Drafted

Chapter 4: To Gain

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, May 2001

Westchester, New York

“Jimmy, come back to bed,” the woman whined, naked as she lay sprawled out across the mussed sheets, a cigarette in one hand and a mostly-empty glass in the other. The air smelled like sex, booze, old takeout food. He growled from where he stood, preparing a line on a brass tray at the tiny hotel table. This stuff, the stuff her father dealt, was the good stuff. The pure stuff. Blow that was hard to come by. Blow that made him feel something for a goddamn minute. Sometimes, maybe even a handful of ‘em.

“One second, babe,” he snarled, bending over and leveling the table with the dollar bill he was usin’. A snort up the nose, a burning in his lungs, and then he was polishing off the bottle of liquor, stalking back over to the woman on the bed. Instantly, the high pushing through his veins. A few goddamn minutes of levity.

“You just can’t get enough of anything tonight, can ya?” she asked through a white grin, setting down her glass as he hovered over her, moving down to kiss her neck. 

“Ain’t that always the way with me?” he asked through a smirk, but her hands were already snaking down his naked torso, and he growled. 

“I’m gonna fuck you until morning, baby,” he snarled into her ear, hand roughly cupping a breast before taking a nipple into his mouth. 

“You better, if you wanna keep this gig,” she teased, and he snarled, before dipping a hand lower, between her legs.  

“Spendin’ yer father’s money? Fucking his daughter right under his goddamn nose?” he grinned. One finger inside her. Two. She was wet, warm, ready again.

“Yeah, sure. Long as you keep your promise,” she said through a breath as he rolled a thumb over her clit, and he smirked. 

“Sure, Gwen. You and me forever,” he lied, before kissing her roughly.

She shot up, barely breathing, as the wind rustled through the curtains and the open window beyond. It was still dark, and she looked this way and that, completely silent. Her other roommates, Kitty and Jubilee, were both snoring though, and she slowly realized no one had witnessed her dream but herself. At the thought, her skin flushed once more, as a heavy blooming jumble of embarrassment and arousal coursed through her. Another one of his memories. It had to be. She blushed again as she recalled the details, pulling the blanket tightly around her, the dog tags now feeling heavier around her neck.  

He’d been gone for months, but, still, almost every night, she dreamt his dreams. Re-lived his memories. Felt his feelings. Tasted tobacco and whiskey in his mouth, smelled the iron in blood as he hunted. She relived memories of wars, but also memories of idle, sunny days. Memories she wasn’t even sure he knew about. And the women. She couldn’t believe the things he’d done with women. To women. She should be disturbed, it should have turned her off--they were all from his perspective, anyway-- and yet…

Her skin flushed hot again and she felt a slickness between her legs. Instantly, she sat further up in bed, unable to shake the feeling like she’d been caught red-handed. 

 Get a grip, Rogue, she thought to herself, wiping the hair out of her face. She shouldn't be thinking like that. She had a boyfriend now, after all. And Logan, well, he was still gone. And probably wasn’t coming back any time soon. Still though...she gripped the dog tags, bringing them up to look at the name Wolverine. 

The truth was Bobby had been giving her shit lately. For not kissing him, for not allowing him to touch her. She’d given him a hand job a few times, gloves on, but it seemed like not enough for him. Sometimes, she wondered why she was bothering at all. Sometimes, she wondered if he was scared of her. 

Fuck you until morning. Her mind jumped back to those words and how heavy and gruff his voice was when he’d uttered them.God. What would that feel like? Someone strong and heavy and capable rocking into her all night, holding her close, something animalistic and natural and raw in every caress, every moment, every feeling. Her body craved it, was on fire for it, but every time Bobby tried to get close, she felt repulsed. What the hell was wrong with her? 

You can’t have who you really want, so you’re settling, she reminded herself, and she frowned. 

She didn’t want to be Logan’s doormat. She still wasn’t sure why he’d given her the dog tags, either. They felt like a promise, an intention to take care of her. But...how? How from so far away? Had he only felt bad, because of what had transpired between them? Was it a gesture of pity? Kindness? Affection? And what happened when and if he came back? 

She’d imagined more times than she could count she was the woman in some of the memories she’d witnessed. It was always hard, because everything was always from his perspective, which was sometimes just weird, but she had an imagination. She used it. She imagined the feeling of rough hands, taught muscle, maybe even the cold sensation of metal…. 

She could feel her hand snaking down her stomach, when suddenly, Jubes muttered something that sounded like “fuckin’ boys” in her sleep before snoring on, and Rogue’s heart jumped into her throat as she whipped her hand away. Jesus christ. She had to stop being so jumpy. For chrissakes, she wasn’t in trouble, and it wasn’t her fault she’d been dreaming those things or that she was turned on by them. Again, Jubilee mumbled in her sleep, and Rogue sighed in frustration, clutching the dog tags once more. What did it matter what she touched herself to? What did it matter who she dreamt of? She wasn’t hurting anyone, and she was under no real impression anything would become reality. She was a little girl to him, she knew that from what he’d given her. A little girl who had needed saving. She frowned, and lay back down on the pillow. She didn’t want to be the damsel in distress anymore. She’d started taking self-defense classes with Pitor for that reason. But she was still eons away from joining a team, if she even wanted that. Still eons away...from him.  

Could try a little harder, kid. Yer too skinny. Those push-ups ain’t gonna do themselves. His voice, every once in a while, still echoing in the chamber of her mind. She frowned. 

Shut up, Logan, she thought bitterly, before turning over in bed, giving up on her arousal, intent on sleep.

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, August 2023

Somewhere Over Siberia

It was pitch fuckin’ dark, although it really wasn’t. He snarled, jolted awake, but one sniff of the stale, recycled air reminded him. 2023. The jet. Always, the fuckin’ jet, hurtling through the air tens of thousands of feet in the sky. He could sense it was still daylight out there. They always slept during the day, the jet in stealth mode, using the darkness of night for the occasional mission- and something about the fact that his days were nights and his nights were days kept him feelin’ uneasy. Also, they were constantly airborne, the only safe place anymore. It had been years since he’d been fuckin’ airsick, but a rare wave of something feeling like that suddenly settled over him. He snarled, laying back down again, flipping over onto his side. Just fuckin’ sleep. It had been days since he had, drinking instant coffee and pourin’ over jet readouts, just for something to fuckin’ do, the dog-eared paperbacks he’d swiped from here and there over the years fallin’ apart with as many times as he read ‘em, now strapped to the side of his desk with a bungy cord, ignored. 

As part of the normal ritual, he cast out his hearin’. In low tones, Erik’s footsteps and the occasional noise from his and Charles’ quarters, although he realized if the pair were awake, they wouldn’t likely be talkin’ with their minds and not their mouths. That only left Storm, and he heard her sigh from the cockpit. Fuck. She wasn’t asleep either then, although the jet was simply on autopilot, hovering in circles above a desolate region of Siberia. 

The truth was, there was hardly anyone fuckin’ left. They were down to their last defenses. Most days, Charles and Lensherr were holed up in the room on the jet where Cerebro was housed, deliberating. Storm kept the jet in the air, which was all the time, because they were always in the fuckin’ air now. And Logan? He was fuckin’ useless. Nothing to fight anymore. Nothin’ to fight when the other side had won. His only job lately was goin’ on the occasional raid for fuel and supplies.

Sometimes, when it was bad like this, when all hope seemed lost, they’d seek each other out, givin’ each other what the other fuckin’ needed. Ever since Libya, things had become more...desperate. He knew Erik and Charles were close companions, was sure of it, and he and Storm...well. It was out of necessity. 

The first time it had happened, things had been a whole hell of a lot different. Another mission botched, although they had come back in much better shape than in Libya. She’d been holed up in her small room all night though as Logan ran through the debrief alone with Charles, and long after the sun had risen and Logan fell in and out of sleep, he’d sensed her presence. 

He was up in an instant, shirtless, about to get to his feet to deal with whatever the fuckin’ problem was, but a steady hand had stopped him, and he stared down at it to realize she was only in a tank top and not much else. 

“Lay down,” is all she said, and he stared at her, eyes wide in the dark, as she pushed him back on the bed. He growled at her groggily, but she only silently shook her head, before stripping, pulling off her nightshirt and shrugging her shoulders a bit. His eyes flew up her naked body, her mocha skin blending in with the tones of night, her slender limbs, her full breasts, and the silver-white curls between her legs. He growled lowly, half aroused and half distrubed at this advance, and managed to find his voice. 

“”Ro,” he said, and he communicated the rest through a growl he hoped she understood. This ain’t us. There’s a reason we don’t do this. But, if she had understood, she ignored him, quietly taking the time to lay down next to him on the bed, taking one of his hands and wrapping it around her slender form so he eclipsed her. He sighed heavily then, gently leaning his forehead on the bare planes of her narrow back. He could count the notches in her ribcage if he wanted to, although he wasn’t surprised. They were all half-way starvin’ as it was, and the only reason Logan wasn’t leaner was because his body woudn’t let him be. 

“Storm,” he managed to say again, but she was pulling his hand lower, across her stomach, and lower. He snarled, before turning her flat on her back, hovering just beyond her. There was a wanting, desperate look in her eye. One he didn’t recognize.

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

“No,” Logan growled, his whole body betrayin’ him, skin burnin’ up hot, dick rock hard the instant his skin had made contact with hers. He hadn’t fucked a woman since Sable. Six goddamn years of jerkin’ off to memories left somethin’ to be desired. Still.“I respect ya too goddamn much.”

“To hell with your respect,” she hissed, and then, she was lifting herself up on her forearms to kiss him, hard. It was a strange sensation, foreign, the desperate want to kiss somebody, even if he knew the kiss was wrong. Storm knew it too, but still, her tongue slipped into his mouth, and he growled as she made the move, finally pushing her back on the bed and pinning her there. 

“You don’t want this, baby. I’m not...I can be rough. With women,” he managed to say.

“I know. And I don’t care,” she said, eyes pitch black as she stared at him. Again, the animal whined, jerking against the chains, but, once more, he shook it off and frowned.

“We’re friends, ‘Ro. Equals. Always have been,” he murmured, even as he ran one rough thumb along her delicate collarbone.

“Haven’t you been listening to Charles? They’re planning something. They’re planning the end…” Storm whispered to him in the dark.

“That time travel crap?” he said, cocking his head at her, and then she frowned, running her hand down his abdomen, making him shudder. 

“Jesus fuck,” he muttered, closing his eyes tightly for a moment, every muscle in both arms taught with tension as he hovered over her. 

“Don’t make me ask again,” she murmured. “Think of it, like anything else we’re made to do. A mission. An order. Or, hell, just a favor. For me.”

He at first snarled a bit at that, but then, despite himself, grinned a little. 

“Sweetheart, yer goddamn gorgeous, and you know it. Ain’t no favor, ain’t nothing difficult about havin’ ya right here and now. That scent on you right now tells me that,”  he muttered, snakin’ a hand behind her neck, running a thumb down her pulse, and she sucked in a breath.

“Then what’s the goddamn problem?” she hissed, and he frowned once more even as his thumb still traced the lines of her thin shoulder.

“You’d trust me with yer life, and I’d trust you with mine, but you ain’t in love with me, ‘Ro. And, if we do this tonight, you know we’d both wish… it was someone else,” he muttered, and then, she stilled his hand.

“Maybe so,” she whispered, taking his hand and holding it closer to her lips. “But...you’re the only thing I’ve got, Logan. My only friend. My only...anything. And, if Charles is right, all of this...is almost over,” she finished, before kissing his knuckles, and then smiling. “And I’ll be damned if I die or cease to exist without being thoroughly sated a few more times before it happens. And I know you well enough to know you’re capable of the task.”

He snorted, and she smiled, before he sighed.

“Fine. But…’Ro. Tell me, alright? Tell me if ya need me to stop or if it gets to be...too much,” he partly growled, and she nodded quickly, before he slowly moved his hand lower, like she had initially willed, and she gasped in pure lust.

He wasn’t a fuckin’ preist. He savored every moan, every arch of her back. As he made her come, several times over, he swore to fucking god the plane shook from somethin’ outside every time it happened, but he ignored it, keeping on the task at hand, making sure to satiate her completely before havin’ his fill. 

It had been quick enough, quicker than he would have liked, but they both had screamed out when he came, his hands holding her arms tight enough that he knew she’d have bruises. Again, the plane shuddered. She welcomed it though, welcomed him, and after he’d spent himself inside her, he collapsed next to her, both of them breathing heavily, enjoying the after effects of something both of them had been denied for a very, very long time. He simply listened to her heart beat for long moments, quick and wild at first from sex, eventually slowing to a steady rhythm. While it happened, she lay her head on his chest, tracing random words in Arabic on the inside of his arm, like lovers might. 

ثقة سلام مساواة

Except that they weren’t. 

He’d felt fuckin’ awful that first time, guilty somehow, but Storm’s behavior hadn’t changed around him at all. When he noticed a bite mark on her shoulder, however, he’d quickly pulled her aside to ask if she was alright. She had only smiled, lowering her forehead to his chest and murmuring a quiet, “Yes,” before excusing herself.

In the months since, it had happened three or four more times, and, after, she’d always go back to her room. Additionally, in the months since, Storm had been right about the plan. Charles had located Kitty, Bobby, and Pete with Cerebro. All of them still alive, all operating under Bishops’ leadership and command. He’d fought alongside Bishop in ‘20 for a few months, and it was no surprise that tough sonofabitch was still alive, but the news of the others shocked Logan. In fact, he only believed it after Charles had explained how they might be doin’ it. By time jumping. Logan wasn’t sure of the specifics, none of them were, but it would explain the disturbances Charles had felt when using Cerebro. And, if it did, Charles and Erik had their plan. They had isolated a point in the past, after almost a year of research and deliberation, where the tide could change. The notion had become like a religion to the older two men, and Logan and Storm had spent the past twelve months twiddling their thumbs, keepin’ everyone airborne and fed, while the other two figured it out.  And the whole thing was festerin’ within Logan. He didn’t like the fuckin’ plan. There was nothing fuckin’ real or concrete about it. He didn’t like the idea of Charles returnin’ to the past, defenseless. He didn’t like that they weren’t even sure if Kitty could pull off such a stunt. He didn’t trust an earlier version of Erik or Mystique for a fuckin’ minute. And Logan was doubtful keepin’ Mystique from killin’ Trask would make any goddamn difference at all. It all came down to a simple fact. The Professor couldn’t accept what the older mutant already had: they had lost the war, and it was over. 

Once more, Logan snarled at the thought, throwing on a black t-shirt and pair of sweatpants to stalk out into the main portion of the jet. He noticed the two men had retired, and he smiled a bit to find Storm nose-deep in a book he’d lent her some time back: Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road, legs propped up on the console, wool socks on her feet. The blinders were turned off, and his eyes struggled to adjust to the blinding light of the Siberian sun, since they were above the clouds.

He took his time, making a pit stop by the kitchenette to make them both a cup of instant coffee, and then he was padding into the front of the jet, handing her a chipped mug.

“Book alright?” he asked, as she finally put it down, taking the cup from him in gratitude.

“It’s really good,” she smiled, rubbing one of her temples. She was in a simple cable-knit sweater and athletic pants. 

“Where are we headed?” he asked quietly, staring out at the cloudless sky.

“The latest location Blink teleported them to was China, a remote Bhuddist temple, so we’re headed southwest,” she sighed, taking a sip from the mug.

“So we’re finally makin’ contact, eh?” he sighed, leaning on the console, shooting a glance to the room that housed Cerebro, and beyond to Charles and Erik’s quarters. 

“Sounds like it,” and, to his surprise, Storm smiled. “Bobby Drake, Katherine Pryde, and Piotr Rasputin. I taught them all,” she said, and Logan grinned. 

“Makes sense why they’re still alive then, lucky kids,” he muttered. At his remark, though, Storm’s smile fell.

“Does it…” she trailed off, and Logan frowned.

“What, ‘Ro?” Logan asked cautiously, guessin’ at where she was going with this. 

“Does it make you think of Rogue?” she asked carefully, and then Logan was really frowning. No one had spoken her name in years, especially not after he’d slept with Storm. It’d been the same with John, from what Logan could tell. Some things didn’t need to be unearthed. 

“I don’t know. She left so early on, way before those kids did,” he muttered.

Storm only stared at him for a long moment, before she gave it up, setting down her mug. 

“We’ll be there by tonight,” she murmured, glancing out at the midday sun, coloring everything in orange and yellow, and his eyes settled on the landscape beyond them as well, before he came up behind her, lowering his lips to the nape of her neck.

“Don’t worry, ‘Ro,” he growled into her ear, and she turned to look at him, eyes wide with the very dread he was trying to will away from her.

“Logan. Don’t you understand? If this works. If Charles can make it…”

“We undo the war,” Logan growled, looking a little confused.

“We undo everything,” she whispered, a sad, longing look in her eye. “What if...what if I never make it to Xavier’s? Or worse...I’m not..” she trailed off, pulling her gaze away from him and glancing down at the steel interior of the jet.

“Hey…” Logan murmured, taking her hand and pulling her to stand. “You’ll exist, sweetheart. There’s no goddamn way this world could forget moldin’ you from its clay.”

“Easy for you to say. You were already alive. So was Charles, so was Erik,” Storm bit her lip in thought.

“I know yer behind him a hundred percent, ‘Ro,” Logan soothed, squeezing her hand tightly. “So why all this fuss?”

“Logan…” she hissed. “If this works, it’s our last day alive. As we are. As ourselves.”

For a moment, he simply blinked at her. He understood that, of course, on a logical level, but he had such little faith that the plan would actually work, he hadn’t considered the possibility of what would happen if it did.

“‘Ro…the likelihood of that…” he drifted off, and her frown deepened.

“But don’t you see? Or maybe...no. You don’t. How could you?” Storm asked, the nascent beginning of angry tears in her eyes, before attempting again.

“If Charles fails, we die. We’ll be there for days, waiting for him to change history. Days, baby. The sentinels will find us, and we’ll have to hold them off as long as possible. If he doesn’t succeed, it will not matter. We’ll die protecting him. This...is it. No more fighting, no more….running,” she murmured, and something deep and unsettling grew inside Logan’s chest.

He’d had his leg blasted off by a Sentinel in a close run-in with them on a solo mission last year. It had been the first time he’d ever lost a limb, and when it grew back, it grew back without the adamantium, meaning the rust buckets were now capable of disintegrating his skeleton, which meant they were capable of ending Logan’s life. Not that he minded. He figured now that that’s how it would probably end for him, but tonight? And what about ‘Ro?

“If Kitty can even make it happen. If she can even send Charles back that far,” Logan muttered, brushing a lock her hair off her forehead, although this had the opposite effect he intended it to have.

“You’re hoping she can’t?” Storm hissed, pulling her hands away from Logan, who said nothing.

“Logan….think for a second. Think about the thousands of lives we’ve lost. Scott. Jean. Rogue. Even...even John,” Storm muttered, but Logan was shaking his head skeptically, crossing his arms and beginning to pace the small cockpit in front of her. 

“‘Ro, you just got done sayin’ that you weren’t sure your lot would even be capable of existing again,” Logan snarled.

“Whatever way it happens, this is it. Don’t you see that? What’s left for us? There's nothing left. You, of all people, should know when the war is over,” she argued, and something in him fought back a low, guttural growl as he rounded on her.

“Listen. I know we’ve fuckin’ lost it, Storm. You don’t think I know that? Everything I’ve ever known from warfare screams it. We’re nomads, kid. We’re lost…” he drifted off, but Storm still had a look of knowing in her eyes. 

“But… you’ve never had things end for you,” she finally whispered.

“They haven’t for you either,” he retorted.

“No, but, like most people, I’ve known they would end, eventually,” Storm said, a sad look about her eyes. At this, though, Logan was shaking his head bitterly.

“Trust me, I’ve known that about myself too, ‘Ro,” he hissed.

“Have you?” she challenged, and he stood there for a moment, staring at her. 

He fuckin’ wished for it more times than he could count. To die, to sleep. And maybe..that fear in the back of his goddamn mind, that he wouldn’t...always when he was lookin’ over a large body of water, like how Jean, the real Jean died. Anytime, if he made himself stay down there long enough, he figured he could drown. He always had thought, before the Mark X’s, that’s how he’d go. But now...

“Whatever happens, we'll be together in the end, darlin’,” he said, and a fear in Storm’s eyes haunted him, because it told him that she knew, deep down, that he wasn’t necessarily talking to her.

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, August 2008

Staten Island, New York City

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him-and I didn’t know how potent that part might be-that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Rogue rolled her eyes as she looked up from her book, sighing heavily as she glanced around her darkened bedroom. The sun had set and the room was humid, and she was only in a tank top and underwear, lying on top of the bedspread. It was always hot in the attic and she kept the ceiling fan on constantly, not only because it had been such an unbearably hot summer, but also because the residential feline, Zeus, was scared of ceiling fans when they were off. An odd quirk about the cat she was beginning to truly adore. Rogue yawned for a moment, before moving to turn on the bedside table lamp. As soon as she did, she noticed a set of green eyes staring at her from the foot of the bed, and Rogue smiled at the intruder. Zeus had made his faithful nightly appearance, rubbing his head momentarily against the side of her foot, demanding attention.

“I really don’t get what the fuss is all about,” she said out loud to the cat, gesturing to Twilight, which she had closed in frustration and plopped on the bedside table. She’d purchased the book at the Borders in Penn station as a recommendation from her coworker Carmen-oh, trust me, Marie! You. Will. Love. It! -- to read on the long rides home on the Staten Island Ferry, and so far, she was unimpressed. Falling desperately in love with a hundred-year-old vampire. Ridiculous, Rogue thought, while she pet the black cat with the white belly, who arched his back and purred at her touch.

Zeus was technically Mrs. Mable’s cat, the woman whose attic she was currently renting. The house was a cozy bungalow, which had regrettably seen better days, settled in the heart of Staten Island. Still though, the house had good bones, which Rogue appreciated. It reminded her of the old homes on her street where she grew up, down to the antique hardware and floral wallpaper.

 Just like her feline companion, Mrs. Mable had taken a liking to Rogue, mostly because Rogue paid rent on time and helped her take out the trash and would often listen to the woman’s stories of the city in the 1940’s when the woman worked for Western Union, even though Rogue had failed to tell the woman she was vastly undercharging for rent, being this was New York City. Rogue was only paying $200 a month, although that was about all she could afford from what she was making at the desk job she was currently temping at in the city. It was a long, expensive trek to work each day, and she had bought the book to get her mind off of the fact that, one afternoon, she’d glanced out the dirty window of the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty in the distance, and a cold shadow of a feeling had gripped her heart.  

Suddenly, in a rare moment of conversation, the cat meowed, bringing her out of her thoughts, and Rogue smiled.                                                                                                                                                               

“What do you think, Zeus? Team Edward or Team Jacob?” she asked playfully as she continued to scratch the cat behind the ears, savoring the feeling of the soft fur, the body underneath that. 

She’d touched many things in the last year. She’d shaken hands and held open doors and hailed taxis, all without gloves. She’d gone dancing with Carmen. She’d kissed boys and girls while drunk. She’d hugged people. She’d casually touched them. She’d made out with some, gone to second and third base with a couple of others. She’d flirted and smiled and laughed. It had been everything she had imagined it to be, she had quickly realized. The only part she missed, of course though, was the company. She had been surprised with how long Logan’s presence stuck around in her mind after the torch, but from the day she had the injection onward, they all had disappeared, and for the first time in a long time her head was simply...empty. Voiceless. Still. At times, it was still disconcerting. Rogue alone in this tiny bedroom apartment with the seventies avocado-green kitchen and the bubbling wallpaper and the hallway that smelled like cat litter, but it wasn’t Westchester, and that was enough.

Rogue frowned at the thought. It took two days after she’d come back from taking the cure. Bobby had kissed her, and the look on his face told her he regretted it. Perhaps she’d known it from the beginning, how he’d react, but it was everyone else who made it hurt worse. Jubilee was fake around her, Kitty stopped speaking to her. She had even remembered Logan barely acknowledging her, walking around with a dead look in his eye, although Rogue assumed that was more from the events that had transpired in San Francisco than anything else. 

After the funeral, she had gone to bed exhausted and sad. And, when she had woken up the next day, she knew he was gone. Not Bobby, but Logan. No goodbyes this time. No dog tags to be handed off. She knew he had one foot out the door already, but...she would have thought he’d at least warn her. Say goodbye. And she knew, this time, he was gone for good.

It wasn’t long after that, she left too. She couldn’t face them, couldn’t face it. But, of course, away from the shelter of Xavier's, she had no money. It was rough, in the beginning. She’d been beyond lucky to find the posting of Mrs. Mable’s room, and she thanked the world for small favors. Slowly, as spring became summer, she found steady work, and steady friends, and her fears eased. She stopped seeing herself as the other, and, instead, the same as. And that was also enough. 

--

The next morning, she frowned slightly at the book, but decided against her best judgement to take Edward and Bella with her on the ferry. She rolled her eyes through most of it, and by the time she got to the office, she dreaded talking to Carmen about whether or not Bella had made the right decision to stick with the vampire. Luckily, however, they were busy today, so Marie forced a smile on her face, tucked in her cheaply made button down shirt into her black slacks, fixed her headset in her ear, and pretended not to be tired as she answered the phone for HR at the pharmaceutical company in midtown she worked for.

“So are you coming out on Friday or not?” Carmen said after a particularly long phone call, before downing half a bottle of Evian. Rogue shared a cubicle with Carmen, a desk on either side of the eight by eight space. Carmen was a beautiful woman of Italian descent with a thick Long Island accent who had immediately taken a liking to Rogue when she first arrived there. Carmen had helped Rogue learn the ropes, and Rogue knew Carmen found Rogue "exotic” because of her southern accent, and was always trying to set up Rogue because of it. Carmen was also always drinking water and chewing gum between calls. “To get the bad taste out of my mouth when I deny another claim,” she explained one day to Rogue early on. 

“I don’t know. I’m kinda tired this week. It’s been a long one,” Rogue said about the weekend, cracking her knuckles as she glanced at the time. 3:22pm. Ugh. Time didn’t move fast enough inside a cubicle.  

“Well, you should come out because I have a date,” Carmen said, a spark in her eye. Rogue laughed out loud at this, shaking her head. 

“Why would I wanna come with you on your date, hun?” she asked, and Carmen rolled her eyes.

“It’s not a date date. I’m...checking him out. Meeting him and his friend for coffee. I could use a wing woman. Rosalie from payroll is setting me up with him. He’s her cousin, or something” Carmen said, and then, looking around the cluster of cubicles and leaning in a little bit over her desk she dramatically, “I guess the word is he’s a mutant.” 

Rogue almost spit out the Gatorade she had been drinking, but managed to swallow and feign...surprise? Funny thing was, other than the rising anti-government sentiment, most humans out in the real world didn’t think twice about mutants, not their plight, their struggle to be accepted, none of it. Marie had been shocked to find this out, but, after some time, she had come to realize it was always this way with a group of people who had privilege over another- the privileged group never thought it was that big of a deal and it couldn’t be that bad for them. Anyway, this news was surprising coming from Carmen, because she usually liked the blonde, athletic, cookie cutter type. 

“That so?” Rogue finally asked.  

“Yeah. Apparently...he has a tail,” she said, winking.

“Why does that matter?” Rogue blurted out, before she could stop herself, but then Carmen was grinning. 

“Girl, use your imagination. Think of the sex,” she grinned, and Rogue must have made a face because Carmen was frowning.

“Didn't take you for a speciesist, lady,” Carmen said through a pop of her gum.

“I’m not-” Rogue sighed, but then Carmen threw up a finger, spit her gum out, and raised her eyebrows. Rogue frowned, but then turned to see their boss walking down the hall toward them. Mr. Henry Macintyre, Vice President of Human Resources, was a studious looking man, fairly young for his position--Rogue guess early thirties at most--always dressed nicely, with a pair of tortoise shell glasses settled on his nose that Rogue found herself taking a liking to. He was polished, poised, a gentleman, she thought upon meeting him. Unlike Nancy who was in charge of the administrative assistants, he was never gruff with the underlings, never condescending or patronizing, and he always checked in on all the HR staff from time to time, but especially Rogue. To the point where Carmen had suggested maybe their boss had a thing for her, which Rogue had immediately shrugged off. 

“Hello ladies,” he greeted them, stopping for a moment to hover outside their cubicle. 

“Hello Mr. Macintyre,” Carmen smiled her brilliantly white smile, and Rogue simply nodded at him. 

“Busy day today, yeah?” he said, directly addressing Rogue.

“Uh, yeah,” she muttered, through a quiet smile. “You too?” she asked and he grinned.

“The worst,” he said, his blue eyes dancing behind his glasses, and she found herself a little lost for words as he focused on her.

“Oh, Marie,” he finally added, extending a file folder her way. “Do you mind sticking around a little later today? I need you to make some calls. We need to extend invitations to the additional names listed here for the webinar on Friday, sort of last-minute. I hate to put this on you, but I trust you to get it right,” he said through an honest smile, and when Rogue found herself taking the file folder, she noticed their fingers just momentarily brushed, and a surge of adrenaline coursed through her. Of course, he was completely fine, hadn’t even likely noticed it had happened.   

“Of-of course, Mr. Macintyre,” she finally said, and, again, he smiled at her and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Thank you, Marie. You’re the best,” he replied, and then, just before he was about to walk down the hall, he stopped, turned on his heel, and added, “Remember what I told you both. Call me Henry,” he smiled.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Henry,” Rogue murmured, and then he was nodding and Rouge watched as he walked off to his office down the hall. She smiled a bit, and when Rogue turned back to Carmen, the other woman was grinning devilishly at her.

“What?” Marie asked defensively. 

“Nooottthhinnngg,” Carmen said, before holding up her finger as her phone began to ring. Rogue frowned a little, before turning back to the manila folder. She opened it up to look at the list of names, mostly other HR heads of other pharmatech companies, only to notice there was a post-it note on bottom of the piece of paper with a note scrawled in Henry’s handwriting.

I really do need to thank you for doing this. I know it’s annoying to ask you to stay late. Maybe wanna grab a drink with me sometime so I can make it up to you? My treat. - H

Rouge’s smile widened as she quickly closed the manila envelope, grinning like an idiot now, just as her own phone began to ring again. But even the ringing telephone, even the bad novel on her desk, even the long ferry ride she’d have home tonight, sailing alongside the memories of her past, memories of him, couldn’t shake her current mood, as she set down the folder and put her headset back on, answering a little more cheerfully than normal with her rehearsed response. 

“Transigen Incorporated, Human Resources Division. My name is Marie. How may I help you?”

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, August 2023

Somewhere Over Siberia

He’d led Storm back to his room and had fucked her hard, with intention. They were beyond propriety, and she had cried out in pleasure when he’d spent himself inside her. After it was over, he breathed long and hard, sucking in the recycled air, and she whispered a prayer in Arabic. Then, for a moment, no one spoke, both of them simply...existing, until, despite himself, he grinned. 

“If it is the end of the world tomorrow, there’s sometihn’ you could fill me in on,” he smirked, turning to her, her cheeks still flushed from sex. 

“What?” she asked skeptically, wiping a sheen of sweat off her brow as she tried still to catch her breath.

“When I...well. When you….”  he trailed off. “The plane shudders a bit.”

Instantly, a blush crept up the woman’s cheeks as she grabbed a pillow and hid her face. He grinned, before slowly lowering the pillow with one hand.

“Fess up,” he teased, and she sighed before trying to convey her thoughts in words.

“I...well. It’s just like you, isn’t it? You can’t help but-” Storm began, rubbing her shoulder in mild pain from the latest bite mark, even as Logan tried to interject.

“-hey now we talked about that-”

“So...it’s like that. I can’t...control everything I do with weather all the time. Not when I feel like that,” she grinned, and he smirked. 

“Thought so,” he smiled, and kissed her, hard once more, but then she was the one pulling away, and he realized she wanted to ask him something.

“While we’re on the subject…” she began, running a hand through the graying hair on one of his temples. 

“Something you said...the first night. That I had a...scent. Can you really…sense...that?” she asked.

He smirked, kissing the side of her neck for a long moment, before growling into her ear, “yeah.” 

--

Later that night, they’d made love one more time.  The second time, it was slower, every gesture, every kiss, every bite, marred with longing, not as two people in love, but two people who, despite their differences, loved and respected each other very much. 

Afterward, though, sleep was erratic and interrupted. It was the first time Storm had not disappeared back into her quarters, and Logan realized it was strange having a woman sleep beside him, even though he understood on every level why she had chosen to stay. It was likely their last time together, whatever that meant, and her fingers were threaded in his own. Logan, however, kept waking at the strange and rare sensation of a woman asleep in his bed, lying next to him, and his dreams reflected the other times, the other precious moments, when he hadn’t been alone.

Down in the military barracks, fifty feet under the ground in the middle of October, the cold finally getting to him. The anticipation of the mission tightening its grip on everyone. He’d finally fallen into a fitful doze, before he heard the door open, and his ears pricked at the noise. But then, the sound and weight of her soft footprints. When he turned, she was there, lying on top of the covers, in the same t-shirt she’d worn when he’d had her on the table and up against the wall, so close to claimin’ her. 

“Marie, what’re you-” he started, but couldn’t seem to finish. 

“You know what you have to do,” she murmured, and he looked at her quizzically.

“Protect Charles,’ he muttered. “Keep him in the past as long as possible.”

“No,” she hissed.

Logan looked at her evenly in the dark, trying to stifle something black rising up in him. He wanted to watch her from this angle, hair falling softly on the blankets, constantly, all the time, for fucking forever.

“That’s the memory; don’t fall back into it,’ she murmured.

“I’m not mad at you,” he insisted. “Fer pullin’ away last night. I know I’m not anything you signed up for.”

“You’re not understanding.”

“What, Marie? What are ya trying to tell me?”

She frowned, and lay back down next to him.

“Marie…” he muttered.

“Everything you know is going to change. And you’re the one who is going to change it,” she whispered.

“Marie, what’re you-“

“It’ll be so lonely, sugar, knowing what you know. So, so lonely,” she said through hot tears. 

He jolted awake in the dark again, looking around this way and that, only to notice Storm in a deep sleep next to him. Then, he tried to slow his breathing, regulate the rhythm of his heart. He closed his eyes tightly.  It had been a little over a year since he’d dreamt about her. Finally, after years of torment, the memories had faded, until now. And it didn’t take a genius to guess why. 

Meanwhile, the sun had set and night had fallen around them, and he had a message on his virtual comm they’d all had injected into their wrists a couple of years ago that they were approaching. That’s when he left his bed, careful not to disturb Storm. He’d showered quickly, and came back in the room silently. He suited up with intention, piece by piece. Military grade cargo pants, bullet proof body suit, plated armor. He was lacing up his boots when she stirred, still naked, staring at him.

“It’s time,” she murmured, not a question, not a statement. A truth. 

“Yeah,” he whispered, leaving over the bed, to kiss her neck one last time. “Let’s end it.” 

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, December 2008

Brooklyn, New York City

She could feel him lightly trace the plane of her back in her sleep, and she grinned into the pillow. She must have dozed off, and when she opened her eyes, he was next to her, his lean physique stretched out beside her, head propped up with one arm, smiling softly. 

“Damn. You caught me,” he said, 

“Watching me sleep?” she asked and he nodded guiltily.

“You looked so serene, couldn’t help it,” he said, before leaning down to kiss her gently on the lips. She smiled into the kiss, but as they parted she rolled her eyes.

“Liar. I snore and flop around a lot when I sleep,” she said but he was shaking his head.

“You sure? I haven’t noticed that. Over here, peaceful as can be,” he said, and Rogue snorted, yawning and opening her eyes more. It was morning from what she could tell, the way the light flooded into his pristinely clean bedroom.  As Rogue opened her eyes more and noticed the way the light was hitting the bedroom, she frowned slightly. 

“What time is it? Do I need to get going?” she asked, looking around the pristine room. 

They were currently in Henry’s brownstone in Brooklyn. He’d inherited it from his parents, who had both died in a car accident when he was younger, but you would never know a bachelor lived there. Everything matched, the furniture chic and just so. The curtains complimented the lush bedspread. The knick-knacks on the dresser were perfect for the aesthetic composition of the room. It looked like a hotel, apart from a thin layer of Henry’s likes and dislikes draped over everything. 

Henry was like that. In many ways, the opposite of most men she’d known. He was clean, organized, methodical. He was a thinker, carefully considering his actions in almost every situation. Underneath his orderly, cool exterior, however, Henry was actually sort of a nerd. He was into model airplanes and had them set up all over his basement, he had an extensive record collection, mostly early nineties grunge, and an eye, of all things, for interior design. 

I think...I would’ve been a decorator, if my buddies in college wouldn’t have flamed me for it. They would’ve all thought I was gay.

Is it so bad, to be thought of as gay? 

Not now, of course not. But back then...I don’t know. Things were different.  So anyway, I ended up needing a degree in something else. HR fit with most of my college credits.

Marie hadn’t asked how he’d ascended so quickly at a multinational company, even if it was only the HR division. New York was Transigen’s world headquarters though, and the office took over eight stories of a building in midtown Manhattan, so the position was no easy thing to attain.

Instead though, she had learned about his likes and dislikes, his habits, the things they had in common. They both liked Thai and hated reality television. I had five sisters, the Bachelor was always on. They liked Battery park the best, but hated midtown Manhattan. There’s no place to breathe.  He could cook too, a welcomed change from most men Rogue had grown up around, and Rogue had spent many evenings with him in his kitchen, suggesting ways to experiment with recipes, drinking expensive wine, and feeling extraordinarily grown up. She’d spent less time in Staten Island and more time here over the past two months, even though she was still dutifully paying her rent to Mrs. Mable.  

“It’s Saturday,” he said, looking at her incredulously, as he tucked a piece of her ivory hair behind her ear. 

“I know, sugar. I just don’t wanna impose...” she began but he was already shaking his head, moving to thread his fingers in her own.

“Impose? Babe. I’ve already asked you to move in with me,” he was saying into her ear, and then Rogue was blushing 

“A decision which I’m still carefully considering-” she began, before he interrupted her.

“-So having you stay for the weekend is very much not an imposition,” he muttered to her. 

“But isn’t the summit like...two weeks from now?” she asked, and he only shrugged his shoulders. 

“I refuse to work on the weekend,” he said through a smirk, and Rogue rolled her eyes, knowing that he often worked on the weekend, and after hours, and just basically all the time, if he wasn’t assembling tiny Revell Super Hornets.  

“Well, Carmen asked me to go shopping this afternoon on fifth avenue, which is sort of ridiculous. It’ll be window shopping for me. But I’ll stay here until then,” she said through a smile. 

“Why the shopping lately?” he asked. “All that girl seems to do is shop.”

“I know,” Rogue said through a small frown. “I don't know where she gets the money. But this time around she has a new boyfriend. That mutant guy that she met a few months ago. She’s giving it another try,” Marie said through an idle yawn and a stretch of her arms.

“You don’t say…” Henry muttered, suddenly looking oddly uncomfortable. 

“What?” she asked, her brows furrowing as she tried to guess at his feelings. Henry’s frown deepened and he shook his head.

“Nothing. I just don’t always get that,” he muttered. 

“Get what?” Rogue asked carefully.

“Dating mutants,” he said matter-of-factly, and suddenly Rogue whipped her head up to look him straight in the eye. He must have sensed her discomfort, because he immediately started to backtrack. 

“I’m not a racist or speciesist or whatever they call it or anything...it’s just. Sorry. It’s just too weird for me, I guess…” he trailed off through another shrug of his shoulders, while Rogue’s eyes still narrowed in suspicion.

“Uh huh. So you don’t think people should be allowed to date outside their subspecies?” she asked cautiously, and he was shaking his head in mild regret.  

“No! No. I didn’t say that, I just said... it isn’t for me. That’s all. Other people are allowed to do whatever they like,” he finished, looking at her a bit worriedly, like he might have fucked the whole thing up.

Rogue frowned, trying to understand what this new bit of knowledge meant. So far, Henry had seemed accepting of everyone, all religions, races, and creeds. He certainly treated everyone fairly at work, although, now that she thought about it, there weren’t any obvious mutants employed at Transigen. And mutants really hadn’t come up in their conversation before. They also hadn’t talked politics a lot, although she knew Henry had grown up Catholic and still was, and therefore he was a tad bit more conservative. But this was often a fact she overlooked, instead choosing to focus on his epic nineties grunge collection or the fact he knew how to make the perfect egg soufflé. 

“You’re a little old fashioned, you know that?” she finally said through a small smile, deciding to trust him, and moved to ruffle his hair a little. As she did so, she felt him relax a bit more. 

“I thought you liked that about me,” he said through a playful grin, and she nodded.

“Hmmm. I do. Who else do I know makes model airplanes?” she said, and as she kissed him again, longer this time, deeper, suddenly he pulled back in surprise. 

“Ow,” he said, and she looked at him quizzically

“What’s wrong?” she asked, tilting her head at him in confusion, as he touched his lips for a moment like they were tender, before shaking it off, smiling.

“I think you shocked me, hun. Must be all this electricity in the air,” he said through a goofy grin, and Rogue rolled her eyes.

“Ok, no more corny jokes from you, or you shower alone,” she teased, moving to sit up in bed, still naked from the sex the night before.

“You wouldn’t banish me,” he joked, inching toward her, before grabbing her arm to get her to stay.

“I might,” she joked, and he grinned again, attacking her with kisses once more. 

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, August 2023

China

As the jet descended through the clouds, all four team members were suited up and seated near the front of the plane. Charles had made the final contact with Kitty, and they were due to arrive in minutes. The Bird hadn’t landed in over a month, meaning none of them had been outside in as long, and Logan fiddled with two of his last cigars he’d been savin’ with a lighter in a utility belt pocket, desperate for some fuckin’ fresh air. He glanced at Storm, who noticed his fiddling and frowned, before Charles murmured her name and she focused on the task at hand, casting a thick fog around what looked like a temple carved into a Himalayan mountain. 

By the time they got off the damn plane, Logan counted seven. They were dispersed in tactical positions, someone constantly on the lookout. He’d only had time to nod to Blink, Bobby, Kitty, Pete. It was a fuckin’ trip seein’ the last three, let alone aged as they all were. Years on the run had taken their toll, and Logan quickly got a sense they were never in one place for very long. They were lean, grizzled, hardened in a way not even he and Storm were, and Logan was startin’ to realize how fucking valuable having the Blackbird still was. As long as it stayed in the air, they were alive, safe. On the ground, they would’ve met their end months, if not years, before, from the sense he was gettin’ of how bad it was. 

Once they were gathered just outside the temple, things moved fast. Too fast. They were explainin’ quickly how their time-jumping worked, and Logan stole a glance at Storm across from Charles and Erik. They both were vaguely aware of the pair’s plan, but there were several details they’d kept Logan and Storm in the dark about. Logan had figured it was Charles’ business to know ‘em, since he was the one making the trip, until, just as Erik acknowledged that the plan might work, Kitty interjected. 

Again, Logan shot a look over to Storm, who frowned. Logan wanted to can the mission for several reasons, the most obvious being if it wasn’t foolproof, they’d all die, most likely, and this last thread of hope would die with ‘em. And there was no fucking way of making sure it was foolproof. They were breaking the very basic rules from tactical strategy 101.

“You wanna go back there,” Kitty remarked, staring at the Professor knowingly. Logan could tell from the moment she spoke, she was doubtin’ the mission’s integrity, same as him.

“If I can get to her, stop the assasination keep her out of their hands, we can stop the sentinels from ever being born,” Charles explained.

“-And end this war before it ever begins,” Erik added, and Storm looked at Logan with a waning hope in her eyes with what Kitty said next. 

“I..I can send someone back a couple of weeks, maybe a month, but you’re talking about going back decades…” Kitty stopped, frowning as she stared intently at Xavier. “You have the most powerful brain in the world, Professor, but the mind can only be stretched so far before it snaps. It would rip you apart. I’m sorry. No one can survive that trip,” Kitty trailed off, and then, it all clicked. The fuckin’ dream. Marie. The reason for the whole goddamn war, maybe. 

Everything you know is going to change. And you’re the one who is going to change it.

“What if…” he began, and he could fuckin’ feel the heartbroken glance Storm threw at him, but he didn’t look her way. He couldn’t. “What if someone’s mind has a way of snapping back? What if...someone can heal as fast as they’re ripped apart?” 

Logan, know what you’re signing up for, he heard Charles inside his head.

“It’s a risk,” Bishop interjected, and Logan frowned.

This is yer plan, Chuck. How else you gonna make it happen? You better goddamn fuckin’ fill me in on the details, or I ain’t gonna be able to do shit.

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Logan snarled sarcastically.

“Not just for you. You do this, you change history,” Bishop retorted, and Logan sighed, refraining from closing his eyes in fuckin’ frustration. A second ago he’d been a hair’s breadth away from boycotting the entire fuckin’ thing, and now he was signing up Kamikaze-style to alter reality. All because he’d grown soft for the old man. Or for Storm. Certainly not for fuckin’ Magneto. Fuckin’ hell.  

“Well, that’s kinda the point,” Logan shot back, but Bishop was still shaking his head. 

“Some of us could be killed. Some of us may never be born. We have no idea how things may change,” Bishop pressed.

“We could keep going, keep fighting,” Blink interjected, and then, finally he heard ‘Ro step forward a second before she spoke.

“Until what? You all have got a decision to make. You can keep sending Bishop back in time, over and over again to warn you until one day he doesn’t make it. And you all die. Or, you can give up this life, so that they and everyone else who died in this war can actually have a future,” she shot a glance at Logan, who frowned. Ida. John. Rogue. Alive. Safe. Back. 

“You’re asking us to sacrifice our lives for a future we may not even be a part of,” another one of their people interjected angrily.

“Yes,” Magneto said.

“A second chance. A better chance,” Charles paused, glancing at Logan solemnly. “For everyone.” 

Another life, sugar. A better one. 

“My people need to vote,” Bishop warned, but by Charles’ smile Logan knew his fate was fuckin’ sealed.

“They already did. They’re in,” Charles murmured. 

At this, Logan once more glanced to Storm, who was now frowning sadly. He sighed, nodding again to Charles, as Bishop called his team to him, most likely to devise tactical strategy while Logan was under. 

“You’re undergoing immense sacrifice for your kind,” Magneto offered Logan, who only barely stifled a growl. 

“I ain’t the inventor of this harebrained plan of yers, Lensherr. So yer gonna have to give me more to work on than that,” Logan growled, before Charles addressed them both.

“Logan, Erik, you need to meet me inside the temple. Storm, my dear…”

“I’m to join the others,” she said, glancing once more to Logan, who frowned deeply.

Whatever happens, we'll be together in the end. No longer was that true. Not for him and ‘Ro.

Charles seemed to notice this, and cleared his throat. 

“Erik, join me inside. Logan, once Kitty and Bobby are in too, you take care of the door. Then we will brief you,” Charles murmured, and then, the pair left the two still standing in the cold of a temple carved into the Himalayan mountainside. 

“Erik is right though,” she murmured, brushing off the shoulder of his suit, giving him a nod. “You’re sacrificing much.” 

“I ain’t sacrificing any more than you are, ‘Ro. And it’s like you said. What’s left?” he growled, glancing out at the Blackbird and the harsh landscape beyond, before looking back at her. 

“We’re counting on you,” she whispered, and he shook his head, wishing to God any other scenario beyond the one that was about to happen was possible. Logan fuckin’ hated being forced into a corner by fate. It was the same way he felt when the color had drained out of the frame when Rogue had said her final goodbye. 

“And I’m countin’ on you. You watch yer back out there, ok, ‘Roro?” he barely choked out, and then she had tears in her eyes, as she nodded bravely.

“Like Charles said, a better chance,” she murmured through tears, and then the dam threatened to buckle, fear and grief just on the other side, threatening to inundate him. 

“Jesus Christ, kid. C’mere,” Logan muttered, collecting her into his arms, hugging her fiercely. She lay her forehead on his chest for long moments as she cried, just as she had the night before, but this time, something deep down in Logan knew it was the last time. No matter what happened, no matter what he woke up to, this world would be gone.

“Go. Help them,” he muttered, and she nodded, and then she disappeared, slipping into the dark black of night, ordering the others to “spread out” as he backed into the temple, across the divide, closing the door between everything he had ever known, and everything he didn’t.

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, May 2009

Staten Island, New York City

She paced the tiny bathroom with the linoleum floor nervously, clutching the white plastic test in her sweaty palm. It was unseasonably hot for May, and she quickly wiped away a sheen of sweat from her forehead, finally deciding to take another glance at the test.

Fuck, she thought. Two lines. Still two fucking lines. 

It had been a sick, twisted urge, to buy the test. Sure she was two weeks late, but she had been late before. In the beginning, she hadn’t thought twice about it, since her period was always irregular since using birth control, but...she’d always taken it on time. Religiously, since the cure. Of course she did. She was sexually active, after all, and, at only twenty-five, the last thing she needed was a baby. And yet...standing in the line at her neighborhood bodega, she felt compelled to grab the test. She’d downed a bottle of water on the walk back to her place, and now, as fate would have it...two fucking pink lines. She grabbed the instructions again from the First Response test (Can tell you as early as six days before a missed period!), staring at them hard, her hands still shaking. One line: not pregnant. Two lines: fucked. She sighed, sitting down on the toilet once more, head in her hands, breathing out shakily 

If this was her only problem, she’d almost be happy.

A few times, just a few times. She’d worn t-shirts this spring, and sometimes if she brushed up against someone, while on the subway or on the ferry, they’d jump back, as if they’d been shocked. Every once in a while, Henry would be touching her and stop, looking at her strangely. She hadn’t hurt anyone. She couldn’t anymore, right? She had prayed to God that it was just an aftereffect, some residual bit of power leftover. But...if she’d thought about it, she had been able to touch people for two years now, no problem. And now...

She frowned, padding back into the sticky bedroom, the TV on the background having finished a rerun of Friends she’d been watching, now switching to the five o’clock news. She hadn’t been paying attention, but now her ears picked up on the words flowing out of the antiquated nineties TV set.

As mutant militia groups rise in response to the funding of research for inhibitor collars by the US government, the outpouring of mutant resistance continues. The mutant registration act is still set to be put in place by fall of 2010….

She frowned and immediately stalked over to the TV, snapping it off, then stared down once more at the plastic test she was still holding, her thoughts erratic, anxious and wild.

Maybe it was a good thing. If something was happening with her powers, she wouldn’t be able to carry a child, right? She would have to miscarry. Was that awful to think? To hope for? She bit her lip, and flopped down on top of the bed, just as Zeus came up to be petted. It was a Sunday afternoon, a rare time for Marie to be home, but Henry was working today, and she had nowhere else to go. She sighed, running her hand idly over his silky smooth fur.  

What would Henry do if she told him? It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t had that fight about the upcoming election. The primaries had just ended, and he had decided to back the conservative party candidate, a horrid man that had voted for the mutant registration act, that had lobbied for the inhibitor collar funding. That night, she’d almost thrown something at his head when she learned the truth of who he intended to vote for.  

Why are you so upset with me? You know I tend to vote conservative.

But for him of all people?

It didn't help that she saw Henry less lately, as well. The job was more serious now, more demanding. He recently had been promoted to an executive level position at Transigen, and because of it she saw him far less often now that he was out of the HR division. No office visits, no random lunch deliveries from her favorite sushi joint, no flirting by the water cooler. She still spent most nights with him--her things had taken over two drawers in his bedroom, after all--but often he’d return late from work, later than Marie, certainly, and had dropped into bed, exhausted. He’d also seemed distant lately, out of focus, although he remained adamant that she move in with him when her lease was up. Which was happening soon, at the end of the next month. Recently, before any of this mess, she had been toiling over the idea, ignoring what Carmen had told her last week.

If you really wanted it, you would know like that, the woman had said, with a snap of her fingers. 

Marie frowned again, once again staring at the test on the bedside table. 

“What am I gonna do, Zeus?” she asked that cat, who simply went on purring as she scratched him behind the ear. Well you’re no help, she thought tiredly.

Be honest with him, her gut responded instead. She loved Henry. He loved her. He’d take care of her if she was pregnant. He’d marry her, financially support her, anything she wanted, she knew he would. And yet… 

I’m not a racist or speciesist or whatever they call it or anything...it’s just. Sorry. It’s just too weird for me. 

What if he did learn she used to be a mutant, though? How accepting of her situation would be then? What if she passed the X-gene to her baby? Did taking the cure actually change her genetic structure, or just dull the gene? God, why hadn’t she asked these questions beforehand?  A stupid twenty-three-year-old, desperate to get Bobby back, to forget about Logan, unaware of how any of it may affect her future. 

Marie bit her lip in thought. Maybe...just maybe… one piece of news needed to happen before the other. Depending on how he reacted to the fact that she used to be a mutant...then maybe she’d tell him about the pregnancy. If he wasn’t repulsed, if he didn’t clam up, if he accepted her still, then maybe. And, really, how hard was it? She looked normal. There was nothing about her that was freaky. She was still Marie after all, right? 

But if your powers do come back...Marie shuddered at the thought. If her skin turned back on completely...it was over for her. For them. Even if Henry was accepting, she refused to do that to anyone. Condemn them to a life without touch. She couldn’t go back to Xavier’s, that much was for certain, but maybe she could make her way back up north. Get another HR job...most likely miscarry...and then…

Suddenly, horrific pain up her right arm, the feeling of claws embedding into her skin and yowl from the cat she had been petting. She hadn’t felt the connection snap open, but the cat had jumped back, hissing and spitting at her, before quickly darting off the bed and running out of the room. She sat there, shocked, holding her own hand in the other, staring down at the long, red scratches the cat had left on her arm.  

Oh, god. What was happening?

You know what’s happenin’, kid, his voice responded, and she practically cried out as she shut her eyes tightly, pretending she hadn’t heard.

--

Marie stared down at her drunken noodles dejectedly, another wave of nausea suddenly overtaking her. That had been happening lately. She’d be fine, hungry, starving, and then so nauseous she could barely breathe. They were currently camped out in Henry’s new office, which was the size of about ten of her cubicles, eating take-out. It was a little past ten at night, and she had decided to camp out at work and wait for her boyfriend to finish up. He looked exhausted tonight, sleeves rolled up and tie undone, also only picking at his pad Thai with a pair of chopsticks, as, finally, Marie set down the paper container and stared at him from across his large glass desk. She’d been putting off telling this man anything for the past week, and he could tell something was up. He’d been asking her what was wrong, if anything was the matter, and she’d been lying her ass off. Meanwhile, this kind man, this beautiful man she loved, perfect hair now mussed from running his hands through it, dark circles under his eyes from working so hard, whose only flaws included being a little too straight-laced and bullheaded sometimes, was trying to love her. To be with her, and here Marie was still keeping everyone at arm’s length. 

Maybe you have a reason to, a voice--she wasn’t sure whose anymore-- said in the back of her head, and she shook it off. 

“I... have to tell you something,” she finally murmured to her dinner, before looking up to him hesitantly. Instantly, she could tell he could sense the trepidation in her voice, and he set down his chopsticks, staring at her, concern laced in his blue eyes. 

“What? What’s wrong?” he asked, and she sighed, trying to once more fight back tears. She was so fucking’ emotional lately, she could barely stand it.

“I don’t know how to say this…” she drifted off. 

Marie, don’t, his voice inside her head growled, and she shut her eyes tightly for a moment, before continuing on. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but…I’m or I was...a mutant,” she finally said blankly, staring at the man in exhaustion.

He only blinked at her, mildly confused, a shadow of something passing over his features, before he shook his head a little and asked, “What?”

“I had the cure...and I just didn’t think you needed to know in the beginning, because...it wasn’t, I wasn’t...that...anymore. And then, well, what you said about all mutant stuff, I was afraid to tell you,” she dropped off, now truly crying. He still seemed to be catching up, but the moment he saw her visibly upset, he was muttering a “Hey. Whoa.” and he was out of his chair, quickly moving around the desk, gesturing for her hand. She hesitated, and then he was pulling her to her feet.

“Come here,” he said, and then he was collecting her in his arms as she cried into his shoulder. For a while, they stood there like that, while he gently stroked her hair.  

“Jesus, Marie. It’s...it’s ok,” he finally said, and then she was pulling away, looking at him in concern. 

“It...it is?” she asked, a pathetically hopeful note in her voice, and he stared at her assuredly.

“Hell yes. You think I care about that? I just... I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me, talk to me. God, Marie, that’s the last thing I want,” he dropped off, and she was sighing in relief, hugging him tightly once more.

“Thank God,” she whispered, through a relieved laugh, and then he smiled, pulling her back slightly to stare at her once more.

“What...did you think I was gonna dump you or something?” he asked through a tired laugh. 

“Well, right before Christmas, you said…” she dropped off, and he was already shaking his head, still holding both her hands in his own.

“I’m an idiot for saying what I said at Christmas. I’m sorry...sometimes I just can’t shake...look. I’m stupid, ok? Marie, there’s a reason I’ve been single as long as I have. I’m a nerd who has zero social sense,” he said through an awkward laugh and a shake of his head.

“That’s not true,” she said through a smile, and he frowned a little, tucking back a lock of her white strand of hair.

“If...you don’t mind though...I’d like to ask,” he said and she encouraged him to keep going. “Why are you telling me now?” he said, and her heart jumped into her throat. 

Don’t you dare fuckin’ tell him anymore, Marie, Logan’s voice snarled with him. Protect the cub, at all costs, he spat, and she closed her eyes, tightly. 

Get out of my fucking head, Logan, she screamed inwardly, as she looked up at her boyfriend once more. 

“I just...well. If we’re gonna move in together, I thought you deserved to know the truth,” she lied, and, at this, Henry smiled at her.

“Sure...baby,” he replied, and then an odd, goofy grin overtook his features. 

“Can I ask...what you could do?” he whispered to her, and she smiled a little at his curiosity 

Marie…

Shut. Up! 

“I could...take other mutant’s powers,” she said through a shrug of shoulders. “I’d touch another mutant...and I could pretty much use them for a while, like...collect them.” 

At this, he smiled oddly at her. “Are you...serious? Like...you could rack up powers? Like fucking Pokémon?” he asked and she rolled his eyes at him.

“You’re such a nerd,” she muttered. 

“And what would happen if you touched...you know...regular people?” he asked suddenly and she whipped her head up to him once more. How much of the truth to tell? How much to give away?

Protect the cub at all costs...

“I…. nothing. Nothing would happen,” she lied, and then she blinked confusedly at her own lie, surprised at herself that had so easily done it. 

“Oh,” Henry only said, before squeezing her hand once more. “Marie...” he added, and she looked up to him hesitantly once more.

“Yes?” she asked, trying to read the feeling, emotion, the truth behind his ice-blue eyes.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said through a small smile, which she meekly returned

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, August 2023

China

Things were going from bad to worse, quickly. As Logan was breifed, he learned in 1973 Lensherr was imprisioned in the fuckin’ pentagon, and Charles was useless without his powers. He’d spoken to Charles telepathically for some of it, Chuck implanting addresses, facts, pieces of knowledge in his brain quickly. As he listened to the brief, Logan sighed, staring down at the cement slab. No where, at any fuckin’ point in his life, would he have imagined himself here. 

As he ran one rough hand down over it, he found himself shuttin’ down whole parts of his mind. He always did before a mission, a fight. Lockin’ up old memories, turnin’ down the volume on nagging thoughts. Things had precariously wobbled with seein ‘Ro off. If that happened again, as Kitty was explainin’ to him, he was in for it. 

He was flat on his back now, Kitty remindin’ him of the things he didn’t needed to be reminded of. The one fuckin’ truth he’d known since last night, when Rogue told him as much. 

You know what you have to do.

“Once you wake up, whatever you’ve done will become history, and for the rest of us it’ll be the only history that we know. It’ll be like the last...fifty years never happened.”

It’ll be so lonely, sugar, knowing what you know. So, so lonely.

 “And this world, this war, the only person who will remember it... is you.”

1973. It was after Vietnam, after he’d been discharged. Where the fuck had he slinked off to? Where had he been hiding out? 

“You won’t have much time in the past. The sentinels will find us, they always do.” 

He’d still been pining over Evelyn, even twenty years later. Doin’ a lot of illegal shit. Fuckin’ a lot of loose women. Workin’ for mob bosses, experimentin’ with drugs. He’d gotten sloppy, and, because of it, a few years later he’d be Stryker’s prize possession. This was the time before things went blank.  Was Marie born yet? No. Not by at least ten more years. 

“And this time we won’t be able to run. We’ll have no escape. This is our last chance.” 

His fuckin’ heart beating louder in his chest. So loud he swore everyone could fuckin’ hear it.

“You really think this will work?” 

“I have faith in him.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about, it’s us. We were young. We didn’t know any better.” 

“We will now,” he heard Charles say over the pounding of his own heart. And then he was muttering somethin’ real lame about seeing them soon, and then...pain. Fuckin’ incredible, awful, intense pain. He felt like his mind was being fuckin’ ripped out of his goddamn body, he felt his claws tearing through his hands, heard himself screaming, and then the world went blue and green. 

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original/Revised Timeline, May 1973

Manhattan, New York City

It smelled like pot. Pot and booze, and maybe a trace amount of cocaine. The smells harassed his nose as he slowly opened his eyes, feelin’ like he had the worst fucking hangover of his goddamn life. The world seemed wavy, like he was in the middle of the goddaamn ocean, until he realized...fuck. A waterbed. A lava lamp. A woman’s arm, smelling like expensive perfume and cocaine. Shit. Another godamn dream, another goddamn face his memory was forcin’ in front of him, provin’ what a shit-person he’d been. He snarled a little, still blinking away the pain in his head, standing slowly, confused, until he caught a glimpse of himself, stark-ass naked, in the mirror. And then…

Wait. Fuck. Fuck. 

The fuckin’ gray. The gray Marie had pointed out what felt like a century ago. Gone from his hair. His face, the slightest bit younger. Flexing his muscles, he noticed scant differences. He was stronger. Younger. Had it…

He clawed at the blinds, starin’ out the window at...Times Square? Fucking hell. Times Square alright, just the seedy, shitty 1970’s version of that crap before they’d taken the time to crack down on all the organized crime and prostitiution. Before it had looked like goddamn Disneyland. And certainly before it had become a militarized war zone, the last time he’d seen it in ‘19. 

It worked.

He cursed to himself, noticing his pants lying on the radiator. He started getting dressed, trying to decide if he should wake up whoever was in bed with him, when he heard footsteps-three men, one the leader, two heavies- walk purposefully down the hallway toward him, before barging into the room, only two seconds after he’d pulled his jeans over his bare ass. 

“Hey, what’s goin’ on?” he muttered. “Who the hell are you?”

Where the fuck was he? Who the fuck was the woman?

“Gwen. Get dressed,” one of ‘em said.

Gwen. Well that answered that question, at least. 

“Hey. I don’t know what’s goin’ on here,” he started again.

“What’s goin’ on is you’re supposed to be guarding the boss’s daughter, not screwing her,” the fat one said, dressed in a cheap-ass suit, smelling of some fuckin’ awful cologne and cheap whiskey. The other two, one in pinstripes and one in a leather jacket, both looked dumb as fuck.

Gwen. Boss’s daughter. New York City. Fuck, was this Joe Columbo’s girl? Were these his flackeys? 

“I didn’t sleep with her,” Logan protested, and the girl named Gwen threw Logan a nasty look, even as his mind sluggishly recalled four months of fuckin’ her senselss, drinkin’ a lot of Columbo’s free booze and getting high as a fuckin’ kite on random Tuesday afternoons with this woman. Hell...was she even a woman? God, he hoped she wasn’t underage.  He glanced at the woman who was now trying’ to zip up her platform boots as quickly as possible from the bed. Fuck. She might be underage. 

“No?” Fat Ass asked.

“No. I mean, yes, I slept with her many times, but…” he stammered, ignoring the woman’s protests from the bed. 

“Jimmy!”

Logan frowned. You want me to tell the truth, you want me to lie. Make up yer goddamn mind. Meanwhile, he kept muttering on.

“That wasn’t me, that was the old me. I just got here, like, twenty seconds ago.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what happened to your clothes?” Fat Ass remarked, and then Logan’s mind was catching up. 

“My, uh? Oh,” he said, glancing down at his still-naked torso. 

He needed a fuckin’ shirt. And a car. And cash.

“Uh...would you believe me if I told you I was sent here from the future?” he couldn’t help but smirk, and the woman in the bed stared at him like he’d lost his goddamn mind.

Meanwhile, Fat Ass was laughing at him, and Logan knew where this was going real fuckin’ quick. 

“Get out of here sweetheart,” Fat Ass ordered the girl, who frantically picked up the rest of her clothes. “We’re gonna take care of this comedian for you.”

“No, yer not. Yer going to give me the keys to your car and some money for gas or yer gonna end up in the hospital. Trust me, I know how these things play out,” he muttered, almost bored, flexing his muscles just for the hell of it. 

“Oh! Because you’re from the future?” Fat Ass asked sarcastically, and Logan was done fucking around with this loser.

“No,” Logan said, smirking. “Because of these,” and then he was flexing his forearms, the faithful claws tearing through the skin of his knuckles, except it sounded different, felt different...what the fuck?

Before Styrker, you fuckin’ idiot, he thought to himself, glancing at the bone claws once again through a frown before throwing his fists down and planting himself, just when he noticed he’d fuckin’ stabbed the waterbed, lost focus for a second, and took a round and a half of bullets to his chest because of it.

Fuck, he was rusty, he thought, as he took the beating, practically welcoming the pain of somethin’ as simple as multiple gunshot wounds, and not a fuckin’ Mark X incinerating his goddamn leg off. Still though, it fuckin’ hurt like hell, and he cursed out loud, half-pissed at himself, but more alive then he’d felt in fuckin’ months. As his body easily pushed the bullets out, each one landed with a dull thud on the brown shag carpet. 

They all still had their guns drawn, staring at him wildly, like he was a fuckin’ freak, which, unfortunately for them, he was. Finally, he got to work, snarling as he sliced the first gun out of Fat Ass’s hand, probably takin’ a finger with it, before threading his claws through the gun of Pinstripes, throwing him to Logan’s right so he shot Leather Jacket in the leg, then dragged the man around quick enough with his left to stab Fat Ass in the spleen with his right, finally throwing Pinstripes to the floor and stabbing the fucker through the arm for good fuckin’ measure, until...fuck. Shot in the goddamn back by Leather Jacket while he wasn’t lookin’. He snarled, bared his teeth and rounded on Leather Jacket, stabbing him in the chest, only to be shot in the fuckin’ face by the greasy Fat Ass in the cheap suit, making Logan’s head radiate in pain in the still-after effects of the time jump. Logan shouted, stumbling a bit on the spot, before snarling once more, lunging forward and stabbing Fat Ass where shoulder met arm. That’s when he noticed the keys, and whipped them out of his suit coat pocket with the free set of claws into the air. Fat Ass dropped just as he withdrew the claws and caught the keys with his left hand. 

He seethed, breathing out harshly, feeling goddamn alive and useful and free, before he remembered Kitty’s warning and muttered to himself, “Peaceful thoughts.”

He whipped around, grabbing a wife beater he found balled up on the floor, takin’ a whiff of it—clean enough— before searchin’ for a shirt that looked like it might be his. Finding one--god the seventies were a fuckin’ ugly decade--he quickly shrugged it on and buttoned it, before snatching up a brown leather jacket hangin’ on the back of the chair. Turning around to the table, he found a mostly empty booze bottle, some cigars, which he swiped, and a wallet. He frowned, opening it quickly, only to see his own goddamn face looking back at him. “Jimmy Olson,” the fake stated. 39 years old. 6’2”, 200 pounds.  Real fuckin’ cute, Howlett, he thought. He picked through it, only finding a receipt with a buncha numbers scribbled on it, an old punch card to an A&P in the Bronx, and a twenty dollar bill.

“Goddamn broke sonofabitch,” he muttered under his breath, before walking toward Fat Ass and swiping his wallet as well. Two hundred bills. That should about do it. He took the money, even as the man moaned on the ground, twirling the keys in his hand once more, and booked it out of the stale hotel room that now reeked of blood.

As he walked outside, he squinted in the mid-morning sun, the cars, the clothes, the fucking phone booths, allmessin’ with his subconcious. He glanced around the street, trying to sniff out which ride might be Fat Ass’s, until he didn’t have to smell shit. “U LUCKY” on the license plate of a green Buick Riveria, and, on his keyring, a fuckin’ rabbit foot. Bingo. And if he was still unsure, as soon as he opened the fucking door and looked to his right, there was the girl again, still lookin’ strung out as hell. Logan immediately groaned.

“Jimmy! What happened to Ramone?” she asked, as Logan slammed the car door shut and sighed heavily. “And why you talkin’ crazy talk?” 

“Look, uh…” he stammered.

“Gwen,” she reminded him, now obviously pissed.

“Gwen. Yer gonna wanna lay low for a couple of days, alright? Startin’ now,” he muttered, reaching across the seat and opening up the door for her. “Come on. Out,” he ordered, and when she hesitated, he added, “Go.”

She left then, and he started the car through another sigh, trying to get his fuckin’ wits about him. New York City. He needed Westchester county. He ignored the radio in the background--Today, the 18 MP Brigade is departing from Saigon, marking the last American troops to leave Vietnam--ignored the Twin Towers looming in the distance, ignored the fact that somewhere, right now, Storm might be fighting for his goddamn life, and picked up a pair of aviators off the dash, settling them on his face, finally putting the Buick into drive.

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, May 2009

A Dark Room

The first thing she felt was the taste of blood in her mouth. Blood she was swallowing. The bloom of iron, the warm, wet heat pooling behind her lips.  She moaned, but as she tried to move her arms, she met resistance. The next sensation that followed: intense cramping. Horrible stomach pain. No. Not stomach. Lower. 

That’s when she panicked. 

She was duct-taped to a chair in a dark room. She screamed against the gag, trying to see in the dark, trying to breathe and failing, hyperventilating instead. 

…. Marie.

Logan. Oh, god. Logan, Marie screamed internally. The- the… she couldn't finish. She’d been calling it Skittles to herself, but they both knew. She was twelve weeks along, and it couldn’t be laughed off or ignored anymore. The baby.  She felt the warm, wet sensation between her legs, she felt the horrible pain. 

There was a long pause, before another he answered.  

I can’t hear a heartbeat anymore, kid, he murmured, and then she was outwardly sobbing, surprised, confused, as another wave of pain twisted her insides. 

You need to listen to me, Marie, Logan said hurriedly.

Why? Why would I listen to you?! She railed against him.  

Yer powers are back, kid. How do you think yer talkin’ to me? 

My...my powers. 

Marie, I know what yer thinkin’. Stop.

My powers...touching people. You…. coming back. 

Marie… 

The cure ran out. It was me. I did this. I did this. I killed it...I killed Skittles. I...I…

Marie. Quit it. 

I did this.

Marie, calm down. Focus on the situation. If yer miscarryin’ naturally, seems like pretty fuckin’ uncanny timing to be doin’ it just as you were drugged unconscious and thrown in the back of a trunk, don’t ya think? 

There was blood...two days ago. Before any of...this.

I know.

I did this. My powers did this. 

Kid, you don’t know that. Listen-

She said nothing as she sobbed, barely listening as he kept communicating with her. 

When you were unconscious...I was awake. I felt ‘em drag you out of the brownstone and into the trunk of a car. My best guess is yer in Long Island. Henry must’ve slipped ya somethin’ last night.

He...he wouldn’t.  

I’m not here to argue with ya, kid. 

Marie said nothing, as another shot of pain radiated through her and tears fell down her face. She could tell she had taken a blow to her head too, as a throbbing, wet pain radiated from the top of her skull as she tried to focus on Logan’s voice. 

They were talkin’, when they were tryin’ you up. I tried gettin’ as much information as I could. 

Who? W-Who was talking?

He paused for a moment, and then she could practically hear him mentally sigh.

Transigen.

Marie only blinked for a moment, trying to breathe through the pain as her mind tried to catch up.

Transigen…? Transigen produces overpriced Viagra and Epi Pens. They’re a pharmaceutical company. What would Transigen have anything to do with this? 

Marie...They’re working with Trask on something’. Heard ‘em talking about ‘the product’ and whether or not Trask will buy it. My guess is it ain’t legal. At least not yet. God knows the dirty work they’re doing under the table. I’d bet money that 

Suddenly, he was interrupted at the sound of a door opening, and then the small eight by eight room was flooded in the harsh glow of unnatural fluorescent light. She screamed softly against the gag, as she watched a tall, thin man in a pinstriped suit she did not recognize enter, along with two burly men who looked like bodyguards. He wore cowboy boots, too, and they clicked on the marble beneath his feet as he walked to face her, front and center, each body guard on either flank.

“Ms. D’Ancanto, good morning,” he greeted her, and she frowned against the gag, trying to scream. 

“Do not try to resist, Ms. D’Ancanto. You are thoroughly restrained, in the basement of a warehouse near the docks. It is the middle of the night and there is no one around. Let me introduce myself. My name is Claud Smithfield, and I’m the head of security for the North American division of Trask Industries. We’ve recently partnered with Transigen to help us procure certain...commodities." 

Smarmy motherfucker, Logan snarled inwardly. As her body again felt a ripple of pain and she was reminded of Skittles, Marie snarled alongside him, crying out against the duct tape firmly strapped to her mouth.

Then, the man was snapping his fingers, and then one of the body guards was handing him a small leather pouch. Marie jerked against the tape in protest, as the man pulled out something about as big as a paperweight, except that it was glowing yellow.

“You know; I was excited to try this out on you. Fresh off the line…” Smithfield sighed, holding the device in his hands. “Trask’s inhibitor collar. First edition,” he said, before frowning at it through a sigh. 

“But, you surprised us, Ms. D’Ancanto. We just recently, in the past few hours or so, became aware of your situation, and, ironically, this inhibitor we were about to use probably could have saved your child’s life…” Smithfield trailed off through a wicked grin.

Rogue cried out once more against the gag, internally panicking.  

I did this I did this I did this

You don't know that. Jesus fucking christ, kid. They’re trying to make you weak, cut you down. Make you hate herself and yer mutation. You’ve had yer powers come back to varying degrees for months now. You fuckin’ know that, even if you couldn’t accept it. I’ve been around fer as long, waitin’ until you came to yer senses. Skittles was fine that whole damn time. 

“But we don’t want that. You, an unnatural abomination, making more of your kind. Ironically, that’s what Transigen is working on, by the way. Drugs to sterilize mutant women, and maybe even human women carrying a recessive X-gene. But we don’t need to waste the money on the prototype for you, at least not today. No inhibitor for you, and, instead, good old fashioned duct tape.”

Don’t listen to them, kid. They could’ve slipped you anything. They make drugs for that, Marie. D&C, cocktail style, Logan was meanwhile saying.

Please, please, please stop, she begged Logan.

“Even poor Mr. Macintyre wasn’t aware of that particular fact…” Smithfield said, and then Marie was jerking her head up.  

Henry…

The sound of faltered footsteps, as a man with handcuffs was forced into the room. There was blood seeping from his head, and he was still in a button down shirt and tie from the Saturday meeting he’d come home from to meet her at his brownstone. They had made love the night before, and it had been slow and sweet. She’d cooked him lunch after work--they’d shared a pastrami sandwich-- and then she had laid down in his room to take a nap. She said she hadn’t been feeling well, and he’d kissed her on the forehead. That was the last time she’d seen him, only hours before. As soon as she made eye contact with him, her heart thudded so loudly in her chest she thought it could drown out everything else. Meanwhile, frightened, yet knowing, blue eyes bore into her own.

“Marie... I swear,” he tried to frantically mumble, until the one body guard was shoving him hard in the gut, and he winced as Smithfield talked over the commotion.

“We’ve been tracking you since you left Xavier’s, Ms. D’Ancanto. You may not be aware of it, but you’re an incredibly prolific mutant. You’ve fought alongside the X-Men after all, yes? You were there for the fall of Alkali…”

Meanwhile, Logan was snarling in her mind, more Wolverine now than the impression of the man she once knew.

“And when the cure wore off, which has been happening for the last year with most--honestly if you’d been paying attention Ms. D’Ancanto, you would have known earlier--we wanted to make sure you were at our disposal for your unique...gifts. So we employed the help of Mr. Macintyre here to seduce you, keep you close. And I have to say...it was remarkably easy,” Smithfield grinned, as Henry once again struggled against the men who detained him. “He wore a bug of course. In fact, the entire Brownstown was bugged. Every word you’ve spoken, every move you’ve made, has been televised to the higher ups at Trask. Quite the show at points, I have to admit.”

At this, Marie was staring at Henry, her heart breaking, even as he was shaking her head at her. 

“No. No. I God, baby, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t know everything...I didn’t…” Henry was stuttering, jerking again against his restraints. Meanwhile, Smithfield kept talking.

“Luckily for us, your mutation is taking care of your...situation. We can’t have you pregnant for what’s coming up next of course,” Smithfield was explaining, and then Henry was quickly looking up from Smithfield to Rogue, icy blue eyes meeting hers once more in a quiet, pained confusion 

“Wait. Y-you’re...we...? Marie. Why didn't you tell me?” Henry hissed through his own tears now, as a swell of hatred and confusion and anger poured from her. Was he in on it? Was he oblivious? Somewhere in between? As Smithfield noticed her emotional reaction, an odd grin formed on his lips.

“Maybe she would like to answer?” Smithfield said, snapping his fingers once more and then one of the body guards was roughly ripping the tape from her mouth, and she instantly bent over to spit out blood and saliva, nearly choking as she did so.

Give ‘em nothing, Logan barely was able to grind out through a snarl. She sobbed, barely breathing as she looked up to Henry once more.

“Who are you?” she seethed in anger, and he looked at her fearfully, once more shaking his head, but saying nothing. 

“It doesn't matter who he is…the only thing that matters is who you will be,” Smithfield said, handing back the inhibitor to the guard and wiping his hands, walking a step closer to Rogue. “You’ve been injected with a permanent GPS locator into your wrist, next to the ulnar and radial arteries, just in case you get any funny ideas to try to carve it out,” Smithfield said with a grin, before continuing on.

“I am excited to tell you, Ms. D’Ancanto, you’ve been promoted. Transigen operates as a subsidiary of Trask industries, and you’re moving up the company food chain so quickly! From here on out, you will act as a certified intelligence agent for Trask. You will be joining a prominent mutant rights group that has tendrils in upstate New York that has been a thorn in the US government’s side for months now, led by a mutant named Sidney Green, code name Onyxx. You will routinely feed us information of their whereabouts and their plans so that we may sell that information to the government. You will also extract information with your...gifts…. when necessary,” Smithfield said. At this Rogue let out a fresh growl, baring her teeth at the man as she practically embodied the Wolverine. 

“And why would I do that? I’d kill myself before giving you anything,” she spat, throwing a look to Henry, who was desperately still fighting against the firm grip of the man who detained him.

Smithfield sighed, pulling out an iPhone calmly, taking his time, and then began reading from it. 

“Ororo Munroe. Katherine Pryde. Robert Drake. Jubilation Lee. James Howlett. Do these names mean anything to you?” he asked, and Rogue sneered. 

Call his bluff, kid, Logan snarled.

“You can’t defeat the X-Men,” she spat, but Smithfield merely laughed. 

“Haven’t you been keeping on the news, Ms. D’Ancanto? The X-men are mostly displaced, although we have their locations and know what they’re doing even at the current moment. But if that doesn’t... move you to espouse our cause…” he looked once more at the phone. “Todd and Diane D’Ancanto? Your parents, I believe? Or what about Carmen Bucotti? She has a wedding approaching in a few weeks, yes? Marrying a filthy mutant,” Smithfield muttered, spitting to the floor. “Not for long, if the separatist marriage laws go through. Anyway, if that still doesn’t persuade you, I also have a list of twenty cousins and friends, most of which have their own families with young children. There’s even...I’ll say...a goddaughter on this list? Olivia, age 5. She has a birthday coming up. Shame for her to miss if she were to face her demise. Shall I go on?” 

Rogue was openly crying again at this point, even as Henry looked at her helplessly, even as Logan growled in her brain, even as Smithfield continued talking.  

“We will exterminate them, one by one, including the children, if you don't comply. Quickly, if it’s a small mistake or infraction from you. Here. It’s probably best if I demonstrate,” Smithfield said, and then he turned, whipped out a handgun from his jacket pocket, and shot Henry square in the head from a close range. The other man didn’t even have time to shout “No!”, and instantly dropped dead to the floor.

Rogue wailed in newfound agony as Logan swore rudely from inside her mind. 

“Shut her up again,” Smithfield said, and once more they were gagging her, even as the tears continued to fall.

“As I was saying, that would be for failing to report on time, or offering us useless information. A grave betrayal, however...well. Should you try to kill yourself, or escape, or if you give away anything….let’s just say your loved ones’ deaths wouldn’t be near as merciful as Mr. Macintyre’s just was,” Smithfield said, before snapping once more, and then two of the men were dragging Henry through his own blood and bits of skull and brain on the floor, out of the room, as Rogue watched. Then, the man in the pinstriped suit was turning back to Marie.

“Now, Rogue. Let’s prepare you for your first mission, shall we?”

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, November 2011

Zuccotti Park, New York City

The snow was softly falling from the sky as the mutants walked along the streets of lower Manhattan. They’d marched from the remains of the school, for miles and miles, in peaceful protest. They’d encountered some violence from onlookers, but for the most part remained undisturbed as the night wore on and the weather got worse. She’d marched alongside them in the cold, among hundreds, some of whom were crying, others who were chanting in remembrance of all who’d fallen before this moment. They were protesting many things: the fall of the Xavier mansion, the billion dollar “mutant cure” arms race by both Yashida Corp and Trask, the passing of Mutant Registration legislation. She was among her brothers and sisters and would be when it happened. All she had to do, all she needed, was to lead them to Zuccotti. The sentinels would arrive there as soon as she set foot in the park, and they would all die. Except for Rogue. Never Rogue. 

She had purposefully made sure the march was sloppily planned, as was her CI mission. Had purposefully made sure they didn’t have enough defensive strategies in place if disaster were to strike. It would be hard for innocents to get away; that was Rogue’s doing. This was by far her largest mission for Trask and would see the highest body count. She’d already lost her parents, Carmen, her goddaughter Olivia, for being only seconds late in responding or for missing tiny details of information in the past. She couldn’t afford another loss.

In the dark of night, arms linked with other mutants, she glanced over to a mutant named Onyxx. In addition to calling the sentinels, she’d have to absorb him tonight. He held top secret intel about the militia's plans for the next few months, intel not even disclosed to his fellow associates, including Rogue. She would have to extract it from him, and to do that she’d have to kill him. It was demolishing her inwardly, because Sidney had become a close ally, a friend, and Rogue had become someone Sidney thought he could trust 

Rogue, if you only knew what I knew, he admitted one night when the team was hiding out in the Bronx, preparing. 

Sidney, it’s ok. This will work, she had lied. He had glanced down, as if he saw the future, saw its futility.

We’re lucky to have you, R. I couldn’t lead this fucking thing without you by my side, he muttered, holding her hand through her glove with his own larger than life, granite hand.

Silently, tears in her eyes, she counted down the minutes. She’d been dreading this for months, had a razor blade hovered over her wrists just last night, this close to ending her life, ending it all, but hadn’t had the bravery to go through with it. The horrific truth was her family and friends meant more to her than the lives of her team, and it was with that thought that she stepped onto the lawn of Zuccotti, just as the time turned to midnight. In minutes, the streets would be painted red. In minutes, she would lose over half her team she’d been working alongside, whose trust she had earned over time through tears and lies and bloodshed. In minutes, she would sentence half of them to death, and she simply hoped, prayed to God, it was quick. 

Logan? She called out again, but, just as always….nothing. No response. There hadn’t been one in years.  

I’m sorry, she still thought, as she closed her eyes, and continued to pray.

Pinwheel Universe: Original/Revised Timeline, May 1973

I-684, New York

It was like someone had rewound everything. His memories from the seventies were still hazy, but it didn’t take a genius to appreciate a country in relative peace when he saw one. Like an idiot, he had initially tried the virtual comm in his wrist to cue up navigation before realizing this wasn’t his actual body at all, but the poor former sonofabitch’s body he’d stolen. Sorry, bub. Got a lot on the line with this one. Not like you were bein’ a stand up sorta gentleman lately anyway, asshole. She looked seventeen, you lousy fuck.

He settled for a map he’d found folded up in the glove compartment, but as the city was slowly replaced by countryside, he realized he didn’t need it. It was the same hour-long drive on I-684 it always had been. A drive he’d made a hundred times before, comin’ to and from Xavier’s, dropping in and out as he had. Still though, Logan had not been at the helm of anything but the BlackBird in a long, long time. Now, the sun was shining through the open windows, Pink Floyd was on the radio, and for a split second, he let himself relax, until a sense of guilt settled into the pit of his stomach. Guilt and worry. Remember Storm. Remember the rest of them. How the hell was he gonna get through to Charles? And how the hell was he gonna spring Lensherr? He ran through the old rolodex in his mind of who might be alive that he’d known in this time, that is, somebody that wasn’t neck deep in some illegal shit. Callaghan, Maximoff, maybe...he frowned, unsure of how old anyone was, where anyone was, except for the man he was headed toward now. At this thought, he floored the pedal, while the guitar rifts of “Money” escaped out of the Buick’s partially cracked windows. 

--

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. He frowned as he drove up to the partially bashed-in gate, the white, chipped paint and “Private Property. Keep Out,” sign puttin’ him off. Everything was fuckin’ overgrown and ugly, but when he pulled up to the front entrance of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, something deep in him felt...off. He hadn’t laid eyes on this building since he’d left it almost twenty years ago, right after San Francisco, right after he’d helped bury Scott, Jean, Charles. 

A home, of sorts. A place to escape to. Now, in shitty condition. He frowned again as he got out of the Buick and stalked up to the front double doors, glancing around this way and that, using his senses to detect any sign of life, and waited, before a tall, thin man Logan didn’t recognize, no older than thirty or so, answered the door.

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking suspiciously to Logan, who was tryin’ to get a glimpse around the man at what lay inside. A hundred times he’d been through those doors. More times then he could count, someone more than happy to see his goddamn face. Rogue. Storm. The Professor.  Realizing he needed ta say somethin’, he cleared his throat.

“Uh, yeah. What happened to the school?” he asked, remembering the discarded sign on the way in.

“The school’s been shut for years,” the man said, shaking his head. “Are you a parent?”

At this, Logan snorted through a shake of his head. “Sure as hell hope not. Who are you?” Logan asked.

“I’m Hank. Hank McCoy. I look after the house now,” the man was saying, and Logan’s brain struggled to keep up as he whipped off his aviators to get a better look. Tall. Lanky. Geek fer sure, but no fuckin’ blue fur. No paws. No...

“You’re Beast?” Logan couldn’t help but grin, realizin’, if it was true, even if he didn’t look a goddman thing like Logan remembered, it was fuckin’ good to see him. McCoy had been killed early on in the war, dragged out on his lawn and slaughtered by Human Majority. Storm and he had been in Mexico when they had learned of the news. It had been right before Rogue, right before everything changed. 

“Look at you. Huh. I guess you’re a late bloomer,” Logan muttered, sticking the aviators in his jacket pocket as the man beyond the threshold frowned.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m gonna have to ask you to leave,” he lied, and Logan smirked as he caught the door before it closed, realizing he had him. 

“So where’s the Professor?” Logan asked. Best to get to the fuckin’ point.

“There’s no Professor here,” Hank grunted, shaking his head vigorously, struggling to hold the door as Logan barely kept it open. 

“Yer pretty strong for a scrawny kid. Come on…” Logan goaded through another vicious grin, almost growling now, switchin’ over to that other language, and Hank once more shook his head in abject denial.

“Sure there’s not a little beast in there? Come on Beast,” he teased.

“No. No. He’s not here,” Hank was saying.

“Come on Beastie,” Logan said, before easily pushing the door open and knocking Hank aside. 

“Hey!” Hank shouted, following after Logan. “I said the school’s closed! You need to leave.”

“Not until I see the Professor,” Logan muttered, boldly walking into the foyer, smiling as he did so. All the fuckin’ same. The carpet, the oil paintings, the same goddamn smells.

“There’s no Professor here,” Hank growled again, this time grabbing Logan by the shoulder to turn him around. “I told you that.”

Logan sighed, now kinda pissed off, and turned to him, momentarily pausing his search.

“Look, kid. You and I are gonna be good friends,” Logan said through a smile, and then he quickly delivered a punch to the poor kid’s face. Terrible fucking reflexes. Where the fuck are his animal instincts? Logan thought, before adding, “You just don’t know it yet.”

With that, he turned on his heel and headed up the main stairs, using his nose and heading left toward the faculty wing instead of right toward what had been the student wing. Quickly, he strode through the hallway, more scents, familiar and foreign, invading his nose, as he tried to pick out Charles, as he routinely shouted, “Professor?” 

Down one hallway, then another, then another, and then fuck. He barely had time to turn around before a fuckin’ blue ball of fur attacked him, claws out, attempting to plunge ‘em into Logan’s back. He tried to punch the furball, which only pissed him off further, as he easily flung Logan down the hallway and back into the foyer, where he landed on the fuckin’ stairs. 

So there’s the fuckin’ animal, was all he had time to think before he was flung again to the table, Hank on the goddamn chandelier, Logan uselessly swatting the animal back with his hands, this close to poppin’ the claws, when he picked up on another voice. 

“Hank! What’s going on here?”

“Professor?” he asked, lifting his head hopefully from the foyer table to see a shorter man in about his thirties, hair long and unkept, holding an almost empty glass of watered down vodka,  fuckin’ walkin’ down the goddman stairs, answering with a “Please don’t call me that.”

“You can walk,” Logan muttered on the table, blinking at the younger man, tryin’ to put two and two together. 

“You’re a perceptive one,” Charles said sarcastically.

“I thought Erik…” Logan muttered, trying to catch up. Cuban missile crisis. Bullet curves through the air. Hits Xavier’s spine. That had been the fuckin’ story from the beginning. Suddenly his anger flared. Charles hadn’t told him any of this. Charles hadn’t briefed him on shit. If this was for some kind of goddamn ethics lesson, and not the grave oversight Logan hoped it was, he was gonna fuckin’ lose it. The goddamn world was at stake, and he hadn’t been completely briefed. Fuck, fuck, FUCK. 

Meanwhile, the young brat was still talkin’.

“Which makes it slightly perplexing that you managed to miss our sign on the way in. This is private property, my friend. I’m going to have to ask him to ask you to leave”,” he said. Meanwhile, Logan pulled himself up off the table and walked around to face the younger man. 

This was gonna be harder than he fuckin’ thought. This guy was moody as hell. Depressed as hell.

“Well,” Logan groaned, cracking his neck and staring Charles directly in the eye. “I’m afraid I can’t do that because, uh, because I was sent here for you,” he said seriously. God he fuckin’ sucked at this. Anyone. Anyone else in the fuckin’ world would have been more convincing. Anyone. 

“Well tell whoever it was that sent you that I’m...busy,” Charles muttered, now sitting on the steps of the main foyer, drink still in hand, shooting Hank a look. Logan frowned, and continued on.

“That’s gonna be a little tricky, because the person who sent me... was you,” Logan said. 

“What?” Charles asked, zero patience detectable in his voice.

“About fifty years from now,” Logan added.At this, Charles, simply looked  at him like everyone had been lookin’ at him all day. Like he was goddamn insane. And Logan was growing fuckin’ tired of it. Just then, the man broke into a sarcastic laugh, as Beast grinned, signing to Charles that Logan must be goddamn crazy.

“I know. Stay with me,” Logan said, willing all this patience to not come unglued.

“Fifty years from now? Like in the future fifty years from now?”

“Yeah,” Logan muttered, feeling like a goddamn fool.

“I sent you from the future?” Charles asked, again looking at Hank, who shook his head.

“Yeah,” Logan said again. 

“Piss off,” Charles spat, and Logan simply stared at the younger man, frowning, as he remembered what he had been briefed on. 

“If you had yer powers you’d know I was telling the truth,” he tried, voice still thinly patient.

“How do you know I don’t have my…” Charles trailed off, and suddenly he got serious quickly. “Who are you?”

“I told you,” Logan said again.

“Are you CIA?”

“Nope,” Logan sighed.

“Have you been watching me?” Charles pressed.

“I know you, Charles,” Logan began, deciding to finally walk closer toward the younger man, careful to respect his space. “We’ve been friends for years. I know your powers came when you were nine. I know you thought you were going crazy when it started, all the...voices in yer head. And it wasn’t until you were twelve that you realized all the voices were in everyone else’s head. Do you want me to go on?” Logan asked, and silently, Charles shook his head, now convinced...of something. 

“I never told anyone that,” he murmured, and Logan sighed.

“Not yet, no. but...you will,” he added. There was a long pause from the younger man, before he spoke again.

“Alright, you’ve piqued my interest. What do you want?”

“We have to stop Raven. I need your help,” Logan said seriously, and then, thoughts flying back to those he had left behind, who were waiting, potentially fighting, dying, he added, “We need your help.”

For a moment, no one said anything, as a range of emotions passed over the younger man’s face. Logan could tell he hit a vein, as he sensed grief, pain, regret, longing, even, before Charles spoke once more.

“I think I’d like to wake up now,” he muttered, standing and walking past both he and Hank, headed toward his office, in the same place it always had been.

Logan said nothing, sighing, and followed Charles into his office, taking a seat across the desk from the younger man, who was fumbling around for a bottle of liquor that wasn’t empty.

Slowly, then, without bein’ prompted, Logan began explaining. Mystique’s role in Trask’s assasination and the uniqueness of her powers. How it had led to anti-mutant sentiment, the passing of the Mutant Registration Act. Then, the ghettos, the research facilities, the death camps. Logan ran his hands through his unruly hair as he tried to find the words to explain the severity of it all, especially in the last few years. God, he needed a fucking drink.

“Look, in the beginning the Sentinels were just targeting mutants. Then they began to identify the genetics in non-mutants who eventually would have mutant children... or grandchildren…” Logan trailed off. He’d remembered that. When they’d started seizing humans, not only ones who had helped them in the fight, but ones who simply carried a recessive version of the mutant gene. Pulling women out of their homes, packing them into white vans, shipping them to clinics to sterilize them, or exterminate them outright.

“Many of the humans tried to help us…” Logan drifted off, frowning.  “It was a slaughter, leaving only the worst of humanity in charge. I’ve been in a lot of wars…” Logan murmured, before looking directly at Charles. “I’ve never seen anything like this. And it all starts with her.”

Meanwhile, Charles was barely paying attention. He’d taken his drink and had plopped down on the couch, a game of chess between Logan and the Professor who seemed like the furthest possible fuckin’ thing from the man he knew.

“Alright. Let’s just say for the sake of… the sake that I choose to believe you, I choose to help you. Raven won’t listen to me, No her heart and soul belong to someone else now…” he drifted off, and Logan sighed, too fuckin’ sick of the love triangle or whatever it was bullshit. 

“I know. That’s why we’re gonna need Magneto too,” Logan muttered, standing and rounding on Charles

“Erik? You know where he is?” Hank said from his spot in the corner, while Charles laughed once more, which was startin’ to really piss Logan off.

“Yeah,” he muttered to Hank before turning back to Charles, who was still laughing. We don’t have fuckin’ time for this. 

“Could you give me that one more time, please?” Charles asked jokingly, and Logan held back a snarl.

“You heard me,” he said forcefully, and Charles laughed harder, drunkenly standing, breathing out and then rounding on Logan.

“He’s where he belongs,” Charles spat, before heading out the door to his own office.

“So that’s it? You’re just gonna walk out?” Logan snarled after him. At this, Charles turned around tipsily. 

“Oh, top marks. Like I said, you are perceptive…” he sarcastically and bitterly laughed.

“The Professor I know would never turn his back on someone who lost their path,” Logan pressed, and, remembering the years since Charles and Erik had reconciled their differences, the moments he’d witnessed aboard the jet, Logan dared to add, “Especially someone he loved.”

That fuckin’ did it. Charles stopped in his tracks, danced in his spot for a moment, before turning around, a deep frown on his face. 

“You know...I think I do remember you now. Yeah. Tall angry fellow with contentious hair. We came to you a long time ago seeking your help. And I’m gonna say to you what you said to us then,” he said, only inches from Logan now. “Fuck off.” 

In an instant, Logan had him by the fuckin’ collar, patience fuckin’ extinguished.

“Listen to me, you little shit,” he growled, barely able to contain his anger enough to keep from punching the fuckin’ idiot. “I’ve come a long way, and I’ve watched a lot of people die. Good people. Friends,” Logan hissed, snarling at him. “If you wanna wallow in self-pity and do nothing, then you’re gonna watch the same thing, you understand?” he finished, roughly letting go of him. Charles only stared at him for a moment, lost in thought.

“We all have to die sometime,” he finally said, polishing off his drink and stalking back towards the foyer. 

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, September 2015

Harlem, New York City

A voice in her ear, just as she shifted on the threadbare cot, the thin numbers of her team left sleeping similarly. She led this militia group now, or what was left of it. A sharp bite to the evening had everyone shivering in the early fall weather. They were just outside an alley, among the homeless. An empty warehouse. A line of cardboard lean-tos. A trash fire in a barrel. Pneumonia. Infection. Starvation. Still, she was passing on information to Trask. Still, she betrayed. 

Ororo Munroe. Katherine Pride. Robert Drake. Jubilation Lee. James Howlett.

Still, she made mistakes. Jubilee had lost her life because of Rogue. It had happened in the early part of this year, and a swell of newfound depression had consumed her. Her list was dwindling. Despite all she had done for Trask, her list of dwindling, and with it, her utility. The use for CIs was declining, the more powerful Trask became, the more antimutant sentiment grew. You didn’t need to quietly collect intel when you ran death camps.

She coughed hard into her hand, pulling her filthy sweater closer to her. She’d just retired for the night, when it happened.  Part of her had been waiting for it. Part of her was surprised. Part of her wanted to will him out of her brain, even if she had to claw him out with her own two hands.

Rogue.

Charles, she mentally murmured, staring blankly down the alleyway, into the dark night of the city. 

You don’t seem surprised that I have made contact with you. 

No, she mentally murmured, bringing her head to her hand, clutching it in pain. What do you want? 

We know what Trask has done to you, what they have made you do. But we may have found a path toward your own redemption.

I’m beyond help.  

No one is ever beyond help, my dear, she heard the kind man whisper in her mind, and she bitterly shook her head in protest. 

I’ve murdered too many.

You have murdered thousands, but most not directly. And none by choice. It was never a choice. 

She’d let him talk then. Listened quietly as Xavier explained the plan carefully, with precision. 

You want me to kill Hank.

No. I want you to ensure Hank does not die in vain, he trailed off. She frowned, turning onto her side in the small cot. 

 Professor...why now? Why, only now, do you find me? Rescue me?

We only recently have come together again, as a team. Storm, myself. Erik. Even Logan now.

Rogue frowned deeply and shook her head. 

That’s not why you waited. I wasn’t useful before. Now, I am.

I will not sugarcoat it for you, my dear. You are correct. 

You need me because of the plans, to extract them, so now is my time, over anyone else.

 Yes. 

And you need me to act as a double agent, so you dig up everything on Trask, without them knowing. 

Yes. 

Neither mutant said anything for a long moment, until Charles added, it was not personal, Rogue.  

It never is, is it, Charles? 

Not now, no, Rogue. Not with this many lives at stake. So, do we have a deal? 

He waited for her to answer, and she found that she, too, was waiting. 

So do we have a deal? Charles pressed. Finally, Rogue spoke.  

You’re using me, same as them. 

Yes. But the difference is we ask you, and do not coerce you by murdering members of your family or your friends. 

She said nothing for long moments, her mind toiling with the weight of the decision. If she was caught, everyone, not just some of them, would die. But this, however slight, was it. Her only hope. Her chance. 

Rogue?

And then, she responded.

What do I need to do?

Cape Town, South Africa

Marie sighed, closing her eyes tiredly as she slipped out of Charles’ room. The sessions were long and grueling, as Charles extracted years of data, anything she had on Transigen or Trask. Afterward, Marie always felt empty, like almost floating, and the only way to deal with this, in her experience, was to make herself weightless. To forget.

The fire threw wild, orange light into the study, casting flickering shadows about the room.

“You still don’t understand, do you, my dear? If they suspect you, it’s over. If I don’t die, they all will,” Hank had told her, staring her in the eye.

She shuddered a bit, and dressed quickly for the pool in her room, looking out both ways before slipping into the hallway. The last thing she needed was to run into Logan again. She didn’t want to spar, and she didn’t want to talk. She wanted to float, to sink, something.  Luckily, she didn’t run into anyone as she finally made her way to the pool, and she slipped into the still water silently, letting it flow over her skin.

A grandfather clock was roaring in her ears. Branches on fire scorched her nose. Just then, the click of a door, the heavy weight of his shoes in the dry grass, his face calm and resolute. And then, the swarm. The sounds of blades, bats, guns, ropes, the entire bloody procession. 

Rogue closed her eyes, forcing the memory back down, and began to swim laps quickly breaking from the surface to suck in breaths as she cut through the water. It was rhythmic, steady and slow. Swim, breathe, under, up. Swim, breathe, under, up. She kept up the laps, letting the water envelope her, as her mind recalled the whirlwind of the last few weeks, no matter how she tried to stop it. 

She’d been momentarily stunned when she had walked off the jet, still getting used to it all. He was standing there, in all black, arms folded tight across his chest as he watched her closely with narrow eyes. Had she not seen so much strange shit in the past few years, his appearance would have taken her aback. He looked the same. God, he looked exactly the same. 

She mustered all her strength as she walked off that jet, giving him a curt nod. He seemed to be struggling with something-probably revising the way I look in his mind, she thought--and then she was speaking to a man she once knew, but knew no longer.

“Logan,” she offered him, stopping a few paces short of him, again giving him the once over.

“Hey, Rogue,” he said, and she was perturbed by his smile, his ability to be so nonchalant. Why was he smiling? There was nothing to smile about. Not anymore.

 “You’re...the same,” she finally said. “Of course you’re the same,” she added, meaning it in every way possible. He looked mildly uncomfortable about this, anyone would if another had so blatantly pointed out their mutation in this political climate, stamping one boot in the Mexican dirt.  

“Yeah, well,” he grumbled. “Hasn’t been that long.” 

She merely stared at him. How many sleepless nights? How many killed, or worse, tortured before her eyes, some by her own hand? How many children… dead?

“Long enough,” she retorted and brushed past him.

And then, after his temper tantrum in the bunker in front of Charles, she had stumbled on him again when things were more quiet, her own temper cooled, too. He was half-way through a bottle of tequila, and Rogue found she couldn’t begin to criticize his choice of hobby. The world was burning. They all deserved a drink. 

“You need something?” he grumbled, unceremoniously tipping the bottle to his lips once more. 

“No,” she said. Why had she come back here? She had sensed him still awake, even though Storm had long since gone to bed. But it had been too quiet underground, so far away from the sounds of the city. From the muggings and police sirens. From the running. From the stale bread and begging hands. From the chaos. Slowly, she sat down opposite him at the table, and studied him for a moment. He was in a wifebeater and cargo pants, and it was obvious he was suffering a quiet distress. Over her or the recent events of the world, she couldn’t be sure. For some reason, she was never sure when it came to him. 

Meanwhile, he was tipping the bottle toward her as a small peace offering, but she shook her head. She needed to think clearly.

“It looks good. I would, but...not now,” she said, careful to acknowledge the gesture of goodwill while still politely declining. He smiled a little at her, the first time since she’d seen him again, and her heart shuddered slightly. Years, she’d lived with his voice, but the sight of him...that was different. 

“Suit yerself,” her murmured, knocking back the bottle of tequila once more. 

“Charles told me you were in Japan,’” Rogue said, trying to muster up at least the semblance of conversation, and she was surprised to see he took the bait.

“Home for a while first, then Japan. Tokyo for a bit, but Nagasaki, mostly,” Logan responded, his words running together just the slightest bit. She noticed his inebriation, and smiled a little. It took so much for this man to get drunk. She remembered that about him. Had the memories to prove it, too. 

“Japan… that’s a bit different for you,” she said, her voice even as she tried to visualize him there. Logan, bowing? Logan, visibly respecting authority? Logan, assimilating into a culture so different from his own? 

 “Yeah well, at first it wasn’t voluntary,” he murmured, looking at her. “Then, it was.” 

Rogue furrowed her brows, wondering what he meant by this, and let it go. So he’d been on the lam for years, then, she realized quickly. Maybe an entire decade. 

“Were you there, then, in Japan, when the school…?” Rogue began, and it took him longer than Rogue would have thought to answer.  

“No. Not yet. But I was by the time I found out about it a few years later,” he said, a little sloppily, and her anger bloomed. She could maybe forgive him if he had been overseas, but he hadn’t heard about it in Canada? Where had he been living? On the side of an Alberta mountain top? 

They needed you, she thought, rather viscously. We all did. 

And then, he was talking once more, pressing her. 

“Why aren’t you telling them everything, Rogue?” he asked out of the blue. Rogue looked up to the man sharply, trying to think quickly on her feet. Charles had explicitly stated only Xavier himself was to know about her history with Transigen and by proxy Trask, to keep up the ruse, and to lie to everyone else, no matter what Wolverine picked up on in terms of scent. Charles had warned her, too, that Logan especially would be suspicious, with as much as his nose and previous affection for her could potentially set him off. But under no circumstances was she to divulge information. Too much hung in the balance. This was bigger than petty fights, old flames. It was bigger than them both. It was bigger than them all.

“I’m telling the truth,” she partially lied. He was truly drunk now, would be for a few whole minutes guessing from the slurring of his words and the slowness of his movements, and she chose in that moment to slightly forgive him his sloppy interrogation tactics, the goddamn hypocrite. How long had he been working for Charles again anyway after his years-long vacation? Five, six months... at most? 

“And Charles would know if I wasn’t,” she added for good measure.

“Half-truths,” Logan suggested, once more tipping the bottle in her direction for dramatic effect, and her anger doubled as she stared at the man who she suspected was old enough to be her great-great-great grandfather, and who quite honestly should know fucking better by now. 

“You don’t have the first clue about what’s been happening,” she hissed, staring at him evenly. “You haven’t been around long enough to know.”

“Haven’t seen you hanging around the X-Men either, Rogue,” he was saying, and suddenly she was dangerously close to either punching him or letting something slip. She stood out of frustration, about to walk away, when he followed, the bastard, blocking her way out.  “And I’ve been around long enough. In fact, too fucking long. A long fucking damn time, and I know when someone gets sloppy. Hank is dead.” 

The biting truth of his words rang out in her mind. Suddenly she was there, Hank’s memories coursing through her, the jeers and shouts and sounds of Hank being ripped apart roaring in her ears. She said nothing, barely holding it together, as he kept talking.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” he was rambling. “Somebody fucked up. Somebody on your team fucked up, and Hank paid the cost.”

“You weren’t there,” she barely ground out, finally choosing to look him in the eye, a direct challenge for a feral like him.

“Hank was our last contact up north. You could have been here, helping us, but somehow, you thought you couldn’t contact us, contact me, before this fucking moment? Before-” 

“You weren’t there,” she snarled, stepping into his space, provoking the animal, staring up at a man a foot taller than her, all muscle, hair untamed, eyes fiery. He wasn’t afraid of her skin, but she wasn’t afraid of his wildness. This stupid, brute of a man, who long ago she thought she had loved. Whose voice had haunted her for years after. Who she’d given up so much for.  All for nothing. 

They stood there like that, centimeters away from each other. She could tell he was taking in her scent, and she hoped it tormented him like hell. But then, something in his stance fell, and he retreated infinitesimally. He hadn’t moved a muscle, but something had changed, and her own bravado crumpled slightly as well as she broke her stare, too exhausted to keep up the pissing match. 

“Logan…” she tried, looking around the room in exhaustion. “Things have changed. It’s not like it was.” He held her gaze though, never taking his hazel eyes off her. 

“You don’t think I know that?” he asked her, and she truly wondered. Here was a man who had witnessed true change, centuries worth of it, who couldn’t see the difference a decade could make even when it was dancing right in front of his goddamn face.

“I’m not sure,” she added tiredly. She thought of Jubilee, then, and something in her core quivered, her voice breaking slightly as she spoke. And then, he was closing the space between them, so close now he was practically murmuring his next words in her ear.

“The world’s never been safe, kid,” he said, and then he was reaching one hand out, running a finger down a lock of her hair. She knew what he was insinuating. The torch. Their moments together, when he’d left a strong enough imprint on her his voice had returned after the cure, when all the others had subsided, even people she killed. She had been thankful for him then, but now, she regretted it. She regretted him. She regretted it all.

 She winced at the nickname, and just as Storm entered the room, the spell was broken. 

That was the first time. There had been other entanglements, encounters, since. Some of them harmless, like when she’d kicked his ass on the sparring mat, some of them serious, when he confirmed her suspicions about his age and just how many wars he had fought in. 

After almost an hour of hard swimming, though, she’d come up for air and noticed him through the gym windows, a pause in his daily kata, watching her warily, as if the roles were reversed long ago, as if all of her sorrow and grief and memories were his responsibility to sift through, and she was free to simply...exist. 

--

“I don’t like the plan,” she said matter-of-factly, as she took another sip of her beer. She tried not to focus on the way he gripped his own bottle, the way his eyes were taking in every miniscule message she made with her body. She had been trained in the art of bluffing. Was a master at it. She had been a fucking CI for the last six years for fuck’s sake. But here he was, reading her like an open book for the last few weeks, as she struggled to stay closed. Something about Logan...something about him seeing into her, almost through her...

“Yeah, I’m gettin’ that,” Logan muttered, even though he didn’t need to.

“It feels like giving up,” she added. She didn’t understand why Charles wanted to run, to hide, even though now she had a better idea of how he had come up with the idea knowing that Logan had been in his ear about it. But the thought of fleeing, when it was the first time in over six years she was truly helping save her people, and not betraying them...well. It made her wanna destroy things. Decimate whole cities. Tear shit down. Rip it all apart.

“We haven’t even started fighting yet, Rogue,” Logan shot back, and she simply blinked at him for a moment, having to hold back a cynical laugh. All the years of torment, all the awful things she had seen. Oh, sugar. If you only knew what I knew.  

They both had started to get drunk. Around and around they went, him digging for information and she dodging the best she could. Finally, she’d grown tired of the battle, and had decided to call it a night. She had left him there like that, drinking alone in the bar with the mutants with the extreme mutations- mutants that reminded her of Oynxx and made her heart ache--and she had trudged the eight blocks back to the hotel in relative pain. Encounters with Logan always felt like that. Tumultuous. Loaded. Painful.

She cursed the God she didn’t quite believe in when she stepped into the hotel lobby and remembered that Charles had asked her to give up her room and share with the very man she was trying to get away from tonight, but she had dutifully headed to her new residence nevertheless. 

She took her time, showering carefully, with the new routine she had adopted since coming to work for Xavier. Shampoo. Conditioner. A razor. Chapstick. All of the personal hygiene products she now appreciated, practically worshipped. Recently, she was more mindful of the care and maintenance of her body, not because she respected it so much as because she hadn’t been able to have some of those luxuries in years, and she felt she was making up for lost time. After the shower ran long, so long she had steamed up the entire bathroom, frosting the windows in layers of condensation, she was slow in rubbing the lotion into her freshly shaven legs, over her abdomen, over her arms and up her neck. She put on a thin tank and loose pajama pants, and was methodical as she brushed out her wet hair, letting it air dry in the hot, dry climate of South Africa. 

An hour and a cup of chamomile tea later, she had been paging through some flight plans Storm had given her the week before, thinking of going to bed, when she finally heard drunken fumbling in the hall, someone obviously trying several different doors and growing steadily more confused about which one was his. Despite the fact she was expecting him, it still startled her, even as she tiredly rose from her bed she’d been lying on and came out of her room just in time to witness the feral man stumble into their shared living quarters from the hallway. 

“Logan?” she asked, mildly concerned as she took in the sight of him. Hair mussed, eyes uneven and unfocused. He looked tired, older, even from this afternoon. So unlike that man with the cocky stride she had fallen early on for. Tonight had him almost looking...human. Not like an idol, certainly not like a god, not even like an animal, but like a man. A tired, bewildered man finally trying. Trying, at last, to get it right.  

Well, maybe not on this particular night. More like in general. 

“Yeah?” he mumbled a drunken response, swaying on the spot as he did so. He was outwardly ogling her through her thin top, but she was too damn tired to care. He was a man, probably sex-starved as of late. And she had enough of his memories to know that was a big fucking deal for him. Let him look, she thought idly, savoring the sudden rush of power her newfound apathy had won her.

“You ok?” she finally asked, softening a little as she assessed his state of mind, deciding to walk over toward him. The closer she got, the more worried she became that, maybe for the first time in his ridiculously coordinated life, he might actually lose his balance and fall over. 

“You were with someone, weren’t you?” he asked bluntly, and she stopped being concerned for his wellbeing and jerked her head upward to look him dead in the eye at his candor.

“Excuse me?” she hissed, knowing where this was going and hating it all the same. He hadn’t earned the right yet to ask her questions like this, questions so personal in nature, and he fucking knew it. 

“After the cure?” Logan tried to clarify. They stood like that for a moment, still in the dark, only a few paces between them. Just then, an old memory of his bombarded her brain, one she used to dream about, over a lifetime ago.

“I’m gonna fuck you until morning, baby,” he snarled into her ear, hand roughly cupping a breast before taking a nipple into his mouth.

“You better, if you wanna keep this gig,” the woman teased, and he snarled, before dipping a hand lower, between her legs.  

“Spendin’ yer father’s money? Fucking his daughter right under his goddamn nose?” he grinned. One finger inside her. Two. She was wet, warm, ready again. 

“Yeah, sure. Long as you keep your promise,” she said through a breath as he rolled a thumb over her clit, and he smirked. 

Henry had never been like that, and he was the only person she’d had sex with. Sure, she’d messed around with men and women early on, to the point where she doubted she was completely straight, but it didn’t surprise her she’d ended up with a man, considering her long lasting feelings for Logan. Although that particular man had been more careful, softer, than she had imagined from someone who was offering her body pleasure. He’d been distinct and mindful, almost too much so occasionally. Sometimes, she’d wanted more from the patient man, but she’d never asked for it, wasn’t quite sure how toback then. Meanwhile, she’d dreamt of what it might have been like to be with Logan, from the dozens of memories of sexual encounters she’d inherited from him. It was rough, maybe, but also...more. She had imagined more, at least, especially when more wasn’t possible. Meanwhile, the man before her was waiting for an answer. Rogue frowned. 

You were with someone, weren’t you? After the cure? 

“Yes,” she finally admitted tiredly, and she practically saw him visibly flinch at the notion. “I was. Not that that’s any of your business,” she added stubbornly, now crossing her arms, staring at the drunken mess that was her former mentor, growing impatient. Where was he going with this?

“But it wasn’t that ice prick,” Logan said through a growl. He was stalking about the room now like a goddamn caged tiger, and she suddenly wished he would stop. Usually, she was patient with Logan’s animalistic tendencies, but tonight, as exacerbated as they were due to drink, there was no patience to be found for him. Meanwhile, he kept at it. “And it wasn’t about being touched. It was about somethin’ else, somethin’ real.”

Her mouth fell open at this particular remark,  but she shut it quickly. Her brows were furrowed now, as she tried to figure out how he’d know anything about that. Does he assume that I would have a deep connection with the one person I was with? Did his senses tell him that much? Had her scent...changed somehow? From... losing her virginity? Falling in love? Or even...god forbid...from conceiving?

God, please never let him find out about that, she sent up a silent prayer in the dark.

“I-” she began, before stopping. She wouldn’t tell him. Wouldn’t give him anything. He didn’t deserve it; not this version of the man who stood before her. Maybe the voice in her mind that had long since faded, that presence who had been by her side through the worst of it, but not this man. Not him. 

“But it’s not part of the reason you fucked up, is it?” Logan continued, and his accuracy was again impressive, too good. He was close, now, was too close to something she wouldn’t be able to come back from. Instantly, images were flashing across her mind, depictions of scenes long since locked away...

“See, so you attach each rib onto the spar of the plane with this specialty glue. Balsa wood is best for this kind of application, mind you, and...presto!” he stated proudly, staring at the P-51 Mustang’s wing with a fervent affinity, before looking to Rogue for praise.

“Very...cool,” she finally said, smiling apologetically from behind her book, growing mildly bored with his explanation twenty minutes ago, let alone now, as he finally realized this and sighed.  

“You don’t have to like it. I know I’m a dork,” Henry admitted, setting down the glue, finally taking off his magnifiers attached to his glasses. 

“Hey, leave those on,” she teased, and he looked at her, a little dumbfounded. 

“What? Why?” he asked, and she grinned. 

“They’re sexy,” she said honestly, and he laughed before stepping over to her and kissing her cheek. 

“Fuck. Fuck,” meanwhile Logan was concurrently growling, and she shook her head to get out of the memory, frowning at the older mutant once more. 

“What?” Marie shot back, growing tired of his whining, the way he circled around the issue but never landed on any sort of real truth about either of them. She thought the booze would have helped him resolve his feelings, or get to the bottom of things, or-

“I hate, fucking hate, that someone else put his hands on you first,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. That got her attention. She looked up to him quickly, trying to get his meaning as she processed this new information. Is he saying….What is he saying, exactly? 

“What?” Rogue was asking softly, her voice barely above whisper. Mentor, friend, maybe even father figure. Never had he made a move on her. It wasn’t that he wasn’t afraid to touch her, either. A friendly hug or clap on the shoulder was to be expected, but he’d always been stuck on Jean. Either he was pining after Jean while Scott was in the picture or Jean had just died in one way or another and he was grieving her loss. Never had he suggested that he and Rogue could be more. Not once. Except for maybe...that night he dragged her to the bar in Westchester and she watched him cage fight? No. Not even then. He’d fucked a random woman in an alley, finishing mere seconds before Rouge had stepped outside. He had said something about how it “had to be how it was,” lent her his leather jacket afterward because she’d left hers behind in the bar, and had driven her home, a chaste and gloved handshake his only physical apology to her for his sloppy behavior that night.

“You heard me, Marie,” he said, and she frowned.

“But I thought….Jean…” Rogue whispered, and she watched him growl in frustration once more. 

“Yeah, Jean. Jean. She was there, she was beautiful, and you were too young back then, for me to….to do what I wanted.”

“What you… wanted?” Rogue asked, her eyes narrowing, even as her body responded, heating up involuntarily, most likely due to the hundreds of times she had touched herself with his memories for fodder. 

I’m gonna fuck you until morning, baby. 

“Yeah,” he growled possessively, and Rogue closed her eyes to refocus, ignoring the shiver that shot down her spine. He was lying. Or embellishing. He had to be. Because if he was telling the truth, oh god. If he was telling the truth…

“I was deadly then, like now. I would have dropped you to the floor,” she said bitterly, trying to ground herself, find her composure. He’s not fucking Superman. He wouldn't have been able to save you. You’re both all wrong for each other, anyway, especially back then. You would have still ended up in a ditch, empty-handed, at the mercy of Transigen, she thought. It seemed her destiny, anyway. Her one purpose in life. 

“Like I fucking care about that,” Logan muttered, and she realized he was closing the space between them.

“You should,” she whispered, attempting to step back from Logan to look him seriously in the eye, but then he stepped forward, close, so close she could feel the heat coming off him, smell the whiskey on his breath. Her body responded, a fire licking its way through her belly again, as her worry, her sorrow, her regret, was temporarily suspended. 

“Don’t go playing the victim card,” he was saying, and she looked at him for a moment like  he might have lost his mind. The victim card. As if she had a choice. As if she had any other card in her hand to play. He has no clue. He has no fucking clue.

“There are ways around it,” he pressed on, and then her brain was fuzzy again, his proximity playing tricks on her as they shared the same air. He was dangerously close to her now, and she could practically feel her body salivate, thirsty for touch, thirsty to drink someone else in. Anyone. Even him. She was thirsty for other things, too. “You know there are. And I swear to God I would’ve found a way, Marie, had I wised up enough to have found the fucking chance.”

Her thoughts were pinging back and forth, her feelings a mixture of arousal and shock and anger.

You goddamn idiot, she thought wildly as she stared at him. Then why didn’t you, Logan? Why didn’t you fucking do something? Anything? 

Then, he was swaying on the spot, and she remembered he’d probably consumed a barrel or more of whiskey. She exhaled out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding, finally reaching out with her gloved hands to steady him.

“Easy there,” she whispered, confused, enraged, aroused, tormented by the man in front of her. He then was looking down at her gloves, thumbing them between two calloused fingers. 

“You don’t need these ‘round me,” he mumbled at the gloves, and she shook her head slightly, realizing she still had not let go of him. She was practically clinging to him at this point, and she frowned and blinked a few times to free herself from his intoxicating pull.

“Yes, I do. Or do you not remember what happened last time we touched?” she whispered to him. The torch, sugar. You almost died for me. Back then, that meant something. It meant everything.

Logan only frowned for a moment, obviously still woozy, and she managed to finally get her wits about her enough to say, “Let’s get you to bed, sugar. You could use the sleep.” 

But he was stopping, pulling her back when she was trying to pull him forward, murmuring a “hey” from the obstinate spot where he had planted his feet, still clutching her gloved hand tightly. 

“Hey what?” she asked tiredly, turning back to him. 

“This guy you...knew. Did he care for you? Look after you?” Logan asked, an honest, pure note suddenly in his voice. She stared at him for a moment, lost, flashes of memory, of joy and laughter, of late nights, of blood and death and warmth and cold, filled her mind. She thought of things she never allowed herself to think about. She thought of Carmen. She thought of Skittles. She thought of her naiveté and willful ignorance. She thought of Henry. 

 “I thought he did. Or, he did for a time, and then he didn’t,” she murmured, the closest thing to the truth she could stand to say, and, perhaps, for the first time since they had met, that was enough.

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, October 2015

The Underground Bunker, Undisclosed Location, Alberta, Canada

For long periods of time, she wasn’t sure who she was. It had been so much more than last time, and she obviously knew why. His life had been unlocked, and when, once again, he touched her bare skin to save her, she almost wished he hadn’t. Not because of the onslaught of memories she was now working through, one by one, but because, now, she knew she couldn’t go back. She could never go back. The only way was forward, through the pain, through the heartache. No more living in shadows, no more pining for a life she wanted, but could not seize. No more. 

Charles had told her of Two Rivers, of the opportunity someone in her position might afford them. If they could get Smithfield there, if they could create an aggregate of the north American division of Trask, put most of them in one place, Charles might be able to use heavy artillery to take more than just a few important higher ups out, and that was something. And so, between his stints of helping Rogue once more work her way through the cloud of Logan’s likeness and memories and feelings and thoughts that had settled like a heavy fog in her brain, they began planning. Planning to betray, one more time. Planning to save lives, for Rogue, for the first time. And planning to kill, for all of them, for the hundredth time over.  

Logan didn’t know about Two Rivers, at least not about the details, not yet. Besides, he was otherwise distracted, as much as he had worried himself into a frenzy over her and the fact that she had absorbed him again, which she found mildly ridiculous. She had taken comfort in some of it--now she knew she wasn’t crazy for reliving memories that were over a hundred years old-- and, of course, a familiar voice had rejoined her in her mind, which she chose, despite the real Logan’s jealousy, to keep around.

Hello again, she had said to him when she had felt him listening, watching during one of the first mental work sessions with Xavier.

Marie, he murmured. 

Do I have to fill you in, or do you remember the past we shared? She asked quietly that first day. 

I remember. Trask. Transigen. Henry. Skittles...everything...he trailed off, and when he sensed her sadness at his reminder, he added, Unlike the real life bozo. Jeez. What’s a guy gotta do to get a drink of whiskey around here to deal with this neurotic asshole? 

She smiled faintly at this and whispered out loud, “I managed to pilfer three of his cigars for you. I hate them, but I’ll smoke them later for you anyway.” At that, she heard him chuckle in her mind. 

Damn, kid. I owe ya, he said, and she smiled to herself again.

I’ve missed you. I could have used you around for some of the worst of it, during the later years. 

I know, Marie. And I’m sorry, he sighed, before adding, think of me...like a plant in yer brain that needed a little waterin’. Anyway, this time around I got a lotta Miracle-Gro dumped on me, so y guess is I’ll be here for a long while, kid. If you’ll have me 

Of course, she had said simply, and that was that. 

--

A few weeks passed in relative peace as the snow started falling and the missions dwindled.  The underground bunker, however, also grew colder, and as it did the team grew more restless. Rogue had, for the most part, dealt with Logan’s memories--god, it took a long time to even halfway undress a woman in 1860; it took me only a few seconds when I made out with Carmen’s roommate in the alley behind Rave in 2007 --and now they were trying to assimilate to life underground. The cold though, Rogue could not tolerate, not without denouncing her southern core, and she had spent the last few days under a heap of blankets, moaning and complaining, soaking in the drama of it all. The real Logan was inclined to go out for long walks in the snow--the fucking masochist, Rogue had inwardly muttered, much to a snicker from inner Logan--while Rogue often told him to “fuck off,” especially when he joked about his healing factor waning within her if she was that susceptible to the cold.

During the day, often Logan and Storm were scouting, most recently returning over and over again to the Two Rivers area in order to assemble an accurate blueprint of the facility. During these times, Rogue often retreated inward for hours, until she was drawn back out of herself, always by the real Logan. He’d often invite her to eat in the “chow hall,” which was only a ten by ten room with a microwave and a metal shelf stocked with canned goods, and they would talk for a while, sometimes about their shared past, sometimes about the present. Never about the gap, though, the period of time which Rogue had taken to calling when she had been at Trask’s mercy, thoroughly alone.  

“You kids and those goddamn boy bands,” Logan had reminisced one day, and she rolled her eyes. 

“I hated boy bands. Give me a Nirvana album instead any day of the week”

“You liked Nirvana?” He scoffed at her, barely believing his ears.

“Like Nirvana. As in present tense. Just because I have no way to listen to them now doesn’t mean my taste in music goes to shit. You know...the going theory was that Kurt Cobain was a mutant.”

 At that, Logan had snorted in skepticism. “I thought that poor fucker had stomach issues that drove him insane and that’s how he killed himself.” 

“They think he had Crohn’s disease, yes. But...in regard to his music. They think he was...musically gifted beyond...what’s normal. I read it in a history textbook for a class you were supposed to be teaching but you kept skipping out on and Scott took over for. Pop Mutant Culture of the 20th Century? Ring a bell?”

“Hrmmph,” is all he had responded with that day.  

No matter their ultimately harmless disagreements, though, time passed, and she came to know the man in front of her as who he was now, instead of for who he had been. And it was interesting, because he was now complete somehow in a way he hadn’t been before. Wiser, even if he was still occasionally temperamental. More cautious, even if he was sometimes overly crass.

“Goddamnit, Rogue. I told ya to punch me!” He shouted at her from the old, fraying sparring mat they set up in the living room area every morning. 

“There’s nowhere for you to go but straight through that wall, sugar, and I am not going to be the one responsible for cavin’ this place in because your adamantium-laced ass is too damn heavy!”

Another week passed, then another. And one day, after a particularly grueling mental session with Charles, she had decided on a little self-care, dystopian-future style, which meant she parked herself on the mattress of the so-called living room of the bunker that housed the coffee pot and the record player, listening to crappy jazz music from the poor selection of records and drinking lukewarm coffee from a chipped ceramic mug advertising the 1997 Estevan Summer Music Festival, although the temperature of the coffee was only her fault, as she had been too lazy to go over to the machine and make more. . 

She’d heard him before she saw him, his good senses still often available to her enough to detect eavesdropping when she felt it. He was lingering outside the entryway, and, finally, she’d invited him to come and sit with her. He seemed tired, but still careful with how he acted in front of her, and not for the first time in her life she wished he would relax. She smiled a bit as she took in the sight of him, still adorned in military-grade combat gear. He kept his hair cropped shorter now, even though she delighted in the fact that it managed to still stick up on the ends, as she regaled him with some of the things about the real world she missed most. 

“You know what I want more than anything right now?” she asked, and he turned to her from his spot on the mattress, now curious.

 “What’s that, kid?” he asked, a small smile on his face. 

“A Big Mac,” she said through a sad laugh. “I haven’t had one in…god. Years. A Big Mac and all the McDonalds fries I can eat,” she said, and he chuckled a bit in response. At this distance, she could feel the heat radiating off of him, and it felt good. Right. 

They made small talk for a few minutes until he seemed to realize that, despite the heat he was letting off, she was still shivering. 

“Rogue….” Logan muttered, and she looked at him hesitantly.

“Yer killin’ me, kid. Don’t…make it more than...fuck...just c’mere. Healing factor should be worth something,” he muttered, and reached for her, pulling her close to his body, so close she swore he had touched her, but he hadn’t. Logan was aware enough of his own body and perceptive enough of space to keep them both comfortable and in his or her own brain and still keeping the pull at bay, while still feeling incredibly close. 

“Hell,” she muttered involuntarily, breathing into him, her back leaning against his broad chest. Inner Logan had gone quiet--he always did when she was with the man, it seemed--and she didn’t seem to care about anything else as her shivering subsided and she finally murmured, “You are warm.”  

She could still feel his anxiety pulse through him, though. She could tell he wasn’t sure how to hold her, how to get it right, and she instinctively was taking his ungloved hand in her gloved one, pulling it around her thin shoulders so he enveloped her frame. He leaned into her instinctively then, as she gave in to the urge to massage his hands, the left and then the right, knowing full well about the phantom pain in his knuckles that came from using the claws so often. She knew about it all. How often the pain plagued him, always more in his left than his right. The sensitive spots and where they were. How a single touch there could turn him on, or off, with the slightest give or addition of pressure. Now, from his memories she had acquired alone, she pressed between the grooves of his warm hands, working out the kinks, harboring him and reveling in the quiet comfort she provided for them both.

She knew, now. She knew how he felt. Had known it since that day in South Africa, when she had absorbed him. She now understood the layers of it fully, the complexity behind his feelings. The pining early on, the self-shaming when his conscious mind would take over and remind himself she was too young. How he tried to fill the unfillable hole in his heart with the unobtainable Jean, a way to stay miserable, contaminating the open wounds of trauma with the infection of self-contempt. And, later, the rekindling. The curiosity about who Marie had become as an adult, the cloying questions he still had about her fidelity to Charles, to the cause. And...she also had sensed...the need to protect her. The sort of need that only came when you loved a person fiercely. He loved her, maybe always had. She knew that now. 

“Listen, kid...this thing between us-” he was stammering, his voice rough and deep as he struggled to form words, but she only shushed him, unwilling to break the spell. She knew. And there would come a time, a time soon, when he would know she knew, and he would know it back, too.

I love you, fiercely.

“Shh,” Rogue said, turning to stare up at him for a moment.

“Kid-” he began again, but then she was placing two gloved fingers to his lips, and he stopped talking, a childlike look of surprise playing on the lines of his face at how close she was willing to let herself be to him and for the motherly gesture she had chosen to silence him.

“Soon,” she murmured, and he only cocked an eyebrow in that signature way, a small knowing smile playing on his lips, before she changed the subject on him.

“Hey,” she said, and he looked at her with a question in his eyes.

 “You're in the habit of keeping me warm, you know that?” she whispered to him, and he snorted. 

“Am I?” he asked, and her smile widened 

“Do you remember…” she trailed off, still leaning into this warm body as she summoned up an old memory. “I think you might have been chaperoning or something….because before you left the first time, I ran into you at the homecoming dance,” she drifted off, and she could feel the realization also blossom within him as he recalled the memory they shared the normal way, he recalling his version and she recalling hers. 

“You all pretty in that midnight blue dress. Still jailbait, but lookin’ far older than what was good fer ya,” he chuckled, the sound of his laughter deep and rich in his chest, and she found herself blushing just slightly at the thought of Logan thinking of her like that, especially early on. 

“I thought you were annoyed by me,” she began, and he stared at her incredulously, forcing her back a bit to get a better look at her. 

“What?! Hell no, kid. What made ya think that?” he tried, before she interrupted his interruption.

“If you’d let me finish…” she began again, to another laugh from him. “I was frustrated, probably about some stupid teenager shit, and I was flustered, still dealing with you and your senses, and I went outside, only to bump into the person who had caused all this trouble in the first place,” she said through a smile, which he returned.

“I believe I recall the fact that I told ya I was headedout there, kid,” he said, and she shook her head, pressing on.

“OK, but, I genuinely forgot you were out there. Cross my heart. And we were talking, about the dance, mostly, and the stars, too, and, that night, you lent me your jacket for a few minutes so we could finish our conversation,” she said through a grin. “I had the scent of you in my nose for weeks after you left.” 

At this, however, Logan frowned a little, growling as he collected her in his arms once more, and she realized he didn’t like how that particular story ended. 

“Shoulda never left, kid,” he finally muttered, squeezing her gloved hand tightly, and she said nothing, because, deep down, she knew it was the truth.

They had parted ways that night, awkwardly. She had squeezed his hand again through gloved fingers, he had cleared his throat, and then they had found their own rooms, separately. It wasn’t until a long while afterward, but eventually, inner Logan spoke up.

Fucker’s a coward, fer not kissin’ ya, he said, and, even in her exhaustion, she smiled widely. 

I told him to wait, she said. And he had just enough patience and just enough chivalry to listen for once. 

Inwardly though, inner Logan only continued to grumble.

Goddamn sonofabitch’s still a coward. Shoulda laid one on ya long ago.

You know you’re technically talking about yourself, right? Especially if you’re talking about things you should have done in the past? She playfully asked him, and he muttered something about “fuckin’ crazy doppelgangers, not a fuckin’ facsimile of that lame ass” before once more falling silent.  

Goodnight, Logan, she whispered to him still, just as she was falling into the throes of sleep. A moment’s pause, and then… 

Goodnight, Marie, he grumbled, much to her quiet, sleepy sigh of satisfaction.

--

The next day, on a rare day off, she was once again shivering under a pile of blankets, trying to put off inner Logan’s constant insistence to play him in chess for the twentieth time, in which she would surely lose once more. I told ya kid, attack the middle game and lose pieces wisely! We can work on this! Just as inner Logan promised he wouldn’t cheat by reading her mind, the real life version had stomped into the living room, looking like a man on a mission. He was grinning ear to ear, and it was that sort of cocky, overly enthusiastic grin on his too-handsome face she sorta wanted to slap off him. Or kiss off him. One of those two.

“Wanna go on a walk?” he asked her, and she frowned deeply.

“What? Out there?” Marie asked, pointing upward to the surface of the earth, looking mildly disgusted at the thought. There had to be at least two feet of snow outside, from the last time she’d been out. Granted it had been on fewer occasions than he and Storm, but still.

“It’s not like its literal hell outside, Marie. It’s just snow,” Logan pressed, but Rogue retorted with a crisp, comeback of “Tell that to Dante and his ninth circle.” 

Still though, after a little more nagging and a promise to help bundle her up that sounded appealing to Rogue, if only for the potential closeness to Logan that the process would offer, which he did deliver on, a half hour later they were walking in the brilliant white expanse of snow, the mountains dwarfing them in the distance. She felt slightly juvenile as she trailed behind Logan, her smaller feet settling into the footprints he had already carved out of the icy drifts with his much-larger boots.

But the air was sharp and wild, and even though she was still cold, she watched in awe at life around them. A cardinal’s call. The trickling of a nearby stream. Even the sound of the wind as it sang through the valley. As she let out one steamy breath and watched as he did the same, she even found herself appreciating Logan’s fairly pale skin flush slightly some places from the low temperature. He actually had a scarf and winter gloves on right now, a rare sight to behold on Logan, and his disposition was cheery edging on jolly. It was a disconcerting feeling somewhat, but Rouge found herself leaning into it nevertheless, holding on to every infectious moment.

They walked for about a half of a mile or so in a quiet sort of peace, Logan helping her over rocks and sticks and other various obstacles, bringing out a rarer more gentleman-like side of him, the side she’d seen from the older, more antiquated memories. She could tell he was still a bit surprised to learn she was still clumsy, despite her acquired super strength. We gotta work on yer coordination during the next sparring’ session, kid. This is goddamn ridiculous, he pretended to complain, even though she knew he was savoring each trip, each stumble because every time she would fall she would fall into him. He was always where she was, or where she was going to be. He could anticipate that, apparently, and the pace of his heartbeat would increase a few ticks every time it happened, alongside her own. And as they cleared another foothill, and the view opened up once more to showcase the snowy pines and winding creek that carved a path between the mountains, she simply was forced to admire everything again, until she added, out of the blue, “So you grew up somewhere out here?” 

She had a few of his childhood memories. Memories of toboggans and what the Canadians called toques and a childhood friend named Rose. Rogue also had memories from the animal, memories of hunger, half-way starving after his escape from Stryker, living animalistically off the land. Both times, he’d been reborn, all out here, among the Canadian wilderness.  

For a while, he remained silent, until he finally responded. 

“It is strange being back here with you. In this place,” Logan offered.

“Where we met,” Rogue immediately retorted through a devilish grin. That got him, as he turned back around to playfully respond in a verbal sparring match

“Yeah, you a little spitfire trying to get me to cart you around, headed God knows where-” he began, until she interrupted.

“Didn’t see you objectin’ all that much, in the end-” she playfully offered, and he threw her the most adorable truly insulted pout she had ever seen on his face. 

Jesus christ. Give me a fuckin’ break, inner Logan muttered at the saccharine nature of their banter, but Rogue only mentally shushed him, before focusing on the real thing. 

“Like you left me much of a choice,” Logan was saying, turning to face her head on, and then she felt herself smiling as she noticed it, just barely, as it caught the sunlight. Something that shouldn’t be there, that couldn’t be there, but was obvious as this day was clear. 

“What?” Logan asked, a note of paranoia growing in his voice.

Then, her hand was magnetized to him as she stepped forward and gracefully and nimbly ran a gloved hand through his hair, along the temple. 

Gray in his hair. He was obviously put off by it, his vanity fairly in check but still relatively wounded, as he was basically a man that stayed perpetually flawless decade after decade. Then, however, the conversation turned more honest as they once again discussed her pulling him in Cape Town. She tried to console him, convince him she was alright, really, and then, a wild idea struck her, and she simply stared at him once more and told him a bit about his life. You loved ‘Let It Be.’ I know, I know. You hated the Beatles, but you love that song. You hated the smell of turpentine, but loved the smell of diesel exhaust, probably from being on the road so much. Ooh! And also the smell of freshly-opened Polaroid film, the only kind of pictures you liked to take. Instant gratification. Sounds like you. Heh. You also looked remarkably good in a bowler hat, on the rare occasion you had to wear one, and...Logan...listen to me. You couldn’t save that little boy. The one in Vietnam.

Skin slippin’ off like a glove. The sky spitting an orange, toxic rain. The memory momentarily tore through them both. 

“It’s really fucked up that you know about that,” he finally said after some silence, and she simply looked at him, feeling the pity, the honesty, the truth, radiate around them both. No bullshit, no lies, no games. Not anymore. Not as far as she could help it. 

“I know,” she whispered empathetically. 

“And I still don’t have shit on you,” she heard him murmur, and then she was dangerously close to the past once more, to all the ways she had betrayed her kind, to all the people she had hurt. It was then she felt the drug that was numbing it all right now, the opiate that was Logan’s presence in her mind and his preacher by her side, falter slightly in its ability to drown out all the rest.

Nothing erases it. No matter what I do, it persists... I can’t undo it.  

No one’s asking you to undo anything, kid. You can’t erase it. The pain. No one can. Instead, you just learn to... live with it.  

This mental exchange happened so fast, she wasn’t sure it was real for a few moments, until she realized Logan was waiting for her to say something… maybe even share something about what had happened to her.

She sighed, then, still responding with a dejected, “Most of it…my past...isn’t worth knowing,” 

She could tell he immediately rejected this idea, choosing to nonverbally voice his disagreeing with her. He instinctively, slowly moved closer,  and she felt the leather glove of his hand below her chin, tilting her head upward to look at him. 

Hazel eyes. Dark brown hair, so dark it was almost black. The beginning of crow’s feet. Muttonchops. A light scar near his right eye, one small scant white line she’d never asked him about, but now knew was from a sledding accident when he was six. The scars before his powers manifested, they never healed, she had realized a few weeks back.  

He was still staring at her, and she realized only after the fact that he had spoken. 

“I couldn’t disagree more, baby.” 

And then he was leaning in more, so, so close, closer than he ever had, his mouth lingering just beyond her ear, as her pulse rapidly fluttered within her, every neuron, every fiber, alit with want, need, as he whispered his next words.

“All I wanna know about is what makes you tick. There ain't one single part of you I don't wanna get my hands on to figure it out, either, and that’s the goddamn truth.”  

And then, there it was, the deeper understanding that ran hard and dark through them both. She was absolutely in synchrony with him, just enough of his instincts left in her to speak the same base language. He wanted her. Desperately. In every way. He wanted to fuck her on every surface of that bunker, out here in the wild, and, most importantly, over and over again in his bed. He wanted her as his mate. As his partner. Most likely for life. She looked at him, eyes wide in mild overwhelming fear at how intense it all felt, and she was lost for a few moments, before he grounded her, leaning in, breathing in her scent. And then she was moving out of instinct, just barely tilting her neck, baring herself for him, knowing now that when she exposed the thin, delicate skin of her carotid, centimeters away from his mouth and, despite their normal-looking appearance, two incredibly, inhumanly sharp canines, centimeters away from every animalistic urge to rut and fuck and claim he had, it meant something. She watched it happen, watched his eyes go dark, watched his body language change in a quick ripple of energy, as he gently and evenly pressed his teeth and lips to the exposed skin of her neck, biting just slightly. Not enough to mark her, but enough so that it hurt. She sighed in a mixture of pleasure, pain, ecstasy. For a few seconds, she felt nothing but the wetness of his tongue sliding across her neck, soothing the bite, the sound of his growls still in her ears as his hand snaked up to cradle the back of her head posessively, but then it was too much, she was seeing too much, newer things, recent things, as soon as the night before, as soon as now, as she felt his feelings. His arousal. His lust. 

“Sugar…” she warned, coming to her senses a bit more, but he could only growl in response, and she could still feel her pulse in his mouth, and his feral urges flowing more quickly into her, and her skin greedily lapping up more than its fill.

“Logan!” she said more loudly, and then she felt him using all his strength to rip away from her. He was barely standing, woozy once again on the spot, like he’d been in Cape Town, except for this time he was about to lose consciousness from contact with her skin and not a case of whiskey. She bit her lip in anticipation, scared of how he might react, what he might say, even as the residual feelings of his lust radiated through her. Was that what arousal felt like for him? Because...holy...shit… She’d have sex all the time too, if it felt like that. 

That pretty much sums it up, darlin’. Except fer maybe amp up the volume by twenty when, you know, things are good and hard.  

“Fuck, darlin’,” meanwhile the real Logan was saying, and when he saw the profuse beginning of tears in her eyes, he frowned deeply, immediately responding by pulling her close once more, telling her quickly with his body language first: I am not afraid. I will not leave. He pulled her close his chest, not so much unlike last night, before she had made a bumbling mess of things today, out here in the snow. She leaned into him easily, like she had always belonged there, and he buried the bridge of his nose into her soft hair for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured through another few tears, and she realized she was apologizing for everything. For ever taking him in, for ever stealing his power. For being there in that bar in Laughlin, for stowing away in his truck. For fleeing to New York. For falling into the hands of Transigen. For losing...for losing Skittles. For being responsible for the deaths of so, so many. 

“I’m sorry for all of it,” she echoed, the sound of the words muted as she spoke them into the wool of his coat. 

“It’s ok, baby,” he mumbled into her hair, not truly understanding, but stroking the brown and white tendrils all the same.  For a while he held her like that, both of their boots now damp and icy cold in the thick snow, until her heartbeat slowed to a steady rhythm, until she was completely herself, and until he regained his strength, too.

“We’re gonna figure this thing out, Marie,” he finally added, his grip tightening slightly over her gloved hand. “I swear to fucking God we will.”

Pinwheel Universe: Original/Revised Timeline, May 1973

Westchester, New York

Things weren’t fuckin’ goin’ well. Paris had been a clusterfuck. As Logan struggled to stay conscious, mind whipping back and forth between past and future, a surge of pain flowing through him, he’d learned after the fact that that selfish Lensherr bastard had tried to kill Mystique altogether. The fuckin’ charade had made everyone look like goddamn animals, and they’d lost Raven in the throngs of people screaming, running for the lives. All of it had been caught on film, and now, things seemed worse than ever before. 

They’d spent the flight home in silence, Charles sleeping for most of it, or so fuckin’ gloomy no one could start a conversation with him. Logan was exhausted, but sleep was again erratic. He’d been sleeping on a fuckin’ jet for years now, but for some reason couldn’t on the private charter they’d hired to fly back to Westchester. He’d knocked back several glasses of expensive bourbon, savoring the taste, it bein’ years since he’d had any decent liquor, trying to sort out what had happened.

I just saw someone who’s gonna bring me a lot of pain someday.

He hadn’t expected to run into fuckin’ Stryker, of all people, and it had been scary as fuck to feel displaced, images of the Bhuddist temple suddenly flashing in his mind, the telltale pain of claws, adamantium this time, rippin’ through the knuckles, the feeling of being restrained, and then, he was back in Paris, and everything had gone to fuckin’ hell. Erik estranged. Mystique missing. The timeline...

For that one, he needed another glass of bourbon, which he indulged in, generously. How long had it been since they’d sent him back? Two days? Three? Had time passed at the same rate back in 2023? The flight to Europe and back had thrown him off balance, and he felt himself slipping from the life he’d come from. How quickly you get used to a little fuckin’ convenience, he thought bitterly through a frown. Another glance to Charles, who was asleep, fitfully, in a chair, had him realizin’ how much they’d all set themselves back. How in the hell were they gonna find Mystique now? Logan was sure she was still dead set on killin’ Trask, and now it seemed Lensherr was dead set on killin’ Raven.

This thing was likely fuckin’ over. Even if Raven didn’t touch a hair on Trask’s head, Logan was doubtful that what had transpired at Paris was likely to have a positive effect on the future. He knew he had made a goddamn mess of it, although he’d had some help along the way. He frowned, looking back over to Charles. He knew when a man had lost hope, had seen it hundreds of times, during war and peace, and he saw the same look about Charles now. You could practically smell it on him. Why the hell had he thought this was gonna be easy? Why the hell had he thought he’d just stumble in on some younger version of the same man, with the same wisdom only decades of experience could offer? This kid was lost, terrified, numbing the pain of bein’ a mutant with a cocktail of Hank’s drugs and every sorta booze he could get his hands on. It took one to know one after all.

He fuckin’ assumed Westchester was always an answer, sometimes to the problems in Logan’s life he wasn’t even aware of. It was a place of hope, and Logan couldn’t guess how many times he had taken advantage of it, advantage of them, just to get the dump of dopamine he needed to make through another goddamn week. And even when Logan couldn’t set foot in the goddamn place out of grief or regret or shame, it was still always there, that is, until it wasn’t. But just because Westchester had been restored, just because it wasn’t overrun by the government, used as an experimentation lab, torturing mutants and doin’ God knows what else to ‘em in the bowels of the building, didn’t mean this Westchester was the same. The truth was...the place wasn’t nothin without the man with the ideology behind it. Logan was realizin’ that now, although much too late.

No one spoke on the car ride home, and it seemed like no one was gonna, until the turrets the mansion came into view. They had barely made it inside the door, when it seemed the God Logan didn’t believe in intervened, provin’ to the older mutant all over again that the man and the manor were inexplicably intertwined. Just past the table in the foyer, Charles’ legs buckled underneath him, and he hissed in pain, barely able to even use his knees. Both Hank and Logan both immediately moved to help him, and McCoy was able to drag him over to the wall as Charles writhed in agony. 

“What happened? Why can’t he walk?” Logan was asking, over Charles moans.

“He needs his treatment,” Hank muttered. 

“Hank, I can hear them-” Charles was saying, and Logan took a step away from them both, instinctively giving them space in a moment not meant to be witnessed.

“-I know. It’s ok, we can make it stop-” Hank was saying. “I’ll go get it,” Hank muttered, and then he was racing up the stairs, leaving Logan staring at Charles, who was struggling to breathe, clutching his head, moaning. 

Logan didn’t know what to fuckin’ say to the younger man, and found himself mutterin’ uncomfortably from the spot where he still stood, “Hey, hey. Pull yourself together. It’s not over yet.”

And then, Charles’ breathing slowed, and he stared Logan dead in the eye, and Logan could feel somethin’ real cold pass over him. Almost like...almost like before, some outside force, just barely pressing on the surface of his brain.

“You don’t believe that,” Charles said, staring at Logan knowingly, and Logan stopped, frustration gone, as he stared back at Charles.

“How do you know?” Logan mumbled under his breath.

“As these go, this comes back,” Charles managed to breathe, hands shaking as he clutched his head again, closing his eyes. “They all come back.”

Logan ripped his glance away from Charles, turning away and staring at the other side of the foyer. How many goddamn times had he strolled in here, fucking’ clueless...He glanced down at his boots, the thick persian rugs, listeneing to Charle’s irregular heartbeat. Everythin’ in Logan should be tellin’ him it was over, if only because things had a way of never quite workin’ out the way they wanted, the way they deserved. Call him a cynic, but he’d laid eyes on too many dead, mutilated children. Decaying bodies. Maybe...maybe their lot was always meant for this kinda faint. Humanity, re-correcting itself. 

But...he wasn’t back in that temple. Not yet. And the world wasn’t splittin’ down the middle. Not yet. Maybe, ‘Ro and the others were still holdin’ them off. Maybe... 

“Look. I’m…” he finally sighed. “I’m still here,”  Logan finished, turning back to Charles. At this point, though, the younger man was already ripping off his jacket, obviously fuckin’ starved for the drugs that made him feel more human. Meanwhile, Logan pressed on.  

“She’s still out there…” he said frowning. He stared at the younger man intently now, realizing what it would have to come to, what he needed Charles to do. 

“But we need your help...Charles. Not like this. I need you. We can’t find Raven. Not without your powers,” Logan said, and, finally, Charles looked at Logan once more, doubt and fear in his eyes. And, for a moment, they simply stared at each other as Hank rushed back into the room.

“I added a little extra because you missed a dose,” Hank was saying, and then...Charles. Starin’ at the needle, starin’ at Logan. And then, he thought of Rogue. He thought of Hank. He thought of all the people he’d lost. He thought of how their lives ended and for what means. He pictured ‘em, one by one, still glaring at Charles with intensity. 

“Charles,” Logan said once again, still from a distance. Still though, the man ignored him,  grabbing the needle from Hank, lining it up with his vein, tears in his eyes as he shot another glance over to Logan.

It’s over without you. 

And then, the needle discarded, on the floor, and with it, a new, quiet throb of hope.

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, October 2015

Two Rivers Research Facility, Alberta, Canada

“Rogue, I’m just going to assume there is more you’re willing to share and you’re being…hesitant. It’s that or you have wasted our time, which is indefensible.”

She stood there, the feeling of the inhibitor collar heavy on the back of her neck. Her thoughts were racing, even as she shot a glance to Logan, who grimaced in pain, reduced to his knees, as six men held him down, blood seeping from a gunshot wound in his calf, stubbornly un-healing.

“Charles is in the sky, that’s all I know,” she said quietly, evenly. Smithfield, the greying man, the man in the cowboy boots and ugly pinstripes, sneered, and a profound anger burned in her eyes that she tried not to show. She’d been abused, beaten, and coerced by this man, the head of the Canadian division of Trask Industries, and the one she had directly reported to for the past five years for intelligence information. Year after year, one by one, she’d been forced to pass along just intel for Trask to pick off some of the people she cared for. For years, she lived her life in misery, until most of her team was gone. It wasn’t until Hank, until Charles, until Logan, that she had been offered a choice,a chance at redemption. Two Rivers was supposed to be about undoing some of the horrible pain she had caused, undoing some of the hurt and anger and bloodshed caused by that fearful, selfish decision years ago.  

You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid of your powers, afraid to get close to anybody.

Yeah, I do. 

I want to be able to touch people, Logan. A hug. A handshake. A kiss. 

That want, that need, had cost her everything. And was still costing her. She looked over to him, and his hazel eyes were pained as he stared at her. She could tell he was trying to reassure her, even as she heard Smithfield order the soldiers to lift him up. And then, one of them was driving a knife deep into the right side of Logan’s chest, and he was snarling in pain, and she watched him writhe against the men who had to struggle to hold him down just to drag the knife through an intestine, a stomach, a liver, toward the heart. He was going to die. Oh, god. He was going to die.

Just think about what I said, Rogue.

Marie.

Marie. 

“You sure that’s it?” 

She could not find her words. There was nothing else to say, and, again, Logan screamed in pain as the soldier twisted the knife. She could sense him losing consciousness, before fighting against it, growling as he gritted his teeth and spat blood in Smithfield’s face when the man bent over to try to procure an answer from the mutant. 

The man did not hide the disdain, the contempt on his face as he glared at Logan, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his sleeve, before standing, looking back at Rogue. Meanwhile, the soldier had left the knife still embedded in Logan’s chest, and he growled again in pain. He was hurting, always hurting, around her. 

It’s about claimin’ you, isn’t it? You know...if I had you, there’d be no end. 

She looked to Logan once more, to Smithfield, to the man in the white lab coat.

Everyone, always hurting around her. Everyone, dying at her hand. And, what was left? For her, nothing, apart from a few happy, fleeting glimpses, stolen moments of touch while her boots grew damp in the frigid snow. 

Marie, don't do it. The voice inside her head she was surprised to hear, since the inhibitor collar was firmly in place. 

Three more children. Three more lives I can save. 

Marie...I’m begging you. Don’t...do this. Don’t be their puppet again. Don’t surrender to them.

“Still nothing, Rogue?” the man was shouting. “Should we bring the children in here and-”

Marie-

But don’t you see, sugar? This is the first time I own my actions. I control my future, my fate. 

Just then, she took advantage of the man who held her arm who had relaxed his grip, kneeing him in the groin quickly, her hands closing on the inhibitor collar on the back of her neck. 

Marie! Goddamnit, woman! No! the voice screamed from inside her mind, but she ignored it once more, yanking the collar off, but not before she felt the poison seep into her spine. She could feel the real Logan’s eyes on her, but she couldn’t bear to look at him as she gritted her teeth in pain and dodged left, using her bare hand to grab the man in the white lab coat by his uncovered wrist.

Malcolm Goldbach. Head scientist for Two Rivers. Designer of the facility. As the information flowed into her brain, as the scientist began screaming inside her head as she ended his life, she was then throwing her body into another soldier, now with a strength that sent him flying across the room. She heard gunfire, felt pain, but still she seized the portable reader off the body in the white lab coat and punched in a code. Just then, she watched Logan’s collar unsnap, and in one overwhelming moment, Marie watched as Logan ripped the knife out of his chest and began mowing men over as fast as he could, even as a rain of new bullets poured down on him.  

They had run. They had freed children. She had watched Logan cradle the head of the little girl with the brown curls, unconscious in his arms, as the portal opened. She had helped the boys through, and then had stopped short, staring at the man she had just started to know again, the man she now had to leave.  

“Come ON!” he roared. 

“No,” she said simply.

“Marie!” 

“It’s done, baby,” she said, her voice struggling, while the world, the awful, awful world they lived in fell apart around them. Outside, she could feel the air tighten, the heavy metal falling toward the earth, the promise of destruction on the wind. She had told him she loved him. Always had. He protested, snarled, heart breaking in front of her, and then...he was gone.

She stumbled forward in grief, fell to her knees. She could hear the footsteps coming for her--let them have me, let death finally have me--she thought, until six awful words crowded her brain. She’d missed something. Something important.

“The antidote, now!” a guard shouted. “And a tranquilizer." 

No, she thought, as two men tackled her to the floor. And then, a needle once more into her spine and voices, fading voices, above her.

“Don’t you see, you idiot? She’s a goddamn double agent. Med Bay B, take her underground, now. Her knowledge is invaluable!”

No, no, no. Let me die, please. I can’t. Not now. Not again.

Above them, rumbling. Above them, the sound of the Blackbird rocketing forward, out of the atmosphere, hope eroding on the spot. And then, around her, her world shrinking once again. Her chance at her own life disappearing before her very eyes. All of it, fading to black.

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original/Revised Timeline, May 1973

Westchester, New York

Everything looked the same, to the point where Logan was practically lost in time. The same hallways, stretching in several directions, a steel maze. The same circular doors, the same bright fluorescent lighting. It felt like centuries ago that Logan had fled down the hallways, lost and confused, assuming he was back in a fucking lab again, being experimented on. He’d stolen some clothes, found his way upstairs, had bumbled into Charles’ office, and realized where he actually was. Where he had first met Charles. 

The younger version of the man had agreed to come down here, to face his powers. Logan was still skeptical, but as he glanced around the hallways cautiously, the smells alone told him that it had been a long long time since anyone had made use of this basement. Suddenly, his dubiety grew.

“When was the last time you were down here?” he glanced at Charles and Hank.

“The last time we went looking for students,” Hank suggested flatly. 

“A lifetime ago,” Charles murmured, staring at the door as it scanned his retinas.

An outdated, clunky voice greeted him. “Welcome, Professor,” they all heard it say, and a chill shot down Logan’s spine. 

Logan wasn’t a telepath. Not even close, so that world, the world they lived in had always mystified him. Sure, he knew a person’s tells. He could sense if they were lyin’, all by an uptick of their heart or a change in their smell. But that was all the body, all the outward signs of a person betrayin’ themselves. But...what Rogue, due to the nature of her powers, used to talk about sometimes.... Even what Jean had experienced...the intricacies of a person’s thoughts, memories, their minds. Marie had once called it “walking through a cloud.” It never had made sense to Logan, but he’d respected her metaphor nevertheless. 

It wasn’t ever real to him until he saw Cerebro working. It had been overwhelming, the first time he’d been down there, puttin’ out a cigar with his hand as the door shut behind him. This time was just like the last, and before Logan could even blink, the room changed, evolved, and suddenly hundreds of thousands of lives were illuminated before them all. Red pinpricks of life, all mutants. It was shocking, the fuckin’ difference. What the Cerebro on the jet had been picking up lately, only small handfuls, tiny clusters of mutants left, stood in stark juxtaposition to everything, to the thriving, pulsing reality before him now. 

Then though, pressure. A surge of energy, Charles struggling. Logan could sense it in the younger man, and then the dials were whirling, spiking, and Logan could hear himself saying the professors’ name…

Then. Circuits blown. Sparks flying as Hank muttered something checking the generators and disappeared, and Charles slumped forward, a desperate, tired look in his eyes. It wasn’t workin’. It had overwhelmed the younger man, quickly.

“It’s not the machinery, is it?” Logan muttered, glancing down at Charles’ trembling hands, the answer as clear as could be to both men.

Charles was shaking his head. “I can’t do this...my mind…” he trailed off

“Yes you can,” Logan pressed, brows furrowing.

“It won't take it,” Charles stammered.

“You’re just a little rusty-” Logan began, before Charles interrupted.

“You don’t understand. It’s not a question of being rusty. I can flip the switches, I can turn the knobs, but my power comes from here,” Charles muttered gesturing to his head. “It comes from…” then, a shaking hand over his heart. “And it’s broken.”

Logan only blinked at him once or twice. A broken heart. A broken body. In more ways than one, Logan didn’t doubt Charles understood the notion of what it meant to be broken. A spine severed. A man he loved, trusted, betraying him. But for a man who could heal, Logan guessed he understood more about what healin’ meant, and about what not quite healin’ right meant too. Pieces of his innermost self severed, and the way it radiated outward, playin’ on his ability to control his own power. The way it had affected the choices he’d made, all that he’d done since that moment at Two Rivers. Logan knew already that in this timeline, that timeline, any time or space, heartache was always in the cards for people like them. For people like Sable. And Storm. And Charles. They had all survived, had found a way forward, but they’d all healed wrong. Some things, you just didn’t come back from. 

Meanwhile, Charles maneuvered his wheelchair to turn around, giving up on Cerebro entirely.

“I feel like one of my students. Helpless. It was a mistake coming down here, it was a mistake freeing Erik. This whole thing has been one bloody mistake! I’m sorry, Logan, but they sent back the wrong man.”

Wasn’t that the fucking truth, Logan thought through a slight frown. All these thoughts in his goddamn mind, but always helpless to find the words in English to communicate them. But… wait. 

He held a link to the future right now. Kitty was holdin’ him here, right? And when he’d grown “rocky” he’d felt the goddamn adamantium, and felt the cold concrete slab his future body was still lyin’ on.

The wrong man. 

Maybe. Just maybe. Logan stared at the middle of Cerebro for a moment, glancing up at the looming, cavernous space, before finally answering.

“Yer right. I am,” Logan said carefully, glancing at Charles again. They weren’t fucked. Not yet. And to consider that they were was to seal their fate. Everything rode on this moment. Everything rode on Charles understanding he was worth more than what he perceived himself to be. Logan was the link between past and present, always fucking had been. 

One winter, it was so cold, the beer froze in the barrels.

What? You don’t think women can be lawyers?

Storm would kill you if she knew you snuck alcohol into the dance.

Logan! Logan! What did you bring me this time?

Logan shut his eyes tightly, clearing his head for a moment.

You’re going to have to do for me what I once did for you. Lead me. Guide me. 

One more glance around the empty room, and then he turned on his heel, deliberately striding over to Charles, making up his mind with every step, until he was right at the entrance to Cerebro, right in front of Charles’ chair. 

“Actually it was supposed to be you. But I was the only one who could physically make the trip. And I don’t know how long I got here…” he trailed off, glancing down at Charles again. “But I do know that a long time ago…”  Logan paused, realizing what he was saying and smirked as he corrected himself. 

“Actually, a long time from now…” Logan murmured, before leaning on either side of Charles’ chair to stare the man straight in the eye.  “I was your most helpless student. And you unlocked my mind. You showed me what I was. You showed me what I could be. I don’t know how to do that for you. Yer right. I don’t….” Logan dropped off, and then, he smiled. 

“But I know someone who might,” Logan muttered. God, please let this fuckin’ work. 

“Look into my mind,” Logan said clearly, and watched as the younger man responded with skepticism and a shake of his head. 

“You saw what I did to Cerebro. You don’t want me inside your head,” Charles said naively, and Logan couldn’t help but smirk once more.

“There’s no damage you could do that hasn’t already been done, trust me. C’mon,” Logan urged, looking at Charles with an unwavering stare. And then, Logan could tell Charles was giving in, tired and exhausted from trying, but still willing to stumble forward. 

Slowly, the younger man lifted his hand, putting two fingers to Logan’s temple. Logan braced himself, he always did before a telepath read his mind, keepin’ a real tight hold of the animal, trying to relax enough to not barrage the younger man with all that he’d seen and done. All the bloodshed. All the heartache. All the pain.

But then, like a fuckin’ horror show, memory after memory surging between the two men. Memories Logan barely was aware of. Memories of him screamin’ underwater during Stryker, memories of living like a goddamn feral animal in the wilderness, memories of screaming as his skin burned off in Nagasaki, memories of Evie and Irene, memories of Xavier’s and killing Jeannie and findin’ hope again in Rogue. Memories of the war, of broken bodies at North Point. Of a quiet, hopeless Storm. And then Charles was pullin’ away, letting go, tears in his goddamn eyes, a look of disgust and defeat on his face. 

“You poor, poor man,” he was muttering, and Logan barely contained a growl.

“Look past me,” he snarled, shaking off the tumultuous outpouring of the past, but Charles was shaking his head. 

“No, no. I don’t want your suffering. I don’t want your future!” he screamed in Logan’s face desperately, and Logan held on, staring at the younger man who had still not taken his hand off of Logan’s temple. 

“Look past my future. Look for your future,” Logan growled, and then he could feel it. The settling, Charles calming down as, once more, he nudged his way into Logan’s mind. This time, instead of bracing, Logan also calmed, instead of restraining things, simply let them be. Charles’ breathing steadied as Logan murmured “That’s it” again and again, and then Logan’s mind was blank, simply a fuckin’ vessel, and somehow he could feel the slab he was lying on in the future and the pulse of Kitty’s power holdin’ him there as much as he could feel the steel floor under his boots and the metal of either handrest of Charles’ wheelchair in the past. He stood there, patiently, quietly, until the feeling of bein’ used resided, and Charles was pulling away, staring at Logan with a complete change on his face, a knowing, steady look. A look of awe. 

“Find what you were looking for?” Logan asked knowingly, finally standing up once more to his full height as Charles continued to stare at him. Logan smelled Hank coming down the hall, and heard him murmur just beyond them, “Power’s back on."

And then, Charles was murmuring, “Yes. Yes it is.” And Logan gave him a nod. They both had their answers. 

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, January 2016

Former Site of Cerebro, Westchester, New York

Stars are out.

They're nice, I guess. Do you know any of them? The constellations?

Nah, kid.

“Please…” 

Silent tears fell down her cheeks, as they jerked the chains around the mutant’s wrists, dragging him forward, closer to her bare hands. He was snarling, desperate to get away from her. He looked a lot more like a feral than Logan did, claws and fangs and different body structure, but with the inhibitor collar on the back of his neck, he was rendered weak, exhausted. 

“I’ve got a little girl, alright? A wife,” he pled with Rogue through a thick Boston accent, and she frowned, shaking her head slightly against the restraints, trying to tell him with her eyes she wasn’t to blame. Every time she spoke, she was shocked with electricity, and like a simple rat, she’d been conditioned not to speak. Meanwhile, her hands were bound in stationary cuffs. There was nothing she could do as they pushed the other mutant toward her. She knew why, of course, they’d chosen this one. He had a healing factor.

They intended to keep torturing her endlessly, until they extracted the information they needed.

Just...be ready. He’s gonna fight you once you absorb him, Logan warned her, trying to prepare her for the onslaught.

I can’t- I can’t do this anymore, she sobbed in her head, and she felt the imprint of Logan’s voice trying to brace her it, just as her bare fingers made contact with the fur on the feral man’s skin. He suddenly was rendered immobile, frozen in pain, as his life-force, the thirty years of memories, inundated her. Flashes of a little girl, a beautiful mutant woman, a two story bungalow in a Boston neighborhood before the war and a job at a bank, flowed into her head, along with the death and destruction. The last six months spent on the run, practically starving, huddling in lean-tos. The government finally catching up with them, and the little girl being ripped away from him, her crying the sharp, piercing wails of a young child. And, after, the pain, the regret, the torture he’d endured. All of it, now hers to feel, hers to remember, as they both screamed as she ended his life.

Slowly, she violently came to, gasping for breath, rolling over and spitting blood to the floor. The inhibitor collar was currently on, it always was during torture session, and she wouldn’t feel the now-familiar pain of healing until either she gave them something, or was on the brink of death. So far, it had always been the latter. She huddled on the ground on her hands and knees, trying to stay conscious, but, still, her memories, the others’ memories, his memories, crowded her brain.

I intend to be a lawyer. 

A lawyer, eh?

What? You don’t think women can be lawyers?

Daddy! Daddy! Ida screamed, running into his arms.

Hey, rascal. How are you today?

So what kind of a name is Rogue?

Marie, stay awake. You could die if you lose consciousness, Logan snarled from inside her head.

They won’t let me die. They need me. 

“For the last time, Ms. D’Ancanto. The location of the Canadian base.” 

She looked up to him then, through hazy vision, savoring the frustration in the man’s voice. This was her third handler in a month. They each had a week to get something out of her, and, if they didn’t, they were exterminated. At this thought, she only grinned through bloody teeth. She’d never be their lapdog, their fuckingbitch again. She wouldn’t fetch, no matter what kind of bone they threw her way. It was all, and that meant it was nothing.

“Fuck. You,” she hissed, and, in his frustration, the masked man grabbed her by the hair and threw her back to the floor before drawing his gun and shooting her square in the stomach. She screamed in pain as her head bounced of the cement of the concrete cell, and the handler once more spit in the floor beside her 

“Let the stomach acid eat your insides for the next hour or so, see if then you remember anything, any fucking thing, and then we’ll see about turning the inhibitor off. Fuckin’ animal,” he hissed, and left her alone in the room. She whimpered, her hands bathed in red, cradling the gunshot wound in her belly as she lie on one side, his voice remaining close.

You know the goddamn drill, kid. Focus on somethin’ else. Anything but the pain, Logan snarled from inside her mind.

“S-something else,” she said weakly, her eyes fluttering shut once more. Organs corroding, the hot, wet feeling of her insides, her head light already from blood loss. 

So what kind of a name is Rogue? 

I intend to be a lawyer. 

Daddy! 

 L-Logan? she weakly thought in her head 

Marie.

Don’t leave me. 

Never, kid. Never again. 

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, August 2023

China

There was a sense of it in the air, somehow. A knowing of the end, a bracing for what was to come. If she listened, sometimes she could hear it. The voices would speak to her, the different currents the atmospheric changes in pressure all its own language. She could sense it coming, but knew it was not yet. And yet they had been out here for long hours now, on high alert, at their agreed upon positions. The night wind howled against the Himilayan mountains, but she was not bothered. She had honor, and she had courage. She would happily die protecting a new future, a new chance at life. And out amidst the elements that had helped raise her, she felt safe. Certainly safer than inside, where Logan unfortunately was. 

She frowned once more, turning her back to the harsh wind. They were facing this as she hadn’t guessed they would. Apart. But, even as she had felt his warm breath in her ear as they had said their final goodbyes, her body savoring the comfortable and familiar feel of him, soaking in everything she was about to lose, she realized maybe it was as it should be. They were soldiers first, friends second, and lovers far down the list. When called to duty, they followed orders. And that was that. 

Storm, Bishop, to the front door. They’re have been complications. 

Something frigid seized up inside Storm as she immediately turned on her heel toward the temple, and she realized Bishop was right behind her. She glanced to the taller man, who had a long history of being a vicious rebel, fighter, and upholder of the mutant cause, as he looked at her somberly. 

Then, the temple door that Logan had closed only a few hours before was slowly opening, and Storm knew to expect the worst. A desperate, worried Bobby shoving open the door, a haunted Erik tailing him, an urgency in his eyes Storm hadn’t seen in years, and then the professor in his chair, his face somber. 

“Professor! What is this?” Storm asked hurriedly, but then Charles was quickly giving her his memories, showing what had transpired inside the temple. Images of Logan thrashing, of his claws extended, of him injuring Kitty. Of the seeping blood, and then, of Bobby’s plan. Storm’s breath caught in her throat as she turned to Bobby.

“You knew?” she asked. Rogue, alive. Rogue, alive. Oh, god. Oh god. If Logan knew. If he knew...

“They were unable to extract her, Ororo. But now they have me. I will operate the jet, and Erik and Bobby will rescue her,” Charles said hurriedly.

“To use her,” Storm spat, but another look from Charles had Storm softening, realizing just how much was at stake. They were all being used now. Soldiers first, people second, Storm thought through a grimace. 

“Bishop,” Charles began, and then the man simply nodded, quietly entering the temple, obviously aware of his task to see to Kitty during the others’ absence. 

“Charles. Do you need me to-?” Storm began, but another quick shake of the older mutant’s head.

“You are our most powerful mutant. We need you at the wall,” Charles said softly, before hesitating, and then adding, “Any guilt about the past, about not being able to save Rogue, you must set aside, my dear.”  Storm understood immediately and nodded, swallowing the pain of what was happening once more.

“Go,” she said, throwing a bitter look at Bobby, whose motives Storm guessed were much more personal and less espoused to the greater cause. “We will tend to our stations and await your return,” she added, once more shoving off thoughts of how awful it was, how awful it would be if he could know. But...even if this worked and they found Rogue and all was not lost, he couldn't know, wouldn’t ever know. He slept, forever, now lost in time. 

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original/Revised Timeline, May 1973

Westchester, New York

Charles had found Raven, but at an airport headed anywhere. They had decided that they would try again in the morning, give it another go, as fatigued as they all were. Logan stumbled to a spare room, from the look of it an old student dorm, intent on a bottle of Charles’ whiskey and the pack of decent cigars he’d picked up in Paris. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been awake, really. He’d been dozing off and on during the plane ride back, but all of it, ever since that morning with Storm on the jet, had felt like one goddamn day. Constantly scheming, moving, running. 

Come to think of it, he’d been runnin’ for a long time now. Too damn long. And it had nothing to do with the fuckin’ war. He’d thought...well...he’d thought for a moment when he had her back in his life there’d be a future where they could be still. At peace. Maybe a cabin somewhere. Maybe at the edge of some Canadian lake, far away from everyone else. But, of course, that had been a foolish, naive hope, A blind hope from a man tired of runnin’, but unable to stay put in one place for very long either. He wasn’t good at stayin’ still and playin’ house. Every woman in his life that had meant something to him had proven that. Except for maybe Marie.

At this thought, Logan frowned, and snatched the lighter off the nightstand littered with spare change, the wallet with the fake ID, a glass and a nearly empty bottle. As the paper smoldered from the open flame, Logan snapped the lighter shut and the smoke from the cigar coiled up in thick plumes as he shed down to a wifebeater and jeans. There was the kick of the radiator coming on as the sun sunk down through the windows, and night arrived. He lay down then, smoking. For long moments, Logan wasn’t even sure how long, he listened to the news through the tinny sound of the radio, poured drink after drink, smoked cigar after cigar. God. He’d missed this. Just a little fuckin’ time to himself. Maybe a little of that elusive fuckin’ peace.

Rockets did land outside the base, killing five civilians and wounding 12 others. While careful not to go above- the radio was reporting, when suddenly there was a shrill knock at the door, and Logan growled lowly even as he muttered a “yeah” but refused to get up from the place he was lounging. Nothing was getting his sorry ass out of bed tonight short of a goddamn sentinel attack. 

In the doorway, Hank, looking anxious. Something about the sight of him made Logan’s heart soften, which usually was quite the feat. Still though, he had to give it to the scrawny kid. Just like the older man Logan had known from his time, Hank was Charles’ most trusted advisor, his confidante. Hank couldn’t be more than thirty right now. He probably could’ve had a swath of accolades and achievements and degrees--maybe already did, Logan never was sure how Charles had found him--but he’d been playin’ nursemaid to a broken man for a long time, wastin’ his life away at this school, that was certain.

This goddamn school. 

Meanwhile, Hank was talking. Logan was barely listening.

“You know those things can give you cancer. I mean I’ve done some toxicology tests in the lab and…” 

Logan said nothing, taking a big suck of the cigar and blowing it out through his nose, staring at the younger man dead in the face. No way Hank was down here to give him a hard time tonight. And if he was, he’d highly consider stabbing the sorry bastard. 

“You want something?” Logan muttered. And then Logan could smell it on the kid. He was nervous. He wanted information. He wanted...

“Y-Yeah, um...I know it’s complicated, and there’s probably all kinds of rules and reasons for what you can and can't say, but...I was wondering if you could tell me...in the future, do I make it?”

Shit. Hank being dragged onto his lawn by protestors. Beaten. Burned. 

“No,” Logan said bluntly through a shake of his head. Hank was immediately crestfallen, his smile fading on the spot. 

“Oh, Okay,” he muttered, awkwardly standing in the doorway still, maybe a bit like a child who’d had a bad dream, before remembering his manners. “It’s okay. Thanks,” he mumbled, and Logan sighed, her voice practically in his head, memories of her ever since bein’ back here haunting his brain. Don’t give false hope, but give him something. 

“Hey, kid,” Logan said to the door, and it opened just again. Hank was still frowning.

“It’s just the world I came from,” Logan looked at him knowingly, and Hank stared back, before murmuring, “Right.”

--

Flickering light. The smell of smoke. Goddamn it, the circuit's blown again. Fuckin’ newfangled electricity, he thought, as he opened his eyes. Dark. Vision adjusted. Sniffing the air again, he realized she wasn't in bed. He growled, stretched, and stumbled through the dark to the tiny kitchen, to faint light of smoldering ash on the two-seater table. The white linen tablecloth singed through in places from the Edison bulb that had blown. Fuck. Clara would give him shit for that. Another sniff of the air. Booze. Too much. She’d been drinkin’. Also, vomit. Fuck. He moved quickly through the dark to the small broom closet of a bathroom, to find her slunk over the small toilet, nightgown spoilt, vomit in her hair. Breathing? Yes, thank God.

Fuckin’ hell. He moved around her delicately to pick her up, wipe the red curls out of her hair. Grabbed a washrag to wipe her face.

“No,” she whined in her daze.

“Come on, girl. Ya passed out again, kid. Time for bed,” he said, easily picking up her long and lean body as her brows furrowed in the fog of a hungover brain. 

“Just leave me. Can’t share a bed with you. Not...not anymore,” she murmured, and something in him broke.

And then he had her in the backseat of a car they’d rented, parked far in the forest. Evie was straddling him, her thighs harborin’ him, nice and hot and slick. His hand threaded in her long thick hair, and she licked the side of his neck, taking in his scent, when she said it.

“Forever, right Jamie?” He sighed, but nodded.

“Always kid,” he said and he had meant it.

And then he didn’t mean it. 

“Spendin’ yer father’s money? Fucking his daughter right under his goddamn nose?” he grinned. One finger inside her. Two. She was wet, warm, ready again. 

“Yeah, sure. Long as you keep your promise.”

Sure babe. Sure. Forever. 

The scream of a young girl, the feel of muscle and bone and flesh on his claws, and he immediately realized the stunt he’d pulled. Oh god. The poor girl. The girl he shoulda left behind in Laughlin, dyin’, all because he couldn’t fucking sleep at night. 

“Somebody! Please! Help!”

And then she was touching him, putting one smooth, flawless hand to the side of his face, and he was confused and then was just...less. She was pullin’ him in somehow, he felt horrific pain, but also like he was losing things...he felt…

Pain. Betrayal. Fear. Sadness. But not his own. Flashes of Cerebro, but no Cerebro he had ever known. A bullet wound to the stomach, acid eatin’ at the insides. Pain so intense, but, again, not his own. 

Hers. Hers. A purple portal snapping closed. But after, the feel of sorrow. A life, continuing. A life that hadn’t ended. Instead: a fragmented collective, a kaleidoscope turning, mirrored images. His pain. Her pain. Their pain.

“Hello, Logan.”

Her words, clear as fucking day, and then he was gasping for breath, chest heaving, waking up fomr the deep sleep he’d fallen into. 

No. It couldn’t be. It fucking couldn’t be. 

“Rogue,” he whispered to the dark.

--

Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, August 2023

China

Storm’s heart leapt into her throat as she saw the Blackbird returning, and closed her eyes tightly for a moment, thanking God for small favors. As it landed, she left her position and quickly approached the plane. It felt like it took forever to land, and when she assessed her beloved jet with her eyes, she realized it had taken damage, especially on the nose. Suddenly her anxiety surged, and she did not even have to wait for the three individuals to exit to know someone had been lost. Charles and Erik had exited first, somber, but when Rogue walked off the jet and not Bobby, Storm guiltily thought better. In three strides she was over to the woman hugging her fiercely. It took Rogue a minute to respond, but, shakily she brought her thin arms up to embrace the other woman as well.

When Storm pulled away though, she frowned deeply. Rogue was older, obviously. Thin. Still beautiful, but the lines were evident on her face and she had a sunken look about her, as if there had been too many battles she had lost in life. Or never had the ability to fight in the first place. 

“We thought…” Storm began, wiping away a tear as she stared at the girl she once taught, the woman she had once fought alongside. 

“I- I know,” Rogue murmured matter of factly, glancing down to the floor.

“Logan…” Storm began, glancing toward the temple.

“I’ve been briefed,” Rogue said, and then with the faintest smile she stepped away from Storm to follow Charles and Erik inside. Storm watched her go, closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then once more faced the harsh Himlayan wind.

“Spread out again. Bishop will be returning to run shifts!” Storm ordered the onlookers lurking in the shadows.

--

She thought about her regrets. She thought about her parents dying when she was young. She thought about how she took advantage of the people in Cairo, stealing for money and food. She thought about the students she once taught, the ones she didn’t get to, the ones she ultimately failed. She thought about John. She thought about the baby she never would have. She always hoped it would have been a girl. She had a name picked out too. Hazel. John had liked it. All those regrets. She let each one drift off into the wind, letting the guilt go, swirling off with a spiraling drift of snow. What was left? Only love. She felt love. And she felt the things she did not regret. The things she cherished.

“There’s twelve carriers inbound! Ten miles!” WarPath shouted, but she had already sensed it on the wind. Their time was up. 

“We can’t stop that many,” she was hearing Bishop tell her, looking to Storm, who he had realized throughout their time guarding the temple, was a master of tactical strategy.

“No. But we can slow them down,” she said deliberately, and then, she lifted herself into the air, the way she had failed so many times at before, until she had learned how the current could be subordinate to her, do her bidding. 

It’s time, she told the elements, and, fiercely, they obeyed. The wind roared. The thunder clapped, and in the distance, the sounds of carriers beginning to crash into one another. But also the sound of hatches releasing. 

“Get ready!! Sentinels inbound!” Warpath was shouting, but Storm was already charging herself with electricity, and the power emitted through her hands as one after one the vicious beings began breaking their ranks. Blink was a blur of her own portals, Sunspot was aflame. But then, more of them. More of them descending, some of them ascending from the cliffs below, teeming like the ants that would infiltrate her Egyption lean-to when she was stealing for food. Too many too many. They need time. We need to give him time. 

And then, she realized what they needed. Something in her heart quivered, just as her beloved Blackbird did the same. Slowly, it lifted itself in the air, and Storm realized Erik was here, somewhere, and now the jet was leaving them, leaving her, empty and alone. Storm knew why. The Blackbird house Cerebro, and within it a small nuclear power supply, and if she unleashed enough electricity at it, an explosion just big enough to buy them five minutes would occur. Storm ignored the horrific sounds of the jet’s whines as pieces of shrapnel flung off with the wind, as it turned on its side, and then vertically, nose pointed towards the heavens. A target, ready and willing. And Storm would need to pull the trigger.

Lightning. But not the kind that came from the sky. The kind that came from electric moments, all those things she did not regret. Commanding all she knew, from her heart, from all the love she experienced. When she first arrived at Xavier’s and was able to finally feel safe, when a student would compliment her teaching or sheepishly leave an apple on her desk, when Charles asked her to take over the school to run it. And, later, the way John had made her feel when he ran a pale hand down the plane of her back--”Lets have kids”--, the way Logan had fought to save her in Libya, the wild look of chaos and vengeance in his eyes as he pulled his own inhibitor collar off the back of his neck, those fleeting moments Logan and Storm had shared together that were happy on the jet, when he had made her laugh at a corny or lewd joke, and then toward the end, when they had simply held one another.

All of that love, all the love she’d ever known. Charging within her, flowing through her, a power so immense that as a young woman it had scared her, but she was no longer the orphan, huddled under the dark rubble of a crashed plane. She was no longer small and she was no longer weak. She was no longer in the dark. 

She saw white as the lightning flew through her hands and she whispered a final goodbye as the Blackbird shuddered, stilled, and then exploded, and the mountain shook and her soul shook and a shrapnel rain fell down on them all. She dropped, quickly, dodging behind the wall, as she felt the metal rearrange itself into a shield above them, and then the pieces fell to the ground, harmless.

Storm breathed out sharply, her mind and body still radiating from the after effects of using so much power, and finally stood up, taking inventory. An eerie silence had fallen over the soldiers, as the snow fell softly in the air, so different from the chaos of the battle that had been occuring moments before.  Had they destroyed them all? Impossible. It couldn’t be. 

“Is everybody ok?” she asked, cautious as she walked over to where the others were gathered, when she realized why. Breathing hard, hand shaking, Erik pulled out a twelve inch piece of shrapnel from his stomach. He had been hit with the debris, and he was dying. God no. Please. Charles won’t survive his loss. Oh god this is the- 

Then... pain. Pain like she never before had experienced, and then nothing. Her body obliterated, spinal cord severed as the Sentinel attacked from behind, ending her life. Her heart sputtered and stopped, as she floated downward softly, like a white feather on a dark wind. 

---

Pinwheel Universe: Original/Revised Timeline, May 1973/2023

Washington D.C./China

There’s a theory in quantum physics that time is immutable. It’s like a river, you can throw a pebble into it, create a ripple, but the current always corrects itself. No matter what you do, the river just...keeps flowing in the same direction.

She realized her soul had not entirely withered the moment she saw him. He looked older. God. So much older. At first, the connection was overwhelming, as her newly acquired power surged through her. She could feel him there, and he was strong, so strong, and resilient. It was like holding a heavy weight while being suspended in mid-air. No support, no bracing or solid foundation underneath them.

Whatever happens today, I need you to promise me something. You’ve looked into my mind and you’ve seen a lot of bad, but you've seen the good too. The X-Men. Promise me you’ll find us. Use your power, bring us together. Guide us. Lead us. Storm. Scott. Jean. Remember those names. There are so many of us. We will need you, Professor. 

Things had gone to shit in minutes. The Sentinels were unveiled on the lawn of the Whitehouse while Nixon spoke and then Lensherr had descended upon them all. The robots had turned their weapons on the humans, even as havoc erupted and people died and the world was thrown into chaos once more. Rubble falling from the sky, Charles pinned under the wreckage. Logan, desperately trying to fight off the metal hunk of junk to get to the Professor. And then...Hank helping and Logan laying eyes on the Lensherr bastard. Surging forward, batting away debris, until... Logan’s body roared in pain as Erik snaked the wire through him, piercing vital organs, as Logan felt blood fill his lungs. No way to heal. Gotta get this stuff out of me. Gotta-- Fuck. FUCK! 

So much for being a survivor. 

Furrowed brows. Muscles tense. A thrashing of his limbs, even though they were held firmly down. His claws escaping from his hands, drips of his own blood pebbled on the floor. And then he was struggling, screaming, and Rogue silently cried. And then, outside, an explosion that shook the very core of the mountain, and a few moments later the professor’s mind casted out his profound grief. They were dying. Bishop, dead. Storm, dead. Erik...Kitty had just pulled him through the door, and they both sank to the floor. Oh dear god no.

All of those years wasted fighting each other, Charles. To have a precious few of them back.

And then a sharp cut of his body hitting the water. Immediately his windpipe full of it. No oxygen. All pain. All the fucking pain.  He was sinking like a fucking stone. Lungs on fire, body broken. Jesus fucking Christ. He’d failed her. Even as his mind wavered in and out of conciousness--god, he’d fucking failed them all—he calmed himself. She needed him now. He could feel her panic, sense her grief, as he teetered back and forth between future and past.

I’m proud of ya kid, fer makin’ it. You held on. No matter what they did to ya, you held on.

She was silently crying when she heard the floor start to rumble, the room tightening. She watched as Logan’s body still gasped for breath, drowning in a waterless void, his mind growing lighter. She could practically feel parts of him falling away as her hands shook. 

And you know what, baby?

The sentinels in the room with them both. A bright white light. The heat radiating. 

I think that’s our peace callin’.

Her hands quaking as they held the only man she’d ever loved. The man she had lost and found, and then lost. Holding him again, like she had always longed to do. 

A cloud of memory. A sky full of it. Sirius. Canis major. He’d known all the constellations after his memory had returned. He hadn’t had the chance to tell her that. But now, his heart stuttering, slowing, and a surge of anger, as he growled his final thought: Show ‘em. Show the bastards. Give ‘em every last second you got.