A/N: Okay, so I had this idea and wasn't sure whether to bother writing/posting it, until I got a ridulous amount of positive feedback and kudos on my previous X-Men one-shot. Y'all gave me the confidence to do this, so I really hope it's good! lol
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to Marvel, Fox, Stan Lee, and other folks that aren't me.
A Random Happenstance
It was one of those random occurrences that never could have been predicted. Two people who had been all over the country, all over the world, to end up in the same place at the same time purely by chance. One minute they were both walking down the city street with other things on their minds, the next they were literally colliding with each other and complaining appropriately.
"Oh my God!" she gasped the moment she realised this was no clumsy stranger. "Logan?"
"Marie," he smiled at the sight of her, wasting no time in taking her into his arms for a hug.
After all this time, it still felt good, and not just on his side.
"You were the only person I ever knew not afraid to hold onto me," said Marie in his ear shortly before they parted.
Logan tried to keep the pain from his face but it didn't come easy. So much for holding onto her, he had let her go in the end, let her walk out of his life without a word. He should have tried to find her, Logan knew that now more than ever, but maybe it was better that he hadn't. Marie looked every bit as beautiful and confident as she had always been, but more than that, she looked oddly free and at ease with the world. Maybe if he had kept her close, she couldn't have got to this place in her life. There was no way to know for sure now.
Marie was saying something about getting a coffee together and catching up when Logan paid attention again. They walked into the nearest cafe, her grabbing a table, him ordering two coffees. It was shockingly domestic and ordinary given how their lives had been last time their paths crossed. It had been years, too many, Marie said, as she smiled at him from across the table. She told Logan how she had done some travelling, seen a little bit of the world, and then came the answer to the question Logan couldn't bear to ask himself.
"Things just didn't work out with Bobby," she explained, looking down into her coffee as she stirred it more than was necessary "It's the craziest thing, I thought it'd be my... gifts that'd break us up. Turned out it was my choice to get rid of them that did it. 'Course they didn't stay gone anyhow," she sighed.
"They're back?" he checked, even though he had half-guessed from the long sleeves and gloves she wore, even in this mild climate.
"Yup," she confirmed, popping the p. "Right back where I started on that one," she smiled sadly.
He didn't know what to say for the best. As far as Logan was concerned, he never knew what to say to help anyone. Marie was one person in his life who would always disagree with such a statement, so he said nothing at all.
"Anyone special in your life, Logan?" she asked then, prompting him to look anywhere but at her. "Right," Marie nodded. "I guess you never did get over what happened. With Dr Grey, I mean."
Logan didn't even know where to begin in talking about that particular piece of his past. For so long, memories of Jean and what happened to her haunted his dreams and his waking hours both. Finally, just recently in fact, he found a way to let go. Part of that came from realising that much of his pain and guilt came from having to take down a good person rather than anything else.
"Losing Jean was... I did what I had to do," he said too softly, eyes on the table and in his coffee cup before finally he glanced up at Marie again. "You know what that's like, more than anyone."
She nodded her agreement, then inclined her head as she stared at him.
"But you loved her," she said, a statement not a question, and yet suddenly she was uncertain.
"Did I?" asked Logan, shrugging his broad shoulders. "Maybe. I cared about her, but sometimes I wonder if I wasn't just craving what I couldn't have, shouldn't have. Always thought it was safer, wanting what I couldn't get," he said, sipping his coffee and wincing at the taste - this place was too fancy and the drinks far from plain.
"Why?" asked Marie, and Logan supposed he ought to have expected that.
"What I get ends up dead, or hurt," he shook his head. "Taken, killed, sacrificed. I get close to a person they usually end up worse off, at my hand or someone else's," he said, looking down at one of those hands of his and never liking what he saw, even when the claws were in. "Jean was never mine and still..."
Marie felt his pain, just like always, and not only because a part of him existed in her mind even now.
"Logan," she said softly, shifting her seat around to the side of the table, her gloved fingers sliding into his open hand on the table. "You know I understand," she reminded him, glad when he looked up to meet her eyes. "Anybody I care about, I'm just terrified of hurting them, or worse."
Logan did know that, and she wasn't wrong in finding the similarities between them. In spite of appearances, there were plenty, and it was impossible for him not to have realised it. What Marie said when they stumbled upon each other today and he hugged her without fear, about him being the only one unafraid to hold onto her, that meant a lot. They didn't have to be afraid of each other or of themselves when they were together.
"Can't do all that much harm to me."
"You're kidding, right?" she scoffed out a laugh, even as she gripped more tightly to his hand with her own. "You forget that time where we killed each other?" she said in a low voice, mindful of what others would think if they heard.
Her smile was still the kind that lit up a room though, and Logan had missed that smile. It did seem strange to think that they were the only people who had come really close to killing the other, and yet here they were, the best of friends. A funny joke if a person had a mind to laugh, but Logan didn't do that much anyway.
"Still here, aren't we?"
"Still here," she agreed. "And right back where we started, side by side."
She said it like it was one of those throwaway things, a minor observation, nothing more, nothing less. Logan knew better, at least he hoped he did. After all the years he spent in the world, good and bad, and mostly the latter, he only felt this peaceful when Marie was in his company. That was something he never could explain and never tried too hard to figure out for fear of what it meant.
"I missed you, Marie," he admitted without really meaning to, but it was worth every word to see that smile spread across her lips again.
"Well, ain't that somethin'," she drawled the way only her kind of Southern could. "I mean, I did a lot of missin' on you. Never did think it'd work both ways," she admitted. "I was just 'kid', right?"
"No, not really," said Logan, looking away a moment. "I called you that because it's what you should've been, but you never really were a child, Rogue," he teased her, hoping to take the edge off a too serious moment. "At least, not when I knew you."
"Sometimes I feel like I wasn't anything at all until I met you," she said all in a rush, summoning his attention the moment it wandered elsewhere. "Weirdest thing, I know, but having you in my head... it helped me find myself," she explained as best she could.
The truth of it was that Marie had never been sure who or what she was until she met a man who called himself Wolverine. A purely animalistic name did not suit the man she found beneath the muscles and bluster. Logan could be sweet, kind, understanding, and through his understanding of her, Marie had come to realise she wasn't Rogue nor any other identity she made for herself. She found that she was simply Marie, and that person was alright.
"So, you like what you found?" Logan asked her then, hardly aware of his thumb moving against her gloved hand and wrist.
Marie was all too aware of it as her heart started to pound in her chest.
"Sure," she forced out words that might actually make sense, determined her nerve wasn't going to fail her now, not after all this time. "I mean, I think I'm okay," she shrugged easily. "But how about you, Logan? You like how I turned out?"
It was a loaded question and they both knew it. When they first met, he may not have really classed her as a kid, and life hadn't really treated her like one, but she was awfully young then. If he had been the age he looked it was more than twice her own, and the world had known Logan long before. They had their differences, their reasons to keep a fair distance then, but now was different. They had both changed, and yet the similarities between them remained just the same. It wasn't so bad if he liked her now, it wasn't a tragedy if she wanted to risk taking a chance with him.
"Do I like you?" he echoed her question with the most impossible look on his face, she didn't know what to think. "Marie..."
His free hand came up to her hair, fingers ghosting over the white streak through her dark hair and then over the skin of her cheek. She shivered at the barely there contact, her eyes falling shut a moment, until she felt him get closer. The heat of his body against her skin, his breath at her neck. Marie's eyes shot open in an instant when she realised what was about to happen.
"Logan," she forced out, swallowing hard so the rest of the words might come. "I told you, I'm..."
"I can handle it," he promised, before her panic could rise any further.
"Ain't so sure I can," she admitted, looking pained. "But damnit, I wanna try."
No sooner had she spoken than she let herself be the one to close the gap between them. It was a brief moment, it had to be. A kiss that lasted too long could be the death of both of them, because one thing Marie knew for sure by now was that she couldn't live in a world without Logan. When he said he could handle it, she hoped he meant it as fully as she took it. His body couldn't die, not permanently, so she couldn't really hurt him that bad, but the emotional struggle that would come from being her guy, she wondered if he really could deal with that. If anybody could, it was him.
For Logan, this was a moment he hadn't quite known he'd been waiting for until it happened. Stumbling upon Marie in some random town on some random day, it was the most unlikely thing, and yet he couldn't be happier that it occurred. He wasn't much for believing in fate or destiny. If his life had a plan it was a damn screwed up mess of one, but if anything was going to get him to accept that he had a true path to follow, this was it. It would all make sense if fate was trying to lead him back to Marie. Someone or something seemed to want them to be together, come what may, and Logan was through fighting it, consequences be damned.
The End