Title: Running
Summary: Jean Grey ponders Logan's departure.
Rating: PG, I suppose, for character death.
Logan left a few days after Rogue's funeral. Thinking back on it now, I can admit that it angered and hurt me to see him go. I had grown used to the flirtations, the cocky grin, the swaggering walk … but I can understand the reasoning behind his going.
Somewhere, buried inside my subconscious, I think I always knew that Rogue was it for him, his one and only. And not because of my power – we all saw it. It wasn't just a simple understanding of one another, or a friendship evolved of strange and uncontrollable circumstances. Logan shared a connection with Rogue that ran so much deeper and stronger than love. Their bond was one as old as time and just as mysterious.
Pure and innocent, yet always passionate. Laughter was not all that they shared; the threads of their relationship existed through comfort, a shoulder to cry on, soft words in the early morning light. But more than anything, they thrived on acceptance. Outcasts among outcasts, he offered her a soft touch, too quick to activate her poisonous skin, while she gave him a future to look forward to, rather than a past to run from.
He never told her he loved her.
It was already dark by the time Professor Xavier and Ororo convinced Logan that there was nothing more that could be done at the hospital. And it was nearly dawn when the front door slammed shut. I don't doubt that everyone heard the bang, just as I don't doubt that nobody wanted to face a drunken, grief-stricken Wolverine. I don't consider them cowards; if I hadn't been in the kitchen putting on a pot of coffee, I would've been hiding behind my locked door too, pretending to sleep when sleep was impossible.
The light was on. I'm sure that's why he came into the kitchen in the first place, rather than go straight up to bed. I didn't want to deal with anyone, much less an inebriated mutant designed to be a killing machine. But when I turned and saw him – well, I don't think there was anything I could have done to prepare myself.
Logan was there, just leaning on the doorjamb and staring, his eyes wide and bloodshot and his face haggard. "I thought ya were Marie," he said. "Marie's always up now makin' coffee."
I don't know whether he reached for me or if I was the one to take the first step. Either way, an instant after the words left his lips I was standing in the middle of the big empty kitchen, missing Rogue as the tears ran down my cheeks and the lethal Wolverine sobbed into my shoulder. "I never told her I loved her, Red. I never told her," was all he kept repeating.
When Logan left, I realized how Rogue must have felt all those years ago after he'd handed her his dog tags and silently closed the door behind him. She must have been hurt, angry, confused. She would have felt abandoned. But above all, she'd have understood why he needed to go.
Now he's running again, and we all know he won't be back this time, at least not to stay. Before Rogue died, she'd somehow managed to ground him, to mold him into her heart. More than the mansion itself, more than any of the other X-Men, she was his world. Coming back to her was like coming home. But without his soul mate, his lover, his best friend, he has no reason to stay.
He runs because without her to gently guide him, to silently reprimand and praise him, his world has stopped turning and his very spirit has gone back to its wild ways. Now, instead of searching for his past, he wanders like a lost child, hoping to turn a corner and find that missing piece of his heart, of his soul. In his mind, everything will be all right again if he can only find her.
Because then he can finally tell her he loves her.