The Girl: Epilogue
Jubilee sat on her bed of crumbs, stains, drops of nail polish, innumerable missed laundry days and far beneath, presumably, wrinkled sheets. She stared expressionlessly as Marie moved around her side of the room, packing her shockingly few possessions--they're absence would leave no dent in the turmoil; every minute space cleared by her would be filled in immediately, like a child's hole dug too close to the shoreline.
"Well, bye," her roommate of three years chirped, an overly bright voice with an edge, as if insulted by her failure to speak first, exasperated by the thought of such hopeless rudeness. In the past months Jubilee had not said a word, courteous or otherwise, to Marie (and somehow this was inexplicably connected to the sense of cautious awe attached to her since the night with the boats, the statue.)
And though later she would be loudly expressing her glee at being finally free of the younger, stranger girl, of having privacy and "space to think" for a change, after the door closed Jubilee would gaze at her lap, blinking and swallowing and not really in the mood to talk to anyone.
Marie did not reply.
::::::::::::
All of what was Marie's was crammed into a box and two brown grocery bags--the latter balanced rather doubtfully on the former. Flimsy, snagged from the kitchen and still smelling of the peanut butter and oranges it had once contained. The requisite bathroom items, books, a few binders, clothes, an empty picture frame, a handful of pretty shells found at the last beach trip, a music box, a pair Carnival-won stuffed kittens, and the pair of gloves Jean had asked her to wear but which Logan had commanded her not to. Heavy, but that was okay. She wasn't going far.
Up the stairs, each step taken slowly without the benefit of being able to see her feet or grip the handrail--fingers curled around the outer corners of the box, nails digging into the cardboard. Reaching the landing of the fourth floor, wobbling but managing to steady herself. The fourth floor, past maroon doors with their empty anonymity and polished handles. Step by step to the one whose bore a smudge, a perfect oval of blackish goop from a pickups engine--a stamp of deliberate defiance against the cleaning staff...and then past Logan's, down one further. The room beside his, empty since his stays at the mansion became more than brief. The door looked no different than the other's along the hall, but stood out with the shining contrast of being Hers.
She shifted the load in her arms enough to precariously free her hand, ignored the bag that had slid and was currently crushing itself against her cheek. The knob was icy to the touch, smooth, free of even the slightest groove, as if it had never felt the eroding touch of another's hand, as if it had been crafted yesterday, or not at all--as if the metal had shaped itself into perfection. Marie bit her lip, decided that the thoughts were hers, not the admiration of another's.
So strange, that the door should swing open with such ease--not blocked by errant clothes or teenage debris. The Professor had said she was reaching the age in which a shared living space was no longer quite appropriate--though few of the other students had single rooms. He'd told her that she deserved it--Marie doubted there was any statement she could disagree with more--and that with the weight of upcoming college courses, she would need somewhere to retreat to, to study and rest. Although his words were spoken as if being read from a prompter, Marie had felt as nearest to real excitement than she'd been in a long time--and puzzled as to why Logan considered Xavier so cold.
All she saw at first were the seemingly endless stretches of carpet, flat as a prosperous farmer's fields before plowing, their sharp ends at the sides and corners of the room. Burgundy snow, too pristine to be left alone. Marie noted the bed--large, it's floral sheets lacking even the most petite of ripples--and was momentarily thrown by the fact that there were not two of them. A chest, a large armoire in which her small collection of shirts and jeans would hang shyly, alone and engulfed by too much free space. A bathroom where she could spend as much time, as much water, as she pleased. A clean, astonishingly scentless atmosphere waiting for enough of her presence to imprint itself. A new world, more than anything she'd had for herself.
And against the far wall, something that did not blend in with their color-coded surroundings and not built to. Three bookcases whose head would reach her waist, sitting close to the bathroom door in a not-quite straight line. Unpainted and unadorned, save for the artistic trim of bark left running along it's side. Marie set her belongings down with a carefulness she didn't really feel, approached the shelves slowly, as if they might awaken and shift into an animal's crouch--or flop onto their backs to be pet.
The wood was thick, sturdy. A deep interior that promised silently to be filled. Creamy tan, with whirls of chocolate lines. A hello, a welcome, a link whose chains would not snap regardless of the pull on either end, a Familiar. Marie ran her fingers over the top of the closest, stirring the scent of pine and voices in her head that wanted to talk about cabins and raw animal flesh and how a tree sounded when it dropped it's weight to the Earth. Marie felt the corners of her lips rise, crinkle unaccustomed flesh. She looked to the right, not at the level gaze of the wall's blank plaster, but beyond it. She wondered if Logan would be home--and knew even as she did so what the answer was; she didn't have to ask it.
:::::::::::::
He built them entirely from scratch, eschewing even store-bought lumbar in favor of a tree, plucked from the well-stocked supply on Xavier's property. Pine, chosen for it's strong, pure smell as much as the fact that it had already been toppled in a recent thunderstorm--Logan did not believe in waste. Cut with an axe, and his claws when the former showed the slightest signs of dulling. Hewn into rectangles, nearly all of the bark peeled with easy twists of a blade. Each block trimmed, again and again, until they looked identical even to Logan's eyes--and then sanded, every inch, rubbed with his hands to catch the splinters before they could bite a softer palm. The last step was completed with a small handful of nails and a half hour; bookshelves were simple things. No paint, certainly no varnish--even the thought of such a scent lit a flame in his airways like he'd swallowed a torch.
When he was done there were three. Medium size, with pleasing swirls and shifting tints in the wood like a natural mosaic. Sanded again, the sharp edges made round, scrubbed with pine needles to enhance the aroma. Freestanding, though Xavier had given him (unrequested) permission to build them into the walls of her new room...But that would make it difficult to change it's position--or move it into another's.
The job took him two weeks of those rare moments away from her, an hour or two on nights when Logan could convince himself that she was safe enough and asleep enough to risk slipping out to the wood shed. But that wasn't often, because she might be struck with insomnia, a nightmare, a sudden and simple need to find him...that she had not so far did not factor in Logan's reasoning.
Logan set the shelves up in her room, the one he'd told Xavier to offer Marie in order to ensure her acceptance. Lately the need to watch her, have her close at all times, would not negotiate terms for anything less than a few feet. He did it early in the morning, so she would not intercept him as she brought up her things--which he'd promised to help carry, but had known in the same way he'd known The Professor, not him, should be one to suggest her moving next door to him, that she would refuse. Perhaps because the idea of him and a bedroom were still too raw to connect, perhaps because of the alarming complexity her moods had taken on, as reliable as dry sand since the night Lennsher had dealt her a nearly irreparable blow--or was it the night before? Which of the two men had been the one to hurt her, change her in a way that could not be forgotten with a few words and a happy ending?
---It was okay. He didn't have to be there to see the look on her face, hardly wanted to anyway. Only pussies bounced, hovered around the receiver of a gift to be gratified by the reaction...Besides, the walls were thin and his senses like razors. No reason he couldn't be relaxing in his room when she found them.
For the first two weeks after the nerve-shattering flight to Liberty Island and the mostly unconscious one back, Marie had seemed okay. Not good, but not off enough for Jean to listen to his concerns. Tired a lot, and distracted, visibly upset even panicked if Logan was out of her sight for even the barest of moments (and, in a secret part of him, gratifyingly so), but spoke aloud no protest or reason for such fear. Each morning red-rimmed eyes poked out the door of the room she'd shared with the girl who favored banana-tinted attire, sought him out frantically and seemed wildly relieved to find him in the same space on the hall's floor.
And then things had begun to change, shift like a kaleidoscope being slowly twisted in the viewer's hand. She looked at everyone else with tepid suspicion, now that whatever image she'd held of the mansion had burst like an infant's spitbubble. Logan would find Marie with her head in her hands, or pinching the bridge of her nose, or rocking to a tune he couldn't hear, whose soothing properties were apparently not potent enough.
Every inquiry as to whether she'd gotten any sleep was met with the same response, and when asked why she replied inexplicably that it was, "too loud." Occasionally her mouth would open in a reply to a question or one of her own, and what she had intended to say (evident in the widening of her eyes, the stunned set to her lips even as they moved) became something unfathomable about camps, about back alley deals and improperly cooked meth, about waterfalls and gunshots. She spent a lot of time in Xavier's office, working through some side effect of touching him that she could not or would not discuss with him.
And reassuring herself with his presence became a gaze that would not quite meet his, a strange-sounding voice telling him one morning that he could go back up to his room, she was fine, she didn't need him there. Classes skipped and she didn't come to find him. Hours, even days when a wave of hurt or apathy would unexplainedly wash over what had been a more neutral or even happy mood. Afternoons of shutting herself in the library, requests to be left alone. Demands for him to stop following her and lost, broken expressions when he didn't know he still was.
But she still met him for every meal, still sat beside him to watch a football game--or hockey, or wrestling, or any sport he could feign enough interest in to propose--and there were fewer inches of couch leather between them with every passing evening. When ill, it was still Logan's hand allowed to linger on her forehead to check for fever, her throat for swollen glands. And his face was still the first searched for upon entering a room.
And, after all, Marie had been very excited about moving in next door. She hadn't shown the slightest misgivings when she'd told him and surely...surely that could not have been pleasure merely for getting away from her roommate.
Logan could hear her footsteps now, brushing past his door as if a caress rather than a sound. The swish of denim moving against itself, the turn of the knob. He sat on his bed, his back against the headboard and those precious inches of plaster and wood and insulation. A whisper of something being set down, perhaps on the floor. The fibers of the carpet bending down like stalks of wheat, rustling. And then, finally, what Logan had been waiting for.
An intake of breath--not too accentuated, but enough to set itself apart from its brethren inhales-exhales. A petal-soft palm stroking silky wood, the unique swirl set in her fingertips catching on the pine's grains, creating music for Logan's straining ears like the friction between grasshopper legs, like a rosined bow on a cello.
Logan shut his eyes, alone and hence less abashed at the notion that she had altered him, chopped and worn him down to something a distant kin to what he had once been--like the pine tree. He filled his lungs with the scent of her delight.
And someday, he thought, that aroma would not be so rare and elusive. Someday it would be up-close, like the smoke of birthday candles just blown out.
Someday, somenight, there would be a knock on his door--quiet, her knuckles grazing against the wood rather than rapping, as any others would. Someday her eyes would be shy, but not afraid--or at least not unbearably so. Someday she would ask again to spend the night in here--or perhaps Logan would offer first. And she would lay with as much space between their bodies as anyone could without falling off the mattress. That curve of dark hair, or perhaps a pale cheek, cradled by the dip made in the pillow, failing in her efforts to be unobtrusive as she stared at him.
Logan would be still, a special sort of exhilaration fluttering against the confines of his skin but months--hell, years, and two crucial nights had made it a beast he'd never been more in control of. She would ease toward him with little encouragement from him--perhaps a "here, Kid", a lifted arm, a cozy nook her body could fill, and a "good girl". A peaceful expression that would promise more safety than words could.
Soft muscles and softer mounds would fit and feel so perfect against him. Little motions she couldn't help. They would rest like that for as long as she wanted, as long as she needed. And his chest would rise in slow, even waves.
And then his head would dip down. Nose, nuzzle, nudge away her hair. A kiss to her forehead. Light, testing, a little hug. He knew what he was doing. Rub her back to brush loose the tension in her flesh, let his fingers find and tickle the underside of her elbow until her arms unwound from their tight knot across her chest. Logan's knuckles would slide up and down her stomach, perhaps ease up or ease open her shirt, stroke away any shivering. He would lean back, so she wouldn't feel smothered, that she had an escape route, that he was only on one side and not everywhere at once, not yet.
And Marie would feel the cords, not twanging staccato but stroked with low, vibrating notes--the palm of musician following, gentling the created tremors before the next measure.
Logan thought he would use his hand first, then his mouth, kiss his way down her throat, her chest. Find all those places where sweat and nerves accumulated, and make friends with each. Let her wriggle, buck against him and her legs fall open with a biological understanding. He would whisper her names against damp folds until she was in a place beyond thought or fear. And then he would slide into her, take root like he was scraping away strips of his being to replace the lining of hers. They would move like continents, breaking and drifting away and into each other.
Logan opened his eyes.
It hadn't happened yet. But you never know. Someday.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
This post is absolutely, 100% dedicated to Sahara, without whom it literally would have been thrown in the trash/discarded with an irritated click of my mouse. She is wonderful and deserves whole truckloads of Godiva chocolate & raunchy ferals.
I know that many of you were on opposite poles regarding the issue of this epilogue--because of this, what you will find here is very different from what I intended to write--it may be worse, it may be better; even I'm not sure--and I am heartily sorry should this disappoint you. The best I can offer, to those dead set against the idea and determined to see me cry should I go ahead with it anyway, is an 90% sincere apology and a promise that I will not track you down, put a gun against your head, and force you to read it.
That being said, special thanks go to Annie77 and Litlen, who rescued what little shards of sanity I have left--and to Tamana, whose review I reread just when I was about to give up and throw something valuable against the wall.
.
I know that many of you were on opposite poles regarding the issue of this epilogue--because of this, what you will find here is very different from what I intended to write--it may be worse, it may be better; even I'm not sure--and I am heartily sorry should this disappoint you. The best I can offer, to those dead set against the idea and determined to see me cry should I go ahead with it anyway, is an 90% sincere apology and a promise that I will not track you down, put a gun against your head, and force you to read it.
That being said, special thanks go to Annie77 and Litlen, who rescued what little shards of sanity I have left--and to Tamana, whose review I reread just when I was about to give up and throw something valuable against the wall.
.
Chapter End Notes:
.
Well.....here we are again. Hope you don't resent me too much for having subjected you to the above. I struggled a great deal with this conclusion, amidst heavy doses of Nyquil, blowing my nose, and crooning the "Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions" song to my dog.
Thank you for making your way to this point--I wish you many happy hours of reading ahead, chocolate, naked Hugh Jackman pictures, and just enough ice on your roads to close your place of work and/or school and enable you to enjoy the aforementioned. And if you care to make me the happiest person imaginable, please click on the review button down below.
Well.....here we are again. Hope you don't resent me too much for having subjected you to the above. I struggled a great deal with this conclusion, amidst heavy doses of Nyquil, blowing my nose, and crooning the "Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions" song to my dog.
Thank you for making your way to this point--I wish you many happy hours of reading ahead, chocolate, naked Hugh Jackman pictures, and just enough ice on your roads to close your place of work and/or school and enable you to enjoy the aforementioned. And if you care to make me the happiest person imaginable, please click on the review button down below.