She smoked with the same intensity she did everything else--in his remembered life (a joke if there ever was one), he'd never met anyone like her. Everything and anything in her range got all that rush of energy exploding through it, be it fighting or playing or sex. Blowing the smoke aggressively, like she expected it to come back and attack her if she didn't get it far enough away--but she always held a cigarette like a cigar, and that was endearing in a twisted way.

"Problem, darlin'?" he asked, sitting on the step next to her. A strip of white hair floated over her forehead and she pushed it away impatiently with a silk-covered hand, pressed it down behind one ear, recently dyed auburn hair her own petty revenge that she still thought could hurt him.

"Remy and I are over." A glance from chocolate-colored eyes, shifting to look anywhere but at him. "Don't ask and don't bother stayin' unless you brought beer, sugar. I'm piss-poor company tonight."

"You're always bad company." But Logan did bring something, reaching behind him for the ice chest he'd taken from the kitchen. "Get your ass up and I'll get you so drunk you won't even remember his name."

"I didn't remember his name this last time, which was the problem," she muttered with a glare in his direction, accusatory, but she stood up, waiting for him to follow.

"You fuck up your men, Marie. Never get why you do that."

He only called her Marie during these nights--when she was twenty-one and seventeen at the same time, waiting for him to find her on the doorstep and remind her why she was here and not back on the streets of Chicago getting drunk and fighting every chance she got, why she wasn't dead outside Laughlin City because she picked the wrong trucker, why Magneto hadn't gone ahead and killed the rest of her when he tore apart her mind, why the razors on her eighteenth birthday had failed. Dragging her back here the fifth time, he'd gotten her promise to stay. A grudging promise that locked him here too--and admittedly, Logan had been about as tired of moving by that point as could be and dropped his bag in the room when he deposited her in front of Xavier's desk. Avoiding Jean and all his mistakes had become less important than seeing Rogue get past her twentieth birthday alive.

"It's all in the southern charm, sugar," she shot, picking the trail to the lake with easy familiarity, the sound of her boots soft on the rock trail. "You got beer in there or something harder?"

"Your liver will be shot at this rate. Whiskey." A wolfish grin. "It's that kinda night."

A twisted smile, and he could see in the moonlight the track of her tears written in blurred mascara beneath her eyes, hastily rubbed away, and if he looked, there would be wet black stains on the blue silk covering her fingers.

"You know me too well."

"Yeah, so it seems. Come on." He took one of her hands, pulling her behind him, hearing her take another drag before dropping the butt on the ground and rubbing it dead with the heel of one black boot. Then a lift of her body and she skipped ahead, energy sparkling through her, and he wondered if she missed being seventeen and still able to feel. Everything else in her had burned out years before, replaced with something he no longer wanted to acknowledge. On nights like this, he called it failure.

"How do I look to you?" she demanded, turning, fingers gripping his with all that strength and maybe some desperation.

Dark hair shot with white. Flawless cream skin. Dark eyes. He'd heard her called beautiful. Sometimes he agreed.

"Too old." Too young for black liner and red smeared lipstick and the patterns of eye shadow that took more from her than they gave. That made her smile and he liked that at least--that he can make her do that when few others can. He'd learned to count his successes in terms of little things that made a day livable.

"That's the God-honest truth, sugar, and don't you forget it. Come play with me." She skipped backward easily, knowing the trail like the back of her hand. Giving him another bright smile like a gift. "I'll get drunk and try to fuck you and you can hold my hair when I throw up and cry afterward."

"Yeah. One of our usual nights. Ready when you are, darlin'."

It was different when she was seventeen and still had something in her eyes that didn't hurt to see, when she looked into the future and saw hope. He saw her first in a crowd from a cage in Laughlin and thought she looked so young. If he'd known then what he knew now, he never would have let her stay here, dragged her on the road with him before they'd even finished the introductions. He didn't blame the X-Men and when he looked at them over the stretch of a conference room table, he remembered that.

But sometimes, he hated them.

She dropped onto the dirt at once on entering the clearing, inches from the edge of the water, crystal clear and dark blue under the full moon and he sat beside her, pulling out the glasses from the chest, picking up the bottle.

"Good stuff," she said, looking down at it.

"Chuck stocked up after the last time." He opened it, pouring the shots, throwing his back while she lifted hers, staring at it with cool concentration. Then closing her eyes, raising it to her mouth, and he watched her take it. Stared at him afterward.

"There's a lot I can't remember anymore." Her voice was soft and she dug into the dirt with her heels. "What touch is like on bare skin when I ain't usin' it to kill. I got up this morning and realized that I don't know. It scared me, Logan."

"That what precipitated you droppin' Remy like a pair of used underwear?"

"Somethin' like that." She lifted her glass and he poured again, her left hand skating over his jean-covered thigh. "Maybe just sayin' that I don't want 'im anymore did the work for me, though."

A soft sigh and he shook his head when she drank her shot, staring at the water. He wondered if she remembered the rope burns on her ankles and Bobby freezing the surface in a path so they could drag her out. Marie's concept of gratitude left much to be desired.

"You screw with their heads too much."

"You do one-nighters like they're goin' out of style. Don't play vicar with my social life."

"I don't go back for seconds or fifths or tenths with the same ones either. You get three nights under your belt, that's relationship territory." He poured them each another, then sat down the bottle. "You wanna play it that way, your call. But don't act so fucking surprised when they expect more than to be told to strip and perform on demand."

Sometimes, the dark tricked him and he saw more than was there in her--the arch of her throat, the slow smile, the fingers plucking at her shirt, the tilt of her head when she was thinking. Painfully familiar. Sometimes, even, he could be fooled into believing Marie was in there somewhere beneath layers of bitterness and disillusionment and all that rage that nothing had ever been able to clear from her mind.

Once, so many nights ago the memory shouldn't be so fucking vivid, he'd been fooled in his own bed, the feel of her through a silk bodysuit and black gloves, whispering that she loved him. With a soft drawl and a smile and all that experience grafted into her mind, knowing more than he'd ever guessed. A hot night in a strange city with the windows open and sweat drying on his back, taking in the scent of her body underneath him, imprinted so deeply into his mind that he would remember it probably until the day he died. He'd been first and he'd never forgotten that. He'd never forgiven himself either--he couldn't be her father and her lover, even if that's what she wanted, and she didn't want to give either one up.

His choice, the only one he'd made that he could have regretted if he'd ever allowed it.

"I wouldn't need anyone else if--" and she stopped herself deliberately, shaking her head, giving him a bright smile. "Tell me you love me, Logan."

"You know I do, Marie."

"Not Rogue?" A soft pout, taking the shot, staring into the water. One hand slid down to the grass and she leaned back, kicking one foot idly.

Sometimes he hated Rogue. Rogue was the one who'd fucked him and called it love.

"How's Remy?"

"Thankin' God I left, most likely." A long sigh and she put her glass down, trailing her fingers over her thigh.

"He cared about you." They all did, God knew why. Sometimes, they looked at him after and he knew they wanted to ask him questions, like he knew what the fuck went on in her head. Like even if he did, he'd answer.

He knew what they thought, though, when she grinned over breakfast in the morning and slid a gloved hand down the back of his neck with easy familiarity.

"I know." Another stare into the water, then at him. And fuck, she looked seventeen right now, getting over her first break-up, and he refilled her glass. "I didn't want that."

He filled his own too. "You never do."

* * * * *

Rogue was passed out in his bed and he watched her sleep before leaving, knowing it would be hours before she woke up. Found Jean downstairs, perched on the end of the last step, feet planted on the floor. Never lifting her head. It'd been a bad night. For all of them. Once in awhile, he cared when he chose to notice.

It didn't happen often.

"It can't go on like this, Logan."

Three years ago, the smell and sound of her was enough to arouse him, make him look at her and wonder if she screamed or moaned, if she liked it against a wall quick and dirty. When Rogue said she didn't remember touch, he could say he didn't remember love. He knew he'd loved Jean once. What it felt like was a mystery

"Fuck with me tonight, Jeannie, and you won't see sunrise with those pretty green eyes."

She looked at him without rancor and he walked by her, staring at the front door with sharp longing, coming to a stop on the rug before he just continued his way out. From the corner of his eye, he saw her frustrated stare, the twitch of the hands clasped over her knees.

"You like this?" Her fingers spread, taking in the silent mansion, the old smells of death and betrayal and the things they did when the sun set that no one knew about, dressed in black and wishing for one morning where they didn't wake wondering if this was the last day they had.

"I wanna smell the Pacific at dusk and feel sand under my feet. I wanna remember how it feels to wake up alone and not give a fuck. I joined up and I lost those things. And you're askin' me if I like this." He gave her a disbelieving stare. "Get off it, Jean. You aren't the only one that knows what it's like to lose."

She waved a hand away. Another mistake, another night.

"He's waiting for you."

Xavier was awake, waiting, staring off into space. No surprise--the nights after missions always went one of two ways. Usually this way, with Logan in that chair that had become depressingly routine, making his perfunctory request.

"Logan."

"Let me take her."

Once a week, it was simple and inanely predictable, one hundred and twenty-two times. One request, one denial, like clockwork, and Logan wasn't sure if he even meant it anymore. He'd meant it on that pay phone in Chicago--he knew that much. He'd meant it in Phoenix while she slept in the back of the car, blackened eyes and scars crisscrossing her wrists and forearms in unhealed crusted reds and dingy brown, smiling as if she'd just come home from Disneyland. He was sure he'd meant it then.

But then, he'd also trusted and believed and shit, how many people had he been before he got to this? Go figure.

A soft sigh.

"What can you do that we have not, Logan?" And he seemed truly curious, and the break in routine was enough to surprise him, and he didn't know he could be surprised anymore either, so that was new.

"I don't know." Though he had known, in Chicago on hot asphalt, in Phoenix standing in two inch snow--or was it the other way around? He'd known he could do something. But then, he'd hadn't touched her for the first time and let her fuck with his head like she fucked with them all.

He'd still been nothing more than her friend.

A long time ago, he would have picked her up and taken her and not cared what the fuck Chuck thought. But that man had a lot of other things too, like his freedom. Like his own life. He hadn't had much of a conscience, but really that was beside the point, because that man hadn't wanted one. Congrats, win the guilt lottery, your prize is right upstairs. Check her out. All yours for as long as she lives, baby.

"How long?"

"Six months. No contact. No Cerebro." He knew this part by rote as well, though Chuck had only asked for details once and refused him in an afterthought, with Scooter leaning over his shoulder and Jean nodding in the background, like they knew what the fuck they were talking about, therapy and care and some sort of crap about needing family. That it was all about her age and adjustment when he could tell them it wasn't that at all. But who the fuck was he, after all, only the one guy who could find her, bring her home. Only the one they called thirteen times in two and a half years--and when did he start remembering numbers so fucking well?--to handle what they couldn't. He didn't know shit.

Only Ororo had stood still and listened to what he said, what he found, what he knew. Or believed. Or understood. Or something. He wasn't sure of that--but then, he wasn't sure of a lot of things, like the names of the women he fucked because they were always Marie and what the skin of a woman's hands looked like because he always made them wear gloves.

"I'll give you access to all the accounts." Silence, then he looked up, and Logan wished, with more surprise, that the man didn't look so calm. Maybe everyone reached limits. Or maybe Chuck didn't want to hear request number one twenty-three, which might have included Logan tossing his uniform and finding a bar so far away they could never call him again. Maybe. But then, request number fifteen was going to be that and so far he hadn't managed to say it yet. "Six months. I'll respect your wishes. No contact."

"No Cerebro."

An incline of the head and Logan was standing in front of Jean again before he realized that he'd been given permission. And another man--and had he been that man?--would never have waited for it, and somewhere, he was sure he should be disgusted that this was who he had become.

"Bye, Jeannie." And he took the stairs two at a time, hearing her rise but not move, hearing the catch of her breath, her soft question that he would have stopped for three years ago and listened to. Maybe even answered. Heard her feet as they crossed the foyer to the Professor's office, then he was in front of his door and pushing it open and shaking Rogue roughly awake and staring into her eyes when he told her they were leaving.

Something flared in him that years ago, a different man would have mockingly called hope.

* * * * *

"Why?" she asked. Sitting half-up, eyes blurred, long hair a mess around her face--he'd stripped her of her filthy clothes hours earlier and seeing her in stretch lace beneath an unbuttoned flannel shirt was normal enough. If anything about his life could really be considered normal and not the bad punchline to a lengthy joke. Sheet pale around her waist, trying to blink her way into comprehension, her body blanched to black and white in moonlight.

If he'd known why, he may have considered telling her. But he didn't--call it instinct or just naked need, he wasn't sure and cared less. Everything was violent rapid movement, as if he paused for even an instant and thought about what the fuck he was doing, he might realize that he was finally losing his mind. But fuck it, sanity hadn't done much for him yet and when they whispered he was unbalanced in the dark corners of the Mansion, they were more right than they'd ever guessed.

He had a duffle bag packed in minutes and the car keys he'd snatched from the edge of Xavier's desk in his jacket pocket. Credit cards shoved into his wallet, his own reserve of cash pulled out and counted. Shit, when was the last time he left this godforsaken place? One year, fifty-four days, get the minutes, bub, and you can just check yourself straight into an loony bin on your way out.

"Anyone in your room?"

Narrowed eyes, uncertain balance when her bare feet got under her, flannel licking her bare thighs. She was still drunk.

"No."

He breathed a sigh of relief--he knew he wasn't up to it tonight. Fuck, he hadn't been up to dealing with that crap in a long time. Getting the bag settled on one shoulder, he slid an arm around her waist, feeling her fingers close on his wrist.

"Where are we going?" Liquid dark drawl, Mississippi thick in her voice.

"Your room. Walk."

Because she was Marie tonight, she obeyed, and it would have been easier to just pick her up and carry her, but he'd been doing that for a long time. Too long.

"Move." Fifty-two steps to her room--he had it memorized, they'd taken this walk before. Pushed the door open, dropped her beside the door, went to her closet.

"Logan."

"Don't talk." He went through her clothes expertly--God, how many times had he imagined doing this? Chose what she'd need, threw them on the bed, giving her a glance, checking the glaze of her eyes. She'd be out of it for a few hours yet. Good enough.

"What do you need from your bathroom?" Girl things--brush, scarves, he stared at the variety and felt a little out of his league, got what he thought she'd use, threw it on the floor behind him. She jerked, staring at him, and he shook his head.

"Fuck it. We'll get whatever you need later."

Under her bed was her bag--he pulled it out, found the drugs he'd always known she kept, spilling them on the comforter. Packed her clothes and then threw it at the door beside her and flushed her pills.

"Those are mine."

"You just lost your last crutch. Get up."

Eyes narrowing again, but she braced a hand on the wall, getting her feet under her, letting him dress her in jeans like the kid she sometimes pretended to be. He grabbed her jacket, tucking it under the strap, then slid an arm around her again, feeling her lean against him, and the brush of her hair against his cheek.

"Where we goin', sugar?" Gloved fingers against his face, whiskey-thickened voice he sometimes heard in his dreams.

"For a little ride, baby."

* * * * *

She was passed out in the passenger seat when Logan saw Scott enter the garage. Seatbelt secured, seat leaned back, her cheek resting on one hand. She probably wouldn't even remember leaving, which was just as well, since Logan had a couple of ideas how he was gonna handle this.

"You think this'll work?" For a surprise, and this was the day for them, no rancor, no judgement, though shit, even Logan considered three years enough time to do the penance Cyke had put on him for fucking Jean.

"You got a better idea?"

A tilt of his head, eyes unreadable behind red-tinted glasses, leaning against the door. Better ideas were old and used-up and they failed so spectacularly that if Scott was even trying to lay down a line, Logan'd run him over and forget this place even existed.

"No." It was failure, and it felt pretty fucking good to hear, and Logan grinned without meaning to, getting raised eyebrows for his trouble.

"Talk to Remy," he said before locking the trunk and opening the driver's side door. A nod but Scott didn't move. "See ya."

She whispered something when he got in and he turned the key, and he gave her a long look. Ripped his glove off with his teeth, running a bare finger through her hair, against creamy skin that had stopped being deadly for him a long time ago.

"This'll work," he told her softly, and only now, when she couldn't see it, couldn't feel it, would he touch her like he wanted to every second of every day. "Marie comes back or neither of us do."

End Part I

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