A series by November
A series by November
Chapter 38: I Fear
"But I fear
"You and the kid wanna come ice skating?"
"Ice skating?"
"Yeah. You know, ugly boots, metal runners, zamboni."
"Um, it’s July."
"Yes it is."
"Now?"
"Yeah."
"Um. Okay. Maggie?" she yelled over her shoulder.
"Yes momma?"
"Would you like to go ice skating?"
"Yes please." Rogue laughed. The child was certainly polite when she wanted to be.
.
They met at the garage.
"Your truck‘s clean, unlike mine."
"It rained," he grinned.
He cleared some stuff from the seat of his truck, a lighter, a book , a pen and notepad. He shoved them all in the glove compartment and Marie hoisted Maggie up onto the seat.
In a few minutes they were driving through the woods north of the campus. It was that gloaming time where the light was blue.
She again picked up his CD case. Dave Matthews, Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Everly Brothers. She wondered if she wasn’t the only one who had a lot of people in their head.
"Track seven?" She asked politely, holding out the Dave Matthews CD. He obliged, and the familiar beat of "Ants Marching" filled the truck.
"Momma, this is that song we dance to."
"I know." She glanced at Logan from the corner of her eye and saw that he was grinning, perhaps trying to keep his mouth shut.
The skating rink was packed. Among teenagers and fifty year-olds it seemed to be the place to be. People were wearing shorts and tee shirts.
Logan walked behind them, noting Marie’s body as she moved. She was wearing a thin brown tee shirt and jeans. Her hair was in a single braid, with the white streaks marbling it. He was hard just from looking at her. He tried to think cold thoughts.
It took them a while to get skates on. "You go ahead," Rogue said as she kneeled and struggled with Maggie’s laces.
"You sure?"
"Yeah,"
She happened to glance up as he stepped onto the ice, pushing off with a powerful leg, moving faster than anyone out there, leaning to the side with casual grace as he took a turn. And that ass. She was kneeling there with her mouth open, staring out the glass door. Marie realized that this was gonna be harder than she thought.
I could have him, she thought tugging urgently on one of the knotted laces. It was a thought she’d never had before, about anyone. The fact that he could be hers, and tonight she could tuck Maggie in and then tuck him in made her shiver.
"Cold?"
She looked up. He had skated one lap, and then come back to them. She had been so engrossed in her thoughts that she hadn’t seen him skate back.
She wondered if she could smell her desire. There was a time when she would have blushed and said yes. Now she knotted Maggie’s skate, stood up, looked him in the eye, and said "not a bit."
She held Maggie’s hand and stepped onto the ice. Logan took Maggie’s other hand and steadied her. She kicked her feet back and forth and fell forward, then back before the adult hands pulled her tight.
"I don’t like this much!" Maggie said. They laughed.
"Try to stand up straight, kiddo." Logan said. Marie moved forward, and he moved with her. Maggie moved her feet apart and was able to at least be pulled along without falling forward or back.
"Good job, Mags, you’re getting it." Marie said, skimming her fingers along the railing. Teenagers rushed past them.
A lap and a half later, Maggie was able to hold both their hands and shuffle like a little old arthritic woman. She was doing this when she saw a man carrying a toddler on his shoulders, and that ruined the skating thing for her. "I wanna do that!"
"Maggie, I don’t think that-"
But Logan swept her up in his arms, quick. "You sure?" he asked.
"Yes!"
"Okay. Here we go!" She cried out in delight as he lifted her above his shoulders and set her down. "Give me your hands, kid."
Maggie did and squirmed happily. "Giddy up, Logan."
"What, you want me to go fast?" He said innocuously.
"Um, you guys-" Rogue began.
"See if you can catch us, Marie!" Logan smirked and rushed off. She watched, afraid that Maggie was going to freak out as he flew around the rink, dodging other skaters left and right, moving gracefully.
Somehow he knew that Maggie would love it and he was right. Marie saw a look on her face that she’d never seen before, delighted rapture. Maggie wasn’t afraid, and really, sitting on the shoulders of the Wolverine was the safest place her little girl could be. Marie got a sudden image of Maggie flying when she got older.
Marie moved back into the stream of skaters and skated backwards, waiting for them to catch up. "Why don’t you guys see if you can catch me?" She called, small smile, eyebrow up, and then she bolted, turning smoothly as she did so. Marie skated nearly as fast as he did and he was somewhat awed by her supple, swaying figure as it moved away.
"Maggie, I think that was a challenge."
"Get her!" Maggie squirmed. Logan obliged. He hadn’t expected that she could skate, certainly not this well. What he didn’t know was that for a while she had come here every Wednesday night to work out her frustrations, many of which involved him.
Rogue turned, saw them over her shoulder a half rink length away. She merely smiled and skated faster, conscious of her legs and her ass and all of her. Let him chase me, she thought, and then regretted it. But only a little.
She ducked behind the entrance to the rink and pulled her camera from her pocket. She waited until they skated around again, then stepped out and took a picture.
Logan never did catch her that night. They skated for another hour or so. Him and Maggie, her and Maggie, all three. By this time Maggie could skate holding onto only one adult hand, and, watching her little girl skate, she was surprised when she felt him on her other side. He took her bare hand in his, eyes briefly meeting hers and she felt something enormous ripple from her belly to her chest. His hand felt so warm, and she had forgotten that his skin was so soft.
She let him take her hand and looked away, her thoughts racing, cheeks flushing. She deliberated about whether or not she wanted this and by that time they were two laps around.
She didn’t let go until they left.
After, Marie made a pitcher of lemonade and told Logan to wait around while she tucked Maggie in. She emerged from the softly lit room, and shut the door. "She’s out like a light. You really tired her out," she whispered.
"That was fun."
Marie raised an eyebrow. "You think?"
"It’s true. I think she felt like she was flying."
"I know. I was watching her and I thought, what if she can fly when she grows up?"
"Round here, ya never know."
"Yeah. Oh, hey, you wanna see some pictures?"
"Sure."
She went into the bedroom and returned with a photo album. His dog tags were on top. She moved a stuffed animal off the couch and sat down a respectable distance away from him.
"I keep forgettin‘ to give these back to you."
"Thanks for keeping 'em." Right now the pretense of the tags seemed silly to him. He didn’t come back for two scraps of metal, however much they might once have meant to him. He pocketed them and smiled at her.
The first few photos were of her and her friends, from her first year at the mansion. He marveled at how young she looked. "This was me with my roommates, Jubilee and Kitty. Kitty is the one who died. She was so full of life...She was always moving around, always smiling." He clenched his jaw and fought the urge to take her in his arms. He looked instead at the picture of the three girls in their prom dresses. Marie’s was green and slinky.
He recognized Kitty but couldn’t remember from where. Then he remembered waking up in the medlab in a panic, creeping upstairs, and panicking when he saw the girl phase right through a wall.
"Oh, that’s Kitty. When I first woke up I saw her run right through a wall. She scared the hell out of me."
She turned the page to a picture of a cookout. She was sitting on a lawn chair, white streaks in her hair, covered head to toe while everyone else wore shorts. Her smile was wide but he couldn’t help but notice the sadness in her eyes. He remembered the professor’s words about her being "intensely lonely" and felt a surge of guilt. "This was my seventeenth birthday party."
She flipped past more party pictures, past a field trip to New York, pictures of the girls at the beach. Logan noted that in those she was wearing a black string bikini. He gulped. His eyebrow went up. "No gloves with that outfit, huh?"
She chuckled. "No. by then I was able to control it."
She pointed to the next page. "This was a birthday party shortly after we found Maggie. Look how thin she was."
He forced himself to look away from the bikini picture. Maggie looked like a different child. Marie smiled at the bruised, hollow-eyed image of her daughter. In a year she had healed and grown so that there was no physical evidence of her hardships. Blue hair aside, she now looked like any other kid.
"What the fuck were her parents thinking?"
"Well, her hair went from platinum blonde to light blue. They were thinking they didn’t want a mutant for a daughter." He noticed a slight bitterness to the last sentence.
"That’s disgusting."
"Oh Logan you have no idea. They had left her without any food, told her that if she moved that the monsters would get her. I love her, I love her to bits. She’s such a good kid." Rogue flipped through some more pages. "I’ll show you my favorite picture of her."
She flipped through the pages. She stopped at a group of Halloween pictures. They were of Maggie, Jubilee, Bobby, and Carter. In one of them Rogue was sitting next to Bobby, who had Maggie on his lap, and jealousy flared hotly through him. He remembered the Ice Cube sniffing around Marie when they’d first arrived from Canada. Had he had her? He tried to breathe and count slowly while fighting the urge to pop his claws.
"You and the icicle an item?"
"Yeah, like four years ago," she laughed.
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened. You know teenagers, these things run their course. Look. Isn’t she beautiful?"
Marie was pointing to a picture of Maggie in a pale blue fairy costume with crystals on the dress, with a glittery face and tiara and white wings. The kid had a huge smile, missing one tooth, and she was utterly beautiful.
"Wow."
"That’s my baby." She came to the last pictures in the book, from Jean and Scott’s wedding. "You’ve seen this, you were there."
"Yeah."
"So you still wanna watch a movie?"
"Yeah."
She sat down in front of the entertainment center. He watched her bare feet as she stretched her legs out. Her toes were painted a dark, lush purple. "I’ve got A Knight’s Tale, Head of State, Terminator 2, Clerks, Mallrats..."
"Clerks."
"Good choice." She started the DVD and sat back down next to him. "You want more lemonade?"
"I’m good." She nodded and pulled the elastic band from her hair. He could smell the vanilla scent as she shook her hair out and he willed himself not to get hard.
An hour or so into the movie she began to get sleepy and pulled her legs up. Logan noticed that her feet were touching his leg and she seemed to be uncomfortable using the armrest as a pillow.
"C’mere, girl," he said and pulled her arm toward him. He moved over and she supposed it would be easier to just go than to resist and cause a scene. He could hear her heart pounding faster and he vowed to make her stop fearing him. He put a pillow on his lap and she laid down. He saw her hair spread like dark marble over the pillow, and he closed his eyes in an effort not to touch. He rested his arm neutrally on her shoulder and tried to watch the movie.
She closed her eyes and tried to believe that she was lying here with Logan. She had felt alarmed earlier when he took her hand, alarmed and excited and elated, but now she merely felt safe. Outside the window she could hear the summer sounds of crickets and cars passing at the far end of Greymalkin Lane.
She had seen the movie before, and around the time Dante told Veronica not to suck any dicks on her way out to the parking lot, she dozed off. He could hear her breathe, and feel the warmth of her shoulder under his hand. He gently rested his other hand on top of her hair. Cool. Silky. He carefully traced the white parts from her forehead outward.
When she woke up it was quiet. The TV screen was blue and the room was illuminated only by its cool glow and the dim light spilling from Maggie’s room. She looked up and saw him staring at her.
"Hey."
"Hi."
"How long was I out?"
"Not long." He lied.
She shifted and felt the weight of his hand on her hair. He had pulled the blanket down and put it over her.
"Sorry."
"S’okay," he said. He didn’t tell her that watching her sleep and touching her hair was the most spiritual experience he could ever recall having.
She rolled over to lie on her back and looked up at him. There was no place appropriate for him to put his hand, so he rested it on the back of the sofa.
"I can’t believe you‘re back," she whispered.
"I told you I’d be back."
"I think I stopped believing it at some point." she said. "Thanks for taking us skating."
"Thanks for coming." He allowed himself to trace a bit of hair back from her forehead. Her eyes fluttered shut, presumably in pleasure, and he felt a tightness in his chest and groin.
"So tell me some stories about your traveling."
"Iceland was nice. They have these mineral baths there, they’re naturally warm even in the winter. Supposedly they have healing properties." He traced another line over her hair.
"You were cage fighting that whole time?"
"Naw. I stopped doing that a few years back."
"Why?"
"I got sick of being a punching bag." He told her. He was uncomfortable sharing these things but he knew that he needed to, that she needed to hear them. "I guess I stopped believing that I deserved to be."
"Why’d you think you deserved it?"
"You know. The..." he waved his closed fist back and forth in the air. "The thing I hate most about those people is that they made me into an animal, made me believe it about myself."
"I’m so sorry,"
"It’s okay. I‘ve sorted a lot of shit out."
"The kinder, gentler Wolverine," she said. He would have shredded anyone else but he saw the soft smile on her face and the light in her eyes and knew that she wasn’t mocking him. "You seem more..."
"Old?"
She sat up and turned to face him. "No, actually, you don’t look like you aged a day. What I wanted to say was that you seem like you have less baggage than before. Like you aren’t all consumed by anger and fear." He saw a dangerous glint in her eye. "Less bitchy."
"Bitchy?"
"Dude, you were a total growly bitch."
He grinned. "Yeah, I was. When I left I was a mess in my head, and I still am, but I’ve got a lot of shit straightened out."
"You seem a lot happier."
"I wouldn’t describe myself as happy, but... things are better." He wanted so much to tell her that being with her and having a chance for her to know him, and maybe forgive him, was the closest to happiness he could remember being. He settled for smiling, and showing in his eyes a fraction of the love he felt for her.
"How about you, are your nightmares coming every night?" she asked. He was touching her hands now, idly turning one over and inspecting her palm, tracing its lines.
"Almost. But I usually don't wake up with my claws out. You?"
"Yeah, for a little while." She didn’t tell him that it was over three years before she stopped dreaming of being welded without anesthesia.
"I’m so sorry. I feel like I corrupted you in so many ways."
She laughed, thinking about how she had longed for him to corrupt her in more ways than one. "Naw. My shit was pretty fucked up to begin with."
"What about now? Are you happy? With your life?"
She thought about Maggie first, and smiled. Maggie, college, the school. Xavier’s meant everything to her. Yes, she was happy. She knew that there were people out there who wanted her dead, and everyone of their kind dead, and there might come a time when they were at war, but the school was so much more than a school. She wasn’t on the A team but she was going to be teaching, healing, and raising a new generation. Her work felt no less important to her.
"Yeah. Mostly. There are still things that hurt, nightmares that still come, but... I love Maggie so much it hurts. When that judge awarded me custody- I can’t describe the feeling. And this is my home, It’s everything to me."
"I’m so glad you’re happy. And I wish I had been here every time things were rough, and every time you were hurting."
It was as if he had put a healing finger on the place in which she was aching the most, and made the pain go away. She felt the tears swell in her eyes and let them fall.
"Why do you have to be so damn nice?" she whispered.
"What, now you want bitchy and growly?"
She laughed through her tears. "No, but you’re making it damn hard for me to keep my guard up."
"That’s my goal." he said quietly. "I want your trust. I want it more than anything."
Except maybe your love. He wiped the falling tears from her face. Skin on skin. Her heart raced with it.
She was at a loss for words. His hand went to her hair, and it was as if he couldn’t stop touching her. Hi fingers dipped into it and ran through it. She swallowed and tried to catch her breath.
"Don’t cry."
"Allright," she laughed halfheartedly. Then, serious: "Don’t make me cry."
"I’m trying."
"I mean it, Logan, don’t toy with me."
"I won’t." he said, and she wanted to believe him. She wasn’t sure what this touching meant. Was this just more of the same older-brother thing to him? She knew he wanted her, she wasn’t stupid. But she needed to know that he was prepared to give it to her.
His hand was resting on the back of the sofa. She wanted so badly for him to touch her again, so much she resonated with it. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know where to look, or even how to breathe.
"Hey,"
She looked up at him. "Yeah?"
"I know it doesn’t mean much, coming from me. But I’m here for the long haul. I’m not gonna bail on you."
"It’s just so weird. Five years of you being gone from the face of the earth, now you’re here."
"I know." He wrapped his arm around her and held her close. She leaned into it. He continued stroking her hair and she let him.
"So do you still have the hots for Jean?"
"Huh?" The question, out of nowhere, blindsided him.
"Do ya still have the hots for Jean?"
"Naw. She’s an attractive woman and all, but mostly I flirted with her to piss Scott off."
Rogue laughed. "You were good at it."
He chuckled, more of a rumble she could feel in his chest than a sound. "I know."
"You’re bad." she smiled.
"Naw. Just growly and bitchy."
She pulled away and smirked at him. He was making fun of her. She lightly smacked his stubbled cheek. He captured her wrist in his hand and pushed it back, lightning-quick.
She was forced back onto the sofa, and his fingers twined among hers. His smile disappeared and his eyes were intense. She felt his weight on her, so close to her, and warmth. She felt dizzy, as if she could fall down and down and down. He was leaning so close to her. She felt prone and vulnerable and utterly terrified. Her lips parted in a half-gasp and he watched them for a second.
"Marie?" he questioned.
"Hmm?"
He didn’t know what to say. He had no idea what to say. He took both her hands in his and pulled her so she was sitting up again.
"I dunno." he finally mumbled.
She laughed quietly. There was the sound of crickets, and traffic far away, and their breath.
She was so close to him that he could taste her breath and he wanted to kiss her, but he saw fear in her eyes.
So he just smiled and pushed back a piece of her hair.
"C’mere. Hold me." He laid back on the sofa and pulled her on top of him. She heard his heart beating under her ear.
She closed her eyes and tried to reconcile the warm safety of him, the steadiness of his heartbeat, with the wild fear that ran through her, and with the joy that flooded her at his admission of need, his request to be held.
She allowed herself to be calmed and stroked and settled. He convinced himself that at this moment he wasn’t doing any damage, that she was letting him hold her, and even better, holding him. It was moving forward, and all he wanted was in his arms.
They lay, each alone in their roiling thoughts, but their breath evened and became calm and slow in time together.
I have nothing to give.
And I have so much to lose here in this lonely place,
Tangled up in our embrace,
There’s nothing I’d like better than to fall."
--Sarah McLachlan
About a week later Logan knocked on their door. He was wearing jeans and a paint-splattered tee shirt.
