Logan let Marie see him outside of the diner where she'd stopped for brunch. Maman Le Roux's. The hand-painted sign was so worn he almost couldn't read it, but the place was packed. Cajun French music spilled out the doors into the muggy afternoon sunshine and the air on the sidewalk was thick with hearty wafts of andouille and jumbalaya.
He shoveled crawfish pie into his mouth without tasting it, watching from a distance as a round woman with white hair and bright eyes fussed over Marie. She seemed subdued, but once or twice she smiled in a way that lit her up from within and he realized he'd never seen her like that before.
That it took her a while to notice him said a lot about her state of mind. He thought maybe it would be better this way. To let her know he was here rather than to just walk up to her expecting… well, expecting her to talk or listen, or both. It went against his natural instincts — an experienced predator giving up the element of surprise. He couldn't truthfully say that he wasn't a hunter. But she certainly wasn't prey.
She jumped a little when she saw him, frowning, brows drawn together in contemplation. She didn't yell at him, or run from him, or even acknowledge him beyond a sigh and a subtle shifting of her body so that he couldn't see her face. She seemed to accept that he was here with a casual resignation that irritated him even as he was thankful for it. This — whatever this was between them — wasn't something that could sink without a ripple.
He left before she did, melting away easily into the afternoon crowd milling up and down the shady backwoods boardwalk. He needed to move. Being still hurt too much. Music overlapped with the slow bustle of a sunny autumn afternoon. Spices, sweet and savory, were carried on air that was thick with lush scents of damp and green and growing things. Strings of lights twinkled here and there among bottles of spirits and neon signs, advertising a wilder nightlife than the bucolic scene suggested.
Logan wanted Marie to know he was here without feeling pressured to immediately hash it out with him. She wasn't the sort of person who enjoyed surprises, even the good ones. His phone buzzed in his pocket, sending a surge of adrenaline through him.
He didn't look right away, thinking it was probably Marie telling him to fuck off or go away. When he finally did look, it wasn't her. Storm again, requesting that he check in. She'd probably found out about him losing his shit in the cage the other night. He ignored it.
Marie was gone by the time he made his way back to the Jeep. He followed at a distance, cursing when the back roads became gravel roads that became dirt roads not listed on any map. The bayou was another world entirely.
A memory surfaced of her telling him that the Cajun couldn't be found unless he wanted to. Fuck GPS. The blinking dot of her truck hadn't moved in more than an hour. She was on foot. The Wolverine rattled the bars, pleased to have circumstances tip back in his favor. It didn't take too long to find where she'd parked his truck. Pulling off into the trees he parked next to the abandoned truck and stepped out of the Jeep, boots sinking deeply into the rich black mud he remembered seeing caked on Marie's heels.
Close.
He was close, now.
To her.
And the secrets she'd kept for far too long.
~ooOoo~
The bayou hummed around him like a living thing. Breathing. Buzzing with insects and the soft suck-shoop of his footfalls on the spongy ground. Sunlight dappled the landscape around him, illuminating patches of foliage and moss. Bright pops of verdant green so vivid it hurt to look at them glowed like jewels. The air was thick and humid, rife with the scent of fecund earth and decaying vegetation.
Marie's trail wasn't hard to find. She hadn't obscured it or hidden it in any way. The pressure of her tracks told him that she'd moved easily through the difficult terrain. He could see where she'd stopped to stroke the fiddlehead whorl of a fern, and later, where she'd paused to pick a dandelion puff.
She was moving slowly and his heart thudded, aware he would catch up to her soon. They were climbing a gentle slope, barely a small rise for someone who'd spent considerable time in the Canadian Rockies. It was vibrant and alive, though, crackling with energy in a way the still alpine forests did not.
He found her at the top of the rise, sitting under the shade of a fragrant tree he could not immediately identify. Crouching, he studied her for a time, unable to see anything else. He was desperate to read her, to assure himself she was okay and to glean what secrets he could from this silent appraisal.
Slowly, he became aware she was rocking back and forth. Just barely. It reminded him of the wind in the trees and of the motion of the dock back home.
Her hands were bare.
She was crying. He couldn't smell the tang of salt, the air was too thick with the heavy odors of peat and earth and brackish water, but he could see the shine on her face. It wasn't deep wracking sobs, but a profound despair that seemed to seep from her, slipping from under her lashes to trickle down her neck.
He thought he should go away. He was seeing something not meant to be shared. Praying or mourning. Maybe penance for absolution that would never come. Whatever it was, it was intensely private, but he was unable to leave, or to look away from her, or to see anything beyond the space around her shimmering with pain. He was afraid, too. He didn't want his last memories of her to be like this.
And so he stayed.
In time, she stopped rocking. Her lips began to move, to mouth words, but he couldn't tell what she was saying. And then she stopped altogether, so still it raised the hair on the back of his neck. A snake slithered over her and she snapped its neck with casual disregard, flinging it from her like a child's toy.
Lost in watching her pain, he'd forgotten that she was so much more. Logan could feel her power from where he stood. Her human shell concealed a vital being as fierce as the Wolverine, and just as unpredictable. She was not a child. She was not even a woman. She was life. A creature capable of consuming every living thing on the planet if she chose to do so.
She did not appear surprised when he emerged from the shelter of the trees and moved to join her. His silent steps halted as she turned her head and looked at him with feral eyes that were not at all human.
For a long moment he wondered if she might kill him. Raise that naked hand, press it to his flesh and pull him into her until he was nothing but ash and bitter memories. Gleaming, silver bones left behind to be swallowed by the green earth around him.
He joined her anyway.
There was no point in denying it. The time for secrets was over. His life was already hers.
~ooOoo~
Marie didn't greet him. Didn't call out. Didn't even turn her head as he sat in the mossy grass next to her.
"Sorry, kid—" he began, only to have her wave away the words and talk over him.
"My daughter is here." Her voice was soft, husky with emotion, and the pain he heard there made his eyes sting uncomfortably. "Do you see?" The way she said it, he thought maybe he should be looking for a grave marker or a cairn of stones.
Logan shook his head, wondering if a grieving mother could see something he could not. The sound of a child's thin, reedy voice floated up on the wind, only to be snatched away in the next moment by a bird's cry. A shudder passed through him sharply. He was not a religious man, but he had seen and felt spirits walking among the living, and for one horrible instant, he thought maybe her daughter was among them.
His eyes scanned the little valley below, from the ancient cypress trees knotting the edge of the water to the viney bracken blanketing the wild scrub along the ground. Fallen logs and thick brush. Little open areas dotted with reedy grasses and the occasional wildflower. Moss hung in tangles from the branches above, sheltering the floating carpet growing on the top of dark water.
"Just there." Her naked finger pointed towards a thick patch of knotted limbs overgrown with a tangle of wild vines. "On the porch."
For a handful of moments he considered that she was hallucinating, maybe so desperate to see her baby that she'd made up a fantasy to cope with the loss. But then, suddenly, there it was.
"Jesus Christ," he entoned softly, in awe.
He'd looked, but he hadn't seen. The tangle of limbs and vegetation was a house, so artfully camouflaged that was virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain. It wasn't a ramshackle house reclaimed by the swamp, but a home built out of the land so seamlessly that it was almost impossible to detect.
"Yeah."
"Holy shit." Even with the considerable senses at his disposal, it was unlikely he'd have noticed it unless she had pointed it out.
"My daughter is on the porch playing with Red."
He looked harder. "Red?"
"My dog."
She had a dog named Red? That earned her a pointed glare, but she dismissed him with a shrug.
"Goddamn," he breathed, scanning the tangle of vines, not really sure what to look for even with her direction. He was beginning to pick out what must be windows and doors and maybe stairs. The home was a considerable ways up off the ground, as many bayou homes were.
A speckled lump that he thought had been leaves suddenly stood and shook its massive, shaggy head, tongue lolling as a small child tumbled out from between its legs with a squeal somewhere between indignation and delight. The wriggling bundle of churning legs righted itself, pulling on the dog's ear for support, as the pair stumbled into the sunlight. The child's wild red hair glowed in the sun, a radiant spray of copper and russet and gilt that left him breathless.
He tried twice before he could get the words out. "What's her name, darlin'?"
"Elaine." She pronounced it the French way, with the emphasis on the E. To his ear, it sounded like Ellen.
"Elaine," he repeated.
"It means shining light."
The child, still lit brilliantly by the sun, appeared to have a halo of sunbeams. Vivid red curls hung down her back, turning golden towards the ends. Her hair was big and wild, like Marie's. She had pale skin and her mother's dark eyes and temper, if the scolding tone of the chatter was any indication. Logan thought of the auburn haired man in the wedding photo she'd shown him once. He could see the stamp of him on the child, too, even without the hair that clearly marked her as his own.
"I can see why you chose it."
"That's not why."
He was unable to tear his gaze away from the child to look at Marie.
"For the torch," her voice shook. "For the spark you gave to me."
Logan nodded, unable to force out any words. She'd passed the spark he'd given to her on to her daughter. The child was not his, but without him, she'd never have been born.
It was a long time before he spoke.
"Tender," he murmured softly. Until this moment, he hadn't fully understood why she'd used that word to describe what happened between them that night in the torch. "I get it now."
"Tender," she echoed, watching her daughter play with a deep longing that made him hurt in places he thought long dead.
The sun was beginning to set. Soon, there would be fireflies. And stars.
And a box of shimmering secrets, spilled like seeds on the fertile, bayou ground.
Up next: Incandescent. In which the Rogue breaks and the Wolverine finally gets his answers. But one of the worst things about secrets is that whatever they're hiding often doesn't truly feel real until it's shared with someone else...