Remember how I mentioned I wasn't gonna use anymore flashbacks? I lied. There's a flashback in this chapter. Sorry for the mix up!
For an hour, Logan stayed silent as they cared for their baby. He said very few words to Marie...preferring to keep all of his attentions on his daughter.
This behavior worried Marie. She'd never seen him so deathly calm...so still. For all intensive purposes, he should be ripping her head off...but he was storing all of it up for later. As he watched every new expression on his daughter's face and learned something different about her, he put it in his memory bank for the fight that would surely come.
When it was finally time for another nap, Marie nursed the baby and laid her down. The inevitable moment she hoped to avoid was here. She turned on the monitor and picked up the portable speaker before leading Logan out of the room. As soon as the door was closed, he grabbed her arm and snatched her all the way down a flight of stairs to their old room.
Marie wasn't sure her feet ever touched the ground. She just knew his finger marks would be on her arm tomorrow.
When he opened the door, he practically threw her inside. She stumbled and nearly lost her footing, landing hard against a plastic covered desk. Logan slammed the door behind him and paced the room, sparing her a glance every few steps. He clenched his fists as if he were trying to hold back from completely shredding her to pieces.
She recovered from being thrown into the desk and straightened, doing everything she possibly could to avoid his intense gaze.
Finally, he stopped pacing and stared at her, "I'm gonna give you one fuckin' chance to explain yourself...one chance to give me a reason not to hate you. You better choose your words carefully, kid."
Marie closed her eyes and turned away from him, "Jubilee tried to tell me what the jewelry was for...but I didn't believe her. I figured it was a way to trick her so you could get your hands on more of Jean's shit. I know you constantly downplayed your obsession for her...your desperate love for the dead woman...but you just wouldn't let go. Here I was, a breathing woman with a heart beat right in front of you, and I always felt second best. Did you know that you used to whisper her name in your sleep?"
Logan tried to keep his eyebrows furrowed and his glare intimidating, but the revelation that he called Jean's name while sleeping next to Marie shocked him. His steely gaze faltered a little, but he soon regained his bearings and snarled menacingly, "That doesn't excuse you from makin' me think my daughter was dead!"
Marie crossed her arms, "You're right. It doesn't. But, as a mother, it gave me a reason to want better for her. I may have been stupid enough to be your Jean replacement, but I would rather her grow up without you than be second to a dead woman."
He growled and launched himself at her, grabbed her jaw and yanking her forward as he yelled in her face, "Do you know what you put me through? Do you know how much hell I went through thinking we had lost her? Forget Jean! You and that baby was all I thought about for the past 94 days! You lied to me about my child dying! Do you have any idea what that did to me?"
She squeezed her eyes tight as his grip on her jaw eased. That could have been it. She could have kept her mouth shut and avoided angering him further...but that had never been her style. She gritted her teeth and yanked away from him, then stalked to the other side of the room and crossed her arms, "Yea...I know what it did to you. I know how it felt. I know because that's how you made me feel every time you reminded me that I was just a poor man's Jean Grey! What about what you did to me? We're even...now go back to where you came from. Leave us alone."
Logan took several determined steps toward her, causing her to involuntarily back up against the wall. He glared down at her, then suddenly drove his elbow into the wall beside her head. Marie jumped and closed her eyes before slowly reopening them to stare back into his eyes with a determined glare. He breathed heavily through his nose as he put a finger in her face, "I'm not leaving her."
Marie laughed bitterly as tears formed in her eyes, "Why not? You didn't have her with Jean...it shouldn't be that hard for you to walk out on her."
Logan suddenly wrapped a hand around her neck, but didn't squeeze, "I swear to god, I could kill you for what you did!"
She gritted her teeth and grabbed his hand, inviting him to tighten his grip, "Then do it! What are you waiting for?"
He did squeeze...right before his lips came crashing down on hers in a furious, frenzied kiss. It was so deliciously violent and unbearably hot, Marie had no choice but to return the kiss with equal fervor.
Her fingers raked through his hair as he grabbed both sides of the collar of her shirt and ripped it clean open. She whimpered slightly as he pulled his lips away from hers to lick and suck at her neck, chest and stomach before kneeling before her.
She felt him start to unfasten her pants and opened her eyes. She couldn't do this anymore...Taylor was involved. She deserved stability and a healthy home life. They weren't going to provide that if they just started boinking like rabbits again.
"Logan..."
He murmured against her stomach as he kissed and caressed her soft flesh. The slight vibration against her bare skin made her shiver and close her eyes, nearly making her lose her will to stop.
"Logan! Stop!"
'Oh no...please...let's keep going until we can't stop', he thought as he looked up at her.
She squirmed away from him and gathered the tattered remains of her shirt in an attempt to cover herself. Logan breathed heavily and got to his feet as she began pacing back and forth in front of him, "We have some major issues to resolve and I can't do that while you're...while we're..."
He plopped down on the plastic covered bed and closed his eyes...giving himself a chance to "calm down".
After a few moments of silence, he looked up at her, "Yeah...and I have a lot of questions for you."
"Ditto."
He looked up at her, "I know you think that I loved Jean more...but that wasn't really it..."
Marie raised her eyebrows. This was big...he'd never opened up about J-word before. He'd usually try to convince her that his obsession was all in her head and that he was fine. She needed to hear this, "Ok then...what was it?"
Logan looked down, "It's true...I loved her...she was the first person I could remember ever loving. The times we slept together..." He paused and shook his head, deciding not to venture into that area, "She'd been helping me with my memories. I had a feeling the professor was holding out on me, and I was right. Before Alkali Lake, the professor warned her to be careful...he said that tapping into her powers to help me could cause problems...but she said she didn't care...she said I deserved to know who I was." He clenched his fists, remembering the moment Jean disappeared beneath a wall of water, "When she came back, the professor and I both knew that the phoenix emerged because of me. She'd accidentally unlocked some of her powers while trying to help me...the professor said what happened at Alkali Lake was just the small push the phoenix needed to fully take over. Had it not been for me, she would have been normal Jean. The professor would have been able to restore the few psychic barriers that were damaged at Alkali Lake and she would be ok...but because of me...she died."
Marie's mouth had dropped open. He glanced at her and shook his head, "The professor wanted to keep it quiet because the X Men needed me...and if Scott or Storm found out, they'd hate me...well, Scott would have hated me more than he already did."
She nodded and swallowed hard, looking down at her hands, "So then what happened?"
"What happened? The rest is history, kid. The phoenix came back and went crazy...then I was the one who had to kill her...end of story."
"Logan...why didn't you tell me?"
He glanced at her and looked back down on the floor, "I was ashamed. I already had to be known as the guy who killed her...but if you knew that I was the reason she had to die...how would you look at me?"
Marie put a hand on his back, "Look at me..." He slowly lifted his face to hers, "I'd look at you the same way I'm lookin' at you now."
He stared at her for a moment, then looked away, "I'm sorry for makin' you feel like you were second best, kid...I just have a hard time gettin' over the fact that someone sacrificed so much for me."
She ran a hand through his hair, "I tell ya...I've always felt like I needed to compete with her...but if I'd known this...I would have been more patient with ya...I woulda understood...damn Logan! Do you know how much bullshit we could've avoided?"
"I thought it would do more damage to tell you..."
"So why are you tellin' me now?"
He paused for a moment and looked at her as a small smile spread over his lips, "Look at us! How much more damage can we do? Besides...Taylor deserves two parents who can be honest with each other."
"While we're bein' honest...what were you really doin' with Jean's jewelry?"
He looked her in the eye for emphasis, "I was gonna buy you a ring and ask you to marry me."
"Holy shit..."
"Would that've been your answer?"
Marie cracked a smile, which soon turned somber. She looked down, "I'm so sorry I lied to you..."
He nodded, "I can't tell you it's ok yet..."
She nodded as well.
There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence before he turned to her, "Was she born the day of the accident? What happened to her?"
Marie ran a hand through her hair as she began recalling the harrowing details of that day...
************Flashback************
When she came to, she immediately felt an intense pain grip her back and her belly. She cried out as doctors and nurses worked around her, moving too quickly for her to be able to get a handle on what they were doing to her.
She felt the pain...and wetness on her thighs...why were her thighs wet? The doctor barely introduced himself before he told her that her water had broken and they couldn't stop her contractions. The baby was being born now.
"No! It's too early," she cried.
"Babies between 34 and 36 weeks of gestation have a great chance of survival, just calm down, alright? We're gonna need you to push."
Taylor was born after barely two pushes in 8 minutes. She was so tiny...
Marie panicked as her little blue body was rushed to an awaiting table, "Why is she so quiet?" Tears began spilling onto her cheeks as she tried to get a look at her daughter through the doctors and nurses, "What's wrong? Is she alright?" There was more silence, "Please! Tell me what's wrong with her..."
A nurse put a hand on her shoulder, "Calm down...they're working on her."
Marie laid back and put her hands over her face as sobs wracked her body. After what felt like an eternity, the Neonatologist who had been working on Taylor turned around, "The oxygen tube has been inserted...we've got her breathing."
Within a few minutes, they rolled the incubator over to Marie so that she could take a look at her daughter. She looked so tiny and frail...how could she ever survive?
Luckily, her daughter was half Wolverine and 100% fighter.
***************End flashback************
Logan sat with a hand over his mouth as Marie finished telling the story of their daughter's birth. He closed his eyes, "Four pounds...all she weighed was four pounds?"
Marie smiled a little, "And one ounce...don't forget that one ounce...but she got so strong so fast. Made me think she might have your healing factor."
"She looks like me."
She laughed, "Can't argue with you there."
Logan smirked for a little while, then sighed, "I think Storm felt guilty about helping you in your little lie."
"What makes you say that?"
He let out a breath, "She was the one who told me to come back."
Marie's eyebrows furrowed, "She what?"
He looked into her eyes and brushed some hair out of her face, "I'm glad I did, though...aren't you?"
She gave him a long look, "Yea...yea...I think so."
He pulled her into a side hug and kissed her forehead before turning his eyes to the dent in the wall in front of them, "Looks like we got some more repairs to make."
So how is it going out there? Review please folks!