Outside in the hallway, voices and footsteps slid on a scale, louder as they approached and softer as they walked away. Marie waved at the young man at the door.
"Hey, Marcus. Come on in."
Marcus was a senior with a talent for basketball who carried himself as if he was never sure if he was in the right place, whatever place that happened to be. He paused before taking a chair, and Marie offered the least threatening question she could ask.
"How are you doing today?"
This assignment had sounded simpler when she accepted it: to sit in the office she now shared with Warren, available to answer students' questions about various promising projects towards a permanent cure. Hank had been holding these dedicated office hours once a month, and Storm suggested that Marie take over for the week, covering his absence while offering a first-person perspective. Marie had no reservation — school counseling had once been a professional ambition — but now she found herself feeling as nervous as Marcus looked. Hank's answers about the cure might have come from his head, but hers would inevitably come from the heart.
"I'm okay," Marcus said, adjusting the thin black that floated around his face in wispy strands. His voice was low and serious, but his eyes sparkled with humor. "I mean, I woke up with green skin in my last year of high school. Do not recommend. But other than that, just dandy."
Marie laughed. "That's fair."
"I don't have any specific questions," he added. "Hank says I've read as much about the cure as some of the researchers working on it." The smirk persisted, but he was looking at his hands, not at her. "But I don't know anyone who's actually taken it, and Logan keeps saying I should ask you about it."
The surprise certainly showed on her face, but she at least managed not to voice it. For almost two weeks they had avoided each other with the diligence of trains on a shared railtrack. The irony of it was that, in such close quarters, the only way she could keep him out of her sight was to have him constantly on her mind. The idea that Logan might be in a similar predicament — to know that he had thought and talked about her — felt like a shot of the strong espresso Hank sometimes made after lunch.
"Maybe you could, like, tell me how it was? For you?" Marcus looked at her eagerly. "You were a student here, right?"
"I was," she said. "I came here…"
The words immediately jammed in her throat. No honest version of her story lent itself to being told around Logan's name. Her relationship to this school began with him. It had ended with him, as well, until she had decided on this second try.
He cocked his head, waiting.
"The X-Men found me," she said finally. "It's sort of a long story, but there was someone after me, because of my powers."
"Damn. What powers do you have?"
It had been so long since she'd had to explain them that Marie fumbled, trying to remember her rehearsed spiel. Her fingers stretched and curled, seeking the grain of the wood on the desk.
"My skin, it… it absorbs stuff from other people, if I touch them. Parts of their DNA. Parts of their conscience, too. If they're mutants, I actually get their powers."
"Shit. Seriously?" Marcus smiled differently when he got ahead of his self-consciousness: his face widened, the black eyes glowing. "That's the most badass thing I've ever heard."
"Yeah, well." Her shoulders sagged, but she tried to smile. "I don't get to keep any of it, and it can really hurt people, when I do that."
"Oh." His smile loosened as quickly as hers. "Sorry. I feel dumb. Obviously there was some reason you wanted the cure."
"Yeah, the whole kill-with-a-touch magic trick got old fast." That sounded too dark, so she added a joke. "And I spent a lot of money on gloves."
"Hey, you gotta treat yourself." Marcus laughed easily, and she realized she already liked him. "So you must have taken the original cure, right?"
"Yeah, the Worthington shot. This is actually the third drug I've been on. The first one only lasted a few weeks."
His posture stretched, as if the life he wanted was on a shelf just an inch too high. "Man. What a ride those few weeks must have been. You were still here? In school?"
"I was here, but not as a student. I worked here for a couple years after I graduated, as the previous headmaster's assistant. I was just about done with community college when the cure came out."
"Oh, that's cool. So you got cured and… what? You transferred?"
That had been the plan. Every major decision she had ever made until then had been constrained by her mutation. Living in the school, working for Xavier, dating Bobby, even her choice of major — based in part on the availability of online classes — were all shaped by the concern for safety that had driven her from home, terrified that she was fated to hurt anyone who ever loved her.
The cure had brought freedom. Marie still remembered the moment when the needle bit into her arm that first time. The stench of alcohol in the room had made her nose wrinkle, but to this day she associated it with a tingling sense of possibility, with the golden light that spilled from the sky when the clouds scattered after heavy rain.
"Well, I was pretty lucky that I had applied for transfer, even though I hadn't actually been too excited about going." Logan had practically forced her to fill out the applications, sometimes sitting next to her to ensure she clicked Send. "So everything kind of lined up and I was deciding where to go. I got into a couple of good schools, so I just had to pick one."
She screamed with joy when UCLA accepted her into one of the best clinical psychology departments in the country. By then her relationship with Bobby was already over — the seesaw of her self-doubt and his reassurance had turned out to be a load-bearing element. All the light flooding her life suddenly seemed to come from the west.
Marie spent days reading about California, marking crosses on the map where there were snow-capped mountains to climb, massive trees to drive through, and freezing-cold waves to learn to surf. She was knee-deep in that research when Logan stopped by her room one night to ask if she'd made plans to visit Stony Brook.
Marie's second choice was strong enough academically that it would have been a natural fit had she been looking for continuity instead of a fresh start. There was no reason to visit, but the thought of a two-hour drive in Logan's old truck was too big a draw, even if she'd spent three years training her heart not to race when he came near her. So she accepted.
Marcus raised his eyebrows, perhaps intuiting that her story was heavily abridged. "So where did you end up going?"
Her life had already been turned upside down, and that night in Long Island turned it inside out. They spent the afternoon walking around the mostly unremarkable campus; afterwards, Logan suggested lingering for dinner, to avoid crossing the city in rush-hour traffic. But it was too early to be properly hungry, so they looked for drinks first — and because this was a college town and Logan's nose never missed a dive bar, they'd ended up at a pool table, shooting until they'd lost track of both drinks consumed and hours passed. By the time they spilled out of the bar's heavy doors, the Italian place they'd eyed earlier was closed and they were both done pretending to factor in convenience. They sobered up with Nathan's hot dogs, then drove a full hour away from home to sit on the beach in Montauk, where the Atlantic ventured out in all directions and the world might as well not exist. He spread his jacket on the sand for her, and they passed whiskey and secrets back and forth, the night's tight weave slowly loosening until the day found its way through.
By the time the sun rose out of the ocean, Marie had convinced herself she'd hate the West Coast.
"Well, it was… complicated."
Marcus grimaced. "Complicated. Okay. So, like, drama."
She laughed, but the room suddenly felt too small, with its two large desks and the clutter of photographs that Warren sprinkled on every available surface. It was strange to think back to when the cure had been a well-marked path, downhill and straight out of this life: to college, to relationships, to whoever she was meant to become.
"I was thinking about Stony Brook." Even in her own mind, she skipped over some of the details; that day on the mat still made her blush with embarrassment. "But I had a weird summer. My grandmother died."
"I'm so sorry."
"Thank you." She had rushed to Pass Christian when the news of Meemaw's cancer came, even though it meant leaving Logan and the tender bud that had appeared between them. "I went to see her, and while I was there everyone started talking about how the cure was failing. By the end of the summer, my powers were back."
He leaned forward, his expression softening. "So you didn't transfer?"
Marie felt uncomfortably vulnerable. "No. It didn't make sense anymore."
She had asked herself so many times what would have happened if Logan had been home when she returned. But he hadn't. He hadn't wanted her without the cure, and she knew that meant no one else would, either. She went to Los Angeles impulsively, moving the distance from Logan to the "pros" side of the list — but nobody walked anywhere, the air never smelled like rain, and the beaches were always too windy. By winter she was back in New York, singing Duran Duran at the top of her lungs as she and Jubilee opened boxes in the Queens apartment they shared for two years.
"You think you might go now? Finish your bachelor's?"
"I've thought about it." Hank was an enthusiastic supporter, and he always mysteriously knew application deadlines for her favorite schools off the top of his head. Marie shrugged. "But it's tricky. The cure worked, and then it didn't, and then I tried the second version, and that failed even faster…"
"How long has it been this time?"
"Six months. Which is enough to start believing it, but so long that you have no doubts."
She looked at her hands. Six months was also just enough time to start wondering why her life hadn't started yet. Wanting to move the focus to Marcus , she asked, "How long has it been since you manifested?"
"A hundred and twenty seven days." He looked up, long hair falling in front of his eyes, and he smirked. "Not that I'm counting it like some weirdo."
"I know that feels long, but it isn't."
"That's what everyone says. I'm probably this whole school's newest mutant."
"And it's just the skin?"
Marcus cocked his head. "What do you mean?"
His green skin drew attention, but other small details of his appearance were different, too: the nails were black despite no hint of polish; the ears were slightly pinched at the top, not unlike Kurt's; the almond shape of his eyes might have passed for human otherwise, but on him it was yet another mark of otherness.
"Your mutation. It's only been four months. Was it just your appearance that changed? Nothing else?"
"Not really. Just the skin. And like, my nails or whatever." He looked down at his own body, as if he expected to find out the answer right then and there, from a naked-eye inspection. "Are we counting the crippling insecurity?"
She laughed warmly, feeling a surge of affection. "I might have that one, too." Then she straightened herself in her chair. "I think it's important to get to know your mutation as well as you can before you make the decision. Make sure you understand everything it entails, and see if you can figure out what it looks like to live with it. You should decide whatever you want, but I think you'll feel better if you know you've done your homework."
"Is that what you did?"
The trees outside leaned under the wind, trying to eavesdrop. Xavier and Hank had always believed she could do more. Logan had taken their side, too, and offered countless times to help her find out. They had almost convinced her when Worthington announced their cure.
Marie thought of the day she had gone to the clinic, declining Logan's offer of a ride for fear of getting trapped in his orbit. Just like when she left Meridian, she'd given more thought to what she was running from than what she was running towards. It wasn't a lie to say she'd gotten what she wanted, but the hidden truth was that she'd wanted very little.
"Maybe I could have done it better."
Marcus nodded and excused himself politely, understanding this was as much as she was willing to say. He unfolded his lanky limbs off the chair and thanked her before walking out the door.
As soon as he left, Marie went limp with relief. The past weighed so much more than she remembered, and she couldn't wait to bury it again.
"This food is bullshit," Logan declared, jiggling a thick square of lasagna off a large spatula and onto his plate.
The picked-over buffet didn't look appealing. Only one square of lasagna was left in the large metal pan — not that he was planning to come back for seconds of this crap. He moved on to the large basket of garlic bread, lined with red-checkered cloth as if that could make up for something. There were three pieces left, and he took them all.
Next to him, Hank was probing the lasagna with his fork to investigate the filling. "It seems to be spinach," he announced.
"Now, what did I say?" he sighed. "They shouldn't call it lasagna if it ain't got meat."
"I believe the name refers to the layered arrangement."
"It's gotta have curly edges and red sauce. Look at this shit," he huffed, peeling back a layer of pasta on his plate. The filling was a weird oily mix of something creamy and something green. "What the fuck is this green goop? And there's no fucking meat."
"Language, my friend. Some of the children can hear as well as you."
But the lunch hour had come and gone, leaving the cafeteria about as empty as a church on Friday night. It looked like one, too, with the two-story floor-to-ceiling windows, and beams of sunlight so dense they seemed like they might hold something up. Two girls with books piled in front of them were caught up in each other instead, giggling behind cupped hands and trading secrets with their eyes. Marcus nodded from the table where he was sitting alone, with an empty plate pushed away from him and his phone in his hands.
"Yo, we shootin' hoops later?"
Logan grinned. "What now, you failed your math test again and need taken to school?"
The kid clicked his tongue. "You don't talk to Green Jesus like that."
He moved on, chuckling. Ever since Marcus had come to the school, he'd joined Logan and some of the older kids for a pick-up game that ran once or twice a week. The court was the only place where he ever seemed completely comfortable. He'd been talking a lot lately about getting the cure, and Logan had suggested that he go chat with Marie about it. On that first night she'd said something about being lost, and that had stuck with him. Wherever it was that she'd been trying to go, it seemed like the cure might not have been the right way.
Then he noticed her in the back of the room, with her head thrown back like she'd just heard something funny.
Warren was sitting across from her, looking smug that he'd been the one to say it. Logan narrowed his eyes. He'd never had any reason to dislike Warren, and that was exactly why Logan didn't like him. The man was a vanilla milkshake of a person, so goddamn nice that if you stepped on his foot he'd apologize for leaving it in the way. Since he was only in the mansion twice a week, Storm had asked him to share his office with Marie. As far as Logan could tell, Warren had taken that to mean he should be within five feet of Marie at all times.
Her attention touched his eyes like a flash of lightning. She stopped laughing, and then looked away.
Marie had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with Logan, and he wasn't the only one she'd made it clear to. Oh, she was civil. Polite, even. But whatever magnet had seemed to pull them together three years before had its poles flipped. There'd been a time in his life when Logan had gotten used to following her scent whenever he caught it. Now he was getting used to avoiding it.
He had no right to hope for more. Didn't mean he hadn't, at first. That first night, he'd hoped despite himself that her eyes would light up the dark when she saw him, how it used to be when he'd come back from a mission. That they'd linger around each other just like all those times he'd walked her to her room at night and stood on the threshold for half an hour, longer even, while she pulled chit-chat out of him like a magician's scarves. Maybe if there had been something there, Logan might have changed his plans. But with the way things were going, they just made more sense than ever. It was just a matter of waiting for the right time.
"Shall we join them?" Hank asked.
Hank wasn't an idiot, which meant the question was rhetorical. Logan followed him with a grumble, and when they got closer to the table he saw it wasn't just Warren and Marie at the table. There was a little boy sitting beside her by the window, busy playing with the food on his plate. Must have been about five or six, with blue-framed glasses on his face and a head of brown curls.
"Who's that kid?" he muttered.
"I believe she agreed to babysit a prospective student while the mother speaks to Ororo."
He frowned. "How's a kid that little gonna live here?"
Hank pulled a chair to the head of the table, between the two adults. Logan set his tray down in front of the little boy, which put him next to Warren and kitty-corner from Marie. He darted a glance that she pretended not to notice, smiling at Hank instead.
"Hey, kid," Logan mumbled at the boy.
He just blinked behind his little blue frames, but then Marie turned. "Harry, that's Mr. Logan. He's a teacher here, too. You wanna say hi?"
The boy nodded, watching Logan with big eyes, but didn't really follow through.
"And this is Dr. McCoy," she added, pointing over to Hank.
Harry stared at both of them before leaning into her ear. Next to him he sensed Warren watching them, probably noticing the way she lowered her head and brushed her hair back to hear better.
The boy made his voice small, not knowing that he might as well have been whispering straight in Logan's ear. "Ms. Rogue, he's blue."
"That's right, Dr. McCoy is blue," she confirmed in normal volume. Warren laughed, and Hank broke into a wide grin. "But it's not nice to whisper about people in front of them, sugar."
"Okay," he said, going right back to staring at Hank.
Marie ruffled his hair as a reward and he melted under her touch, sinking his chin onto his crossed arms with a contented look on his face. Logan's smirk twitched in sympathy.
"Harry here's a big fan of dinosaurs," Warren volunteered. "Right, Harry?"
Harry blinked and leaned towards Marie a little, throwing an appraising look at Warren. He looked like a cat who wasn't looking for new friends.
"He really does! Right, sugar? He was teaching me some things earlier about…"
Underneath the mess of brown hair, those green eyes found Logan's garlic bread and sparkled. He broke a piece in two and handed over half; Harry moved his hand towards it slowly, clearly not wanting to attract attention. His lasagna sat untouched.
"...all the books Karen got him…"
He stared openly as he chewed, giving Logan the same once-over he'd given Warren. Logan stared right back, watching the kid's little jaw move as Rogue started petting his hair again without looking. She clearly wasn't thinking about it. It was just where her hand went. She was attached to this kid already.
"...sure you'd have a lot to talk about, Hank!"
Hank nodded along and said something about coming by his office to look at fossils, but he inhaled his food and bailed to prepare for his next class. He was always in a hurry these days, with the work in Washington taking as much of his time as it did.
Logan stabbed another bite of lasagna, keeping his eyes on Harry as he did the same. He snaked one arm across the table, reaching for the other half, and Logan nudged his plate to put it within reach.
"Hey, did you know birds are kind of like dinosaurs?" Warren asked. "I'm pretty sure a sparrow is more similar to a T-Rex than the T-Rex to the stegosaurus. Isn't that crazy?"
"Really? That's so interesting. Did you know that, Harry?"
The smile on Marie's face made a snarl bubble up in Logan's throat. He scarfed down a forkful of lasagna just to have something to do with his face.
Harry turned away from the garlic bread he was thoughtfully gnawing on. His chin was freckled with crumbs. "But dinosaurs are cool. Birds are lame."
Logan didn't even try not to laugh.
Warren laughed too, holding his hands up. "Touché, dude."
"Harry, sugar, that's not…" Her lips were pressed together, but her shoulders were shaking. "It's not very nice."
"Why not?" Harry whined.
"It's fine," Warren said, waving her off with a smile. "So, you're a shapeshifter, right? Have you ever tried to turn yourself into a dinosaur? Like a T-Rex or something?"
Rogue squeezed Harry's shoulder. From where she was sitting, she couldn't have seen the look of weariness he threw Logan, like he couldn't believe this clown.
"How is a T-Rex gonna fit in my bedroom?"
Logan found himself smirking. The boy had some spunk and a bullshit detector, two qualities he could appreciate in anyone. He pushed more bread the kid's way.
"Alright, alright." Warren laughed again and shot Marie a smile that he probably thought was charming. Fuck, maybe she did, too. "How about, like a tiny one?"
Harry frowned. "A tiny T-Rex is not cool." He turned towards Logan and pushed the blue glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Do you want to see me turn into a pumpkin?"
Logan turned to Marie when he laughed, out of habit. She was laughing, too, something sparked when they caught each other's eyes, like she'd forgotten to hate him for just a second. But she remembered and looked away, and Logan looked at Harry instead.
"Maybe later, buddy."
"Are you a teacher?"
There was a hint of disbelief in it, like he'd already figured out Logan couldn't be cut from the same cloth as the others.
"Yeah." Logan punctuated that with a mouthful of lasagna; maybe eating green food was something a teacher would do.
"Do you teach math?"
"Warren teaches math. I teach history."
"Like when dinosaurs were around?"
Logan had to laugh. "No, kid. I teach people history. You know. Wars and shit."
That turned into some kind of emergency. "Ms. Rogue, Mr. Logan said shit!"
"Harry, there's no need to repeat it." At least she finally looked at him properly. "Logan, can you please?"
She didn't specify what he was supposed to do, but all she seemed to want from him lately was silence, so he shut up.
Harry had his own agenda. "What's your mutation?"
Logan's eyes flickered down. "I heal. If I get hurt, I get better real quick. Sometimes so quick you can't even see it."
It wasn't the whole story, but it was enough to make the boy's lips make an O to match his wide eyes.
"Warren has wings," Marie piped.
Logan couldn't resist. "Like a bird."
Harry laughed, and even Warren managed to chuckle before he stood up from his seat, like he'd just remembered some place he had to be where no one was making fun of him. Harry didn't seem to mind.
"Where are all the other kids?"
"Well, Harry, a lot of people had their lunch already, but there's a lot of students, you know? It's just… not all of them are your age."
"What age are they?"
Marie paused, trying to measure the size of the fib. "Just… older. A little bit."
"But who am I gonna play with?"
She smiled and tucked a curl behind his ear. "You can play with me, sugar."
Harry looked at her like she was a bike on Christmas morning. "Every day?"
She nodded, and he turned to Logan. "With Mr. Logan too?"
There was a weird pause. The teenagers had gotten up already, and when Warren left it was just the three of them in the cafeteria. Marie looked at Logan. She clearly didn't like this direction.
"Sure, kid. With me too."
"What's your favorite dinosaur?"
Logan chuckled and waved towards the window. "You know there's a nice big lawn out there that's real good for kite flying? You know how to fly a kite?"
Harry shook his head, mesmerized.
"I could teach ya sometime."
"Harry, sugar, let's go see if your mom is finished."
It was pretty obvious that if she had been finished she'd be here picking up her kid, but Harry bobbed along, trying to talk while Rogue made a big fuss of extricating herself from the dining bench and pulling him along with her, looking everywhere except Logan.
Hope beaded in his green eyes. "Can we please go fly a kite?"
He raised his head for her answer, but Marie let out a breath that was pure anger. "Not today, sugar." She glared at Logan. "Can you please not do that?"
Again with the asking for things without saying what they were.
"Do what?"
"Just don't promise anything, okay?"
That stung more than he wanted to admit. "You gonna tell that to Hank, too? To Warren?"
But he knew the answer to that. Warren hadn't kissed her on the mat that day after Long Island. Warren hadn't rolled on top of her the minute she put her hand on his chest and said it hadn't been for a boy that she'd taken the cure. Warren hadn't put his hands all over her and then pulled away panting like a dog, rock-hard, to say maybe he should take her on a date first.
She scoffed, but before she could put him in his place Harry yelled, "Mommy!" and they both turned to look. Karen was at the door and he ran towards her with arms out like wings. She squatted down and lifted him off as he jumped into her arms, burying her face in his neck. The boy's laughter bounced from wall to wall.
Logan sat watching as she caught up to them, just as Karen was putting Harry down. He couldn't hear them well enough to make out words, but he didn't have to. The script was obvious just from the look on Karen's face. She reached down to ruffle Harry's hair and shook her head with a sad smile. Marie's whole body sagged, buckling down with the defeat. Logan stood up and cleared their plates, hating that he couldn't go to her, couldn't scoop her into a hug, couldn't make anything better.
"You want this light off, darlin'?"
Logan was standing at the door to the faculty kitchen with one hand on the light switch that she had left off. Ororo raised her eyes and shook her head. He turned on the lights that illuminated the sink behind her, but avoided the harsher ones directly over her head.
He watched for a second before giving his assessment. "Bad day, yeah?"
She mumbled and looked down at the glass she held in her other hand, swirling her drink absent-mindedly. He walked up to the bar cart and reached for an open bottle of Hibiki. She preferred scotch in general, and recently Hank's frequent company had drawn her towards the peaty, smoky undertones he favored. Logan partook occasionally, but his taste bent towards lighter and more floral palates. Taking the stool next to her, he raised his glass.
"Cheers."
"You won't get any cheer from me tonight, hon." However begrudgingly, she clinked her glass against his before taking another sip.
"Kids?"
"Literally everything," she sighed. "Kids, too. I talked to Sunny again today."
It had been almost a month now since the red-haired teenager had knocked on the door, slouched under the weight of a scuffed backpack, its zippered pockets stuffed half-hazardly in the way of quick getaways. Sunny had the kind of intimidating beauty that both attracted attention and repealed it, and while her fellow sophomores seemed to more or less unanimously like her, Ororo suspected her friendly persona was a carefully curated exhibit. When class let off and students curdled into their little cliques, she floated fluidly between them, offering smiles freely but preferring books to company. To this day, no one at the school knew what her mutation was.
"You figure it out yet?" Logan asked.
"Would I be drinking in the dark if I had?" she quipped, and he laughed.
"You're drinking over one surly teenager? Come on, darlin', I'm starting to think you're going soft."
Ororo blew a breath up her face, causing white hairs to flutter. "I'm also worried about the bill. Hank keeps telling me it's okay, but I think he's struggling down there."
"Hank knows how to play that town, Ro."
"I know, but so does Trask. And he has scruples, which they don't." She looked down at her tea. "And I had to turn away that little boy."
"Harry, right? I put that one together when I saw the mom's face."
"Rogue was so disappointed about Harry." She had sought Ororo in the main office after Karen left, her opinion of the decision obvious on her features. "It really broke my heart."
"Yeah, I got lunch with them. Seemed like she really bonded with him."
"Our youngest student right now is 11, and we already struggle with her."
"I get it. Hell, I don't know why you took that meeting in the first place."
"I didn't know." She sipped her drink and felt the world pulse around her, duller and then again brighter. "It was my bad. She didn't mention the kid's age and I didn't insist."
"I bet that was on purpose. The mom must have figured it was a long shot." Logan squeezed her shoulder. "You can't help everybody, Ro."
"Can't I?" She put her elbows on the table and lowered her head to her hands. "I feel like Xavier did."
"He just made it look that way," he said decisively, taking their empty glasses to the bar cart. It was made of glass and brushed gold, and it gleamed in the dim light. A cap twisted off one bottle, and liquid trickled out. "I bet that's not what he told himself at night."
"Honestly, I don't know how the hell I ended up with this job."
It wasn't the first time she'd admitted this to him, even if she mostly managed to maintain her poise with everybody else. There was little point in trying to contain Logan to her own carefully curated exhibit. More than anyone else, he had free access to the warehouse in the back, cluttered with the piles of mistakes she had archived for future reference.
Behind her, Logan's large hands set down the drinks and landed on her shoulders. "You remember what this place was like when he died? When we had no teachers? No money? Barely a goddamn student?"
"Of course I remember." After three of their own had died, there was essentially no faculty. Donors who had been personally attached to Xavier came to his funeral but rescinded their checks. Parents made appointments to pick up their children. The last time she had been so lost was at a street market in Cairo.
"Then look around, darlin'. There ain't another person in the world who coulda gotten us from that place to here. Don't you let anybody tell you different, not even if it's you."
She leaned back against his touch. "What am I supposed to do when you're gone, Logan?"
"Hank oughta be up for a shoulder rub whenever you need one."
Ororo reached back to swat his ribs, laughing over the flutter in her chest. Logan dodged her, sinking to his seat.
"So you had lunch with Rogue, huh? Does that mean things are getting better?"
His face darkened enough to make the answer redundant. "If anything they're getting worse."
Logan and Rogue had always had a natural connection, having come to the mansion together. When the girl was young enough to be called that, the obvious fact that she could never say no to Logan had made both Ororo and Scott shudder at the thought of what he could have obtained from her. Eventually, however, time and observation made her realize that he would never do anything inappropriate. His behavior towards Rogue was always warm, but never unrestrained.
After Alcatraz, something had shifted. Part of it was simply Rogue's demeanor, changed by the cure. She had given new meaning to the term "comfortable in her own skin." Ororo remembered seeing a new sundress everyday that summer, gradually tanning into a new identity.
Logan had changed, too. When she was lost after Alcatraz he had been the one to find her, promising to help rebuild the school. Maybe having that clear map of the future had been what allowed him to make room for Rogue in it. During the days, she often saw them lingering near doorways, stopping to tell each other little things as they moved around the mansion. In the evenings they were always tumbling inside together, laughing, smelling of cigar smoke.
When Rogue had called and asked about a job, Ororo had been thrilled to have her back; but she also imagined it might mean keeping Logan, too. That hadn't turned out as she had hoped.
"You know she smokes now?" he asked suddenly. "Cigarettes."
He said that as if it was particularly shocking, his own weakness for tobacco notwithstanding. Ororo laughed softly.
"It's been three years, honey."
"I guess."
His voice was cracking with regret, and she reached for his wide back. The muscles were bunched under the skin.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Probably not."
"What happened?"
He rolled his glass between his palms, avoiding eye contact. "Ro…"
"I'm serious, Logan." Stroking his back, she softened her voice. "Why was she so mad that you weren't here? Does she… does she know anything?"
"God, no," he said abruptly, standing up as if the seat was on fire. He caught his breath and ran a hand through his hair. "No, fuck no."
Ororo fought down a wave of relief she knew was represhensible, and pressed on. "Why was that such a big deal? I mean, as far as she knows you just… took a while to come back, right?"
Logan sounded tired. "We had… plans."
"What kind of plans?"
"You really gonna drag this out of me now?"
"I waited three years for you to volunteer the information," she pointed out, an eyebrow raised. "You didn't."
"You suck, you know that?" He knocked back what was left of his drink and then reached for hers, doing the same. The smell of alcohol hung in the air. "You remember I took her to see Stony Brook?"
"Sure."
"That night was… I don't know."
Ororo offered a slow, deliberate nod. "That was the night you two came home together before breakfast, right?" The gossip mill has been at peak productivity in those days, and she had done what she could to slow it down. After Rogue left, the rumors gradually starved out.
"Nothing happened," he said, quickly. "I just took her to Montauk."
She smiled. "To the lighthouse?"
"Yeah. We ended up seeing the sun rise."
"That couldn't have been too long before she told me she wasn't going to UCLA."
Logan rubbed his forehead, gravitating back to the bar cart. "I was a fucking asshole," he said over the sound of whiskey splashing into the glass. Even for someone with his metabolism, the pace of his drinking was alarming. "I should have let her do what she wanted."
"It's a moot point, Logan. She didn't even go."
"Yeah, but maybe…" He shook his head, looking down. "I don't fucking know."
She winced when he knocked the shot back. "What happened after Montauk?"
His weight collapsed next to her again. "There was this day when… We were on the mat, and it just… you know."
Ororo raised her eyebrows. She knew. "And?"
"I mean, she opened the door. What do you think I did?"
"I think you fell right through it like you'd been pushing that door for three years."
"Let's get this straight, I didn't push," he scoffed. "Went right through it, though, that's for sure. But the only way I could live with myself was if I at least convinced her to take it slow, so I tried."
Finally, the joints between the facts were visible. "But then she went to Pass Christian."
"The day she got that call, I was supposed to take her out to dinner."
"Like, on a… like a date?"
Logan just nodded.
"I'm sorry, honey. I get it now."
When the news came that Rogue's grandmother was terminally ill in Pass Christian, Mississippi, Ororo, the plan was that she'd go for the summer and then come back to settle in Stony Brook. She'd made endless fun of Logan for how he'd paid attention to his phone for the first time in his life, smirking in the blue glow of the screen as he stood outside with his cigar, texting back and forth. She still remembered his voice on the phone calling Rogue as they landed in Montana, reassuring her that all would end well. Just minutes before they went into that school.
Weeks later, when Rogue returned to find Logan gone, it had been her checking her phone incessantly, still not believing that he wasn't here. Ororo had been confused at the time; Logan had been away before, and Rogue had never shown impatience about it. Now it was clear why that time had mattered so much.
"I assume you didn't tell her why you weren't here."
He shook his head.
"And knowing you, I'm guessing you barely talked to her."
Logan just looked down, the glass empty between his hands. "What was I gonna say?"
Ororo sighed out the rest of her patience. "Well, no wonder she's treating you like she is."
He shrugged. "Ain't like I don't deserve it."
"So this is how you're punishing yourself? You're just gonna let her hate you?"
"What, and you don't think she'd hate me more if she knew what happened?"
The full weight of the years came between them, holding down the silence. Ororo searched Logan's stoic face for clues: the long line of his nose, the set of his lips.
Then another small fact found its way into the narrative. "She told you she was leaving. That was when you turned away."
He nodded. Ororo had always wondered about how abruptly things had worsened after Montana. Logan had been in touch with her, occasionally sending sparse but consistent updates as he slowly drove himself back, in need of time alone. But at some point he turned away, crossed the border to Canada and veered west where he'd come from. He'd been in British Columbia when Ororo finally tracked him down, holed up with a heap of empty bottles in the kind of motel that didn't mind the blood stains on his sheets or the burnt spoon on his nightstand.
"Honey... She didn't know."
"If she had, she woulda done the same thing." He stood up, swiping the bottle as he moved towards the door. Over his shoulder, he called, "Why don't you send that kid Sunny to my class? Maybe I'll see what I can do before I leave this place for good."
"This is sublime."
"It's good shit. All the way from fucking Havana."
"How did you get them?"
"Guy I know."
"I see. Don't tell, I suppose."
"Don't fuckin' ask."
Hank chuckled, and a few inches from his blue face the tip of his cigar glowed a little brighter before he blew out. "Touché."
Logan snorted, then let the quiet roll over them. His usual spot just outside the portico was a front-row seat to the orchestra of late summer, playing full force around them. Leaves rustling, insects chirping, prey scurrying. A whole world out there that he usually inhabited alone and occasionally thought he might be hallucinating. That part of him always relaxed in Hank's company, grateful for the break from calculating what other people saw, smelled or heard. Hank came into his world with him, and knowing that was a strange comfort, like it confirmed his existence, if not exactly his sanity.
They didn't have that much in common otherwise. Hank fit in the school like a round peg in a round damn hole, teaching the upperclassmen's full science curriculum as well as two levels of social sciences. Logan taught all levels of history, self-defense and physical education, and felt every single day like he was faking it. If one of the kids in the back of the class were to raise their hand and ask, "Why the hell should we listen to you?" he'd have nothing to say. Hank would have a good answer: degree after degree, government and research jobs, a license to practice medicine, an embassy appointment, for chrissake. Logan had about a million miles on the road and a record tally of dead bodies. Which, in all fairness, had to count for something.
"How's the training going?"
"I assume you mean Rogue."
Logan pulled on his cigar. In the distance, the crickets called insistently, their high-pitched chirp scratching ridges in the dark.
"Well, I'd like to think we're making progress."
"Her strike work ain't bad, but you need to get her grappling. She's all out of balance, too. You gotta stop letting her trade pull-ups for push-ups, and give her a lot of single-leg drills until she learns to stop favoring her right side so much on the mat."
Hank blew a perfect ring of smoke before smiling at him. "You've paid rather close attention."
Logan didn't bother denying it. Every time Marie was around the smell of truth followed him like a shadow, and there was no way any feral would have missed it. "Wasn't my choice not to train her."
"I seem to remember you two being close."
Close. They'd been close, alright. Training together every morning, nothing between them but her lycra, his gi, and that last shred of decency wearing thinner by the day. Close was how he'd held her that night in Montauk, when the earth tucked itself so deep under the stars that the leather alone wasn't enough to keep her warm. He'd always told himself that he wouldn't cross the line, but he never figured what he'd do if she crossed it. The minute she splayed her hand on his chest and said "It wasn't for a boy, Logan," he pinned her on the mat and drank her kiss like it was water. Her clothes had come within about a second of ending up in tatters just like that so-called decency had, but somehow he managed to pull back and stammer, "I oughta take you on a date first, baby."
Three fucking years.
Logan shook his head to clear it. "I seem to remember you minding your own business."
But Hank chuckled, taking it as a joke. Hard to intimidate a person who could tell exactly how nervous you were.
"How's it going with the bill? You making progress?"
"I'd like to think so." Hank took a deep drag. "I take that to mean you plan to carry on with your plan?"
"When she finds a goddamn history teacher," he said, resigned.
Ever since Logan had talked to Ro seriously about quitting, something or other always seemed to come up. She didn't want him to go, he knew that even if he didn't get why. Originally the previous year should have been his last, but the couple people she'd interviewed to take up history had sucked. Then Hank got so busy in Washington that Ro asked him to stay longer, at least until the bill was through and her full-time faculty was full-time again.
"Is there a chance you might reconsider?"
"I'm dead weight at this point, Hank."
The man made to say something, but the distant rumble of an engine caught their attention. They both turned, watching in silence the headlights cut wound towards them, cutting through tree trunks in the dark. The crunch of gravel got louder as the car slowed to a stop in the circular driveway, right in front of them. The driver's door opened first and a blonde head of hair ducked out.
Even before she was out of the car, Logan's stomach sank. People didn't show up late at night because something good had just happened.
Karen Cook pulled her son from the back seat before coming around to them. He was perched on her hip, squeezing a bright-pink stuffed animal that looked like a long-necked lizard, until Logan realized it was a dinosaur. Of course.
"I'm so sorry to just show up like this," she said. Her hair was tied high up on her head. The kid was still in pajamas. Between the two of them, they smelled like sleep and tears. "I didn't know where else to go."
A.N.: Hey friends! Here's another chapter for ya. I think these initial chapters are going to take a little bit longer to come out because I'm still building out my backlog, so expect 3~4 weeks.
