The leaves were beginning to turn by the time Marie came back. Summer's long yellows and dry, brittle greens had slipped quietly into fall's warm riot of persimmon and gold. All of it seemed less vibrant without her until one afternoon she turned up in the hall outside his classroom with a tan and paper bag that had the unmistakable shape of a six pack of sweating longnecks.

Logan dismissed his class early, as unable to focus on the Tet Offensive as the room full of teenagers on that crisp, Friday afternoon. They scattered, as only jubilant teens at the beginning of an unexpectedly long weekend can. Marie put the bag on his desk and walked through his classroom, fingering the spines of the hundreds of books messily lining the walls before winding back up at his desk. She sat on it as if she owned it, legs swinging absently like a child on a tailgate.

In the last few weeks, Logan had done a lot of thinking about what had happened. Wondering where he went wrong. And why. For a while he'd wondered if maybe he'd misread the entire situation. Maybe she'd been trying to relive a lost moment with her man. That Cajun prick. But then, she'd had the Cure when she was with him. He'd fucked her. Loved her. Made love to her.

Every touchable inch of me, inside and out.

Logan would never, ever forget those words of hers. Those sharp spires had pierced him deeply. Maybe things had fallen apart when her powers came back. Maybe the Cajun couldn't deal with untouchable, deadly skin. Maybe he hadn't known what a good thing he'd had until it was gone. Hell, maybe he did know and he'd just pissed it all away doing something stupid. Marie would never stand for anyone stepping out on her. She was too proud. And too strong. Too softhearted, too.

He felt bad for Cheyenne, as well. What she'd done had backfired horribly, but it had come from a good place. She'd tried to help. To include Marie. Her mistake—and his— had been assuming Marie wanted to be included.

It didn't make any sense, though. Why did Marie keep prodding him and pushing him? Suggesting women. Scenarios. Positions. What the fuck? Those inclusive things— those were her ideas. She was in control. She'd included herself.

Nothing made any sense anymore.

Logan, uncharacteristically, was the first to break the thick silence. "Hey, kid. Miss me?"

He expected the usual warm hum of denial and cocky head tilt and was surprised by her response.

"You know, I think I kinda did— when I wasn't busy pokin' my little Logan voodoo doll full of pins." He chuffed at that, not quite sure if she was kidding. "Which just proves I'm as fucked up as everyone thinks I am."

The personal admission was offered so freely he was momentarily struck mute. It typically took a hell of a lot of work to pry any such details from her. She still hadn't once met his eyes and that was unlike her, too. Marie might not be forthcoming, but she wasn't typically the shy sort. Once or twice he'd caught her looking at his hands and blushing and it wasn't difficult to work out why, given the graphic nature of what she'd seen last time they were together.

"You okay?" His words were husky and quiet.

"No."

Logan had no idea what to say to that. She was finally being honest and he found himself floundering where he would have normally blazed ahead.

"Wanna get the hell outta here?" He needed to be outside. Feel the cool wind in his face and to be able to see the open sky. It was easier to think with dirt under his feet and the warmth of the sun on his shoulders. And there was a better expectation of privacy, too.

That made her laugh a little. "Leave? When I just got back?" She slipped off his desk. "I could stretch my legs a little, yeah."

Maybe she really needed to, though it was more likely her uncanny ability to read him that had prompted her easy acquiescence.

The woods enveloped them, welcoming back one of its own with a jaunty flutter of fiery leaves and the solemn majesty of old growth trees, stately and solid. Dappled sunlight fell on them both, kissing that streak in her hair until it glowed.

The steady movement helped. Grounded him, somehow. He was uneasy. While they didn't usually talk about the sex afterwards, the conversations that followed tended to be rocky, full of thorny emotional issues and painful revelations. This time, though, Logan was uncomfortable with how things had ended before. While he didn't really want to open up that can of worms, he still felt like it should at least be acknowledged.

"I'm sorry. About before. I didn't know Chey was gonna—"

"I don't want to talk about that. It's fine."

He grunted. It was most definitely not fine. Marie was more jumpy than usual and the faint color in her face, even now, suggested she was dwelling on it too. Remembering. Reliving the wholly carnal experience in graphic detail.

"If we ever do this again, and that's a damn big if, sugar... then never again with her."

Logan nodded his agreement, more than a little surprised she'd even consider another walk on the wild side with him after what had happened last time. "Fine. I ain't married to the idea of it havin' to be her."

Marie had a strange expression on her face. One he couldn't read.

That made him uneasy. Starting one of these conversations in such an unstable place probably wasn't smart. That feeling of expectation was still there, though. Buzzing between them. It was her turn. She'd had a front row seat, literally, to an intense orgasm. He had let her see everything.

Everything.

Not just every spurt and shudder— it was so much more than that. Afterwards, he'd realized that he'd probably given away far more than private graphic details. It was likely that in that unguarded moment, his face had been a open book, revealing not just an intense longing for a more intimate, physical connection with Marie, but he imagined his heart had probably been in his eyes as well.

It made him feel vulnerable and defensive and annoyed that what she revealed to him in return was so paltry in comparison. Little more than crumbs from her table, and sometimes not even that. He could feel his resentment building, burning under his skin and even the stillness of the forest didn't help the way it usually did. He also couldn't help but wonder what Marie would have done if he'd been the one to offer her a taste instead of Cheyenne.

It was a difficult question with no easy answer. Story of his life, especially when it came to Marie.

For a long time they walked in uneasy silence. The shadows lengthened and cooled, even as the colors in the sky bled into vivid apricot and fiery pink as the sun edged lower.

"I went home to see Mama."

He was so shocked by her unexpected words that he stopped walking. There she went, slipping in under his guard, just like always.

His reaction seemed to please her and she perched herself on a fallen log, picking at the moss and leaves absently. "I really wish I hadn't left that beer on your desk. I could totally use one right now."

"S'probably already been liberated," he returned, finding his voice and moving to lean against a nearby tree. Close, but not too close.

"Please. Who'd be stupid enough to steal from the Wolverine? You could probably have a stack of hundreds on your desk marked 'Uncounted cash for booze and hookers in Vegas' and nobody'd lay so much as a finger on it."

"You would."

"Yeah." She smiled. "But then I'm not exactly known for having the best judgment, now am I?"

She didn't expect a reply and he didn't give one. "How're things back home?" he said instead, unwilling to let that thread of conversation slip away entirely like a stone sinking without a ripple.

It had been one damn big stone.

"Weird."

"Weird how?" Because a one word answer was not going to cut it. Not anymore.

"I dunno. It feels too small somehow now. It was home, but it's not anymore. Familiar… but… not. My room is a moment frozen in time, like a shrine to the life I left behind and not the sanctuary I remember. They're my things but nothing fits. It all makes me feel weird. Anchorless."

"Yeah." He knew that feeling all too well.

"I have all these memories of growing up there. The first time I rode a bike. Swinging sparklers on the 4th of July. Skinned knees and fireflies and backyard barbecues and piano lessons. Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas mornings. Mama's sweet tea and summer vacations and sleepovers with my best friend. Things we all remember."

Logan flinched a little at that, but she didn't notice, lost as she was in the past. Not everyone had those bucolic childhood memories.

"But it wasn't the same, even though the things in the house were the same. School pictures lining the hallway. My bronzed baby shoes on the mantle, like always next to the shadowbox with my christening gown and booties knitted by Mama. Even—" her voice trembled, "Even the marks on the wall in the kitchen where Mama measured me every birthday until I ran away." She had tears in her eyes now. "I've grown half an inch," she added absently and he wondered if she'd written Marie or Rogue by the new line.

"Sounds like good memories." Painful to think on, maybe, but still good.

"Mama's different... Shinier. Freer." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Daddy died a few years back."

That surprised him. He didn't offer up condolences, aware she'd had a rocky relationship with her bigoted, small-minded father even before she manifested, but he was surprised she hadn't told him that her dad had passed. "You never said."

"No, I didn't, did I?" Her head came up. "What did you expect?"

"Maybe for you to tell me what's goin' on with you." When she snorted at that, he added, "The big shit, at least." For fuck's sake. She'd lost her father. Maybe that's where things began to change? She wouldn't be the first fatherless girl to wind up in a bad place.

"Oh sure. I'll just interrupt you mournin' the love of your life and cryin' into your sake to tell you my problems." He sucked in a sharp breath at that. That cold detachment was deliberately cruel. And the words painfully true.

"I didn't lose her. I killed her," he snarled.

"Bullshit. She killed herself. Selfish until the end. I heard about it from the others. Do you even know how many people she killed? Dozens? Hundreds? Even Charles—" Marie tripped over the name, her voice hitching. "He was the first person to ever accept all of her. He loved her even more than her parents and she tore him apart! She didn't give a shit who she hurt, as long as she got what she wanted in the end."

"Watch your fuckin' mouth."

She ignored him.

"She wanted to die because she couldn't live with what she was."

"Says the girl who shot herself up with the Cure for some boy." He was being shitty, but fuck. She pissed him off.

"That's not what I did and you know it!"

"Every touchable inch of me, inside and out. That's whatcha said about that Cajun, ain't it? I thought it was for the iceprick, but I guess you just meant a different boy."

"I did it for me."

He knew that all too well. Anything to make the pain stop. She didn't want to die. She wanted to live. Still, his blood was up and he didn't give her a goddamn inch.

"Whatever you needta tell yourself, kid."

Her eyes narrowed.

"So your beef is isn't with anything in the past — but that I didn't tell you? Christ, Logan! I'm not clairvoyant. It's not like I had any way of contacting you, even if I wanted to. You were just gone. If you missed out on my life while you were drinkin' and fuckin' your way across the world, that's on you."

She had a point, but so did he. "Been back for a couple of years now."

"And? You just expected everything to be the same as it was before? Grow up, sugar. Nothing stays the same forever. Not even you. There's so much you don't know. So much!"

"Tell me, then."

"It's not that easy. You don't just get to waltz back in here and have my personal life handed to you on a platter! You wouldn't like what I served up, even if I felt like sharing."

"Try me."

She was furious, but he could see she was considering it. Weighing what to say, what to share. Girl never could resist a dare.

Her eyes blazed with memories and in that unguarded moment, he saw her face change. Grief. Love. Pain. Rage. Sorrow. Joy. Shame. Vivid flickers of true emotion before she managed to force the tidal wave of feeling back. She blinked a few times and then with anger burning bright and hot she stared him down, defiantly.

"I was married."

If he hadn't been leaning against the tree, he would have lost his feet.

"What?"

He'd been prepared for her to confess she'd killed someone with her gift and liked it, or that she'd fucked her way through too many men to count before winding up with the Cajun, or maybe even that she was glad her dad was dead— but married?

He knew it was wrong to feel possessive of her, but the spark that burned so brightly in her had come from him in that night in the torch. She drew breath because of him. Because the animal had fought for her, and bled for her, and died surrendering his gift to her so her flame wouldn't be extinguished forever.

She was his in ways people— humans— would never recognize. And she'd given herself to someone else? Sex he could understand... but marriage was another matter entirely. A joining of something beyond the physical.

"Told you," she snapped, taking in his stunned silence and the hard clench of his jaw.

"You're lyin'. Tryin' to fuck with me."

"You mean you wish I was."

He growled at that because she was damn right.

"When?"

"When not who?"

"I fuckin' know who. That Cajun dick." He glared at her, hating the look in her eyes, even now. "What? I didn't go diggin' if that's what you think." She did not look convinced. "Your face changes when you talk about him." Scent, too— but he didn't want to go there.

"Remy." He hated even more how she said that name. There was a gravitas there. Good or bad, she'd had some miles with the man and they'd left a mark. She might have had the Wolverine inside her head, but there was someone else out there who still probably knew her better. Some other man owned her heart. The heart that beat because of him. Because she'd taken what he was— all that he was — inside her, not once but twice. She'd taken his wild light and made it her own.

"I don't wanna know his name."

"Remy Etienne LeBeau," she fired back just to push his buttons.

It worked.

"Shut up."

"Told ya you wouldn't like it."

He ignored her. "Answer the fuckin' question. When."

"Why does it matter?"

"Marie!" he thundered. He'd damn well have that answer from her, at least.

"Fine. Not like it matters anyway. We met the summer after I turned nineteen." Not all that long after he'd split, then. He was arrogant enough to believe those two things were not entirely unrelated. "I was divorced before I was twenty-one."

"Mmph."

"I'm assumin' that's not the grunt of: Gee, I'm happy ya had somethin' good for a while."

"Damn straight. It's the grunt of: Women should be fuckin' grown if they're gonna get hitched."

"Do you even hear yourself? What patriarchal bullshit! How many kids do you know who remember Bull Run, sugar? The putrid trenches at Marne? I know the brutal, bloody beaches at Normandy. I can still taste the acrid stench of burning bodies at Auschwitz." She probably saw the horror on his face, but she didn't stop. "Nagasaki. Hamburger Hill. Weapon X."

"Jesus Christ."

"I have decades— centuries of unspeakable things in my head, so let's stop pretending that I'm Polly-fucking-anna, okay?"

"It don't make it right." He was dug in, stubborn to the end.

"Oh please! Spare me your condescending bullshit, huh? You're what? Closing in on the two century mark? Back in your day, they married a hell of a lot younger than that. How do you know you know there isn't some wife in your past who was fourteen or fifteen or sixteen?"

"Shut up!"

"No. You wanted this. You pushed. You're always after me to tell you this shit. It's not my problem if you don't like hearing it. In fact, I warned you that you wouldn't and you still dared me!"

"That's a load of shit."

"No it's not. You only want to hear things about me if they fit neatly with whatever you imagine I'm really like— not that you ever made much of an effort to find out. As long as it's within the scope of that Marie box you have in your head— then fine, but I'm not allowed to color outside the lines. Even with you. How ironic is that, considering how much you hate boundaries of any kind?"

"Pretty damn cocky of you to even assume there is a Marie box."

She laughed at that. "I have you in my head — not the other way around, cowboy. There's a Marie box." She was not wrong, but he didn't like being called on it.

He just growled at her. As much as he cared, he still didn't want her crawling through his personal thoughts.

"It's pretty damn outdated, though. And for a guy who was embarrassingly vocal about the whole 'women should be grown' thing, you got a lotta dirty thoughts about—"

"Enough!"

He shifted, no longer leaning against the tree, but standing freely in what was obviously a fighting stance. His fist was clenched. Jaw, too.

"You wanna go, sugar?" She pulled off her gloves. "I'm game if you are."

Shaking his head, he took a step back and then another, fighting the animal for control.

"I ain't lettin' you off the hook so easy. You think goin' a few rounds is gonna get you outta talkin'?"

"Whatever."

"Who knows. Maybe it's just an excuse to touch me in a way that don't scare the shit outta you." She growled. Actually growled at him at that. It would have turned him on if he wasn't so angry. "Hell, maybe you just like gettin' hit. Turn you on, baby?" He knew it did.

"Remind me again who said he liked pain?" she hissed.

"This ain't about me."

"Isn't everything?" she sneered.

"What the fuck?" He could feel the claws pricking the backs of his hands. Instead of grounding him, the pain only spurred him on. "You want this to be about you, then make it about you. Talk or get the hell away from me."

"You're an asshole." But she settled herself back on the log, just the same. It was so unexpected, he almost missed her next words. "It was a fall wedding. N'Orleans. We honeymooned in Paris, after. I ate snails!" She laughed softly at the memory, despite the emotionally charged conversation. "And I learned a lot of dirty words in French. We walked for miles, looking at art that's even older than you! And I had the best sex of my life." He realized, then, she hadn't backed down an inch. She meant for the words to hurt, and they did. But they were also clearly the truth.

Marie pulled her wallet from her pack and held out a worn wedding photo. Looking at it made his chest ache, but he still smiled. She'd worn boots with her wedding dress. And his cowboy hat. Her man was tall and lean with auburn hair and weird black and red eyes that made him uneasy.

"Nice," he managed to push out, handing the photo back to her.

"Yeah, I'm sure that's the first adjective that came to mind."

"Not the first," he agreed.

It wasn't the man in the photo that killed him. It was the smile on her, wide and carefree and bright enough to light up the world. Where had that girl gone?

"I don't get it," he said, finally.

"Don't get what?"

"That night on the dock. Our bet. No meaningful connection with anyone since you took the Cure? You paid up. Brought me a bottle."

"Yeah."

"So what gives? You sayin' you married that guy and there ain't somethin' meaningful there? 'Cause what's in that photograph says otherwise."

"Not everything's what it seems. That's just one moment in time."

"That don't make sense."

"Sure it does. It's like someone looking at you right now and going- Gee, he doesn't have any scars. He must not know the first thing about pain."

Logan sucked in a sharp breath. "Hey—"

"Look, I'm just saying some people are lying liars who lie and you can't make a life on that." She pushed herself to her feet. "And if you're stupid enough to try, then the whole house of cards comes crashing down."

"He did that?"

She didn't reply and didn't look at him. "It doesn't matter. It's done. Over. I'm just saying that as far as meaningful goes— when nothing's real, whatever life you thought you were making is gonna wind up in flames no matter what."

"That's what happened." It wasn't question.

She didn't answer.

She just walked away through the tall trunks, pale under her summer tan like she'd seen a ghost.

He followed from a distance, eventually melting away when he heard her void her stomach into the leaves. Only painful, visceral memories could do that. He knew.

As he walked away, he thought maybe she was still carrying the weight of those old ghosts with her even now.

He knew about that, too.

Up next: Brand. That's gonna leave a mark…