A series by November

Chapter 17: Gotta Launder My Karma

"Gotta launder my karma..."
--Lo Fidelity Allstars

Logan paced behind the mansion until a path was formed in the snow.

~Logan, welcome back. Please come to my suite and I’ll put you out of your misery.~

"The fuck?" He growled into the wintry air.

Logan came into the suite, still in his coat. "Charles." He nodded respectfully.

"There are some things you should know."

"I noticed."

"Logan, while you were gone Rogue grew up."

Clearly, he thought, clenching his jaw.

"They were on a mission about this time last year."

Mission? Marie going out on missions?

"They found a three year old girl behind a dumpster in Philadelphia. She was abandoned by her parents when they discovered she was a mutant. She had been starved and beaten. We brought her back. This summer Rogue adopted her. She is Rogue’s daughter."

"Marie’s a baby herself-"

"When you spend more time with her Logan, you’ll see that that isn’t true."

Logan was silent. He hadn’t slept in two days and felt like shredding something, julienne style.

"Logan, I know that your intentions toward her are good but there are some things you must understand."

"How do you know what my intentions-"

"There is a difference between using one’s telepathy to read someone else’s mind and having loud thoughts projected to you. Amid the... many expletives you were projecting it’s easy to sense your feelings for her. I didn’t make any choice to hear you, in fact, your projecting woke me out of a fairly deep sleep."

"Sorry." He looked at his hands.

"Logan, I want you to understand- you were gone for five years. Rogue, aside from missing you deeply, felt abandoned and betrayed. I don’t believe she has seriously dated anyone but she has been intensely lonely. So don’t expect her to necessarily accept you with open arms."

Logan was quiet, but again his thoughts were clear as day to the professor.

"She does love you Logan, just give her time to trust you too."

He nodded silently.

"Welcome back. Will you be staying with us?"

Logan did not hesitate. "Yes."

Upstairs in her room, Marie was sitting with her knees to her chest, sobbing.

She’d been so cocky. It was so easy on the phone. Act like a badass and he’d fall at her feet. But she couldn’t hold up in the face of him, in front of him. He was every bit of baggage her heart had ever carried, in carnal form, tight jeans, metal, and leather.

That phone conversation had bred the worst thing of all in her heart: hope. She had hoped he’d changed. She had hoped he would be come back and be something solid. He seemed genuinely sorry for being incommunicado for all those years. She had thought, maybe, he was worthy of her respect.

And then, he set eyes on Maggie, and pulled this stupid shit. And now she had no idea who he was.

She was stupid to hope. Because now, she wanted him so much. She knew she could have him. She could walk out her door and upstairs and open his door and scream at him until he threw her up against a wall and-

Sleep, Rogue, she told herself.

Downstairs, he wrote.

He had kept a journal as far back as he could remember. It was a pneumonic security blanket of sorts. Waking up in the snow naked, knowing nothing, was a terror he never wanted to relive. The hardbound journal helped him preserve his memories, the dream-flashes he could remember. He tried on paper to knit them together for years, and always when the puzzle was assembled, it was the same picture: torture.

No memories of a life before, no memories that weren't full of pain. Some days he felt that he was merely a construct of his captors, groomed, enhanced, and composed of only torture and pain. Nothing else. Those days he would write about new memories, about the sunset or the beauty of the wilderness or the desert, of his few friendships. At times he wrote for pages about a single tree or sky or flower, describing in minute heightened detail, scents, textures, color and light. It accomplished nothing, but heightened the illusion that there was something other than pain.

And, sometimes, his words were self-flagellation. Usually it was undeserved. Today it was.

October 20, 2003
I’ve gone and fucked up big time. I was afraid to come back and now I think I know why. I think I was kidding myself and it had nothing to do with Jean. I saw her today, saw her and Scott in the kitchen and it was no big deal. Jeannie’s s sweet kid and I’m happy for her. But Marie - she’s another story.

Marie has a fucking kid. I left and she was a kid, now she has one. How the hell did that happen?

Of course Chuck tells me that it’s not her kid. I’d go crazy over the thought of some mug touching her, getting her pregnant. I’m so damn jealous and I just don’t know what to do with it.

While I was gone, she turned into this kick-ass, self-assured, confident woman. She’s an X-man. So sue me, but it’s hard to wrap my brain around.

I think the thing she gets to me the most is that she can touch. I was at her door talking to her for the first time and five years and this kid walks in. Marie scooped her up, natural as could be, and she was touching the kid. The last thing I would begrudge her is the chance to touch without hurting, god, she deserves it and has waited for so long for it. I’m such an asshole. I have no right to feel this way, but I feel it anyway. Marie should be touching ME.

Of course there’s no chance of that happening any time soon. First damn time I see her, and I act like such a dick. I am so goddamn pissed at myself. First I fuck up by not calling for five years, then I show up and act that way. You’re an asshole, Logan. God, I’m such a fuck up.

Jesus. I'm jealous of a tiny little child. I need a dose of the danger room.