This was her favorite kind of day -- cool and bright, where the dew twinkled off the cobwebs pulled taut between the two jagged branches of the tree standing crookedly out of the box in the sidewalk, the air fresh and crisp and sweet with maple sap. The sun splintered through fat three-pegged dark red leaves and warmed her toes.
Things were different now. There were no superheroes in the small East Coast neighborhood where she lived, no mutants. No epic battles and world-ending catastrophes. The only real excitement that occurred around her was through the lights and colors of the TV screen when she curled up with her cat named Kitty each evening at six. She had a routine. A pattern. A life.
The days of the X-Men and all that accompanied seemed like a distant fantasy, a strange biopic dream she'd just woken from and could swear was real. It was funny, really, what she remembered of that time -- remembered the creak of tight leather on nimble bodies, the glossy ivory ocean of Ororo Munroe's hair. She could recall the gritty feel of dirt between her fingers as she crashed into the artificial ground in that legendary Danger Room, recall the kiss of fire and ice as her boyfriend and his best friend battled out their differences. She could remember the feel of Logan's sideburns, bristly and coarse, against her palm as she killed him inch by inch.
The memories still caused her heart to pound and her breath to come in frantic heaves, as though her body was not quite convinced she'd ever really left Xavier's mansion. But she had. She had new friends now, gentle easy-going young people who dreamed of being doctors and lawyers and Nobel Peace Prize winners. Who worried about things like college tuition and whether or not to marry their high school sweetheart. They were good people who loved her, un-swathed her from the miles and miles of fabric that had woven her into a cocoon of solidarity. With them, she got along. She belonged.
So as she walked to the book shop where she worked when she wasn't attending classes that fateful morning, she felt no fear. No trepidation, no excitement, no trembling heart-wrenching thrill. She felt sweet and happy and whole, at peace with the universe, exactly where she needed to be when she needed to be there.
Her thoughts never roamed the uneven and mountainous terrain that was the memory of the X-Men that day, never lingered over the telltale scent of cigars, cheap liquor and flannel. Not once did she think of them -- not even when a young woman with bright pink hair walked into the store and asked if they carried a copy of The Once and Future King, a volume she kept stashed under her mattress who's spine was as arthritic as her great-grandma's, who's words were run together by tears and who's pages were curled by long hours being rubbed between her fingertips. No, she had moved past all that. She had not pulled out that book for many months now.
She had healed all those old wounds.
The shop was unusually quiet that day, with only one other customer aside from the pink-haired girl. Neither bought anything. So she spent the afternoon crouched comfortably in the corner of the front desk, leafing through magazines and giggling over the exploits of dashing celebrities. She texted her boyfriend, a charming dark-eyed fellow named Robby. She even ate the piece of apple pie the matronly owner of the cafe next door brought for her.
After closing she walked home again, whistling a tuneless theme to her life and kicking at fallen acorns. It was early evening, and people were out. Families sitting on their porches, sipping lemonade, little children running the streets. Not many cars through here. Not many strangers. This was a small calm world of familiar people. Nobody here to be afraid of.
She felt him long before she ever realized it. A shift in the air, perhaps, or a hang-over from the talents afforded to her by the soul she had absorbed; she wasn't sure. Her porch-swing, the one Lily, her roommate, always laid on in the summer when she was making out with her boyfriend, was rocking slowly back and forth. It was autumn now. Nobody touched it.
Inside, the house was exactly as it should be. Small, tidy, lived-in: a beanbag chair and a couch in the front room, a flat-screen TV. Tight colorful kitchen with shafts of sunlight filtering through the flimsy pale yellow drapes. Cabinets with stickers on them, a fridge with photos in magnetic frames. The bedrooms were undisturbed, hers with her bed still unmade and her window still cracked open; Lily's a tornado tragedy of magazines, make-up and discarded clothes.
There was nothing to indicate that somebody had been in here since she left it early this morning, after Lily had gone to class. Nothing at all.
But she knew. She just knew.
Finally, she found it. Proof of her suspicions. It was long after dark, when Lily was stretched out on the sofa eating macaroni and cheese. It was her cuckoo clock, the one her mother had given to her when she was five. A little purple kitten popped out and meowed every hour. Somebody had snapped it off, probably in alarm, and then painstakingly re-attached it; she could imagine it now, him standing here -- the kitten exploding out, startling him. Him snapping out as fast as lightening and ending its long career of time-keeping. He may have put it back to cover his tracks, or maybe out of guilt. Knew this was something of hers and felt sorry to have broken it. Yes, that sounded right. That sounded like him.
"It probably just broke on its own, honey. It's, like, four hundred years old. Clocks to that eventually, even if you change the batteries," Lily advised wisely, waving her cheesy spoon in the air.
But the cuckoo clock's muteness made her certain, and she knew she was right. He had been here. Searching for her, perhaps? No. No, then he would have found her: it would take no effort for him to track her from here to the shop. No effort at all.
Then maybe just to check in. Maybe just so he could feel confident that he knew where she was, even after all these years.
A new thought occurred to her. Maybe he had been doing this for a while. If he put his mind to it, he was undetectable. She would never have known. Maybe today was just a fluke, and he'd been keeping tabs on her for ages. Maybe since the beginning.
Maybe she had never really been free of him at all.
--
That night, she wondered what he looked like. Had he aged? Likely not, though it had been some four years. Had his style changed? She tried to imagine him dressing differently and couldn't. She knew he must, of course, if he was really very old at all -- how long had jean jackets and big belt buckles been in? Denim pants? Leather overcoats? He had to blend in. Besides, his clothes did not regenerate like him; they had to wear out.
But even so, she just couldn't envision him going shopping.
This brought up so much, she realized. That murky old swamp in the back of her brain labelled X-Men: Do Not Approach had just been vigorously stirred.
Flashes of caped, withered old men in strange looking hats, fierce hairy half-humans, blue skinned beauties. All the terror and anguish tied up in them. And then slower, more deliberate scenes of his face, his eyes -- the gentle curl of his lips as he looked down at her. The warmth there. The love.
That was how she chose to remember it, anyway. She knew better now.
How was Bobby Drake doing? Was he an X-Man now? And Storm. How had the school changed with the new headmistress? How had she survived Xavier's death?
There was a wrench of pain in her chest. Yes, that's right -- you remember all the good and you must remember the bad, too. Jean, gone. Scott, gone. Professor, gone. Dead. And the inevitable questions: would they have died if Rogue had not come to them? If she had stayed in Mississippi where she belonged, if this war between Magneto and Xavier had never been ignited? Or would they be alive, whole and happy; would Logan still be roaming the wilderness of Canada?
After three weeks, she had forgotten the whole thing. So he had stopped by, what of it? He hadn't shown his face, hadn't, to her knowledge, been back. Move on. Keep living. Let the past be the past.
So she wasn't ready, she really wasn't ready, when she walked into him coming back from work.
"Oh, oh!" she had yelped. "I'm so sorry, mister!" That classic southern drawl still lilted her words when she was surprised. Two big hands grabbed her arms, stabilized her. She noticed he was wearing a leather jacket that looked terribly familiar.
And then his eyes. Hazel, ordinary in most respects aside from their burn. Like fire and wind and sea, all mingled in one; keen like a hawk's. His beautiful eyes.
His name fell from her lips like a stone, like some badness she had just regurgitated up. "Logan."
And he said, "Yeah."
They walked back to her house together, not saying anything. Inside, she walked up to her cuckoo clock and took it off the wall. "You broke this."
And he said, "Yeah."
"You know, you're really gonna have to come up with some new vocabulary if you want this visit to last more than ten minutes."
And he said, "Yeah."
She set down the clock, frowned at him. "Logan."
He waited.
"Why are you here?"
He crossed the small kitchen to her fridge, looking ridiculous in the tiny space, crunched and contorted as he searched for a beer and came back with orange juice. "Big question. Long answer."
She followed him with soft eyes. "How long have you been watching me?"
He popped the plastic container from the seal of his mouth, let out a breath. "A while."
She nodded, almost smiling. It had been so long she had forgotten the art of speaking Logan. Lost the rhythm. "C'mere," she invited, swooping her arm in reference to the living room. "Have a seat."
He complied, folding himself into the threadbare sofa with the OJ still in hand. He kicked his boots up on the coffee table and locked his eyes on the TV. "You got cable?"
"No."
He sighed as though this were a great pain to him, and started flipping through the channels. Settled on a rerun of some crime drama with lots of blood and guns on CBS. After a good ten minutes of gore and bullets, he looked up at her. "So you gonna sit down anytime soon, Rogue?"
Oh, she thought. That's right. She was Rogue to him.
It was that long ago.
She curled up a few inches from him, watched the show with wavering interest for another few minutes. "I'm not Rogue anymore. I have a real name."
"Rogue's a real name."
She plucked at her toenail, picked at the fire-engine-red paint. "Not my name, though."
He chugged more orange juice.
"I go by Anne now."
He slammed the container down on the lamp table next to the sofa, didn't even look as juice sloshed out the top. "You 'spect me to call you that?" He sounded almost angry.
She shrugged. "I don't care what you call me."
Wrong thing to say. He stood up to his full height abruptly, pulling at his oversized belt buckle and grimacing in displeasure. He grabbed the orange juice and stomped it back to the kitchen, stomped over to the door, stomped out on the front porch. Then he stopped, leaned back in and burned her with his eyes. "So you really don't care, huh? You really just forgot all about us? We saved your life. We took you in. But you're living your little fairy tale now. Alright, that's fine. Nice fuckin' visit, Anne."
Unmoved, she only furrowed her brows at him. "Since when have you and the X-Men been a We?"
"Since around the same time you and the X-Men stopped being one," he snarled. He was back inside now, braced in front of her like he was readying for a fight.
She stayed on the couch with her arms wrapped around her shins and her cheek on her knees. "I left because I was Cured, Logan. I wasn't a mutant anymore. I didn't belong there."
"Bullshit!" he raved. "You left because you're a coward and you know it, Marie! You ran the fuck away, just like you always been doin'."
She shook her head calmly. "No. I left because there was no place for me. The Professor and Scott had died. Others, too. Things had changed. I had changed. It was time for me to go."
Hands rooted to his hips, he gave her a long-suffering look. "You and me both know that ain't true, darlin'. You left cause it was damn uncomfortable livin' there. Don't ya think it was hard for me too, kid? With all them gone, like you said? It was rough on all of us."
She sighed, scrubbing her face with her hands. She had had a feeling it would come to this. "Whatever, Logan. It doesn't matter now. You can stay if you like, or you can leave. I don't care." She looked up at him sadly. "I missed you. You should know that. I missed you all."
He stared at her for a long time without speaking or moving. "Yeah, well. Cry me a fuckin' river. You didn't go half of what the others did. Like the Prof, like Scott. Like Jean. She died to save your sorry ass, ya know. Died twice. You ain't been through nothing compared to her."
She laughed once. "Neither have you."
"Yeah, but you haven't done shit! You just escaped to your scenic little La-La Land and that's just a coward's way out!" He stormed back into the kitchen for some more juice and maybe a muffin.
She trailed after him, grabbed him a plate and glass that he wouldn't use. "Would you have been happier if I'd died, Logan?" She handed him the plate. "Would you have been proud of me then? Like Jean? If I'd been like Jean, died to save you all like Jean? Given myself for the greater good, like Jean? Would you love me then?"
The plate he was holding hit the floor and splintered, but she didn't hear it; too busy getting slammed up against the wall. "That ain't what I said."
She leaned forward until he could feel her hot breath on his face. "That's what you meant." She took a bite of his muffin, a sip of his juice. "They told me how she died. Would it have been easier if it was me? I didn't do anything. Didn't have anybody. Not like Jean, she had so much -- The Prof, Storm, Scott. You. She was a doctor and a teacher. She contributed. She mattered. It would have been easier to kill me, wouldn't it have?" There were tears on her face but they weren't for her loss. For Jean's. For Logan's. Not hers. "Wouldn't it have?! You already put your claws through me -- how hard would it have been to do it again? Is that why you're so angry, Logan? Because I survived and Jean didn't? I know. I know you'd have switched me for her any day. Fuck, Logan, everybody would have. I would have. Nobody would miss me, not like Jean. I didn't matter." She smudged her eyes. "Well, I matter now. I have people who want me now. Who'd miss me. And I just don't need you anymore."
She left him there, in the kitchen. Knew he'd be gone by the time she got back. And when he spoke, it was so quiet and weak she was almost certain she'd imagined it, her hopeful heart: "You mattered, Marie. You mattered to me."
--
She next saw him was two and half years later, when she was graduating from her university with a degree in classical history and literature. He was standing a few feet behind Robby, conspicuous amongst all the suits and gowns with his jacket and jean look.
She kissed Robby right in front of him, made sure he noticed the glint of her engagement diamond. Invited him to the after-party, which she and he both knew he'd refuse. Hugged him, stiffly. He didn't hug her back.
At three am that morning when she stumbled back to her house, she almost died of heart attack to find him dozing on her porch swing. Lily had gone away months ago, to live abroad. She was living alone for the first time since Canada.
An odd thought had struck her as she watched him watch her. "How's Bobby Drake doing these days?" She thought a moment later that he might not know, had probably abandoned the X-Men by now.
He sat up and gave her a look as cold as stone. "Bobby Drake died on Alcatraz Island. Got shot when he was fighting Pyro." He swallowed, looked her up and down. "You weren't there."
"No," she mumbled, remembering the feel of ice on her lips. Her tears were hot, though. "No, I wasn't."
He stood to his feet and put an awkward hand on her shoulder. "I wouldn't -- I'm glad. That you weren't there that night. I wouldn't have been able to do what was needed if I was busy lookin' after you."
She shook her head slowly, running her fingers over the jagged teeth of her car keys. "No. I would've died, arm in arm with my comrades. Like a hero. With courage." She closed her eyes and stepped away from him. "That would have been the brave thing to do. The right thing."
He said nothing.
She left him again.
--
Another five years passed. She was twenty-eight now, and pregnant. Her name was Anne-Marie Truman, otherwise known as Mrs. Robert Truman. She worked as a professor at the local community college, and liked her job.
He left an empty plastic container of orange juice on the front steps of her suburban house with a note inside that read Don't get freaked out when I show up. She closed her two car garage and rubbed her hand over her belly, wished she could say back: Don't you get freaked out, either.
When she found him a week later drinking beer in the tree in their backyard, she wasn't angry. Or freaked out, for that matter. She was sad.
She'd figured it out a month after she last saw him. Took that long because she just didn't want to believe it.
"Are they all dead, Logan?" she asked the tree. A soft thwap and she knew he'd landed behind her.
And he said, "Yeah."
"Even Storm?"
And he said, "Yeah."
Every time she saw him she ended up in tears. How poetic. "Even Jubilee? And Kitty? And St. John?"
And he said, "Yeah."
When she turned to him, she told him the truth. "I wish you'd never come. I could have gone... Gone my whole life. Without ever knowing."
He didn't say anything. There was nothing for him to say.
"But then you would have been alone in the world. You'd have had nobody. If I had done the right thing, been on that island -- you'd be alone." She looked at him. "You didn't die. Is that was makes you angry? That you're still alive?"
He stared at her, plucked a leaf out of her hair.
She took his scruffy face in her hands and kissed him, and he kissed her back. He tasted like beer, which was no surprise. Neither were the cigars. Maybe some mint -- toothpaste or gum? "My husband is a good man," she whispered to him in the darkness. Her hands roamed the forest of his wiry hair. "I love him. This will be our first child. It would be wrong of me to leave him."
Logan kissed her again, and this time she tasted the salt of his tears. "You just have to walk inside--"
"--And I'll never see you again," she finished. His eyes glowed like a cat's in the shadows. "I'm normal now, Logan. I'm happy. I don't want to give that up. I'm not a mutant. I'm a normal person. I'm a normal person."
He caught a little drop of water off her nose on his fingertip and watched it shimmer silver in the moonlight. "No," he murmured. "You're not. Never have been." He smiled at her. "You're a mutant. No cure will change that." He pointed to her swollen womb. "Your baby'll be a mutant. What will hubby think of that? When the real world perforates your little utopia?"
She should walk inside. Make love to her husband that night. Look up names in a baby book. Enjoy the life and vitality of her students at college, daydream about her future. Her happiness. How everything was perfect, everything she always wanted.
She didn't, though. Somewhere along the line her happy life was no longer worth a world without Logan. How could her child know the capacity for goodness in a man without knowing Logan? How could anybody?
This time, she did not leave him. This time, she had a chance to look back at the autumn leaves and say goodbye. This time, she wrote a note to her family that would break their hearts and leave more questions than answers. This time, she knew she was not who they thought she was, who she'd wanted so badly to be -- normal, peaceful, ordinary. Calm and happy and whole. This time, she abandoned a whole new set of loved ones.
She returned to the fight. She returned to her beginning, with Logan in a pickup truck through the blackness of night. She missed Robby, a lot. Knew that Robby missed her. Leaving was not the right thing to do, but then again she'd never been the one do the right thing, to make the hard choices. That was always Jean.
At the very least she was finally where she belonged, even if it wasn't where she wanted to be. Logan and she had finally formed a We, the one they'd always been but never acknowledged.
It wasn't all she'd dreamed of, but it was enough.
She still made Logan call her Anne.
FIN.