of weird to hear it suddenly,” she says, and it’s true, he doesn’t know why he has done it now. An attempt at intimacy? Then he wonders if the Cajun calls her by her name, and he thinks he has an answer to why he just used it.

But, if he is honest with himself, ‘kid’ has always felt even more—right—to him. More intimate, even, than her “real” name.

What are real names, anyway, he thinks to himself. He doesn’t even know if his real name is Logan.

And true enough, she declares, just before mercifully returning to her previous assignment, “I like ‘kid’ from you. It’s cozy,” she says, and he remembers her saying that, the first time. “Sexy, too,” she adds.

“Okay,” he acquiesces—but at this point, with what she is doing, he would have acquiesced to anything she might have asked—and then the thought of what “anything” could be terrifies him into coming.

She looks impressed. “And with a condom on, too. I think that must be a new record for you,” she teases.


*


Storm says, right before going down on him: “There’s something different about you.”


*


Gambit, Kitty, and Kurt leave on a mission to guard Hank during another UN conference on climate change, this one in Madrid. And Logan is relieved to not have to go to yet another boring, uneventful, diplomatic shindig.

But when they come back, Gambit is on a stretcher and even Kurt’s face looks pale.

When she can stop shaking, Storm says that Hank’s convoy was shot at by an anti-mutant terrorist group that has been responsible for recent bombings of mutant refugee shelters in various other European cities.

She says that the shots came so suddenly, Kurt was only able to teleport Hank away after Gambit had already been hit. Kitty had been able to phase him out of the following bullets, but not the first two.

He looks for the kid, but she isn’t in her room; that day, or the next, or the next. She only shows up just before class, and leaves directly afterwards. She still taunts them all relentlessly, but when her students’ backs are turned, her face unlocks again, and he thinks he sees real fear in her eyes.

And in class, she now smells like poker night, too—but not quite, he realizes. Not of sex. But only deep, heavy presence; as if she is wearing the Cajun's breath on her skin. And he thinks that might be even worse than poker night’s smell.


*


So he says to Kurt, itching to make fun of the Cajun, “So what, the jerk got shot, just like that? Couldn’t even dodge it?”

He snorts, “Fuckin’ amateur, is what that is.”

Kurt looks at him and says, evenly, “Gambit was shot because he threw himself in front of Hank and Kitty.”

To Logan’s unmoving face, he continues: “Only because he protected them in time was I able to react and teleport Hank out of harm’s way. And at that point, Kitty was able to phase Gambit’s body against the bullets that followed.”

Then he raises one navy blue eyebrow at Logan. “Amateur,” he repeats.


*


That night, alone in his bed, Logan thinks a long time about what Piotr said that one poker night; something about defensive mutations and offensive mutations.

He knows that many, if not most, mutants—like Bobby, Piotr, Storm, Hank, himself—have mutations that are neither predominantly offensive nor defensive, but can be used both ways, even if biologically some of them tend towards what Piotr described as hyper-immunity.

But then he thinks about Gambit. Someone who can make a bomb out of anything—that’s an offensive mutation, no doubt about it.

(Then he remembers, suddenly, that Scott, too, had had a predominantly offensive mutation—and Logan’s fists tighten, and he has to take a minute to re-gather his thoughts.)

And then he remembers a cliché he told Storm once; that the best defense is a good offense.

And he thinks of what he did to Jean, with his own "offensive mutation." What he did—

—to defend everyone else, yes, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows. Every time he thinks of it, every time he wants to gut himself at the very thought of it, he has to look around at the mansion, at the kid, at Storm’s face, and know—he did it for them, for these people, for these lives in front of him, and this life they are making together. And he knows had been the only one capable to do it, and survive intact.

But now he thinks of a mutant he doesn’t like at all, with unusual eyes and an offensive mutation and no regenerative factor to speak of. Using his own, un-superhealing body to protect everyone else.

Logan doesn’t want to understand him; and he absolutely doesn’t want to respect him.

But he thinks of the kid’s arms around that mutant, crying the tears he has been smelling all week: outside of the medbay, outside of her room, outside of the Cajun’s room.

And he doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like any of this.


*


Sooner than he had expected, they start to fuck again, and when he sees that her facial expressions have returned to normal, he is relieved to have been proven wrong about what he thought he had seen on her face the past few days. If she can still casually go down on him in the locker room, he thinks, she must not be too affected—even if she had been clearly shaken at the beginning.

But that same evening, Logan sees the Cajun up and walking again, and overhears him promising Piotr that he will be back for poker nights soon, that he is all right now, that he has gotten out of the worst part of the woods, that they can all be relieved; that of course nothing bad would ever happen to him; and Logan thinks he knows why the kid is back to normal.


*


And so it goes—the Cajun makes a relatively speedy and perfect recovery, and returns to once again be a regular presence at the poker table. And the kid resumes her enthusiastic visits to Logan’s genitals, and just as enthusiastically renews the invitation back to her own.

But things are different, he notices: Gambit no longer entertains the same gaggle of rapt female listeners with stories about Paris, and Logan never smells metal or ice or gold on the kid anymore. He smells himself, and the Cajun, and that’s it.

And the look Gambit gives him over the poker table now is no longer simply one of amused rumination and defiance—but something deeper, graver; something more somber and resolved.

And he definitely doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like any of this.


*


Nevertheless, the kid is as detached and casual as ever—but against the backdrop of everything else he has noticed, her behavior is now thrown in sharp relief. It grates, pulls at his skin.

One afternoon, after he goes down on her in the backseat of an Aston Martin V12 Vantage, he asks her again, still between her thighs: “How did you get your powers?”

She looks down at him. “I told you, I’m not telling,” she says, her voice tense and careful.

“I want to know,” he says.

“Well, sucks for you,” she says. Then grins. “Though, speaking of sucking and you—”


*


Another time, he sees a bite mark on her breasts again, and before he knows what he is doing, he lifts his own shirt up by the neckline so the shirt collar covers the bottom half of his face. Then he presses his mouth to the skin there, and bites down—hard, hard, harder, harder, harder—

And she is yelling, “Wha—ow, ow, ow, ow, fuck, samurai, samurai, samurai!”

And when he finally lifts his head, she looks at him, too shocked to even throw him across the room, as he had been expecting. And he is even shocked at himself.

She demands, “What the hell?”

“Sorry,” he says. “Went too far.”

“Thank god for safe words, you sadistic fuck,” she says. “Or I would’ve had to touch you and grow my own tit back.”


*


And he almost says, “Okay.”

To shut himself up, he occupies his mouth elsewhere. Trying to stop himself from thinking: If I touched her, his marks would disappear.


*


And Storm says to him again, “There’s something different about you.”

“What,” he mumbles, his mouth, once again, otherwise occupied.

“I’ll tell you later,” she says, and leans back.

When it is later, he asks, “So what’s different.”

Storm’s eyes glint, as if pleased that he has brought the subject up again. “I don’t know. Just something.”

Then she inspects his face, carefully. “Since he got back from Madrid, Gambit hasn’t been wanting to sleep with anyone else. Much to my own disappointment.”

He freezes, then grunts.

She grins. “I wonder why that could be.”

He grunts again.

Storm’s grin only gets wider. “Oh, Logan, honey, you—”

But he doesn’t let her finish, quickly resuming his mouth’s previous occupation, and he thinks he has found a good—and certainly audience-approved—method to get out of uncomfortable situations.


*


The kid is across from him, reading a newspaper in the cafeteria, and her eyes brighten at an advertisement for an action movie. “Oh, I’m definitely going to go see this.”

“What,” he asks, and she turns the newspaper around to show it to him. A man in a robot suit, standing on a pile of destroyed things.

“Looks smart,” he says dryly.

“It looks fuckin’ amazing, is what it looks like,” she says. She peers at the newspaper more closely.

“In a month only? Why do they advertise it so early if it’s only coming out in a month, that’s annoying.”

“We should go,” he says, without knowing what he is saying.

She looks up at him. “What? I’m still eating.”

“No,” he says, slightly irritated. “To the movie. When it comes out.”

She stares at him. Then she breaks into hysterical laughter, her face on the table and her fist banging the surface. He looks at her, now definitely more than slightly irritated.

Thinking, She laughs like the Cajun.

She lifts her head and says, “Yikes. What was that, you asking me out on a date?” She shakes her head. “Let's keep the romantic comedies in the movies.”

“So that’s a no,” he mutters.

“That’s a no,” she affirms.

Then she smiles sweetly. “But if you give me five minutes to finish my salad, I’ll fuck your brains out in a supply closet.”


*


And he realizes he hasn’t seen Warren around the mansion for a while, so he asks Storm where the asshole went; and Storm looks at him, surprised, then infinitely amused, and says that one lovely afternoon, Warren had gone to his room and his doorknob had exploded in his hand.

She says he was able to save himself from death or permanent dismemberment by flying out of the way, leaving only his pride fatally injured. He moved back to San Francisco shortly after the incident.

“You didn’t know that?” Storm asks, staring at him. “Where the hell have you been?”

And he thinks about offensive and defensive mutations again, and about things he hasn’t seen and doesn’t know.


*


There is another mission, to accompany Hank on a diplomatic visit to Tokyo, in preparation for an upcoming conference that will also take place soon in Japan.

In Storm’s office, while they wait to be given orders, he feels the kid staring at him pensively, and when he looks back at her, she swiftly averts her gaze. Then he sees Gambit, noticing the kid’s discomfort and anxiety. And that grave, determined look is back on the Cajun’s face.

Finally, Storm assigns the Tokyo mission to Kitty, Bobby and Kurt. And the reaction of simultaneous relief and disappointment on the kid’s face has him totally confused.

So afterwards, as they are all filing out of Storm’s office, Logan takes her by the arm and asks, “You okay?”

“Sure,” she says brightly, and once again he knows she is lying, the same way he knew she was lying before; though, once again, he does not know why she should lie over such a thing. But this time he doesn’t let it go.

He asks again, leaning in more closely, “You sure?”

And she backs away from him so hastily, he thinks he might have accidentally touched her skin—but she is still in a long sleeve shirt and gloves, and he is perfectly fine. Still, she is looking at him like she has seen a ghost.

Distressed, he weakens his grip on her arm and murmurs, “Hey—”

From the hallway, Gambit’s voice comes, saying: “Minette.”

And the kid turns a little red, and Logan is doubly confused. It is the first time she has looked this flustered and uncertain since he met her—and now he thinks he was lying when he told Storm he didn’t remember what she looked like back then.

Gambit continues, “You coming to lunch, yeah?”

Then Rogue snaps out of it; she smiles at Logan, and the girl he first met is gone again, and so completely—that just like that, once again, he doesn’t remember her face anymore. She shakes his arm off.

Then she turns and calls back, “Yeah, I’m coming. Jesus, I’m hungry.” And she begins to walk towards the Cajun.

And when she reaches him, Logan can hear her mock-complaining, a little lustily, “Didn’t we say you couldn’t call me that in public? Bad swamp rat.”

“Then you better punish this swamp rat, eh,” he hears Gambit reply.

And Logan doesn’t understand anything, doesn’t like anything.


*


Once again, in Storm’s bed, she asks him: “So. It get any better yet?”

“What,” he says.

She cups her chin in her hand, leaning on her elbows. “Your imagination. It get any better yet?”

He looks at her. Gently, she adds, “Don’t you think it’s time to stop pretending?”

“Cut it out,” he says.

She remarks, “It’s starting to get painful to watch.”

“So stop watching,” he says, then shakes his head and says, starting over, “I mean, there’s nothing to watch.”

“Nothing to watch,” she repeats.

“Yeah, nothing,” he says.

Storm looks at him. She seems to be deciding whether or not she should say what she is thinking. Then she takes a deep breath and asks, “Is it because of what happened with Jean that you won’t admit it?”

He glares at her. “You’re out of line,” he says, and throws the sheet off of his body, looking for his jeans.

“I know how much you loved her, Logan,” Storm says.

“You don’t know anything,” he mutters, cursing their last more adventurous session, for making his belt buckle so hard to find. Finally, he finds it under her desk chair.

“‘I won’t let myself have feelings for someone else just to lose her again,’ that sound about right?” she says from the bed, eyes following him.

He finds one of his shoes under the bed, no socks. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“You’re not being honest with yourself,” she says. Then, thoughtfully, as an aside: “Or maybe you really are that dense.”

He finds one of his shirts and slips it over his head. Then he retorts: “Honest, like you are with Hank?”

Storm’s face goes blank. She pulls the bed sheet all the way up to her chin, covering her bare breasts.

“You’re right. We’re finished here. Your other shirt is by the door.” He can hear the tremor in her voice.

He freezes, sits up. “Wait, Storm, sorry, I—”

“Nope. Get out. Good night.”

He exhales and leaves, picking his shirt up off the doorknob, one foot still naked.


*


Almost instinctively, he goes to the kid’s room, but he can hear Gambit’s voice, saying, “Minou… minou… minou.” And her laughter—then no more laughter.


*


During a demonstration in class, the kid throws a particularly strong young boy over her head and onto the ground.

And when the young boy looks up at her in a mix of unabashed adoration and lust, she snickers and says, “Yikes—this is just a judo lesson, big guy. Don’t go falling in love with me.”

And he hears the words as if they are a command especially for him.


*


And then Rogue, Jubilee, Piotr and Kurt are sent on a mission, once again to guard Hank at the U.N. Disarmament Conference, now being held in Kyoto.

They are meant to be gone for nearly a week, as the conference will last for three days. He doesn’t see the kid at all for the week leading up to their departure—she claims the preparation is more complicated for this particular mission; he isn’t sure if he believes her.

Finally he catches her in her room, just before she is about to leave. When she opens the door and sees him, she hesitates, then reluctantly invites him in, saying she doesn’t have much time. He closes the door behind him, and watches her go back to zipping up her bag, putting on her shoes. He doesn’t smell the Cajun on her; she must have seen him earlier and showered.

“So, almost a week, huh,” he says.

“Yup,” she says, then zips the last zipper shut and stands, bag over her shoulder. “So say hi to Storm and your right hand for me.”

She laughs. “And Westchester County, I guess.”

He wants to say, Not Westchester County. Not Storm anymore, so much. My right hand—a lot.

When he tells her, “Bring me back a souvenir,” a look of pain flashes across her face—

And it is driving him crazy, wanting to know what it is, so he says to hell with finding a good moment, and grabs her by the arm and says, “What is that.”

She laughs, tries to tug her arm away playfully. “What? You want to have some fun before I leave? I guess I have two minutes—”

But he doesn’t let go of the arm. He says, “What the hell is with that look on your face every time someone mentions something related to Japan.”

Her face hardens. “Nothing. Let go.”

“No,” he says. “Tell me.”

“Logan, let go,” she says, and pulls—and she is strong, but he isn’t so weak himself, and if he puts the full weight of his skeleton into his hand, she’ll have trouble—

Until she cries, with the voice she used to cry for help that night on the Statue of Liberty, the voice that made him put his claws through his own chest—

“Fucking let go!” and pushes against his chest with the full force of her powers.

And she sends him straight through her heavy front door, into the hallway, and through the door to the room across from hers, which belongs to Kurt—who fortunately isn’t inside the room, because he is already on the jet.

He looks across the hall at her, splintered pieces of door in his lap, in his hair, in his shirt.

She looks at him, breathing hard, both fists clenched. Then she walks out of her room, bag in hand, and mutters, “Get this fuckin’ mess fixed before we’re back from the mission.”


*


That night, he knocks on Storm’s door. She opens it, and mock-cowers at him. “What, you want to destroy my door, too?”

“Can I come in?” he asks, never having had to ask before.

She looks at him, looks inside her room, then looks back at him and smiles remorsefully. “I don’t think so.”

He grimaces. “Are you still pissed about what I said about Hank, because I’m really sorr—”

She holds up a hand, shaking her head. “Ack. Enough. No. I’m not angry about that.”

“Then let me in,” he says, with a little smirk full of his intentions.

Storm keeps shaking her head, the same smile on her face. Then she goes into her room, searches for something, and comes back.

“Sorry, Logan,” she says. “But my general rule is to end things the minute the other person gets serious.”

Her eyes darken, and adds, under her breath, more to herself than to him: “It hasn’t always been a great rule, I admit.”

He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t—”

“Logan,” she cuts him off, impatiently. “You know I don’t mean with me.”

He gapes at her, but can say nothing. And in her hands, she is holding the shoe he had left there during their argument, and his two, now-washed, socks.

She smiles again at him.

“Good night, Logan,” she says, putting the items in his hands. And then he can only watch the door meet his face.


*


And when he masturbates, he cannot stop himself from thinking about the kid, so he doesn't even try; but at some point, he is no longer imagining fucking her, licking her, or being sucked off by her; but, rather, holding her, smelling her. And in his fantasy she smells of nothing but the two of them, and when he comes, it pains him, how not enough it is.


*


The poker night that week is cancelled; at this point, even Bobby knows to avoid being alone in the same room with Gambit and Logan.

He sees the Cajun everywhere: in hallways; in the cafeteria; in the Danger Room right after Gambit’s target-practice class, which is now scheduled just before his own close-combat class as a result of the shift in schedule with Kurt and Piotr away. Gambit, exiting the class shortly after his students, in his light body armor, carrying a bag of their practice projectiles in his arms; exchanging a silent look with Logan, in his loose sweats, ushering his own students in with his customary mocking taunts, only slightly more violent this week.

Logan doesn’t understand why Gambit still hasn’t ever confronted him. He long ago expected a cornering in some dark hallway, a strict order to “stay away from my girl,” a fierce promise of brutal punishments to come, if certain body parts of his ever again came in contact with certain of hers.

Then, he thinks, He must be wondering why I haven’t done the exact same thing.

So he asks himself why he hasn’t. And he thinks he and the Cajun must have the same answer, or attempts at an answer. Excess pride, for one—to issue an outright threat to the other one would be to admit weakness. Also, respect for the general peace of the mansion, especially given the current political climate—as mutants, they all have enough fighting to do.

But more than all of that, Logan thinks they both know that neither of them can say “my girl” and be correct. They both know that she belongs to no one; certainly to neither of them. Knowing that she has worked extremely hard to make it that way; to keep herself utterly separate, utterly un-possessed. To lay any sort of claim on her would be to ensure losing her altogether.

Perhaps they both also know that, somehow, despite their mutual resentment and distrust, they are not really fighting each other—though neither would turn down the opportunity if it presented itself. They both seem to understand that the real adversary is her; that she is far and away the strongest obstacle to either of their hopes or desires or—

But here Logan stops thinking, and begins class.


*


The replacement doors Storm has ordered by rush delivery, are indeed, delivered in a rush. And she leaves all the work to him: to install the doors in place, make new keys, make sure everything works; claiming that she has far more important things to do.

“Believe it or not, I do other things in this mansion besides fuck you and help you get in touch with your feelings,” Storm says with a grin.

“Yeah,” he snickers. “You fuck other people, too.”

And with exchanges like that, it is thus that the tissue of their friendship is protected, even after the end of their sexual relationship—which, he realizes, has unexpectedly lasted quite long. He wonders how long has it been since he started sleeping with Storm.

And he stops, just as he is fixing the kid’s door to its hinges.

Since Alcatraz, he reminds himself, harshly.

He hasn’t thought about it in a while, and the guilt of that realization opens his skin up again. The way it felt when he was struggling towards Jean, feeling each layer of himself ripped off, and then remade, again and again. And he feels it once more; how painful a happy life can be.

He thinks about what Storm said. What happened with Jean.

What did happen with Jean, he asks himself. He had come into the mansion a broken and unfinished creature, with barely fifteen years of memories, all of them consisting of cage fights and motels and women who walked away to live real lives. And when she had walked silently into Xavier’s office—after he had nearly crushed her windpipe in the medbay—she had seemed whole, composed, knowing, at ease in her loveliness.

He had thought, Beautiful, yeah, but probably up herself about it.

But when they spoke later in his room, and she told him about her mutation, he had sensed something else in her, something behind her wholeness and her composure, especially when mentioned working with the professor to develop her telepathy. Something sad and doubtful and fearful and dangerous all at once; as if she, too, thought there might be something broken and unfinished in her; as if she, too, was afraid to know what it was.

And the dangerous part had especially intrigued him; the idea that this woman in clean, expensive-looking clothes could be fierce, even wild; it aroused him to his toes.

Plus, the idea that she might be also able to read his mind, to reveal his past to him—that was too compelling to forget about.

And later, when he had asked her if she could use Cerebro, and she hadn’t wanted to admit that for someone like her, it would be "dangerous"—with Scott supplying the word instead—he had seen that look on her face again, and he had known for certain that there was something else in her, some side of herself she wouldn’t ever be able to show to her loving fiancé and her cherished mentor; some side of herself she thought it would be best to lock away, without perhaps even quite knowing what it was.

He had sensed immediately how unsure and afraid she was of her own power, and he had stopped thinking about how composed she was, but about why she had to be so composed.

He started thinking about the idea that someone that beautiful, that elegant, could be just as broken and unfinished as he was—and once he started thinking about that, he couldn’t stop. He started to think about what it might be like if he were the one she showed that side to.

When he had learned about the blocks Xavier had placed on her mind, he had been furious; furious because it reminded him too much of exactly what had happened to him. Finding out that she, too, had been controlled, contained, remade under someone else’s direction—that like him, her life had been decided for her—and he had known he was right about the look on her face.

He thinks that is the real reason why he had been the only one able to stop her, at the end. Not only because of his specific abilities, but because he knew what she was—knew her in a way the others, who had loved her more, and longer, than he did, wouldn’t ever know her, precisely because they loved her so much. Because they loved her, they wanted her to be safe, protected, normal—even at the cost of her own freedom. They loved her good; but she wasn't all good, and there wasn't anyone who had been able to love that part, until him.

Because he didn’t love her the way they loved her, he had been able to look at all of her without flinching; to recognize her face, contorted in rage and frustration and torment; knowing it as the one he himself had worn, too often, for too long.

And she had begged him to kill her, and he had panicked, had refused, had held her face in his hands; anything but that, anything but that; so he suggested Xavier’s help, and already saying it, he felt like he was betraying her, betraying the unspoken kinship between them; he had known the words were a mistake, even before she tossed him aside.

When he had said "I love you" to Jean, he had also wanted to say, just as much, just as desperately, as both apology and comfort: "I know you."

And after Jean, he had thought: I don’t want to know people anymore. It hurts too much to know someone like that.

Not realizing he might not have a choice in the matter, that his senses might catch things without his wanting to, that his body might let people in without his permission.

Like a girl into his camper. A girl in his room while he was having a nightmare. She was the one he hadn’t ever expected and certainly hadn’t ever asked for.

And now, inside the kid’s room, still making sure her door works, he can smell himself and the Cajun, can smell the sweat on her old clothes, the dirt on the bottom of her old shoes. And he realizes he has already long ago memorized every single smell.

In his head, he tells Storm that, to his dismay, his imagination might be getting a little better.


*


He makes two copies of the kid’s keys, handing Storm only one; knowing it is wrong, not caring.


*


And just like the goddamned Cajun, she fucking comes back injured.

But no one seems to know at first, because everyone is chatting and debriefing in the hangar, and coming up behind the group, still unseen, Logan is the only one who notices—although Gambit is not there to greet her, and he knows the Cajun would have noticed it, too, and then he wonders why Gambit is not here to greet her, but now there are more important things to think about—the way she is casually keeping her right hand in her jumpsuit pocket.

And he doesn’t speak, but walks up behind her and grabs the kid’s gloved hand out of her pocket before she can notice him and fight back.

Then he rips the glove off, and she shouts out in pain, “Motherfuck!”


*


And while he stares at the bloody, cut-covered hand—much, much, much worse than even he had expected—he can distantly hear the others asking:

“My God, Rogue—”

“Why didn’t you—“

“When—”

“How did that—”


*


She is still shouting, “Logan, let go!”

Still holding her by the covered wrist, he says, “So is the fuckin’ souvenir you brought back for me?”

Her eyes closed, wincing, gritting her teeth, she bites out. “Yeah, that’s it, now fucking let me—”

“I’ll take it, then,” he says brusquely, and pushes her sleeve up to grab her bare arm.


*


And he can hear her saying, just before he passes out, “If he doesn’t die, I’m gonna fucking kill him!”


*


And when he awakens, she is nowhere, and when he goes to her room, she isn’t there; and when he checks, she isn’t in the Cajun’s room, either.

For the rest of the week, she avoids him totally and completely, with martial determination. And if she happens to run into him, she starts hissing, “Somebody get him away from me before I fucking destroy him,” and Piotr and Kurt have to quietly, gently escort him out of the room and away from the mansion’s fragile valuables.


*


“We still don’t know what happened to her in Kyoto?” he asks Storm.

Storm shakes her head. “Hank had no idea she was injured, has no idea how that would have even happened. According to all members of the mission, there were absolutely no incidents to speak of. Totally peaceful.”

Logan asks, “You think it’s connected to how she got her powers in Manhattan?”

“I really wonder,” Storm sighs. “She hasn’t told you anything yet?”

“Not a fuckin’ thing,” Logan says.

She looks down, smiles forlornly. “Without any telepaths in this house, it’s harder to get to the bottom of things, isn’t it.”

And he looks at Storm, small inside Xavier’s office. She has changed so little about it; the globe, the intellectual knick-knacks, the antique books—she has kept it all. She has only brought in the documents and devices she needs for her day-to-day activities; as if she is only using the office temporarily.

“She’s completely healed,” Storm says. “But because you were the only one who saw the wound, we have no information about what it was or where it came from.”

“The way it looked, it was recent, like it happened just before they came back,” he says. “Her hand was totally covered in really clean wounds, like it had been cut a bunch of times. Like by a knife or sword.”

When he says sword, something moves in him, but he doesn’t know why.

“Well,” she says. “There is one thing. Beforehand, she asked specifically to be assigned to the Kyoto mission."

He stops. "Why?"

"I asked her, too, she wouldn't tell me," Storm replies. "Just said she wanted to go. Originally I was going to send you."

He cannot think, cannot breathe. "Why would she do that," he bites out, slowly.

Storm sighs. "I think you’re probably the only one who’s going to get anything out of her. Though Gambit might know something.”

“Gambit,” he repeats, and snaps to attention. He can feel his knuckles shivering again. “Why the hell would he know anything?”

Storm looks at him. “They do spend a lot of time together, Logan,” she says flatly. “It’s possible she would tell him things that she wouldn’t tell you.”

The idea—and the fact that he knows it is not just possible, but likely—must do something ugly to his face, because now Storm is raising both her palms in surrender, saying, “But who knows, it’s just a thought, calm down.”


*


The kid doesn’t come to see him. He sees her almost exclusively with the Cajun, who looks at him much the same way she does; ready to destroy him at the slightest suspicious movement.

He thinks, What the hell is she so angry about, she must’ve known I would do it, and if she didn’t know, come on, it’s not like it’s the end of the world.

And then he remembers something Jean said, about Rogue taking on his personality traits for a little while after the Statue of Liberty, and he wonders if it’s really just his own barely suppressed temper, lashing out at him.

Then he wonders—and he can’t believe it is the first time he has ever thought of it—what else she must have taken from him, that time.

He thinks about Japan, and the word sword, and the cuts on her hand, and the look on her face when he asked for a souvenir.

And none of it makes sense, none of it turns into anything that he can remember. But then again, the one thing he does know about himself is that there is so much he doesn’t remember; nearly an entire life in his head, all behind a door he cannot open, in a room he cannot enter, and even Jean and Xavier hadn’t really wanted to go inside his mind—

And then it dawns on him, that Jean and Xavier are not the only ones who have had access to his head.


*


She knows things, he realizes. She knows things.

And the lost past, which he had finally decided to abandon at Alkali Lake, walking away from Stryker forever—now comes roaring back to him, in a place he hadn’t thought to look.


*


He thinks about his body letting people in without his permission. A girl into his camper, a girl into his room. A girl he hadn’t expected and hadn’t asked for.

When he had thought to himself that he didn’t want to know people anymore, he had forgotten about the possibility of someone else knowing him.


*


Then he stops, chokes, and realizes that if all this is true, she must have seen inside his head again, this latest time.

And this time there are even more thoughts that he doesn’t know—but these ones, he can guess.


*


She still will not talk to him, or even be in the same room as him, but the action movie she wanted to see is coming out the upcoming Friday, so he throws a newspaper down directly on top of her pasta—“What the fuck! Gross, Logan, fuck!”—and says, simply:

“Friday. Seven o’clock. I’ll pick you up in your room.”

“If you’re setting the date of your own death,” she says calmly, “that sounds perfect.”

“Movie first,” he says and walks away, trying not to shake as he does.

Seeing Storm on the other side of the cafeteria, wanting to wipe the smirk off her face.

If the kid already knows what hasn’t let himself know yet, then all he has to do is—know it, too.


*


On Friday morning he is already shaking, because he doesn’t think he really knows yet what he’s supposed to know by now; or because it’s too hard to let himself know it, because he doesn’t want to know it, doesn’t want to open the door that knowledge would show him.

And on Friday evening he still doesn’t know. But he makes his way to the kid’s room, anyway.

At seven o’clock on the dot, her new door is locked, and there is no mistaking the sounds he is hearing. Even the Cajun, who is not the most reserved of sexual partners, sounds utterly, achingly undone. And the bed sounds like it is going to break the wall, the floor, itself, all the furniture in close range.

And he would like to think they are faking it, but he can smell the truth of it from outside the door, probably from the end of the hallway.

Logan swallows, looks down at his watch, which he had bought on the road, somewhere in Canada, by a woman who had looked like Jean. Seven-oh-five.

He knocks on the door, loudly, unmistakably. “Hey, kid, time to go.”

But if the sounds stop for a moment, the moment doesn’t last long, and then once again, every single sound of pleasure and exclusion bursts over him, within him, as if they are doing it in his own ear.

And he wants to put his claws in the new door; he wants to use the key in his pocket to barge in and tear the two apart; he wants to prove every hopeless expectation about himself right—

But then, suddenly, he thinks about what he was trying to teach his students during the tai-chi lesson: about stillness, about rootedness. About being unmovable.

He thinks of himself telling Jean, with wistful hope in his heart: “I could be the good guy.”

And Jean replying, knowing him too well, seeing through him yet again, “Logan, the good guy sticks around.”

Logan knows now what that grave, determined look on the Cajun’s face feels like, because he feels it in his own skin, hardening his features.

So he closes his eyes and swallows. He pulls out a cigar, lights it. Then he sits down, on the ground, next to her door. Hearing everything, smelling everything; enduring everything. And he waits. And waits.


*


When Gambit opens the door and sees Logan waiting there on the ground, even he has the decency to look shocked; then, a grudging acknowledgement.

“Later, minou,” he says loudly, still staring down at Logan, then closes the door behind him, discreetly, so that she will not glimpse the other man.

“I’m going in,” Logan says, standing. “Move.”

“She be busy for a while,” Gambit says. “You give her time to get dressed.”

“I don’t care,” he replies.

Gambit looks at him in appraisal and surprise. The words seem to have won Logan some respect in the Cajun’s eyes.

He says, “Rogue don’t want to see you.”

“I don’t care,” Logan says again. “Move. Now.”

Still looking at him, his appraisal concluded, Gambit shakes his head. “The man don’t even know,” he murmurs to himself.

“Out of my way, or I cut my way through you,” Logan says, and he already regrets it, having made the first threat; but then he doesn’t regret it anymore, because he thinks he might actually do it.

And now Gambit looks extremely satisfied, and Logan knows he was right, about the reasons they had never threatened each other up until now, and he feels his pride take a significant hit.

“Be my guest, mon ami,” the Cajun says, and this time the mon ami is purposeful, barbed, full of the kind of hidden rage Logan has only ever recognized in himself, and Jean.

Then Gambit moves out of the doorframe, and begins to walk down the hallway.

“Eh, Wolverine,” he calls, still walking away. “Gambit don’t have to say—one wrong move, Gambit takes your head.”

He turns back around, and the black and red eyes are fixed upon Logan. “You already know, yeah.”

And then he disappears around the corner, and Logan has to retract his claws, not having remembered putting them out in the first place.


*


The door has already locked on its own, so without a single second thought, Logan pulls out the spare key he has made for himself and opens it again.

She is still in bed, still naked, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling—and when she sees him, she screams, covers herself. “What the fuck,” she says. “How the hell did you get in here?”

He says simply: “Made myself a key.”

She says, “Jesus Christ. Get the fuck out of here.” And she wraps the sheet around her, hops out of bed, and tries to reach for her sweater, on the ground. He stops her, starts to move into her arms.

“Wha—wh—hey,” she says. “I haven’t forgiven you yet, asshole.”

“I don’t care,” he says, and doesn’t move.

“Logan—hold on—wait. Just wait.”

“No,” he says, and buries his face in her hair.

“You don’t have any gloves.”

“I don’t care.”

She is tense as wire underneath the sheet. “Just let me get showered, at least.”

“No.”

Her breathing catches, and she says, “Come on, Logan.”

“No.”

“Logan. Just let me take a shower.”

“No.”

“I know you can smell him,” she snaps, finally.

And he can—he smells the Cajun almost more than he can smell her, at this point. The whole room, her entire body, everything is rubbing the evidence in his face: the reality of her pleasure, of her total and absolute non-belonging, of the two of them together. He thinks he might actually have a kind of rage blackout, smelling it for so long, having it fill his nose so completely, having it be lodged so deeply into his body: this reminder of everything she is and does, that isn’t and will never be open to him, part of him.

And he thinks—with just that little thought, he knows a little bit of what he is still not letting himself know.

His arms around her, he sees that he is actually physically shaking with anger and he remembers the first time they had sex, when he had shaken and shaken, and she had been totally still and nonchalant.

Her voice is a little more gentle now when she says, “Come on, Logan. Five minutes.”

She tries to laugh. “Then we can have some fun, too.”

But he still doesn’t move. “No.”

“Logan, I know you can smell him,” she repeats, her voice rising again. “It makes me feel weird. Just let me take a shower. You must not like it either.”

“Yeah,” he says, barely able to speak through the fury. “I fuckin’ hate it.”

“So let go of—”

“No.” And he pulls up the bedsheet and meets her mouth with his, and realizes it is the first time he has ever kissed her.

And he lets the sheet drop for a moment and brushes his uncovered mouth on hers, quickly pulling away before she can start to protest, and then he yanks the bedsheet back up and kisses her through it again.

“Stop, stop,” she says when he breaks free and moves on to other parts of her body. “Shit. Stop.”

“No,” he says.

“Stop,” she says again.

“That’s not the safe word.”

“Logan, st—”

“That’s not the safe word,” he says again, coming back up to look at her face, directly.

She closes her eyes, and he can barely hear her voice now. “Stop.”

“That’s not the safe word,” he says again, and moves back down to kiss her stomach through the sheet. “Say samurai, and I’ll stop.”

“Logan.”

“Say samurai,” he says, moving further down, where she smells even more like the Cajun. “Or banana. Fuckhead. Sushi. Karaoke.”

She starts laughing in spite of herself, but he can smell the salt on her face. “Logan—”

He looks up at her. “If you want me to stop, then say any of those words.”

But she doesn’t speak, only looks down at him, shaking her head, over and over; in defiance, then in desire.


*


Afterwards, he says, before he loses his nerve:

“I want to know how you got your powers. And I want to know what you saw in my head.”

She freezes, says nothing. Finally, she whispers, “Which times?”

He stares at her. “Every time,” he says, and she jolts, and he knows he has said that to her before.

“Jesus, Logan—”

“There’s time,” he interrupts. “I’ll give you time.”

“Time to what,” she asks.

He looks down, at the bed, at his hands. “Time to not be afraid of whatever you’re gonna tell me,” he says.

She frowns at him. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she says, and she sounds distant again, and he can still smell the Cajun in her skin, in her blood.

“It’s not just for you,” he says, and he hadn’t expected to be that honest.

She closes her eyes. “Logan—”

“Don’t say no,” he says, and he knows it sounds like pleading. “Don’t you say you can’t.”

She looks down at her hands, miserably, and once again she looks like the girl he first met, and this time, he recognizes her; recognizes that girl inside this one, thinking he can see, a little bit, the outline of the path she has taken, to become who she is now.

He touches the top of her head with his mouth, then pulls away again, thinking if he touches her now, again, he won’t care about everything else.

“I’ll give you time,” he repeats, feeling every atom of empty space between them. “And then I’ll ask you again.”