FIC: October 19 (2/2) Rated R
A/N: This is part two of October 19 - sorry it was so long in coming. If you want to read part one, it's here: http://jaq-of-spades.livejournal.com/8654.html
Alternatively, you can read the whole story in one go on the new WRFA archive - I'm loaded! whee! It's at http://www.wolverineandrogue.com/wrfa/
Jean came back in May. At first, she thought it was jealousy, that whisper of unease that twisted in the pit of her stomach whenever the telepath was near. But when it turned to pleasure, like a million fingertips tracing softly across her skin, she began to wonder. Jean would smile, and Rogue would hear a song inside her head, rich and haunting and so fucking powerful she wanted to cry. And Jean’s eyes, once a flat caramel, followed her everywhere. They were near black now, heat and invitation lurking in those depths. And something else - an immensity that was coiled and hungry. At the time, Rogue never thought to wonder for what, and then she took the Cure, and Jean’s eyes were just cold and dead. Looking past her, to Logan.
He had told her, later, about the Phoenix. How she had wrapped him in Jean’s endless legs and taunted him with echoes of the woman she used to be. Goodness and morality abandoned for pure desire. How want and need were the currency of the Wolverine, and the man was nearly lost.
Rogue had collapsed at that, her knees giving way as she realised she, too, had come close to being a victim of the Phoenix. As she shook in his arms, he had shushed and smoothed her hair, rough hand on the skin of her cheek, her bare feet warm on top of his. Tears, thankfully, were mute, requiring no explanations as her pain streaked his chest in seeming innocence. As he murmured platitudes of better places and the noble sacrifice of a good woman, she cried for that loss of divinity, that chance to be his perfect counterpart. The Phoenix had wanted them both, and unlike Logan, Marie would never have had the strength to resist. A rose of apology on each grave, and one for Logan’s bed, and she left.
Four-year-old jeans, long-sleeved shirt that still stunk of too many smoky bars, and a worn green coat. Too hot for May, so it stayed rolled up in her duffel bag, but she knew it was there, and if her ride got too fresh, or her spot for the night too damn depressing, she could stroke the felt and take comfort from her own strength.
She reached Meridian in the fall.
*
It felt like some sort of weird alternate reality. Up at 7, at work by 9, and cursing the boss by lunchtime. Not for something worth spending that energy on, but for little things: the boredom, the monotony, the endless creep towards 5pm. Letters to type, papers to file, customers to bare her teeth at in some semblance of a smile.
Combat training and the ability to fly a super-stealth jet were not qualities she could list on her resume, and upper-middling results at a mysterious private high school barely qualified her for an entry-level secretarial position in a small law firm in Montgomery. When they asked why she had no job experience at 21, she had donned a tragic smile and directed sad brown eyes at the floor. “My momma. She was ill for a long time, and … there was only me. Now that she’s gone …”
Momma, of course, was hale and hearty, three hours away across the state line. She was the one who might have been dead. “I had you in a ditch, Marie. Or maybe frozen under a bridge somewhere. For the first year, I had hope. By the second …” her hands had sketched sad trails in the air, and their meaning was unmistakable. Mourning her dead, mutant daughter was easier than being forced to talk to the live one.
“I’m sorry, Momma. For everything. I shoulda called, but …” her voice trailed off, admitting there were no buts that were acceptable, and too many to explain. But I was afraid you might not want me. I was afraid you just might. She lifted her head, straightened her spine, and refused to lie. “I had to find out who I was. Who I could be. My name is Rogue now.”
And she was surprised to find it was still true.
*
She had taken an apartment on Royal Street with two other girls. They had asked if she was a smoker, a drinker and if she had a job, but didn’t bother to enquire after a mutation. That possibility was so far from their white-washed reality that Jessie and Kate would have never considered it; they thought “Rogue” was the slighty wacky choice of blessed-out hippie parents.
“It’s kinda funny, though girl, ‘cause there’s no way you’re a Rogue,” slurred Kate, one night after a home-made Margarita too many. “With your looks and that bod, the men’d be lining up for you if you just noticed they existed, hun. Ya gotta get yoursel’ out there.” Kate fancied herself a party girl, but there was a sadness to her too-tight smile. Jessie was quieter, but more observant, which was unfortunate. Rogue could have done with a friend, but the years of Logan in her head made her suspicious of anyone so watchful.
They were spring cleaning, that day, when Kate pulled Rogue’s green coat from the furthest corner of the hall closet. “What, in Jesus’ name, is this?” She brandished it with an expression that slid between distaste and incredulity. “Ah mean, jus’ look at the state of it! There’s moths! And it smells,” she pronounced, her nose wrinkling like Aunt Beth’s beloved pug.
“It’s mine,” Rogue snarled, her tone as feral as the Wolverine had ever managed. Kate blinked, astonished by the venom. “Sor-ry!” Jessie had jumped into the uneasy silence, running her hand over the felt with a slow smile, a dreamy look in her eyes. “It’s seen a good few miles, hasn’t it? Did you see snow, Rogue? I’d love to see snow.”
“Miles and miles of it. Up north, it’s nothing but snow and trees. And sometimes you can’t see the trees.” Her mind cast back, days of hunger and pain and loneliness. And a bar, a cage, a man.
“It’s the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see. So white your eyes hurt, but everything looks … pristine. Walk a few metres away from the town, and there’s nothing. No footprints, no dirt, no ugliness. So pure, so clean.” Her voice broke, hardened. “Course, walk too far and it’ll kill you. There’s a price for so much beauty.”
Tears? Where did tears come from? Rogue ignored them, thought of the times Logan had comforted her. She was a normal girl, with a normal life, now. She was paying the price.
*
Jessie had opened the door. Her strangled yelp floated out to the back porch, where Rogue and Kate were stretched out, trying to catch any breeze that dared to stir in the late afternoon heat. No one in Alabama went visitin’ on days like today, but that was just another rule Logan had never bothered to learn.
His eyes followed a bead of sweat as it rolled from her hairline, down the side of her neck, and then hesitated on her collar bone. They darkened as it wavered there, seeming to urge it forwards, salivating at the dizzying plunge into her cleavage. Her mouth went dry, and the polite greeting she had honed over the past year fled her brain.
“Quit staring, Logan. It’s just a bikini!”
“It ain’t your bikini I’m lookin’ at, darlin’.”
Her heart thumped, and she wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like. It thumped again, proving otherwise, but the beat seemed slow, as unreliable as those parts of her body that were revelling in the attention. Not interested. He’s not interested. He’s not. The litany didn’t help when the green in his eyes was vanishing into gold, and Rogue’s memory was fishing deep. She knew what that look meant. That intent. He wanted to fuck her.
Thump. Thump. Her heart agreed. Her blood sang. Her brain tried to object, but she’d already been pulled into what some people might have called a hug.
Want. Need. Desire. Rogue should have known they would catch her in the end.
*
It wasn’t what she expected. It wasn’t quick, or hard, or anonymous. He didn’t leave, afterwards. He might have made her cry, but the tears came as her body shuddered with joy, not abandonment. He had cried, too, as he moved over her, long slow strokes dragging out the pleasure, the fulfilment. “Marie, Marie, Marie,” he said, her name a metronome.
Puzzled, she reviewed his memories. A frazzled waitress, out back of a no-star diner. Nought to 200 in less than a minute, easy expertise on both sides. Or the fight groupie, Laughlin City, the night before she arrived. He’d pounded the woman for hours, draining away the aggression of the cage into a willing body. Too willing. He’d felt bad about some of the stuff they’d done, but regret had no place in a one night stand.
And there she was. Green coat. Glances from under her hood. Chocolate eyes straight to his soul. A face by Botticelli, or maybe Bellini. (Logan, an authority on quattrocentro art, Magneto mocked. She hushed him, and tried not to be amazed by the disclosure.) Innocence. A dangerous sensuality. The need to run, and run, and run, lest temptation catch him up.
But he lacked faith in himself. Faced with abandoning her to the snow, he couldn’t. Faced with abandoning her to death, he wouldn’t. So they had become one heart, one soul. She had thought. But now? He wasn’t being predictable. He wasn’t being the Wolverine. She wondered if she knew Logan at all.
*
“Marie? Where you goin’, baby?”
“Home, Logan. I’ve gotta work tomorrow. And get some sleep tonight.”
“Don’t go. Stay and keep me warm.”
“Its 104 degrees outside, Logan. You’re warm enough.”
“I just thought …”
“I gotta go. See you Friday, maybe?”
“Friday, as in the end of the fuckin’ week Friday? Why not tomorrow?”
“A week with you and I can barely focus, sugar. Not to mention walk. I need to rest up some. I’ll be all fresh by the weekend. See you Friday?
“Yeah, kid. Friday.”
*
But Friday turned into Monday, and Monday into Friday again. She was sick with what she was doing; the need to see him churned in her gut and made her ill as she listened to the messages he left.
“I’m missing you, baby. Call me.”
“Are you out of town, Marie? It’s Logan. Give me a call.
“Marie - where the fuck are you? Are you OK? Call me.”
“Marie. I’m leaving. Westchester. Maybe you’ll catch me there.”
She sat in the closet with the phone, replaying his messages over and over. Three in the first week. Two in the second. One in the third. And a final, lonely voice on her machine, more than a month later. She was running harder than he ever had.
He only called once after he went back to the mansion. Kate had moved out by then, but her replacement knew better than to wipe the machine. It was Jessie she hid from, though, those observant blue eyes full of sorrow and sympathy. And here, in the dark, she could curl up in her coat and let the smells take her back. To Laughlin City. To the train. To the mansion. Back when things were uncomplicated by things such as adulthood, and honesty, and truth. And the most painful of all. A word she couldn’t even think. A word he had said.
Her fingers ached to press the numbers, but her traitorous mind wouldn’t allow it. This wasn’t Logan, it insisted. That man wasn’t him. This was a man who could love her, and surely, that wasn’t him?
Her memories were holding her to ransom. Surely the present could be found in the past? She, who held the pasts of five men in her head, understood men better than most. They didn’t change. They didn’t.
She was terrified that maybe they did. He had. Because this man had the body and soul of her lover, without the dark places and outsider’s rage. He was calm. Loving. Supportive. The ideal mate for any woman. Unworthy, unworthy, unworthy, screeched her demons.
*
Four years. Four years in the dark, four years of hot summers slipping into balmy winters, and nothing but moths and silverfish gaining the benefit of thick, green felt. Even comfort was beyond its reach, as Marie turned her back on Rogue, and everything to do with her past.
And one day, the scent of cigar smoke had faded to the point where none but a feral mutant would have been able to detect the hint of finest Cuban. But there was no feral mutant in her life, now, and there was no need to cry as the last evidence of their relationship slipped from her senses.
Marie d’Ancanto was too busy to regret the past. 40 hours per week as Brunner Braun’s best legal secretary, followed by 20 hours swotting for the LSAT. She had narrowed her preferred law schools to two, and now all she had to do was pass the entrance. Mid-October, she thought. And if work and study weren’t enough, she would find a man to distract her. He would be rough and treat her badly, and she would smile and take the punishment, for a while. Then she would smile and move on to the next man who had muttonchops and a motorcycle, never once even thinking his name.
When November came, the firm called it a triumph. Top marks in the state. They couldn’t keep her locked up in Montgomery, heavens no. “You deserve the pay rise,” old man Braun said as he handed her the file on the New York office. “You’ll love New York.” There was no reason not to go, she told herself. Walking along Wall Street every day, Marie could feel the drag towards Westchester. One train. Less than an hour. Just curiosity, she told herself, only natural, she said, and walked faster.
That first week, still staying in a hotel as she goggled at the price of apartments, she fought the temptation to ring head office and explain she had made a mistake. The second week, as she unpacked her clothes in Mrs deLazio’s spare room in Brooklyn, she gave it a month. And shaking her birthday coat out to air, Rogue wondered why she’d even packed the old thing. It was too tattered to wear now, the kind of rag that even the Goodwill would reject. By rights, it belonged in the dumpster. But somehow, it found its way into a box under her bed.
Gathering dust, holding emotion, impregnated with memory.
*
October 19, and Marie was contemplating buying a new coat. Her leather trench wasn’t up to a hard winter, and she fancied something in cherry red. Shaped, no hood. She was still contemplating when the first snowfall of the year blew in, an early visitor from the frozen north. She couldn’t remember ever being so cold.
The coat under her bed was better than no coat at all. She sneezed at the avalanche of dust, and did her best to remove some of the lint. Slipped her arms into the sleeves, and tried not to breathe.
Surely it was just an allergy attack. Weepy eyes were a classic symptom, and she was just all sneezed out. Crumpling to the floor, crying, and crying and crying. Momma’s little girl. Marie, Rogue, Rogue, Marie. So confused, so tired of being confused.
Logan. Logan. Logan. You made me what I am, but I couldn’t handle who you were. Couldn’t handle the gentle man, the loving man. Couldn’t handle being loved. The pain wracked her body until it she heaved it out, one dry retch after another. Regret, regret, regret.
Hours later, work forgotten, she rose to her feet and stumbled to the telephone.
“Xavier’s. Wolverine.”
“Hello, sugar. Do you know what day it is?”
“Marie. Uh - October 19? Do you really remember?”
She held her breath. “Remember what?”
“Today. I stabbed you, ten years ago today.”
“Yeah. I remember. I never realised you did.”
His voice was quiet, and she could hear the shame pulse through the handset. “It was sick, but … all I could think was that I was touching you.”
She sobbed, incredulous.
“Jesus, Logan, I nearly … the feel of you inside me, I nearly came.” The silence on the other end of the phone stretched and began to ache.
“Logan? Are you there?”
“Yeah, baby. I never knew. I mean - the connection we had, sure, but I didn’t realise I fucked you up so bad that the pain … no wonder you didn’t want to be with me. I screwed you up something shocking.”
She shook her head, begging him to understand, before realising he couldn’t see her.
“Fuck no, Logan. No. October 19 is the day I was born, for God’s sake. The day Rogue was born. But … Rogue wasn’t enough. She couldn’t stop Marie hurting, couldn’t stop Marie hurting you.” She paused, dragged in a breath.
“My momma thought I was better off dead, Logan. Her baby, Marie, was dead. And when I took the Cure, I realised I’d thrown Rogue away, and Marie was dead, and … I was no one. Nothing. And if I had you, I had to be someone, someone worthy of your love. But I wasn’t. So I couldn’t - I couldn’t do that to you.”
He was crying, now, choked sobs echoing down the receiver.
“Stop, Marie. Just fucking stop. Wherever you are, just leave, and come home. You are enough. You’re fucking everything. I need you here.”
It took her a minute, maybe two, to hang up the phone, place it gently in its cradle. She stood, legs shaking, and looked about. She wouldn’t even need her bag. Cash in her pocket. Ten-year-old jeans. A long-sleeved t-shirt. A green coat. All a would-be, once-was mutant girl would ever need.
FIN.