A series by November

Chapter 83: Trying Again

As spring gave way to summer, summer gave way to late summer, and Marie felt herself warming also.

They celebrated their first wedding anniversary at home with Maggie. They made dinner and Maggie’s gift was a portrait of them. It was done in crayon and very good for a seven year old. The picture didn’t show Logan’s claws. They were both smiling.

That night Marie devoured Logan, rabidly touched and scratched and sucked until he had to bite his lip to keep from screaming. As he recovered from his orgasm Marie smiled and licked her lips.

“Logan?”

“Yeah, darlin’?”

“Are you ready to try again?”

He looked at her, startled out of his post-orgasmic haze.

“Really?”

She nodded.

“Any time, baby,” he pulled her close, stroking her hair. “What about grad school?”

“I’ve decided. I’m gonna work here and get the orphanage going, do research. I think I’ll tell Chuck I’ll commit to two years and after that maybe I’ll go back.”

“Is that really what you want?”

“Yeah. You know I was miserable my last semester of college.”

“You’re not just doin’ it for me and Mags? Cause I don’t wanna hold you back.”

“No, this is really what I want to do. I want to be here with you both.”

So, she did, and they tried again, that very night.

In late August they went to the beach and a week in the sun helped. Logan rented out a beach house where Rogue sunbathed and swam while he watched from the deck, painting, reading, or just dozing. Maggie was free to play under his watchful eye without any commentary from strangers. She made friends with a little girl in the beach house next door and they were inseparable. They fell asleep at night to the cadence of waves.

In the next few weeks Rogue met with Xavier, Scott, Jean, and Storm and Xavier's financial advisors. They also met with a friend of Xavier’s who knew how to apply for government grants.

At first the ideas for brainstorming were general. There was so much to talk about. Facilities, staffing, selection criteria, and the addition of K-12 faculty.

They decided that the next phase would be expansion of the school to include kindergarten on up. Xavier hired an architect to build another building west of the duck pond. There were committees ad nauseum, the teacher selection committee and the security committee, consisting of Pyro, Logan, and Scott, who planned for securing the new building. The estate to the north was up for sale and Xavier bought it, although what he was doing with it, he didn‘t say.

Since there were thousands of teenage mutants, but only a few hundred younger children who’d manifested in the country, the selection criteria for the school would differ. Effective in the next semester admission to grades six through twelve would be based on academic achievement.

Meanwhile Rogue was cobbling together a curriculum for a new class called Genetics and Geneticism. She tracked down every alumnus of Xavier's and grilled them about what issues they would have found helpful to explore as new students. She developed a curriculum based on her thesis data and on their answers. The class would debut in the spring, with luck.

Hank decided to teach for WCC after all. The first class was interesting. Rogue and Logan sat in the back. There were about seventy students and faculty in the course.

Logan had done the readings Hank had suggested and he understood everything. His quick mind grasped all of it, and what he didn’t, he made notes to ask about later. Rogue, on the other hand, had assumed that her college classes would prepare her for Hank’s class. She was mistaken. She became lost in the first forty-five minutes, and unwilling to give the energy to doing the suggested readings, she dropped the class.

The students were a mix of senior bio majors, grad students, and curious onlookers who came to the first class “to see the fuzzy blue dude.” Most of those were either bored out of their minds by Hank’s professional manner, or scared off when Logan looked at them menacingly.

“So are you contemplating a career in genetics?” Rogue asked one day when she came upstairs and he was reading.

“No. Just interested.”

“I’m totally impressed.”

“Why?” he said warily.

“Why? Because that shit’s tough. I have a bio background and couldn’t get it!”

He just raised his eyebrow and looked down at his book.

“Logan, look at me.” He did. She touched his cheek. “Stop being so damn defensive. Other people may have pigeonholed you as all brawn and no brains, but not me.”

“Sorry,” he said.

September was hard. The thirteenth had been Marie’s due date. Logan found that painting was a good outlet for his grief. He did a painting of a fetus in vivid colors, tiny toes and tiny fingers. He didn't show that one to anybody.

Mariah came to visit just before Thanksgiving. Logan went down to the hangar to meet her and saw Charles already there.

“Making the moves on my ma, Chuck?” Logan said.

“Yes,” was all Charles said, one eyebrow up. This time Mariah blushed. It was the first and only time any of them ever saw that.

The night before Thanksgiving Xavier told Logan that he’d asked Mariah to marry him. He wasn’t looking for a blessing, but hoping that it was okay with Logan. Logan clapped him roughly on the back and gave his blessing anyway.

The next day at Thanksgiving dinner after everyone said what they were thankful for, Charles tapped his glass and made the announcement. “I am pleased to announce that I have asked this woman, who some of you know as Logan’s mother, to marry me, and she said yes!”

The place erupted into a joyful cacophony. No one, telepaths excepted, had seen it coming.

“How do you feel about this?” Marie whispered to Logan.

“I’m happy,” he said simply.

Mariah planned to sell the house and move to Westchester. Logan had come to like the house in Canon but there was no sense in anyone holding on to it. He was glad that Mariah was moving to New York.

One afternoon Marie and Mariah walked along the path in the woods. "How are you holding up, Marie?"

Marie looked at her. She thought Mariah was talking about her pregnancy. "Well, I guess."

"I regret not being there for you as much as I could after you lost the baby."

Mariah had a way of coming out with things, point-blank. It was the last thing Marie had expected her to say and she looked at her mother-in-law in surprise.

"You were here for me."

"Not as much as I wish I had. I have to tell you Marie, I feel terrible. In reality I had a hard time dealing with it myself. Losing Logan..."

Marie touched her shoulder, wordlessly.

"That feeling, sometimes it seems so real, like he's still gone. I never thought I'd have a grandchild. I thought Logan was dead in a gutter somewhere. And when you lost the baby it brought all that back."

"I'm sorry."

"No. You did what you had to do. I'm not telling you this to make you feel guilty. I'm telling you because I feel badly about it. I should have been able to put that aside and I didn't."

They kept walking on the trail, light snow crunching underfoot. Marie thought for a few steps. "I never felt like you weren't there for me. Maybe it was because I dealt with it by just isolating myself. Maybe because so many people here were supportive. But I never once thought that you were avoiding me. So I don't want you to think that it hurt me."

"Okay."

"I can't imagine what it would be like to lose him. He's such an amazing man."

Logan had done enough canvases for a show. He sent photos to Mariah’s friend Dinah and she booked him for the following June. He was nervous about it. But the media knew him only as Wolverine, not Logan Christensen. At the time when he’d been on TV even he didn’t know his name, so it wasn’t publicly known.

Marie’s period came every month, like clockwork. In early December she woke to the dull throbbing of cramps. They were light and she prayed that they were from her workout the previous day. She slid out of bed. The sheets were pale and unmarred in the moonlight. Logan turned in his sleep, but did not wake.

She went into the bathroom and touched herself. Her hand was red. She went down to the gym and ran the shower until the water ran clear, and cried. It was the first time she had hidden tears from Logan but she couldn’t bear to inflict any more on him. Sometimes the loss of the baby was so fresh and new it was like blinding light. Being in the deserted lower levels gave her a chance to sob loudly until all the tears were gone, and when she slipped into bed beside Logan, he was none the wiser.