'Cuz I can't make you love me
If you don't.
Three whole days. Outside of the week she'd been out of town, this was the longest she'd gone without talking to Logan. Six months she'd known him and she'd reduced herself to living for the next time he stopped by.
Rogue tried not to think about that. If she did she was afraid she would find it unreasonable behavior. No, she didn't need to think about it.
Instead she concentrated on her heart problem. It still gave her random fits of palpitations. After doing careful research, discarding silly theories such as heartbreak, she'd given up caffeine. She must have been drinking too much coffee. There was no other logical explanation for the way she'd felt lately.
She'd thought about mentioning it to Logan the last time he was over. He'd been tense, almost edgy. It was possible he could benefit from giving up something too. Although, she was willing to bet his healing factor took care of all his ills.
Three days. Maybe she should call and make positive he was okay.
"Yeah." At the sound of his voice, Rogue's heart did an odd sort of flip. She found it weird, this one felt as if her heart could be working properly again.
"Hey," she replied. "I'm at my apartment."
There was a pause. "I can't come." Logan's voice sounded different, far away.
"Busy?"
"Trying to work something out."
"Will you come by when you can?" There was a lot of noise in the background and she wished for the first time in her life that someone else was safe.
"Yeah, might be a few days."
When he did show up four days later in the evening, he looked like he'd been on a week long drunk. He smelled of stale beer and staler cigarettes.
"I can't stay." Logan had never avoided anything in his life, but now he avoided her gaze. She kept searching his face for something.
He didn't want to tell Marie it was over, that he couldn't continue on this way. But he didn't think he could go on pretending anymore. If he picked up his bag she would at least know he wouldn't be around much anymore. That was what he was telling himself; because he didn't want to admit after all he'd gone through for a better future, they didn't have a future at all.
Logan had promised her the time travel wouldn't change their relationship. In the end, Marie of the old timeline had been right to doubt him.
Rogue followed him into the bedroom and almost ran into his back when he stopped to grab his bag of clothes.
"Need a change of clothes, then I'll be out of your hair." He gave a half-hearted smile.
The colored votive candles on her dresser reflected in the mirror and threw odd patterns about the room. She looked so pale in the soft light. It transported him back to the moment in the monastery when he made his fateful decision.
She placed a trembling hand on his sideburn, running a thumb over his cheek. This past month Rogue had done everything she could think of to make him tell her again. If she could just hear 'I love you' once more, the dying muscle in her chest might be jumpstarted. But there seemed to be no right combination to make him say those words.
He let himself be pulled to the bed. Logan didn't put up any argument as she pushed down his jeans and pulled up her nightshirt. When he entered her, he buried his face in her neck breathing in her scent. It brought him some measure of warmth and hope. The tear he shed at what was destroyed by changing the past was lost in her hair.
Later at the door, bag over his shoulder, he placed a soft kiss on her lips. This time she had to turn away from the depth of emotion in his eyes. The kiss tasted like goodbye. It was full of regret and sorrow, and he'd held her as if he was committing the way she felt to memory.
Rogue went to stand at the window like she always did, but this time he didn't look up. He hunched his shoulders against the cold splatters of rain. Logan had said his farewell the only way he knew how.
Why then, since she wasn't emotionally attached, did it feel as if her heart were turning to a cold, dead stone in her chest at the same instant it felt like it was going to explode?
~*~
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000