FIC: The Bargain (10/10) Rated R for adult content.

[jaq_of_spades]

Title: The Bargain (10/10)
Author: JaqofSpades
Email: jaqfic at yahoo dot com dot au
Rating: R (sexuality, language, violence)
Archive: WRFA
Spoilers/Continuity: Post X2. No X3.
Genre: Shipper fic
Summary: Logan and Marie strike a bargain in order to survive the weeks on the run after Stryker's raid on the Mansion.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing. Please don't sue. The copyrights of Marvel Comics and Twentieth Century Fox are respectfully acknowledged.
Feedback: please. Constructive is best, any is welcome.
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Author's Notes: Less psychodrama, more emo-drama. This is the end, folks, so I had to indulge. A million thanks to my wonderful regular review types who kept me writing and learning and writing some more: Sares (DeepSaltWater), CrankyLex, Jenn (feeferj), Becca (dutchxfan), Lady Wolf Crescent Walker, Laenwyn, Gammameta, Amanda, Bridget, and Shadowlady. I just hope I’ve done justice to the wonderful, detailed reviews many of you have given me. Enjoy.
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Chapter 10: Discovery

Logan stared at the rust working its way up from the wheel arches of the vehicle, eyed the slight skew on the rear doors, and thought hard about the over-worked engine. He shook his head again, and Rogue pouted. For a hard-ass bitch, she sure wanted this camper.
He sighed, and handed over the $3000 the guy was asking. A good bed should not be the deciding factor in the purchase of a camper van.

Her gleeful bounce sparked a pang of regret he was too slow to banish. Sometimes, she looked just like Marie. The mile-wide smile, the eager eyes. The bashful glance up from under her lashes. When he saw that, he knew she was playing him, because there was nothing bashful about Rogue. But other times, Marie just seemed to creep through her defences. His joy when that happened was tempered by vague feelings of disloyalty - though he was fucked if he knew who he was being disloyal to.

He had loved Marie - strangely, he could face that now - but what he felt for Rogue was different. Visceral. She spurned his protectiveness and rejected soft feelings with a ruthlessness that scared him, but he gloried in her independence and savagery.

Instead of following him about like a faithful puppy, she stalked at his side like a proud lioness, and that excited him. Beyond bearing. And as they always did now, his thoughts bolted south. To sex. Fucking on a kids roundabout at the local park in the dead of night. Getting her off during a movie just for the taste of her on his fingers. Locking themselves in the one spare room at Lensherr’s and not emerging the whole day because Rogue had just remembered a kink she wanted to try. That thin little whip had left the walls splashed with blood, and neither of them knew whose it was. Or could count how many times they had fucked that day, inside the door and against the wall, in bed so often the sheets were vile and they rolled to the floor. At least they hadn’t broken the furniture.

He looked across at her, the features so familiar but the spirit within still surprising. She was taking the relevant details from the dealer, and asking keen questions about preparing it for the road. He laughed at that, because he knew they’d be on the road within the hour. Everything they owned was stuffed in one duffel, they’d said goodbye to the X-men and even the strange kids from Manticore, and supplies would be acquired on the road.

“C’mon darlin’. Time to move out,” he smiled at the two conversationalists. “We’ve got a lotta miles to cover today if we’re gonna make it to the border anytime soon.”

“Where you folks planning on going, then?” the seller - Barry or Garry or something - enquired with the studied glee of the enthusiastic traveller.

“Down to Mexico. Got a yen to see this girl in a bikini,” Logan drawled with a crude wink. True, of course, but they would actually be heading north. Nobody alive knew about his cabin in the wild stretch of forest beyond Laughlin City, and he was looking forward to settling Rogue into its comforts.

“I’m a southern girl, don’t like the cold much. Margaritas and the beach for me!” she prattled, the perfect picture of an empty-headed trophy fuck. He would remember them, allright, and when the government came looking for them, they would head south instead of north.

Visions of Rogue in a barely-there bikini danced in front of his eyes, and he dismissed them because THAT was Marie; Rogue would be naked and proud, and he would fuck her into the sand, scratching and biting and snarling all the while. He promised himself they would head south one day, but Mexico didn’t have enough deserted beaches. Brazil. An island. He would start saving now to buy an island off Salvador, or maybe somewhere sleepier. There’d be a hut right on the beach, palm trees and no more children or war or death. And they would never, never wear any clothes.

Logan realised he was snickering at himself and looked up shamefaced to find Rogue doubled over with laughter. The guy had gone, and the keys to their freedom were dangling from her hand. “Where the hell were you, sweetheart? Standing there with a huge grin on your face and laughing? The Wolverine laughing?”

He growled at her and swatted her behind as he moved to the Harley. Back of the camper for now, and then he’d sort out a little trailer for her later. “Just had me an idea. You won’t be laughing when I tell you later,” he promised, raising his eyebrow in an outrageous sneer that promised all sorts of devilment.

He manoeuvred the bike inside - a lot more difficult than it used to be, what with the bed/table set up and the dinky little sink and even a gas cooker. A real little home on wheels that meant they’d only ever have to stop for a shower or a crap, and could take as long as the liked heading north, or south again. Thanks to Xavier, he had a dozen sets of numberplates to switch around, and a stash of auto paint to complete the disguise. Vans were generally black or white, so for the first leg of this trip, he’d make it … pink. With spots or something. Because no one would expect two fugitive mutants to be travelling in a hippy dippy love wagon. Maybe he’d grow his hair long and get Rogue to stick flowers in her hair. And lovebeads. They needed lovebeads.

Logan pulled himself up with a start. He was getting carried away, and it frightened him. He couldn’t remember ever feeling like this - happy, almost joyful. Giddy with it. He suspected some of it was the relief of escaping the responsibilities at Xavier’s - Rogue had simply cut through their ties like ribbons - but a part of him knew it was even deeper than that.

It was Marie. He had loved her, but hated himself every minute he did it. He knew he was wrong for her, but couldn’t stay away, couldn’t give up on the idea of them together. But she had known, seen his reluctance and decided to do something about it. She had turned herself into the woman he was allowed to love, allowed to have. If he was glad to be away from Xavier’s, he was ecstatic to have escaped the vicious self-disgust that had been eating him from the inside.

He glanced across to the woman sitting across from him in the cab of the camper. She looked different from the girl that had once gobbled beef jerky in that same seat. It wasn’t just the lushness that a few years had added, but the lack of fear and self-consciousness. Rogue held herself like a weapon about to be fired. Deadly, seductive, yet comfortable with herself. And him. Marie hadn’t been afraid of him, but hadn’t been comfortable either. Rogue knew he couldn’t hurt her, and didn’t particularly care about the fact that he wouldn’t.

“Want me to drive, baby?” The sensible question broke into his reverie and jerked him back to the task at hand. Interstate. Traffic. West. They were heading west, weren’t they?

“Later, darlin’. You navigate for now. What do you reckon the best way up to Laughlin City is? Do we head for the border straight away or head west a bit first?”

They had discussed the plan - skirting west around the lakes and then heading up into Ontario and Manitoba, mainly because neither Rogue or Marie had been through there before. They weren’t worried about getting across the border - the Brotherhood had supplied their passports, and they were actually real - but there was no point hurrying straight to the nearest crossing. Canada could wait a day or two, and Logan was keen to spend some time on the side of the road. In a rest stop. Just like that one.

He yanks the steering wheel to the right, and they are screened behind a stand of trees before Rogue realises what is going on. The Wolverine already has his jeans undone and his cock sticks out like a flag, red and proud and ready. He is remembering bowed pink lips on an innocent young girl, and the thoughts that went through his mind every time she looked at him.

“Suck it.”

Rogue simply licks her lips in response, widens her eyes and slides across to position herself in front of him. “Really? You’ll really let me?” Wolverine growls at her and that mouth is around him and God it could have been the first time around with those eyes glancing up to him every few minutes and that mouth sliding up and down with the lack of focus that yells inexperience. But she has natural talent and a blow job is a blow job and soon he is coming and its nothing to do with the 16 year old girl forced to suck him off in the front of a camper. Nothing at all, even if he is hard again just at the sight of a curtain of dark hair and those blowjob lips.

She smiles shyly as she wipes her mouth with the end of his t-shirt and climbs up next to him. She lays her head on his shoulder and looks at him with knowing eyes, and suddenly is seventeen going on eighteen, with a dozen lifetimes of memories in her head. “Was that what you were thinking about the first time?” Rogue asked.

He grunted. Even with his cock still drying in the air, it was hard to admit. He buttoned himself away, glad of the small physical task, before he spoke. “Yeah. Every time I looked at her. Your lips. I couldn’t look at them without seeing them around my cock.”

“But you didn’t do anything about it, Logan. You didn’t make her go down on you, even if you wanted to. You didn’t make her do anything - except save her life, get a better life. You loved her, and you let it be all about her, and not about you. That’s the best anyone can do for someone they love,” Rogue said gently.

“And Marie knew it. She knew you wanted to touch her, wanted her to touch you, but that you were holding back. Waiting for her to grow up a bit. Hell - you nearly made it to eighteen, for God’s sake. A few more months and she would have been a legal adult. Don’t you think she appreciated that? Appreciated you letting her play with Bobby for a while? It got old, sure, waiting for you to make a move, but it was the right thing to do. You did the right thing.”

He grunted, then frowned. “How come she didn’t have that in her head? The fact that I wanted her to … at night, it used to be in my nightmares. There’d be the guys in masks and stuff and the pain, and then there’d be Marie, on her knees and begging me not to make her. And I’d just push her head down.” A sharp breath shuddered into his lungs.

Rogue shrugged. “No idea. Maybe you didn’t think about it as much as you thought you did. Maybe other things had taken over by the time you touched her. She got a lot of stuff, but I don’t think that was there. She didn’t tell me, anyway. My oral fixation is all my own,” she said with a sly grin.

He smiled, but still weary, still heartsore. Brushed his hand over her hair, as he would have done with Marie, and leaned in for a hot, slow kiss. Which he could never have done. “Thanks, darlin’. You’re pretty good at this psychoanalysis stuff for a hell bitch.”

She laughed, but if it rang a little hollow, Logan didn’t want to know why. It was time they were back on the road - miles to go and all that crap. He guided the camper back onto the highway and pointed it west. He could do this. It wasn’t like travelling with Marie at all. It wasn’t.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Looking at the map Rogue insisted they buy - as if he didn’t know the way to fuckin’ Canada! - Logan had to admit the route they had taken was new to him. It had meandered after leaving the Interstate, skirting the lakes as much for their beauty as convenience, and choosing secondary roads on which to make their way west and north.

They’d seen lots of stuff - gentle forests that were more forgiving than the frozen pines further north, a river valley that unfolded like the most secret of smiles as they rolled around a bend. A number of fug-ugly towns, too, but they were best forgotton, Logan grimaced. He preferred to remember the old guy with the 1940s tractor that had been stalled at a crossroads, and the flower stalls either side of the road a few hours back. Signs of a quieter, simpler life, where no one had adamantium coating their bones and mutants were the stuff of sci-fi movies.

They were passing through the latest in a succession of hoky little towns when he realised something. Marie was gone, and in her place was a woman he barely knew. Her scent screamed to him, and her familiar features soothed the confused beast inside, but he didn’t know HER - the woman she was. And he didn’t know if he loved her.

He had thought he had, but he suspected he might have been thinking with his cock. Or, worse. Thinking with the heart that loved Marie, and had been unable to let her go. Rogue had done her best to shock him out of that misconception - he still got hard thinking about that blowjob in the diner - but she looked at him with chocolate eyes and spoke through pouty red lips and used long, elegant hands to push back mahogany hair streaked with pure silver. It was easy to forget and dream of a Marie he could touch, who fought at his side and fucked like a she-demon.

Another sidelong glance and she’s there in his peripheral vision, combat boots crossed on the dash and sunglasses slipping off her face as she dozes in the mid-morning sun. He feels the familiar heat rise just by looking at her and pushes it away, seeking the emotions underneath.

Friendship. It was there, honed by map-reading spats and joint shopping expeditions and her quiet understanding of his fears. Possession. A flood of it. Marie would have been annoyed and Rogue fuckin’ outraged, but it didn’t stop the primal need to bellow “this is mine”. Nothing new there. It swelled in him as his eyes traced her cheek and her lips and her chin and the erotic sprawl of her there, sleeping.

Her lips twisted a little, a huffed exhalation, and there … something else. A warmth. No name for it yet, but it certainly precluded him from allowing anyone to hurt her. Or make her cry. He wondered, briefly, if Rogue DID cry, or if that was beyond her emotions. And then the thought chilled him. Because that led to love, and he didn’t want to go there. The thought that she might not love him - might not know him, either - was too painful to consider.

She stirred then, her eyes cracking open and her gorgeous mouth stretching into a smile as she finds him watching her. A quick shuffle along the bench seat and she is next to him, lips whispering from his ear to cheek to the corner of his mouth. Tongue darting out to say hello. His heart thumping so hard it makes him ask the question. Is this just me wanting her? Is it?

He can’t deny he is hard - and Christ, her hand there is NOT helping - but he wants it to be more, even just a little bit pure. So he takes her hand in his own and kisses her fingers.

“Sleep well?” A fond smile, friends. More than just lovers.

“Mmm. I feel like a kitten, all warm and just needing to stretch. Wanna go for a walk or something?”

And that’s a good idea, because short of some exuberant fucking in the back last night, they’ve had no exercise in the past 24 hours, just driving and talking and stopping to eat.

“Where are we, anyway?” she asks, looking out at the endless stretch of lake.

“Just crossed into Minnesota. Heading up 61, like you wanted. Not that you’ve been awake to see all this.” Logan waves his hand at the postcard-worthy scenery, cliffs giving way to hidden coves punctuated by a million little streams racing down to meet Lake Superior. “Next town is Silver Bay.”

She grabbed the map and traced her finger over their route. “There’s a hiking trail up in there somewhere. It must be signposted, or we could ask in Silver Bay.”

He snorted. He was The Wolverine. Walking tracks were for pussies, and as if he’d have to ASK to find his way in the forest. “We’ll cope. Just need somewhere to leave the van.”

Minutes later, they had pulled into a picnic area, and Wolverine led them off into the brush. A little pushing their way through undergrowth and they were following an animal trail, winding and weaving through gullies and along ridges until it levelled, emerging into an open floor of old-growth forest. Wolverine centred himself and breathed deep. The only human he could smell was Rogue. And her scent was painted with all sorts of wildness that suggested her humanity was, at best, a compromise. They could run together in this place without spoiling its sanctity.

He glanced back, arched an eyebrow in invitation and broke into a run. Heavy as he was, the leaf-carpeted floor absorbed his footfalls and he felt its benevolence as he loped through. He could hear Rogue behind him, quieter than him, really, but her breathing and the tang of sweat keeping him alert to her presence. They ran, startling the small creatures of the forest even as they moved silently through the green loaming. They ran, and for a little while, they were able to outdistance pain, and loss, and the agony of rebirth.

The incline was small, but long minutes of running were beginning to tell as the Wolverine’s pace faltered. He was still running, but slow enough to be able to stop when the world fell away, and the cliff revealed a panorama hundreds of metres below. A wide swathe of blue, the glare of white sand, and a town set deep into the cove. He felt Rogue skid to a stop beside him, and threw his arms around her as she doubled over to drag in an extra breath.

“So … beautiful,” she gasped, sides heaving from their headlong rush through the forest. “Fucking unexpected,” she said, peering over the cliff, “but beautiful!”

Flopping down on the rise, they drank in the view, and enjoyed the noisy silence of the forest. He lay on his back, staring up at the canopy, and her head was cushioned on his belly, eyes closed. When her hands began to wander - one to his buckle, the other tracing the inside of his thigh, he catches them in his own and drags her to her feet.

“Later, darlin’. Hungry for food after all of that exercise,” he lies, keen to take the pressure off. Sex was a too-familiar retreat for them, and he wanted to see what they had without it. He wasn’t sure how long it would last, but even that would be revealing, he Logan felt.

She looked surprised but didn’t object. “Then, old man, we better get going.” Her stomach rumbled in sharp counterpoint. “Guess I could do with some food as well.”

They wandered back more gently, and as he stepped back off the path, Logan sent a wordless thanks to whatever spirit had created this sanctuary. He knew he did his best thinking in the green, and it looked like he might do his best feeling there as well.

……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Hamburgers at Silver Bay were followed by a walk along the bay - she’d turned him into a damn tourist - before the drive to the border. Skirting Thunder Bay, they headed west on the 11, Logan quietly congratulating Canada on the better road that had fewer cars. It was good to be home.

They still had a ways to go before they could stop for the night, he calculated, if they wanted to make the cabin this week. Taking it slow and easy sounded like fun, but the multi-coloured show around him suggested fall was settling in, and winter wasn’t far off. There was a lot to do to get a cabin in the Yukon ready for the winter.
And Rogue needed to see it, think about the isolation and the prospect of being locked in with him for a full winter. Have the chance to change her mind before the snow piled so high she couldn’t. So, for that matter, did he.

When no sex before lunch turned into no sex after dinner, Rogue was pissed. Logan was sympathetic - it’s not like he had stopped wanting the woman, and her frustrated arousal was driving HIM nuts - but didn’t bother to explain. She needed to figure it out for herself.

It took three days. Things had become almost companionable, Rogue resigned to the buddy-buddy atmosphere and no longer intent on provoking him into passion, and only the nights were strained as they lay side by side in the narrow camper.

She had been munching on an apple, quieter than usual, obviously running things through her filter in the same way Marie used to do.

“I do love you, you know.”

He nearly swerved off the road. She grabbed the wheel and righted it with a quick epithet, and then returned to her apple as he regained control. For long minutes, he was unable to say a thing, his brain paralysed by emotion.

“Do you really? Or are they just Marie’s memories of loving me?” He wanted to ask more but couldn’t, the pain of self-disclosure gumming up his mouth.

“Logan, I was created to be a mate for the Wolverine. Love isn’t a part of that. But Marie knew you needed it. She thought you deserved love. So she made that possible for me. But she didn’t force me to feel it, to inherit it, if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t love you before all of this, but now … now I do.”

She had fallen in love with him. In her own right. In less than a week. It seemed far too unlikely to be true, but he could smell the truth of the words. He was aware of a tear rolling down his face, and wondered if she would despise him for that. It shouldn’t matter so much, to be loved. But he couldn’t deny that it did.

“Why don’t you want to touch me?” Her question, this time. And the pain and confusion she had hidden for days were laid bare.

“It was too good. Too much. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything but the beast. And you,” he threw her a rueful smile, willing her to believe him. She was nodding, so he continued.

“I thought maybe if we held off for a while, we could think about what was going on and figure out where we needed to go. And then, if it worked out, maybe would be able to … make love, instead of rut like animals.” He rushed the last few phrases, embarrassed by the need to acknowledge his feral nature.

She tilted her head, obviously wanting to blurt something out, but moulding it into a careful enquiry instead.

“I can tell the difference, you know. Between you and the Wolverine. I’m not just for him. I’m for you too - Marie wanted you to make love to me.”

He didn’t know how to answer that. How to explain the dichotomy in his soul, the lines that couldn’t be crossed. So far, only the Wolverine had been allowed to have Rogue. Logan had been far, far away, dreaming of Marie. But as Rogue set about healing the wounds on his soul, Logan had begun to long for her too.
………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Five days, and Logan snapped. Rogue had sunk into dismissiveness, angered by his inability to love her. Every breath dragged in a thick stew of pheromones, and her sullenness annoyed the man while arousing the animal.

It was breakfast that did it. She voted for pancakes and coffee, he wanted the full-on diner breakfast. And the diner they chose must have been the only one in Canada that didn’t have both on the menu. Enraged, she refused to eat anything at all, and barely looked at him as she sipped her coffee.

“Get over yourself, kid. Have something else for fuckin’ breakfast,” he sneered.

She raised an eyebrow and leant across the table, right into his face. “Once upon a time, darlin’, I would’a had you for breakfast. In a place just like this. My head between your knees, baby.”

He froze, and desperately tried to banish the image. It didn’t work. Logan dug in his wallet for a twenty while swigging the last of his coffee. He was out the door seconds later, and was backing the van out of the diner carpark when Marie banged on the door.

“So you’re just going to LEAVE me here, you scared old fuck? Is that it? You’re gonna run?” She was shaking with fury, hair in a wild halo around her face and anger pouring from her skin.

“Well, fuck you! Just fuck right off! God forbid you should ever love anyone who had the guts to love you back! Anyone who might be your equal!”

Rogue stormed to the back of the van, and wrenched the double doors open, crawling inside to get her duffel and to collect the underwear drying on their dinky clothesline.

Logan cut the engine, and simply sat, lowering his head to the steering wheel. The Wolverine prowled, and then pounced. Jumping down from the cab with an earth-shaking thud, and slamming the door so hard it shuddered, he stalked to the back of the van to find Rogue climbing out, ready to leave.

The growl rumbled up from his belly, two parts threat and one part displeasure. She chose to ignore it, brushing aside the restraining hand. He roared, and flipped her around, throwing her face first into the van. His mate did not leave. Ever.

With a snarl, Wolverine leapt forward, and grabbed her by both ankles. A quick tug and her ass landed in his crotch, exactly where it should be and already throbbing for her. One claw exposed and the denim parted like silk, stripped away from the waistband with a quick flick of his wrist. No underwear and he could see her from cleft to clit, shaking with anger but more drenched with every minute. And when he ran the blunt side of one claw down that cleft to nudge at her pleasure, the cold thrill of it sent her writhing upwards to grind against his cock.

She was close but hadn’t come just yet. Wolverine sneered. The bitch would have to beg a little before that happened and if she thought she was begging now … he dropped to his knees to bury his face in her. Little licks. Just a taste. And she had risen to all fours in her desperation to grant him access and FUCK teasin, because the sight of her ass swaying in front of his face was just too much. Buckle off, jeans down and he was fucking her so hard she was propelled forward with every movement. Hands stretched out in front, braced against the bed and she was slamming back with every stroke. Bruises on her hips from his hands and her fingers bloody from trying to grip the floor and her ass banging him so hard he thought his balls just might explode if he didn’t come soon. Oh. Oh. The roar originated at the base of his cock and ricocheted upwards, spilling out his throat as the spasms overtook him. One bellow after another and he just kept coming and coming for fuckin’ ever. And ever.

When he marshalled his senses, he was sprawled on top of Rogue, still embedded deep inside. He raised his bulk off her - she responded with a grateful drag of air into her lungs - and damned if the girl didn’t rock back with him, settling into his lap. And contracting as if to remind him he was still captive.

“Jesus, Rogue, I’m sorry.” Given her current position, Logan figured she wasn’t too mad at him, but he needed to apologise anyway. There hadn’t been much opportunity for the usual niceties - candlelight, condom, simple consent, for example - and a cursory inspection revealed bruises blooming on her hips, a chain of toothmarks around her neck, and her hands cut and bloodied. He shuddered in disgust and apologised again.

“Why? Me and the Wolverine get on just fine,” she purred, running her hands through his hair and shimmying her hips just enough to reignite every ember in him. “But now,” she said, looking deep in his eyes, “I want to make love with Logan.” And she was already moving, hips in circles over him, and little internal ripples that were insanely good as they gripped him like a thousand hands. Logan cursed and closed his eyes. Somewhere, somehow she had absorbed the memories of Persian harem girl, because this wasn’t normal. Wasn’t possible that he could be about to come again, minutes after the first. And if this was about love … he scooped her up and deposited her on the camper’s mattress, stretching out above her. Eye to eye, mouth to mouth, chest to chest and hip to hip. The symmetry was astounding and Logan wondered if this was why they called it the missionary position: it was the best way to worship each other?

He could see every freckle on her chest and the smile on her face and that make him just HAVE to dip down to pull her delicious nipple into his mouth. And then the other, because it would be mean to play favourites and they both tasted so good he was nearly coming again. And then she started with the rippling and he WAS coming so it was time to stroke in and out and in and out and she was convulsing around him, and that was it. That was heaven. There was no love talk and no pet names, just a twist so they could lie face to face and stare into each others eyes as sleep crept over them. And then a happy darkness, welcoming and dreamless.

He awoke an hour later to wonder exactly where they were parked, and why the back doors were still open. As memory came trickling back, he tensed, and looked down at Rogue, curled into his body just as Marie had liked to do.

Had he betrayed her? The girl he had made love to - with, he reminded himself - hadn’t been the same creature he had fought into submission minutes earlier, or on countless occasions before that. She had been softer, more giving, more … more Marie. It was possible he was wishing the similarity into being, or - and this chilled him - that he was being manipulated, but he didn’t think so. Something told him to trust her, trust them.

Love had proven its power to him - made him a man again, saved his soul, broken his heart, but, he told himself, at least now he knew he had a heart. And Marie had been so good at love, so rich with it, he couldn’t believe she would abandon it totally. So maybe, he wondered, she was still in there. Waiting. All he had to do was find the key.

…………………………………………………………….

North, and the sky seemed to be growing with every mile. Crop land had given way to pasture and then to range, followed by the endless stretch of dark pines that blanketed the rolling country around Laughlin City. They had been driving for eleven hours, bar pee stops, and just wanted to get there already. Then the alternator gave a hiccup and the damn truck stalled, and they weren’t going any farther tonight.

“Fuck! I was dreaming about a hot shower. I swear, I was drooling at the thought earlier,” Rogue groused. “Oh well, it could be worse - we could be freezing in the snow or something.”

Logan looked at the long stretch of road ahead of them, and a similar stretch behind them, and the pines in every direction. He sniffed, and wasn’t sure, but thought it might be. Each place had its own smell, and this one did seem familiar.

“Last time, you were about to freeze in the snow.” He stopped, and walked up the road a little way, coming back convinced.

“This is where we met. Properly, I mean, not like in the bar. Where I kicked you out of my trailer and made you run after me.”

She hadn’t noticed the slip in pronouns. Rogue and Marie were not interchangeable, or so she liked to say. But this time, the magic of the place had overcome that truculence.

“Where I climbed in your trailer? And ate your jerky? God - how weird.” And, he thought, weird how her intonation had changed, thickening a little into soft Southern. Not yet Mississippi thick, but not New York sharp, either.

“Yup. This is the place. Our beginning, I guess.” It so easily could have been the end, for her. Left to freeze on the side of the highway by a heartless bastard who still didn’t know why he had stopped. Who had wondered, day in and day out, if it was because of the girl’s innocent sensuality and sinful red lips.

“Let’s camp here. Not in the van, out there - in the forest. Let’s make a big campfire and sleep under the stars and celebrate that.”

He was shocked to his core. That was Marie. Surely, that was Marie - exuberance, youth, that commitment to commemorating even those everyday acts that proved so very special in retrospect. Logan didn’t dare say so, but he knew it was Marie. And he couldn’t disagree with her suggestion.

They dragged the mattress out from the camper, laid it on a groundsheet and the sleeping bags on top. It was still fall, but the mercury would get pretty low tonight, even if there was no snow in the air. A campfire, properly built, would burn all night and keep them warm as well as a little bit safe.

Later that night, after Rogue had crept into her sleeping bag to escape the cold, Logan sat by the fire contemplating their situation. Tomorrow, he would stock up on edibles and necessary tools, and they would head up the mountain to his cabin. He would give Rogue a week to make up her mind whether to stay or go.

He still didn’t know what he wanted her to do. One part of him was frantic with hope, sure that Marie would come back and waiting, just waiting, for Rogue to be gone. Another part hissed at his inability to appreciate the wild one, the mate.

Lulled into a trance by the flames, the Wolverine stirred and looked about him. The forest. The mate. Home. Soon they would be home.

He was sad for the man. The girlchild had been warm feelings, like curled in the frozen black with your mate, cubs snuffling through her fur, wind howling outside rock walls safe, warm. But past, past. Roguefemale was running through forest with wind, wild rut in first of the green, lash of heat and flash of claw and mounting and inside, inside, inside. Roguefemale was life. Animal. Human. All things. Always.

Unfolding himself from the campfire, the animal-man stood tall in the glow for a minute more. The dancing flames had lured his feral self into expression, and the wisdom there had shocked Logan to the core. How long had he divorced himself from the Wolverine, hating that part of himself with such passion that he had been unable to see the truth? See the primitive wisdom that informed his every move, his every desire?

For 15 years he had pretended to be a man with an animal trapped inside, an animal that needed to be leashed and chained and bent to his will. And he had done it, blindly chasing the label, the status that would never be his. Should never be his. Stryker would never see him as a man. Xavier would never see a man. Magneto had no desire to see a man, and perhaps he had been right. Homo superior. A being that was not a man, and not an animal. A new species, a mutation so powerful and so transforming that the words of ordinary men had no way of describing what he was.

But Marie. Marie hadn’t needed words. Her own gift - her true gift, for understanding and insight and knowing what was needed - had seen him, had seen what he was and what he needed. And her mutation had responded, sifting through the awarenesses in her mind to create the perfect counterpart, a being who could match him in word and deed and tooth and claw. Rogue. His mate. Not ‘their’ mate. His mate. Because he was finally whole.

Wolverine kicked in the ashes of the campfire, scented the air for predators one last time, and slid soundlessly over to the sleeping bag where his mate lay waiting. “Sssh, love, sleep,” he whispered as she stirred, tracing the sharp edge of her cheekbone with his tongue to taste her happiness. “Goodbye, Marie, my love. Thank you for this gift. This life. Your love. I’m sorry Logan never realised he deserved it, couldn’t take it from you. But I can. I will.”

He rolled the blankets around them both, and snuggled down into her warmth. And in a clearing in the forest in northern Canada, near a spot on the highway where a man could have left a girl to freeze, Wolverine and his Rogue slept. And watching over them both, a girl called Marie waited. And hoped.

FIN