"You'll never be going back home." Tom Waits.
"We are being very nomadic with the truth, yes? The both of us? Do you think this is acceptable?" Jonathan Safran Foer.
"But if you never find the heart to start all over again, remember I was one who tried to be a friend to you." Concrete Blonde.
She slipped through the crowd, easily avoiding their touch. Eased herself onto a barstool, and slid a fifty folded around a forged license across the slick surface.
"Molson. Keep 'em coming." The barman nodded and did as he was told.
Places like this always made him surface. Truth be told, she welcomed it; encouraged it, sometimes. Brassy country music on an old jukebox, a bar nipped and gouged by the scars of a thousand fights, dim lighting and thick smoke. She made it a point, on travels, to every once in a while hit the sort of place she thought he'd like. Just for old times' sake. She'd lived with his ghost in her head and that entitled her to a few things.
"Molson," a voice echoed, down the bar. "Keep 'em coming." Rogue's head lifted, slowly, and oh, wasn't that precious, wasn't that perfect, because after all these years, there he was.
She turned back to her beer. If she had any luck left, he'd never smell her in the din. Good to know he was still around – she'd heard he was, of course, but hadn't seen him.
"Just like the lady there," the barman was saying, and of course Logan looked up, and his nostrils flared, and his eyes widened, and then he came to sit next to her. Neither of them looked at each other. They drank for a few moments, in silence.
"Never figured you for a place like this," he said.
"Funny," she said. "I knew it was your kind of place."
"Old dogs," he agreed with a grunt. Drank again. A silence stretched, and while it wasn't companionable it was not hostile, either. Rogue never underestimated the comfort of a lack of open hostility.
"You want something, sugar?"
"Wanted to know how you are. How you've been."
"Why?"
"That's the kind of thing a friend asks, isn't it?"
"Are you?"
He thought about that, for a moment, before answering. That was different. "Used to be. That count for something?"
"Not much does, these days."
He grunted. "The hell have you been up to? I've heard things, but—"
"Probably sounds better that way," she said tiredly. "Been living my life, Logan. Done a shit job of it, but – that's how it goes sometimes."
"Huh." He turned the idea over. "I always thought – thought you'd be okay."
"You should've known better," she said with a shrug. "I did."
"You did not."
"Didn't want to. Was I expecting it? Different story."
"So tell me."
"Which parts you want to hear, Logan?"
"Everything that's true."
"It's all bad. You know me," she said, lifting her hand up. "Can't touch a thing without killing it."
"Didn't kill me."
She sighed. "It's kinda public, here. I got a room – it's got a bar in it. We can talk there."
"Okay," Logan said. What else could he say?
-0-
He let her lead him out through the parking lot, to a car – a nondescript white American sedan. Four doors. She thumbed the alarm off and with a solid mechanical thunk the doors unlocked. She used to like those little Japanese sports cars. The ones that looked like rockets.
"Never would've figured you for a car like this," he tried to say lightly.
"Times change, Logan," she said. "What's more anonymous than a white four-door?"
"Nothing," Logan said, remembering the time he'd taught her that. He opened the passenger door and eased himself in. Fumbled with the seatbelt, out of reflex – and the memory of old arguments – but when he saw she ignored hers he didn't bother.
"Not so safety conscious now, huh?" he asked.
"I got one up on you," she said. "In-god-damn-vincible. Can't even pluck an eyebrow anymore."
"Huh," Logan said. "Heard about that. She still in there?"
"No," she said, coolly.
"No she's not?"
"No, we're not talking about that."
"Okay."
"Okay?" Marie asked. "Who taught you self restraint?"
Logan ignored that jab and watched Marie drive. Her capable hands moved across the wheel, adjusted the gearshift, and Logan recognized himself in the motion. It pleased him, and then it bothered him: did she know there were still pieces of him left inside her mind? Did she want them to be there?
The rain started, fat drops splatting against the rented windshield. Marie made a "Tch" sound, vaguely, against her teeth, then flicked the wipers on.
"God damn rain," she said. "Don't hardly ever stop."
"We're in Washington," Logan said. "What'd you expect, sunshine?"
Marie shook her head, ignoring that conversational attempt too. Fine. Logan could wait. He'd got this far, into her car, being taken somewhere so they could talk more easily. He'd lost the right to decide how things would happen a long time ago.
-0-
Logan waited through the rest of the drive – a quick hop on and off a highway, a detour around some construction. The destination was nothing he'd expected: a decent hotel, with key cards and shining brass fittings and staff behind the desk waiting to be useful – or, more likely, hoping they wouldn't have to be useful.
"You see all those cameras?" Logan asked, in the elevator.
"You got anything to hide?" Marie replied. "I don't. Not anymore." She stepped out of the elevator and into a hallway: beige walls, reddish carpet, mathematically-positioned light fixtures. Ugly art. A step up from the places Logan crashed when he was on the road.
"You're not part of that anymore?"
"I'm not part of anything," she said, fishing in her coat pockets for the key card. "I'm just me." Card found, she slid it into and out of the lock on the door. "Just some old mutie bitch who was on the news, once or twice, a long time ago."
"You're not old, kid," Logan said, dropping into an armchair.
"Not a kid anymore either," Marie said. "Pull up that table, huh?"
Logan did that, and grabbed an extra chair too. Marie returned minus the coat, with a double handful of little bottles of booze.
"You ever think folks like us are just wasting all the good booze?"
"How d'you mean?" Logan asked.
"Not like I can get drunk anymore. And you never did."
"Good booze ain't for getting drunk on."
"You think Genesee is good."
"Usedta. Maybe I don't anymore. Maybe I'm into wine now. You don't know."
"You don't change," Marie said flatly, and Logan couldn't argue with that because it was true. He watched her line the bottles up on the table. Two blank shot glasses, no hotel logos. "You got until we're out, hon."
"For what?"
"For whatever the hell you want to know. Then you get gone." She uncapped the first bottle.
"You really want it to go this way?" Logan asked. "We used to be friends. Good friends."
"Don't," Marie said. "If that's where you're gonna go with this you can get up and walk out that door right now. If you have some burning need to make things right, you're running a little late."
"Always was," Logan muttered, downing the first shot.
"Yeah, you were," Marie said, knocking back her own. "We used to be friends. So you get some answers. Maybe that'll be enough for you to learn I don't need rescuing anymore."
"Then what?" Logan asked.
"Then whatever. You live your life. I'll live mine. And if you start getting all grumbly at me I will put you out in that hallway. I can do that, now."
"I heard."
"Y'heard everything, didn't you?" she asked, refilling the glasses. "Why are you here then?"
"What you hear and what happened aren't the same thing."
"So ask me," she said coolly. Logan studied her for a moment: as beautiful as ever, but colder somehow, harder, as though she'd accepted how useless it was to change the world. This wasn't what he'd wanted. Was what he thought he'd do to her, if he got too close. Funny that it all went the other way.
"Where did you go after – when you left?" he asked, finally.
"Mmm. To Erik. You know that."
"Never did figure out how."
She tapped her head. "I knew how to find him. Or – how to find someone who would. Same thing, really. You might've met her. With any luck you killed her. Raging bitch, called herself Emma?"
"Oh. Scott's girlfriend."
"You shittin' me?"
"Not a word of it."
"That boy – anything with tits and telepathy, huh?"
"Something like."
"She knew where Erik was. That was fun." A chuckle. "I got into her rooms – Erik knew the back way in. I couldn't bend the metal like he did, but I learned lock picking from the best." A nod to Logan. "When she found me, I told her that either she'd tell me how to get to him or I'd take it from her head."
"So she told you?"
"Yeah. And he – he understood."
"Thought he'd condemn you for it."
"Not a bit. He understood it all. I felt like they'd failed me. I wished I'd never taken it, because then I wouldn't know what I was missing."
"You still think that?"
A shrug. "Sometimes. Other times I'm happy I did, because I know if I hadn't I'd always be wondering what I could have done with five months of freedom."
"You really think of it like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you're trapped?"
"Wouldn't you?"
He thought. "Guess so. I would. But you, you're – you were—"
"No. I never got used to it. Still haven't." She sighed. "Do you have any idea what that's like, to hate something that's a part of yourself?"
He made a fist and examined it. "Yep," he told it.
"Bullshit, Logan. I know you. You like having those damn things in you. You don't like what they mean. You don't like what they could say about who you were. But you like them. I hate my skin. There's a difference."
He was quiet for a moment, then, "How is it you still know me so well?"
"You don't change."
"Seems to me I changed a hell of a lot when you showed up. Though," he said, pointing the shot glass at her, "not as much as you have."
"Ain't that true," she replied, still cool and still disinterested. Logan wondered whether the girl he'd known was still in there.
"Learned the hard way not to care too much," she told the silence. "It just hurts, later. Or to trust anyone. Same goddamn thing."
"You turned into me," Logan said.
"And you turned into – what are you now, Captain Hero or something? Heard you damn near run things there."
"Yeah." It was good, the life he had. Doing something good for the world. For the kids. "You can still come back," he offered.
"The prodigal daughter returns, all hail the Wolverine. That why you're here?"
"It's not like that."
"You still don't get it. I never wanted to be there. It was good, you know, not being alone anymore. Good people there. But it wasn't what I wanted."
"You didn't want it at all," Logan said.
"So you see why I tried," she said.
"I told you then," he said. "Long as it was for you, I didn't care."
"No, you didn't. That's the point, Logan. I did whatever the fuck I was gonna do, and you – you didn't care."
"I—" he started. There were plenty of ways to end that thought. I had other things on my mind. I had a lot going on. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I really believed you knew what you were doing. I was too caught up in that god damn Phoenix business to notice anything else.
Deciding that now was the time for honesty, if nothing else, he repeated the last one.
"Why wouldn't you be?" she asked coolly. If there had been any bitterness, it had been buried, deep, a long time ago. "Kinda hard not to notice when she went off like that. Especially for you."
Own your mistakes, she'd always said. "Yeah. I fucked that up real bad, for you."
"You did," she said. "But I did it on my own anyway. And for a while it was good. I was better."
"Weren't bad before."
"You live with my skin and say that. You live with you in my head, and Erik, and Carol, and you tell me that's not bad."
Logan thought. "I can't."
"I know. I put a good face on it, but you know it was hell. It is. Every goddamn day."
"And we went and blew up the cure." There it was: the thing unspoken. That, not Jean, was why she'd stared at him with betrayal in her eyes, those last few days, before she'd vanished. And with him inside her head, he knew, there was no way to find her unless she wanted to be found.
"If you could do that," she said, her voice steady, "if you could do that and look me in the face and tell me there was nothing wrong with what you did, then you didn't know what I needed. Not at all. Or you did and you didn't care."
"Or I didn't notice," he admitted, hating himself even now for it. "We thought Chuck was dead, we thought Scott was dead, Jeannie was dead, everything up in fucking flames, cures being shot outta guns – you know what I had to do there. I had to kill her."
"And you loved her."
"I did." That simple admission hung in the silence for a time: past-tense.
"You don't still?"
"She's dead. Don't matter anymore what I felt or not."
"That's why you could do it," Marie said, pouring another drink. "Why you could kill her."
"But I couldn't help you," Logan finished the sentence.
"And here we both are," Marie said. "Funny how it all turned out."
Logan started a sentence and stopped, then reached for the last little bottle.
"You wanna drink that one slow," Marie said. "That's done, so are we."
"Don't do this," he said, opening the bottle, pouring the drinks. "Not to me."
"Not to you? Who the hell are you to say that now?"
"I'm sayin' what I should have a long time ago," Logan said. Cards on the fuckin' table, and whatever she decided he would take. He didn't get to call the shots anymore. "I owe you. I know that. I fucked it up, fucked it bad, a long time ago."
"You're a bit late," Marie said, sipping the last drink. Letting it last.
"Always was, darlin'. But here I am. Anything you want, you say the word and I will make it happen."
"Got a time machine?" she asked eventually.
"Nope."
"How about a way to make me forget the last ten years of my life?"
"Don't have that either."
"So now what?" she asked. Curious, finally.
"Come with me," he offered.
"Where?"
A shrug. "Anywhere. You got anything keeping you here?"
"No."
"Okay then. I always promised you—"
"You can't pick up like everything didn't happen. That's not how it works. We're not gonna go on some god damn road trip and have me turn back to eighteen and hopeful and suddenly life is okay."
"Never said it would. But let's go anyway. Somewhere we've never been, either one of us. Figure out what's there to see. Figure out who we are now. Going backwards won't do either of us any good. Let's do something new instead. This ain't a rescue. It's a start."
The silence stretched between them. Logan didn't think, didn't hope. He just waited.
Marie downed the last of her drink. "You got yourself a deal, sugar."
NOTES:
I never liked the X3 movie, but it did offer some interesting angles for fic. Since there's so much comic canon to choose from anyway, the backstory here works like this: after X3, plenty of other stuff happens (Rogue joins up with the Brotherhood, but otherwise feel free to imagine between the blanks as you wish) until the state of the X-Men is more or less as seen in Joss Whedon's Astonishing run, and Rogue is no longer a player in the world of mutant politics.
This is, in its way, a couple of conversations I wish I could have. That's how life goes, sometimes. You can't look back, you can't go home, and you can never undo the things you've done. But you can go forward. That's worth something, isn't it?