"I can't decide if it's a choice
Getting swept away
I hear the sound of my own voice
Asking you to stay
And all we are is skin and bone
Trained to get along
Forever going with the flow,
But you're friction
This slope is treacherous
This path is reckless
This slope is treacherous
And I, I, I like it."
(Treacherous- Taylor Swift)
Rogue was a nervous girl, shifting every few seconds as she sat on her bed next to Maia, "You, uh…shouldn't actually stay in here. Ah can get a little crazy sometimes."
Maia shook her head, she'd heard enough from Logan that she understood crazy, "I'll find somewhere else. Sorry for putting you on the spot there, I just had to tell him something."
"He cares about you." Rogue muttered, tugging on her gloves out of habit.
"I know." Maia groaned, standing up from Rogue's desk chair. "He does, but he's confused. I'm confused, it's just awful. I couldn't handle him babying me and hating me at the same time."
"Ah don't think he hates you." Rogue whispered, "Ah've been in 'is mind."
Maia laughed, "So have I. That's why I know he can't stay away. Can't get his head on straight with me sleeping on the next bed either."
"What's it like?" Rogue asked.
Maia could see a dark shape where the girl was, but that was it, there weren't any facial features or body postures for her to cue off of, "What's what like?"
"Sex."
Maia almost choked on the bottle of water she'd been sipping on since Rogue had handed it to her. "I…uh…what?" Rogue stayed silent. Shit, Maia was not prepared for that question. "Uh…"
"Be honest?" Rogue asked softly, "Ah'm curious, and you know…Ah can't really touch people. If ya don't want to, that's fine. You're just…the only one Ah feel'll be honest with me who's got any experience."
"I shouldn't." Maia told her, but something in the teenager's voice told her the girl was searching for something, and silence wasn't it, "Okay, uh…the first time was…overwhelming. He'd just been shot in the head, I was sure he was dead and I was completely crazy. Then he wasn't, and he was completely overwhelmed by the animal side of him. I won't lie, it hurt. And then it didn't. After we were so much closer to each other." Maia scoffed, "Of course you see where that's gotten us." She shook her head, "It's nothing to compromise yourself for, Rogue. If it's someone you really care about, just wait until you're both ready."
"Ah may nev'ah be. Can't touch." Rouge groaned.
Maia reached out, glad she made contact with fabric and not skin, "Hey, mutations develop and change all the time. Rice kept expecting mine to adapt for my blindness. What I'm trying to say is…you're young, Rogue. Try not to worry about your sex life for a while, okay?"
Rogue sighed, but her voice seemed lighter, "You're easy to talk to, like Logan."
Maia smiled in response, "He and I are more alike than he'd like to admit. Even more so after Laura."
"You'll find her." Rogue said, her voice as certain as she could make it while drowning in her own doubt.
"I know." Maia said certainly. She felt those words in every bone in her body. "For now, I need to find a place to sleep tonight. I'm feeling the strong urge to hide."
"I can find you a room." Came a voice from Rogue's door.
Maia caught a distinct red hue at the top of the blur in the hall, "Jean. Thank you, that would be nice."
Maia joined Jean in the hallway and followed her closely, "You seem to have hit it off with Rogue. I'm not surprised. Logan's got a soft spot for her."
Maia sighed, "I'd really rather not keep talking about him right now." She bit her lip, pausing in the middle of the hall, "Jean, I'm sorry."
"For what?" She asked, even though they both knew what was on Maia's mind.
It was one of the things that had been bothering her since she woke up, "Logan told me that I was the result of an affair my mother had with a professor in Upstate New York. That's why I'm a mutant and none of my siblings were." She took a deep breath, "Hank mentioned your parents live nearby, that your father is a professor. Two redheaded mutants with mental abilities…what are the odds?"
Jean sighed heavily, her posture mimicking Maia's in it's stiffness. "That's what I thought too."
"I'm not going to do anything to upset anyone, I just wanted to see if you thought the same thing." Maia told her softly. "My dad is dead now, but I had a pretty kick ass set of parents. I'm not gonna mess anything up for your family. Be kind of hard to explain anyway since I look like a teenager."
"You're a year and a half younger than I am, and while my dad doesn't know about you, he did tell my mother about his affair when I was a kid." Jean told her, "You wouldn't really mess with anything. If anything they'd both be thrilled about Laura." She laughed shortly, "I told them years ago that Scott and I aren't planning on children. My dad would be thrilled to have a granddaughter."
Maia stared in Jean's direction, astonished, "Are you serious? I mean, we're mutants. Laura at the very least inherited Logan's healing, who knows what else." She rubbed her temples, trying to shake the headache that had been forming, "Your parents, your mom especially, how would they be okay with us?"
Jean took Maia's hand, "Because I put them through hell when I was a kid. They never told me about the affair, but I read it in their minds. I also know how disappointed they were when I said I didn't want to be a mother, but they understood. My mother is the most understanding person I've ever met and she'd jump at the chance to be a grandmother in any capacity."
Maia smiled and let her…sister…lead her down the hallway, "So I'm taking baby pressure off of you?"
Jean laughed again, "Exactly." She paused, opening a door, "This will be you, third door on the left."
Maia felt around the room a little. It was basic: a bed, desk, chair and side table both with lamps. A window parallel to the door let in a lot of light, and the door didn't have a lock. It was perfect. "Thank you."
"Of course." Maia rubbed her head again, and Jean noticed, "Hey, is your head hurting you?"
"Yeah. I'm just thinking about how I'm going to go crazy if I don't have something to do." Maia groaned, "I never did actually graduate, think the Professor would mind me sitting in a couple classes?"
"Not at all!" She exclaimed, "Besides, you never had mutant classes. Audit some of the classes, I'm sure you'll learn a lot." Jean hummed slightly, interrupting her own topic of conversation, "Your head's hurting pretty bad, Hank has something to help, I'm sure. Want you to take you to him? I forgot I'm supposed to be meeting the Professor in Cerebro to help look for Laura."
It was jarring to hear someone else say Laura's name. She'd kept it to herself for so long. "That'd be fine. I need to apologize anyway, for...stabbing him with a needle." Maia told her, face flushing with guilt. She'd been horrible to the man, and he'd only been trying to help her.
Jean laughed, "Trust me, Hank's fine."
He was, actually, fine. And blue. He was blue. And the strange feel of him she remembered for heir earlier encounters was fur. He was a furry blue man. Okay. She could handle that, even if her instincts were telling her to beat the crap out of him for shining painfully bright light in her eyes.
He giggled like a little girl, "It's incredible! Your eyes are so much better than they were two weeks ago! I mean they look like they belong to a hundred year old Romanian grandmother, but...at this rate, these remaining cataract like sheets of scar tissue should disappear in a few weeks. Full recovery!"
Maia grimaced at his boisterous voice, "That's fabulous, but... my head is still killing me."
He went still for a second, as if he'd forgotten the whole little spiel Jean had blurted out before running off. "Oh, yeah. There's not much I can give you that won't possibly interact poorly with what those sick bastards were trying to do, and even though it's been a couple weeks, I'd rather be safe than sorry."
"I understand." She said firmly, not wanting to think about what Rice's plan had involved.
He gave her some standard pain relievers and suggested she rest her eyes for the remainder of the day, that straining to see was probably causing the headache in the first place. Maia worked her way slowly back to the room Jean had shown her and spent the rest of the day in bed, contemplating everything.
The following morning Maia awoke in an empty room. She hadn't realized how accustomed she'd become to having Logan either pacing the room or lounging on the other bed. Once her heart had stopped hammering in her chest and she remembered where she was, loneliness hit her hard. Hell, she even missed the blissful moments when he held her as she settled back into herself. She couldn't be alone. Fortunately for her, Jean had apparently talked to the Professor, and there was a list of class descriptions and times taped to her new door.
She spent two agonizing days sitting in on classes, listening to the students. The movement, the life in the school was almost enough to keep her mind off Logan. Or so she pretended whenever Jean and Rogue asked. She was positive they both saw through her, but they seemed to have learned enough about her not to ask, and, try as she might, she'd stopped sleeping. The time she spent in her room alone sobbing or staring at the inside other eyelids wasn't really productive, but she could feel her power struggling to reach out from her damaged body and that was a slight comfort. 'Baby steps' Jean had advised, and the other students now all advice to share with her since she was sitting in on their classes. All she thought about was how she'd screwed up with Logan. She'd done it to focus on Laura, but now she could only think about him.
Maia was sitting in one of those classes when she heard it; the tale tell sound of Logan's booted feet on the slick wooden floors and the scrambling of students, their sneakers scuffing against the floor as they moved out of his way. He'd finally come back to the mansion. She kept her face pointed towards the instructor, Scott, but couldn't help the ache in her gut when Logan paused at the doorway of the room only to continue walking a beat later.
She pulled her knees to her chest and didn't hear another word of Scott's lecture.
Maia screamed when someone put a hand on her shoulder. Heart pounding in her chest, she looked around wildly, only calming when she caught a flash of blue to go with the stammered, "I-I'm sorry!"
Panting, Maia was grateful her arms had been locked around her knees. Shit, she hadn't even heard Scott end his lecture, but the classroom was devoid of any other sounds besides a rattled Hank. She unwound slowly, only speaking when her feet were on the ground, "It's okay, I wasn't paying attention. I should have been." She sucked in a breath, "What's up? Did the Professor find something on Laura?"
"Not yet." Hank replied heavily, "Are you still getting headaches?"
Maia smiled thinly at him, "Only when I'm up for more than two hours."
"Which you have these last two days." He said, a bit of a teasing tone in his voice, "We do talk about you, you know? Jean, the Professor and I. We want you to get better." She didn't respond. "Try these." He put a pair of glasses in her hands, and she arched an eyebrow at him. "Hey, put them on, they should help."
They weren't magical, but the coke-bottle lenses did seem to help take some of the strain away, "Thank you." Maia whispered, giving him a far more true smile.
"Of course!" He replied, his answering smile evident in his voice. He put a hand on her arm.
Maia went quiet. She could hear Logan again, and when she looked over her shoulder, she could just make out his figure in the doorway. "Logan?"
He turned away.
"Hey!" She called, tripping to the door, catching herself on the frame to poke her head out of the classroom. She heard him stop, and held a hand out towards him, "Logan, please. I was an idiot." Maia trembled at the truth in her own words, "You're it for me. We're better together."
He clicked his tongue in disbelief.
"No, Logan. We are. Have you been able to think of anything else? I haven't. Not really even Laura. Just you." Maia confessed, "I can't think straight when you're not with me."
"I'm bad for you."
Maia felt tears fill her eyes, "No, you're not. If this is about you leaving me…that wasn't your fault."
His silence was answer enough.
"I did it, Logan." Maia's whole body shook as she made her confession, "The only reason I lived was because her mutation was triggered in my bloodstream, but it wasn't in hers. I was dead for hours. I knew you wouldn't leave me, but I knew she wouldn't survive. I was right, but it doesn't mean I don't feel guilty."
"What did you do?" He asked, voice low and dangerous.
Maia hiccuped once, straightening, "I compelled you, Logan. I made you take Laura and leave. I looked you in the eyes and made you run, and then I was told you were both dead. Whatever guilt you have about fucking a teenager or leaving me, that's nothing compared to the guilt I've lived with for nearly a decade over getting you both killed. I made the wrong choice, Logan, and it's haunted me. I'm in the wrong. Me, not you. You don't get to be the fucking masochist. I keep screwing up and making things worse." She stood in the hallway trembling, adrenaline rushing through her.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Logan growled, and suddenly he was on her, both her forearms in his hands, her back against the ridged wall. "Kid, I wouldn't have left if I'd had another choice. I'm difficult to manipulate, but you've managed to figure out a new way." He pulled the arm Hank had touched to his face and rubbed it across his stubbled cheek, "I can't stay away from you."
Maia followed instinct and went slack in his grip, tipping her head to the side, exposing her neck to him. "Then don't. Don't stay away. I was wrong. I need you to stop hating yourself. I need you."
Your reviews are so appreciated! Back with Logan next chapter to what he's been up two during those two days, and also...more than likely a satisfying continuation to the end of this chapter. Hope everyone is well! Let me know what you think!
-Jenn