(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 2

Standing outside of Xavier's School for the Gifted, Logan took a long drag on his cigar and blew the smoke out slow. Honestly, he wasn't even sure why he had bothered to go back there, or maybe he knew exactly and just wished he didn't.

Going out to Alkali Lake, it was supposed to help him find answers. All he had actually found was an empty facility that told him nothing at all. His past was still a blank, the present looked awfully uncertain, and as for the future? Logan hardly knew where to begin.

Dropping the butt of his cigar to the ground, he crushed it under the heel of his boot and took in a breath of fresh air instead. It didn't help, but then he already knew nothing was going to. He would probably be better off turning around and walking away from here, carrying on with his life as it had been before. Yes, it was violent and lonely, but at least it was uncomplicated.

Unfortunately, as much as The Wolverine was an animal, Logan still felt the need to be a man of his word. He had promised Marie he would come back, for his dog tags, at the very least, though he suspected she knew there was more to it than that. She was altogether too smart for a girl so young and supposedly innocent. Last thing she needed was a guy like him, and yet, she seemed pretty stuck on him.

"It's only gonna end bad," he told himself in muttered tones, and yet, put his best foot forward and walked into the entranceway of the school.

There were a few kids milling around, nobody he recognised, then suddenly, a shock of white-blonde hair as Storm descended the stairs.

"Logan, right on time," she said, approaching him with a warm, welcoming smile.

"Right on time for what?" he asked, but she never got a chance to answer.

There was a clatter from the room across the way as someone practically fell through the doors into the entryway. Marie was not exactly graceful, but smiling widely, and just as beautiful as he remembered.

"Logan," she breathed, regaining her balance and walking right across to him.

He hadn't quite been ready for the hug, but he didn't deny her, he couldn't bear too. With her long sleeves and gloves besides, they were safe enough, after all. Honestly, Logan wondered if he would've cared either way as they held each other tight, and for maybe just a little too long.

Reminding himself that Storm was watching, and that he was being a fool, Logan pulled back and looked down at a still grinning Marie.

"Uh, you miss me, kid?" he asked her, use of the child-like epithet as deliberate as it had ever been, and for good reason.

He had to remember how young she was, how far out of his reach, especially when she was in the process of literally throwing herself at him. One out of the two of them had to have some good sense, and as the more adult member of the pair, Logan figured it ought to be him.

"You know I did," she said definitely, meeting his eyes.

"I need to confirm some details with Jean," said Storm then, "but don't go away, Logan. I meant what I said about your timing being good. We really need a babysitter tonight."

"Babysitter?" he echoed with a frown, looking away from Marie in time to see Storm strolling away through a door and disappearing from view.

"So, you find what you were lookin' for?"

Unsurprisingly, Marie had his attention back in a second with her question.

"Not exactly." Logan shook his head slightly, noticing another presence out of the corner of his eye. "Friend of yours?"

The boy seemed to have come out of the same room Marie tripped out of moments before and he was staring very hard at her too.

"Oh, yeah. This is Bobby," she explained, waving him forward. "We've been hanging out some. Bobby, this is Logan."

"Right," said the boy, nodding once and offering a hand to shake. "Just call me Iceman."

"Man?" said Logan, with no small amount of amusement as they shook hands, forcing himself not to flinch when he felt his own fingers begin to freeze in the kid's grip.

Pulling away, he rubbed his hand on his jeans and looked between Bobby and Marie. He didn't like the green feeling that welled up in him at what that particular scene conjured up in him.

"So, hanging out?" he checked, mostly looking at her rather than him.

"Sure, as friends," she confirmed, rolling her eyes. "We're not datin' or anything."

She was clearly oblivious to the fact that Bobby was all for them being much more than friends, which was no bad thing, at least in Logan's opinion. Of course, he wasn't about to say as much or examine too closely why he didn't want Marie dating at all. Safer just to walk away, and Storm was soon back, giving him the perfect excuse to do so. She needed to tell him what this babysitter gig really entailed.

It was a pretty simple assignment, or so Logan thought when it was explained to him. All the responsible adult types needed to go do their X-Men thing, which meant there was nobody left to keep an eye on the kids. Though it was hardly Logan's wheelhouse, he figured he could just hang out in the school, see that nobody came to any harm.

When night fell, the whole place went quiet. Logan was equal parts glad and disappointed that Marie hadn't come looking for him, hoping to catch up or whatever. It would've been nice to spend some time with her, but then again, he figured he was better off keeping his distance if he could, for both their sakes.

Seemed like most of the kids got the memo to stay in their rooms and sleep, or at least be as quiet as possible, after lights out. There was one watching TV in the rec room, seemingly flipping the channels by blinking, but Logan left him be, since he wasn't hurting anyone and claimed he didn't sleep anyway.

Logan then wandered through to the kitchen, seeking out a snack and more over a real drink. That was where he found one more stray.

"What you doing in here, Iceboy?" he asked Bobby, frowning at the sight of him at the counter.

"Iceman," he insisted, practically pouting into his pint of ice-cream. "I couldn't sleep."

"Seems to be a lot of that going around." Logan nodded, searching the refrigerator for a drink. "No beer in this place?" he grumbled.

"It's a school," Bobby reminded him smartly. "The best you're going to find is soda. Right there," he pointed up.

Logan drew a bottle out of the cabinet and figured he'd make do, since it was all that was on hand. No way he could make a run out to the liquor store and leave all the kids alone. He figured nothing too terrible would happen to them, but it probably wasn't worth the risk anyway.

"So, you and Rogue," he said then, deliberately using the name she usually went by when talking to others as he pulled up a stool across the counter from Bobby. "She says you're just friends."

"We are." Bobby nodded. "It's pretty much impossible to get close to her," he lamented, stabbing his spoon into the ice-cream over and over.

"Yeah, well," said Logan shifting on his stool, taking a drag from the bottle of too-sweet soda and wincing. "Not exactly surprising. You know, the way she is... it's not easy on her."

When Bobby actually laughed at that, Logan was ready to take a swing at the little punk. There was absolutely nothing funny about Marie's condition. She had a power that was unprecedented and unrivalled, but it couldn't exactly be called in a gift in the truest sense, not when it damned her to living without any real human contact.

"I'm sorry, but Rogue's no touching policy is so not the problem." Bobby shook his head. "Pretty sure she wouldn't get close to me even if she could. Not for as long as her heart belongs to someone else."

Logan's eyes snapped up from the counter to meet Bobby's gaze and there was absolutely no doubting what the boy meant by that comment. Wasn't as if Logan was so blind he didn't know how Marie felt about him, but everybody got crushes sometimes, especially girls her age. Hadn't really occurred to him that it was anything more than that, not until Bobby said it the way he did.

Opening his mouth to reply, without really knowing what the words were going to be, Logan changed his mind when he heard some far-off noise, smelled something in the distance that shouldn't be there.

"No," he said softly, just before the guys in black burst in.

It took the incident on the plane to really hammer it home to Logan.

What happened on Liberty Island, when he thought he lost her, thought he let her down, he could pass that off as a broken promise, another screw up on his record. It was easy to tell himself he was only suffering guilt rather than anything else.

As for Marie's feelings for him, her crush or whatever, he couldn't be blamed for basking in her adoration just a little. It was always nice to be liked, to be wanted, even if you knew you could never do anything about it. Even if it was nothing real and concrete.

It ought to be even easier to dismiss his own feelings, to tell himself he didn't really have any. The Wolverine was an animal, there was barely a man left anymore. He tried to say it was true, but being amongst people again, even mutant people, the heroes that were the X-Men and the kids that they cared for, it made a difference. It all reminded Logan that he was still a person, deep down. That he could care, that he could love.

When the attack came on the school, escaping with Marie, Bobby, and John, there just wasn't time to think about it all too much. On the run, with nowhere to go and nobody they could really trust, it had been a real mess for a while there, and frankly, Logan was only glad to know everybody made it out alive. After the mess at Bobby's house, it was a relief to get on the X-Jet and escape. At least, he had thought so, at first.

A horrifying fear had gripped Logan's heart and soul when the back of the aircraft blew and Marie went sailing clean out of the plane. In a split second, he was unbuckling his safety belt, bound and determined to dive out after her, save her any way he could, even if it meant he died trying. He never quite managed to perform the heroic feat. Instead, the new guy, Nightcrawler or whatever his name was, had suddenly winked out of existence and just as fast seemed to be back, with Marie cradled safely in his arms.

A while later, everybody safely on the ground, albeit amongst Magento's Brotherhood, Logan sought out the blue-skinned, German-speaking saviour and found him already in good company. He heard Marie thank him for what he did, heard the guy tell her she was welcome, and that was that. Didn't seem like much for saving a life, especially when that life was hers. Logan had to make sure this Kurt guy knew just exactly what he had done today.

"For so long, I spoke with nobody," he said with a strange smile, eyes on Marie as she walked away, then on Logan as he approached from the other side. "Now, they come one after the other to make friends."

"I'm not exactly looking to buddy up," Logan admitted, perching on the rock beside his fellow mutant, "but just like her," he said, tilting his head in the direction Marie had gone, "I need to thank you. You saved her life."

"And for that, she thanked me too," Kurt confirmed. "There was no need for her to, but I understood the motivation. With you? Ah, yes, I see it now," he said, smiling too much as he met Logan's gaze, causing him to want to look away immediately. "Such affection. It runs very deeply in you, I think."

It wasn't supposed to. That was what Logan meant to say. He wanted to deny his feelings, because it would be a whole lot easier to not have them. Instead, he just got up and walked away, rather than confirming or denying anything.

Later still, as he laid awake in his tent, Mystique came to him. She asked him what he really wanted, transforming herself into first Jean, then Storm, and finally Marie. The sly smile that came with her last disguise proved he had given something away, though he had tried to hide it even then.

Logan had believed he was an expert in not feeling, and certainly keeping well-hidden whatever he did dare to allow to be a real emotion inside of him. Problem was, it was getting harder all the time, ever since Marie crawled into his truck, and then, very soon after, into his heart. This wasn't just misplaced affection, a guilt trip, couldn't even be passed off as good old-fashioned lust. He loved her, so much so that he couldn't think straight anymore.

"I am so screwed," he told himself, covering his eyes with his hand.

Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a damned thing he could do about it.

To Be Continued...