"Choices"
By FyrDrakken <FyrDrakken@juno.com>
Rating: R/NC17, for language, eventual smut, and nasty adult situations.
**WARNING**: This fic portrays an abusive relationship. Sensitive or easily offended readers be advised.
Archive: To the WR Fanfic Archive and X-Men Movie Fanfic Archive when completed. Others just ask first and permission will no doubt be given!
Classification: Angst, eventual smut. Logan/Marie, Marie/Remy, Logan/female — in no particular order.
Series: Unrelated to anything else I’ve written or plan to write, and once you get a few scenes into this you’ll be glad...
Disclaimer: Lots of corporations like Fox and Marvel, and people like Bryan Singer and Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin, hold more rights in the characters and settings I'm playing with than I do. But I'm even more broke than Marvel, so I'm not worth the time and trouble of suing... The only "profit" I'm getting out of this is getting the demons out of my head without resorting to my family's traditional substance abuse, serial marriages and/or self-mutilation...
Feedback: Questions, comments and snide remarks directed to <FyrDrakken@juno.com> will receive guaranteed responses. As an Elitist Fic Bitch in good standing, I welcome constructive criticism -- if there's a problem in something I've written I *really* want to know about it so I can fix it!
Thanks: To all those whose feedback on my prior stories (and repeated requests and demands for sequels!) have given the incentive to continue to lose sleep slaving over an overheating laptop! And again to jenn for her betaing and AIM encouragement...
Soundtrack and quotations: To those who might be interested in such things, I wrote part of the opening pages of this story while listening to angry Swedish chicks (Drain S.T.H. — Horror Wrestling), part while listening to the best of Enya (Paint the Sky With Stars), and part while listening to Danzig. Betcha can’t tell where I switched CDs... ;-D (I think I have proven to my own satisfaction that the music I’m hearing while writing doesn’t do that much to affect the mood of the fic thus produced.) With that being said, my quotes and lyrics collection was still stuck on the hard drive of my defunct laptop for the beginning of this story, so my early choices of mood-setting quotes were mostly limited to two albums. Tool’s Lateralus is beautifully layered with haunting lyrics sung through clenched teeth, and Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory is anger and pain yowled into the radio waves. They fit the story lyrically, but don’t feel compelled to listen to either or both albums to provide an actual "soundtrack" to this story. (Unless, of course, you’re a nu-metal fan...)
Note:
[ ] = Thoughts
* * = Emphasis
/ / = Rogue reliving a bit of borrowed memory
* * *
"Choices"
by FyrDrakken
* * *
He had never expected to come back and find her with someone else.
In truth, it should have been obvious that such a wonderful girl wouldn’t stay lonely for long, that her worth wouldn’t go unnoticed by others. But it had never occurred to him. Hadn’t Jean told him she was "taken with him" before he left? Hadn’t he promised to take care of her, nearly died saving her life, left her with his feelings inside her head, given her his dogtag along with his promise to return?
Wasn’t she his?
Didn’t she know that? She was wearing his fucking *name* around her neck, close to her heart, for Chrissakes — or she should have been. Such had been his intention when he left.
But maybe he’d stayed gone for a little too long. Left her to grow up a little while he was gone, maybe to get that whole high school thing out of the way, and if the both of them were very, *very* lucky even to get some kind of a handle on her mutation. He took some time to do some thinking, too, trying to figure out how he felt about what had happened between the two of them, and what he could — or wanted to — do about it. Probably he’d lost track of time a little. That happened very easily when you didn’t age, didn’t pay attention to holidays or the date or even the day of the week. He didn’t keep any calendars in his truck (back when he’d still had it), didn’t even wear a watch. Time passed for him, and beyond noting dusk-to-dawn or the shifting of the seasons, he let it pass without affecting him.
But those around him *were* affected by it — reason enough for him to keep from getting too close to anyone. Except that he *had* gotten close to someone — and when he finally went back to find her, he discovered that time had passed for her, too.
* * *
"Now I'm trapped in this memory
And I’m left in the wake of the mistake / slow to react
Even though you’re close to me
You’re still so distant / And I can’t bring you back
no
No matter how far we've come"
— "With You," by Linkin Park
* * *
When the weather began to soften into warmth again, it occurred to him that it wasn’t the first spring since he’d left Westchester, and that perhaps it was time to look in on his girl again, see what kind of a woman she might have turned into while he was gone.
The answer turned out to be quite a woman indeed, lovely and gentle but still charmingly unpredictable and with intriguing little temperamental flashes of spirit. He was greatly pleased to discover — quite rapidly — that her gift had been brought under conscious control since he’d seen her last. He was crushingly disappointed to discover — almost as rapidly — that some other guy had come along in his absence and was now getting the full benefit of Marie’s touch.
He was too confused at the knowledge to be quite sure how to deal with it. The Wolverine had firm ideas about his rival that involved immediate bloodshed to be quickly followed by consummation of his halted relationship with Marie. Logan had enough sense to realize that carving up her boyfriend — or even merely beating the shit out of him — for some odd reason probably would not result in Marie delightedly falling into his arms, and enough control over his beast to therefore refrain from doing so.
The situation was a puzzling one. He was used to brief flings with women who found his body or his competence with physical conflict to be all the incentive they needed. Courtship beyond that of the one-night stand was uncharted territory for him — part of the reason why he’d needed so much time to adjust to the idea of pursuing Marie for something long-term. In the end, most of his hopes had been pinned on the attraction Jean had attributed to the girl, and he had returned to New York vaguely expecting her to sort of come to him when he gave her the signal.
So of course it didn’t work out that way. She had a boyfriend, and while she was clearly — endearingly, even thrillingly — glad to see Logan, and willing enough to "hang out" with him in front of the TV or shooting pool at a local dive, unfortunately the dates and the cuddling — to say nothing of the kinds of more intimate affection that he had *really* been dreaming of on the lonely nights — were all going to that asshole from New Orleans.
What could he do? Just walking up to her saying, "Marie, what happened? I promised to come back — why didn’t you wait for me?" was a little too needy, too plaintive for his pride to stomach. Clearly she hadn’t understood, or had disbelieved his promise after some time had passed, or hadn’t been interested enough to wait for him.
So *he* waited. His mere return hadn’t been enough for her to get the point and drop Gumbo — well, the guy was no real prize. He was an overly smooth charmer with a wandering eye, and Marie had too much sense not to see through him. When they came to a falling out — and they *would*, Logan was sure — he would step in and make sure Marie forgot all about LeBeau.
Except that it didn’t happen. There had their share of rough patches, little lovers’ spats, but they were smoothed out again before Logan had the chance to take advantage of any of them. It couldn’t last, though — they were both hot-tempered, jealous as hell, independent, argumentative. Fought quite a bit, in fact. It was an unstable relationship — it couldn’t last.
Except that it did. They fought frequently — and were well-practiced in making up again, passionately. The wedding came as no surprise to anyone — except Logan, for whom the announcement came as an almost physical wrenching in his insides, an unfamiliar emotional equivalent of the more physical internal damage he was so used to receiving. He went to the ceremony, only because Marie had smiled at him so when she said that she wanted to see him there with the rest of her "family." Had he been religious he would have thanked God and all the saints that she had patched things up with her parents years ago, because it would have been a crippling irony had she asked *him* to give her away. He slipped away from the reception as soon as he could escape, changed out of the nice suit, went into New York City and spent a week and a half barhopping, fighting, and jumping into bed with as many bimbos, barflies and bored housewives as he could find. Rogue never noticed — her honeymoon with Remy lasted two weeks.
He hadn’t been celibate since returning to Xavier’s — a man had needs, and since Marie was otherwise occupied he considered himself pretty much blameless for his periodic flings. He’d never had anything going with any of the females at the Mansion — for one thing, the majority of the household was comprised of students, and for another most of the adult females tended to be either already taken (like Jean and, heartbreakingly, Marie) or else not particularly interested in him (like Ororo and Betsy). Instead, he periodically spent a night, or even a few of them, out hitting bars in Westchester or the big city, seeing what kind of trouble he could get into and what beds he might wind up in. He didn’t make a big secret out of his activities away from home — but then, he didn’t exactly go broadcasting the details to all and sundry, either. Those who knew him well enough had a good idea of what he was up to, and the rest of the household amused itself speculating.
Which was how matters stood, when Cicely Marshall arrived at the X-Mansion.
* * *
"run desire run this sexual being run him like a blade to and through
the heart no conscience one motive to cater to the hollow
screaming feed me here fill me up again temporarily pacify this
hungering"
— "the hollow," by A Perfect Circle
* * *
Cicely had a mutant healing factor, and the enhanced senses that seemed to be the inevitable corollary. This was not the first thing that intrigued Logan about her, and it damned sure wasn’t what intrigued most other male occupants of the household and not a few females as well. Cissy was tall — right at six foot — blond, blue-eyed, with strong but well-balanced features and whisper-smooth skin. To say nothing of being built like a brick outhouse.
She was stacked. She was also strong — and fast, and temperamental. Logan had more than a suspicion that Sabretooth may have been passing through Wisconsin twenty-odd years ago. This idea bothered him not at all — the girl couldn’t help who her parents were, and even if Sabe *was* her father he hadn’t had anything to do with the raising of her. In fact, it was pretty goddamn funny to think of the opposition having added to the X-Men’s number, even if in a long-delayed and indirect fashion.
Ciss was well past her school days when she was brought to Chuckie’s attention, but she came to Westchester willingly enough, to learn about her mutation and join the team. What teaching she *did* need was mainly along the lines of learning to use her enhanced abilities to their fullest potential and training in physical combat — both of which Logan was the most qualified to help her with.
As far as Cicely was concerned, it was nothing short of a sign from God to find a man who shared her particular mutation despite being completely unrelated. (Which he was — the shared abilities were just unique enough to be worth having Hank McCoy run a quick blood test on the pair of them to rule out a familial relationship. The X-Men not having access to any samples of Victor Creed’s DNA, Logan kept his suspicions along those lines to himself since they couldn’t be verified or disproved.) Getting to spend so much one-on-one time with Logan suited her just fine, while a number of the unattached X-Males ground their teeth at how unbelievable lucky a bastard Wolvie was for getting to run off into the woods for "tracking lessons" with a Norse goddess.
The tracking was fun — learning how to use her enhanced senses, and how to handle herself out where her mutation could really be tested against the environment, whether in the comparatively tame woods surrounding the school or out on a camping trip to somewhere wilder. But what really got Cissy’s blood going was the combat sessions, sweat and muscle exertion and instincts assuring her that she was currently wrestling with a prime alpha male specimen of her own species.
As far as Cissy was concerned, it was a match made in heaven. It was so obvious it didn’t bear mentioning.
Logan would have been very surprised indeed had she ever mentioned it to *him*. Because what was obvious to *him* was that Marie for whatever incomprehensible reasons was currently favoring that dickheaded Cajun over himself, and such a situation was so ludicrous as to almost *require* an eventual change for the better. The man was clearly a prize flake, and once the new wore off, Marie had too much sense to stick with him for life. Wasn’t the American divorce rate at about 50%? So despite her marriage to his rival, he remained hopeful.
And in the meantime, he occupied some of his spare time with other women. Ciss was his first fling under the roof of the X-Mansion itself, and he went into it with preconceptions shaped by his sex life up to that point. He was used to having a lot of meaningless sex, based on physical attraction and the adrenaline buzz following a good fight. Cissy was clearly cut from the same fabric as himself, and he wasn’t at all averse to a good rowdy fuck after a practice session in the Danger Room, or better yet after getting back from a mission (especially once Ciss made full teammember). It was fun, it was convenient not to have to go into town to get laid, and there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of talk required.
They *should* have talked. They really should have.
* * *
Logan remained happily oblivious to the expectations being built by frequent sex over an extended period of time. He still went out alone occasionally to get drunk and hopefully get fought or laid — better still, both — but not as often, since he now had a fuckbuddy under the same roof. He didn’t take Ciss on dates or talk about feelings with her or any of that other boyfriend/girlfriend shit, and he would have been startled to realize that he and she were beginning to be regarded by the others as a couple, rather than merely a pair of teammembers who worked and trained together a lot due to their similar abilities.
He had certainly never told her about how he and Rogue had joined the X-Men, or that the dogtag around his neck had for a number of years graced Marie’s throat instead. (At least until she started seeing Remy and took it off.) And when Marie first told him that she was pregnant, he didn’t tell Cissy why he had drunk every alcoholic beverage in the Mansion within the space of an hour and then gone to her bedroom for several hours of wild despairing sex.
He didn’t go to Cicely when Marie miscarried, though — not even for sex. Instead, he sat with Rogue for hours, helping her try to drown the pain with alcohol and giving her a shoulder to cry on. He even shed a few tears with her.
Possibly some men might have been relieved — if guiltily so — that their beloved wasn’t to bear another man’s child after all. But Logan had his own sharp-edged morality — he had to, doing the things he’d done and still being able to face himself in the mirror — and one of his principles was that children were off-limits. They had done nothing to deserve the harm that so often befell them, and they were not to blame for who their parents were or what their parents might have done. (This was in part why he was so genuinely unconcerned at the thought of Cicely possibly being Creed’s daughter.) So what if it had been Remy’s kid? It was also Marie’s baby that had been lost, and she was grieving for her child, and Logan hurt with her.
It was a stressful time, and Logan spent a fair bit of time with Marie, and Cissy got left alone to do some thinking of her own.
That probably wasn’t really for the best.
* * *
A few more months went by. Routines settled back into normal. Logan was, if not exactly content — after all, Marie was still regrettably with Gumbo — then at least in a reasonably tolerable situation. He had a few good friends, like Marie and Kurt, he had periodic excuses to get into really fun combat situations, he had his steady supply of beer and cigars, and he had Brunhilda the Mutant Sex Goddess sharing a bed with him in a frequent and pleasant but uncomplicated manner.
Which was of course when Cicely told him that she was pregnant.
* * *
He asked her to marry him, of course. It didn’t require thought — it was what a man was supposed to *do* when he’d gotten a gal in the family way. Probably another symptom popping up of having formed his initial attitudes and reactions in a much earlier decade, when leaving a woman unmarried and pregnant was still considered to be a serious misdeed.
Which was why he’d always been so careful about using condoms in his remembered past. He didn’t really give a damn about diseases what with his healing factor, but the prospect of leaving one of his one-nighters pregnant had been severely worrisome. One of the more nightmarish ideas about his forgotten life was that he might have left a family behind, and he was sometimes haunted by the idea of one day running across a child of his own that had grown up fatherless. (He always imagined his own irascibility as being a trait that would have been passed on, leaving him to one day be greeted by a surly, intractable adolescent or young adult with a lifetime grudge against the drifter who had abandoned him and his mother to a succession of uncaring boyfriends or surly stepfathers. For some reason he never pictured his putative abandoned offspring as having grown up well-adjusted in happy homes with loving parents.)
He had only stopped using rubbers with Cissy because she had told him she was on the pill, and with a healing factor she had no more reason to worry about STDs than he did. It wouldn’t be until much later that the thought would occur to him that Ciss might have deliberately skipped a pill or three to trap him with a baby — at the time, he was merely upset with her for her carelessness in having forgotten.
He didn’t gripe at her for it, though. Instead he silently kicked himself, for having put too much trust in someone who had proven to be untrustworthy. Whether she had missed a pill "accidentally on purpose" or just through genuine forgetfulness, clearly he had been mistaken in leaving the matter entirely up to her.
True to form, he didn’t really try to discuss it with her. Just told her to make whatever wedding arrangements she wanted, and he’d go through with it. She wanted a nice ring, yeah, sure, just pick it out and he’d fork over the cash. Then he went out and desperately attempted to get severely drunk — a wasted effort, with his healing factor clearing the alcohol from his system almost fast as he could drink it.
If Marie’s wedding had been a knife to the gut, and her brief doomed pregnancy a desperate sinking within his soul, then his own impending marriage was a set of shackles being currently made to order. To *Cicely’s* order, and he left her to it. No need to bother him with the news of the preparations — it wasn’t that he didn’t care so much as that it was more than he could stand to hear.
The X-Crew were delighted. Another wedding among the teammembers, and long enough after Rogue and Gambit’s that people were eager to go through the fuss and excitement again. Logan made his disinterest in the planning abundantly clear, and this was almost universally chalked up to his being male and therefore disinterested. Cissy was excited enough for them both, and a fair number of the teammembers and older students eagerly swirled about her debating bridesmaids’ dresses and floral arrangements.
Marie was not one of their number. At one time Logan would have been both delighted and encouraged by her noticeable lack of enthusiasm regarding the idea of his marrying another woman, but under the current circumstances he found such optimism to be both misplaced and badly timed. Besides, she knew him well enough to probably be sensing just how little he really wanted to marry Ciss.
One thing was for sure — the rest of the X-Crew seemed largely oblivious to his reluctance. The consensus opinion was that the two of them were such a well-matched couple that a long-term pairing was only appropriate. The news of the baby was being kept under wraps for the moment until the wedding was over, barring a few people. Jean and Hank knew, as the team doctors, and so did Cyke and Xavier, since the mommy-to-be was taken off the "active teammembers" list in terms of going on missions. Logan had told Marie over a few beers at their favored dive, so she knew the real reason for the wedding — perhaps part of her lack of enthusiasm lay in knowing that Logan was marrying out of obligation rather than love. So for the moment the only teasing Logan had to deal with concerned his impending assumption of marital responsibilities.
Which was fine with him, since he was still trying to deal with the implications of the upcoming marriage. Once he had a handle on *that*, time to worry about parenthood. After all, the wedding would be over and done with months before he had to cope with an infant.
In keeping with his quest for mental clarity regarding the approaching changes in his accustomed lifestyle, he spent a fair bit of time out and about, away from the X-Mansion and the alarming wedding preparations. Including the usual amount of bedhopping — hell, he wasn’t married *yet*. There was no bachelor party, as such — he disappeared on another of his excursions about a week before the wedding, and didn’t come back till the morning of the ceremony.
He had judged his timing nicely — returning early enough to shower, neaten up, and dress in that damned tux before he had to put in his appearance — without having had to get out of that stripper’s bed too unpleasantly early. He stood in front of his gathered friends, teammembers and students and absently said what he was supposed to, while wondering in a small part of his mind whether Cissy had chosen anything interesting when selecting the underthings to go beneath her inappropriately snowy-white dress. The realization that he’d be finding out for himself later wasn’t nearly as tempting as Cicely would have no doubt hoped, being overshadowed by the sad thought that he’d never particularly found a bridal getup to be arousing, with a single exception.
Marie had been literally heartbreakingly beautiful in her wedding dress.
Cissy was breaking his heart in her wedding dress, too — but not in the same way.
* * *
The honeymoon actually wasn’t too bad. Niagara Falls, conventional enough but really just an excuse to get away from the X-Mansion for a couple of weeks of intensive sex. Not a lot of talking required, though Cissy did quite a bit of that anyway. Logan just lay and let it all wash in one ear and out the other, trying not to think about how much more attractive he would have found Cissy’s throaty velvet murmur had it come with a Southern accent.
The honeymoon ended in more ways than one when they got back home. Going away on vacation together was one thing — moving in together was quite another. Merging disparate decorating styles was bad enough. Trying to work out an equitable division of closet and bathroom space was worse, though Logan mostly just let Ciss have the lioness’ share. (After all, she had more clothes and bathroom junk both.) A more basic incompatibility occurred between Logan’s military neatness and Cissy’s tendency to mark her own territory with randomly scattered personal items.
Then of course there was the talking issue. It wasn’t just that in sharing living space Logan now had to hear so much more of Ciss — it was that *now* she was finally deciding it was time to get his input on certain matters. Which meant that instead of being able to let the chatter wash over him like before, he was now periodically jolted into awareness by a, "What do you think?" or worse yet, "Are you listening to me, Logan?" or even, "Answer me!"
The wedding crap now being over and done with, a lot of her questions had to do with baby stuff — again, something he was more than willing to leave up to the lady in question — though he was gradually beginning to be sneakingly interested in the matter. But sometimes she wanted to hear about his *feelings*, or generalized relationship shit, and he just wasn’t really on board for that kind of talk.
Besides, why the hell did she have to get so damn *talkative* at the end of a long day? He just wanted to plop down in front of the TV with a sixpack and unwind, and here she was asking him some damn thing about wallpaper for the baby’s room or what have you.
And then there was the sex. The one part of their relationship that he’d had no complaints with, aside from the private wish that she were smaller, dark-eyed and white-streaked brunette. But with the new hormonal cocktail swirling around in her bloodstream, coupled with a certain baseline tiredness caused by the new demands on her system, she really wasn’t in the mood as much often anymore. And having been removed from missions and discontinued her physical combat practice until after the birth, she was no longer getting a periodic adrenaline jumpstart to the libido.
Which kind of offended Logan. Wasn’t that supposed to be the one major compensation of marriage — that at least he could count on getting sex regularly? Okay, he could see that maybe she wouldn’t be interested *every* night, especially what with the baby and all — but after a full week of, "Not tonight, Logan," "Not *now*, Logan!" and, "Can’t you just give it a *rest*?" he metaphorically threw up his hands in exasperation and took a little trip into the city to find someone who *was* in an affectionate mood.
If and when challenged, he had a lot of justifications ready. That nowhere in that "To have and to hold, cleaving only to each other," crap had there been anything *specifically* forbidding one-night stands. That it would be pretty fucking unfair of Cissy to say that no one else could have him for a few hours when *she* hadn’t wanted him for an entire week. That it wasn’t like he was planning to run off for good and leave her and their kid starving in the streets or whatever — he just needed to go out and have a little fun sometimes.
All of which was rationalizing bullshit, and he damn well knew it. The truth was that he was acting like some cranky teenager, just barely going through the motions of something unpleasant he felt he’d been forced into. You were supposed to marry a girl after you got her pregnant, and he had. You were supposed to take care of your wife and kid(s), and he would. But he’d be damned if he was going to bend over *that* far backwards to meet Cicely’s demands.
Yes, he knew that fidelity was generally considered to be part of the deal in marriage. But he was cranky and unhappy and he knew how to play the part of the unregenerate Neandertal if he chose.
So he was expecting to walk into a storm of disapproval when he got back home. He was surly and unrepentant, and more inclined to defend himself than to beg forgiveness.
He wasn’t expecting quite the fight he walked into.
* * *
"Everything you say to me
Takes me one step closer to the edge
And I'm about to break
I need a little room to breathe
Cause I'm one step closer to the edge
And I'm about to break"
— "One Step Closer," by Linkin Park
* * *
"*Where the hell have you been*?!" was the greeting as he walked into the room.
"Out," he replied succinctly.
As he hung his jacket up in the closet, she came up behind him and sniffed him. He had gotten cleaned up before returning to Westchester, but knew that it would require a fair bit of time in the shower to get rid of the smell of sex, especially with her heightened senses to fool. He hadn’t felt like making that kind of an effort, especially when he didn’t much care if Cicely knew what he’d been doing or not. So he hadn’t bothered.
"*Who was she*!?!"
He frowned thoughtfully. "Can’t quite remember her name. Candy, Cindy? Connie? Something like that." He stepped away from the closet, having to brush past Ciss to get by.
She had frozen in shock at his rather brazen reaction. It was ridiculous of her to expect him to deny the truth when he knew that she could smell it on him, so perhaps it was his total lack of shame that had floored her.
Anger melted the ice, and she turned on him. "*What the HELL did you think you were doing*?!"
He gave her a mild look — deliberately, aggravatingly unconcerned. "I was getting laid — what did you *think* I was doing?"
Which was when he found himself examining the carpet from extremely close range. [What the hell...?] His jaw hurt, briefly, before the ache faded away in the time it took him to realize, [She hit me. The bitch hit me...]
The first impulse was to surge to his feet and respond in kind. What stopped him was simple.
She was his wife.
That was right up there with abandoning a gal after getting her knocked up — no, worse. Abandoning a woman and your future child was criminally irresponsible — but beating up on your wife or girl was actively evil.
Aside from the extremely special case of combat training, You Did Not Hit Your Woman. Ever. *Ever*.
*Or* your kids. Anyone under your protection, really. You just didn’t. Ever. No matter what.
Which left him wondering how the hell to react. He got up off the floor, carefully, taking his time because of the pause it afforded him to think. He was carefully expressionless when, on his feet once more, he finally raised his face to hers.
Cissy looked shocked, perhaps even remorseful — but as his gaze met hers and she realized that he was waiting for her cue to respond, something flickered through her eyes. Not regret. Not apology.
Logan recognized it, even lasting for only a fraction of a second.
Contempt.
Then she quickly turned and left the room.
[Well, hell,] he thought, suddenly tired. [I deserved that. Running off like that, cheating on her, not having enough respect for her not to go throwing it in her face... I deserved all of it.]
Even the contempt.
No, *especially* the contempt.
* * *
Regret can be a lingering emotion — but it doesn’t always pop up when it would be the most useful. Logan felt bad about running out on Cissy like that for a few days — but then the aggravations started to pile up again, and perhaps a week later he found himself riding his Harley out the front gates once more.
Her reaction on his return was largely similar to the first time, though again he was surprised at the blow. Wiping the blood from the already-healing cut on his lip, he regarded his wife with more astonishment than anger, and when she determinedly changed the subject a moment later he was relieved to do so.
He certainly knew the expression, "Begin as you mean to go on," but he wasn’t thinking of it at the time. Perhaps if he’d realized what kind of precedents were being set for his marriage, he would have acted to change things — but it’s difficult to know how he might have been able to, given the constraints of the situation he found himself in and his own character.
* * *
Time passed, as it is so apt to do.
Cissy got more and more swollen, and more and more cranky with her husband. Logan viewed the transformation with a certain alarm — not only had the hot and cold running sex dried up completely, but merely being in Ciss’s presence seemed to trigger an argument nowadays.
He still hadn’t quite figured out how to react on the occasions when mere words weren’t enough to express her ire. He cautiously ascribed it to the unusual stresses brought on by pregnancy, and naively hoped that after the baby arrived things could revert to the reasonably comfortable way they had been before the wedding.
He also kept the habit of wandering off on random evenings. He didn’t fling his infidelities in his wife’s face anymore, but she knew what he was doing anyway. Logan realized that it upset her — but then, in recent months *everything* upset her, and sometimes he just had to escape for a few hours.
* * *
It was on returning from another of these little sabbaticals that Logan cautiously entered their shared quarters and found them empty. No Cicely.
[It can’t be time already — can it?]
Marginally bothered by the fact that he wasn’t even sure when his wife’s due date was — or more specifically, how close to it whatever day today was might happen to be — Logan wandered down to the lower levels. Just within earshot of the Medlab, which was quite close enough for him. The fuss going on within seemed to confirm his suspicions.
[Better make a clean getaway before someone spots me and tries to drag me in there,] he figured, slipping back up to the ground floor and out of the mansion.
[A day or two ought to be long enough to get it all over with,] he mused, leaving the school grounds again.
* * *
Marie had not been unaware of the excitement when Cissy had made her way down to the Medlab — nor deaf to the woman’s loud complaints at her irresponsible husband’s absence.
It wasn’t that Marie *disliked* Ciss especially, so much as that she sometimes found her a bit much to deal with. She might have wondered what Logan ever saw in the wench, had she not already known the sad truth — a pretty face, a great body with a spectacular rack, and readily available sex, but not much else.
Well, he’d gotten a lot more than he’d bargained for. Marie still got to spend a fair bit of time with Logan one way or another, and she knew that he wasn’t finding marriage to be a particularly pleasant experience, though he wasn’t very forthcoming on the details of what problems he and his wife were having. But she could also tell that he was beginning to be almost shyly interested in the concept of having a kid — in fact, she wasn’t sure whether his enthusiasm was tempered by his marital difficulties or he was deliberately subduing his own excitement in her presence out of deference to her own recent bereavement.
She sighed to herself. She wanted Logan to be happy — he was probably her best friend after Remy, or maybe even *before* Remy — but right now it kind of hurt to see someone else getting a baby when she had lost her own so recently. Not that she was ill-wishing anyone else’s child — but it reminded her of the loss a little too strongly right now.
So she was staying away from the Medlab, or even the well-wishers clustering in the rec room waiting on updates. Instead, she was upstairs keeping a watch — or least an ear — out for Logan’s return, so that she could steer him down to his wife.
Except that she thought she’d heard a motorcycle engine a few minutes ago, and it was fading into the distance rather than getting closer.
She frowned, and decided to see if his cell phone was turned on.
Surprisingly, he answered the call — and on the second ring, too. "What?"
Marie smiled. Typical Logan — why waste time with courtesies and greetings? "Hey. It’s me."
"Hey, kid. Something wrong?"
"No, just your wife, demanding your presence. She’s down in the Medlab," she added significantly.
"Is she now."
Marie frowned. [Total lack of surprise.] "You might want to consider coming home. Like, now."
"Nah, not really. It’s Cissy’s show — I’d just be in the way."
She almost smiled. "You wouldn’t by any chance have just come home, figured out where she was, and snuck back out, would you?"
"Would *I* do a thing like that?" She didn’t need to see his face to hear the smile in his voice.
"Yes, you would."
"Well, maybe." Still smiling.
Serious now, "Cissy’s show or not, it’s kind of one you need to be at."
Also serious, "Kind of dangerous, really."
"Don’t worry, Jean and Hank are really good, and she’s got a healing factor besides..."
"I meant for me."
"Oh. True," the smile was back. "Don’t tell me you’re scared..."
"Of course I am. No way am I getting *near* Ciss right now. Call me when it’s over."
She laughed. "Okay, you don’t want to be around your wife. But it’s not just your wife. It’s also your son or daughter putting in an appearance. It’s the kind of thing you’ll wish you’d been there for."
"You think?" That sounded almost wistful.
"Yeah, I do..."
Which was of course when she was interrupted.
"Is that Logan on the phone? Let me talk to him," and Scott was there, reaching for the phone and taking it out of Marie’s hand before she could protest. "Logan, quit being an asshole and do something responsible for once in your life. Get the hell back here. *Now*."
Not having hypersensitive ears, Marie couldn’t hear Logan’s response to that. But she didn’t need to hear the other side of the phone conversation to guess...
"He hung up on you, didn’t he?"
Scott hung up the phone, not bothering to confirm the obvious.
"Scooter, you *dick*! I almost had him convinced before you came charging in there giving him an *order*. So of *course* he had to refuse, *then*! Thanks a whole hell of a lot!"
Turning her back on Cyke, she stalked off, while wondering if she had any kind of a chance of tracking Logan down herself if she took a car out of the garage and tried to find him.
* * *
Rogue wound up checking their local haunts, with no luck. She also tried calling Logan’s cell phone again, but after talking to Scooter he had evidently either quit answering or shut it off entirely.
She gave up, went home and waited.
She tried calling again the next morning, but he still wasn’t answering. Sometime in the early afternoon, she heard the motorcycle engine approaching.
Marie met him in the garage. "Okay, I can understand why you hung up on Scooter, but I wish you’d answered the phone when I tried to call you again."
Logan half-shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed.
She didn’t say anything further, silently walking back into the house with him.
"Well?"
"Well what?" she responded.
"Are you gonna make me ask?"
"Yes," with a smile that she turned away from him.
"How’d it go?"
Relenting, "Come on down to the Medlab with me and meet your son."
"How — is he — ? Who does he look like?" was the closest Logan could come to verbalizing his sudden intense curiosity.
She smiled more openly this time. "I don’t know — I haven’t seen him... I was waiting for you."
Entering the elevator, he gave her a slightly concerned sidelong look. "Is this — does this bother you?"
Understanding what he was referring to, she looked pensive. "Not as much as it might have before today."
He turned his head, giving her a more direct look but not asking.
"I just found out this morning. I’m pregnant again."
"Ah." Logan examined his feelings at the announcement, cautiously. It still hurt, the thought of *his* Marie having children with another man — but the memory of her grief was too clear. He wanted her happy, and she wanted a baby, so... "Good luck," he told her, and was surprised by how much he meant it.
"Thanks," she said softly as the elevator doors opened.
Logan entered the Medlab as silently as he knew how, not wanting to disturb — whomever. Jean, doing something incomprehensible and scientific in her private office, came out to meet the pair of them. "If you want to see Cicely, she’s asleep, but you can check in on her — "
"No! That’s fine, let her sleep," Logan said hurriedly.
Jean gave him a sharp, disapproving look from behind her glasses. He was beginning to get used to that expression, from multiple faces. "If you want to see your son — " with the tone to match the look, as though she was offended at the very idea that he might care more about his offspring than his mate, " — he’s asleep, too, but — "
"Where, in there?" Logan interrupted, identifying the room with the sound of soft breathing and a tiny, rapid heart.
"Right through there," Jean said, her expression softening somewhat.
[Maybe she just didn’t expect me to care,] he thought absently as he slipped into the room, Marie right behind him. He was getting used to the opinion of him that the X-Crew was forming, based on his piss-poor conduct as a husband. Not that he really *cared* about most peoples’ opinions of him — but there were a few he *did* care about, and most of those were under this roof...
All thoughts of his low public approval rating fled at the sight of the tiny form in the bassinet. [So *this* is what I traded my freedom for,] he thought with a certain self-deprecating humor not unmingled with wonderment.
He approached the small bed cautiously, overwhelmingly conscious of how fragile the creature within it was and how large and casually destructive he himself was. This new little person was intensely fascinating, but Logan had almost no close experience with babies. They seemed both mysteriously complex and eminently breakable, like delicate machinery.
Well, when in doubt, read the manual. Cicely had left more than enough baby books scattered around their quarters — best start picking a few up and reading them for himself.
But catching up on his research could wait. For now, he was getting his first look at his son.
Resting his hands on the railing of the bassinet, he studied the sleeping baby. Dark fluff of hair, small flushed face screwed up tight with the intense effort of sleeping. The entire package barely making a decent armload, were Logan to be so incomprehensibly bold as to actually pick him up.
Taking up a mirroring position on the opposite side of the baby bed, Marie whispered, "Logan, he looks like you."
"How can you tell?" Softly, not wanting to wake him up by any means, because he hadn’t the faintest idea how to deal with an awake baby. He also hadn’t the faintest idea how any resemblances could be detected to anyone in such a squashed little face.
"Just look at him! The nose, and the jawline — that’s you. More like Cicely around the mouth. No idea whose eyes he has..."
Which was of course when he chose to wake up. No doubt all the whispering going back and forth over his head had disturbed him. With a little grunt of annoyance at all the noise, the baby opened his eyes — blue — and decided that tears were in order.
"Ooop. What — ?" Logan looked at Marie, hoping for some help in the crisis.
Fortunately, the noise attracted Jean. "Here, we just pick him up..." Suiting action to words, she lifted him from the bed and abruptly set him into Logan’s arms. "Hold him like this... No, support his head..."
[Oh, hell. Nothing like getting thrown in the deep end to teach you to swim quick...] Logan froze, hoping that Jean’s TK would be fast enough if he wound up dropping the kid. After a few seconds passed with the baby not slipping out of his arms, he asked, "Uh, now what?"
"Talk to him. Here, if you’re worried about dropping him, then sit down." Jean steered him to a chair.
[Right. Closer to the ground, less distance to fall — and he might wind up in my lap before hitting the floor...] Fortunately the baby had quieted down after being picked up — nervewracking squalls at close range would have been intolerably stressful when paired with the fear of dropping the infant.
Deciding that Logan & Son seemed secure enough for the moment, Jean announced, "If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go check on your wife." There was a slight emphasis on the final two words that Logan preferred to ignore.
As Jean left the room, Marie drifted over to the chair as if magnetically compelled. Looking back up at her, Logan asked, "Do you wanna hold him?" He wasn’t sure if he’d be relieved to get the responsibility literally out of his lap, or disappointed to have to let go. Now that the noise was no longer a factor and his grip was beginning to feel a bit more secure, Logan found himself starting to almost enjoy it.
"No, you should hold him first. He’s *your* son."
There was the faintest tinge of regret in her voice. Logan felt an answering regret, although probably not for quite the same reasons. [He should have been *your* son too, Marie.] "Don’t worry. You’ll get one of these, too."
She smiled at him faintly, sadness lingering around her eyes. "I hope so."
"You will. I promise."
Her smile began to strengthen, but Jean walked in before she could think of a response. Because she was still looking at Logan’s face, Marie saw the way he actually flinched slightly when the doctor announced, "Cicely is awake and asking to see you."
Turning his head to look at Jean, Logan missed the frown that appeared on Marie’s face. "Should I put him back? Do you want to — ?"
"Here, I’ll take him while you go talk to her." Jean briskly lifted the baby out of his father’s arms.
Logan hesitated before leaving the room. "Can you let Marie hold him for a while? If — I mean, if you want to," he added, looking back at Marie.
"I don’t see why not," Jean answered. Logan paused long enough to see Marie cautiously accepting the infant before steeling himself to face his wife.
He frankly would have preferred to face the Brotherhood, Magneto included, with one hand tied behind his back.
* * *
He didn’t really have anything to say to her. That had usually been the case where Ciss was concerned, in fact. In this situation, he supposed that one might be expected to ask how things had gone, or how she was feeling now. But that would be opening up a whole can of worms — a topic that he really wasn’t that interested in to begin with, and that she’d probably be letting him hear more than enough about on multiple future occasions anyway.
When there’s nothing in particular to say, then say nothing. Logan silently entered the room and leaned back against the wall, waiting for Cissy to deign to notice him. She’d asked to see him — no doubt she had plenty *she* wanted to say to *him*. Might as well let her do most of the talking — she would have done so anyway.
"*There* you are — about damn *time* you showed up. Where *were* you, anyway?"
"Out." Standard question, standard response.
A frown. "You could have at least checked in once in a while. Knowing that you had a wife who was due to give *birth* to your *child* any day now," that last with a tone that Logan had become very familiar with in recent months: If You Were A *Good* Husband You Would...
Logan shrugged. He had enough sense to realize that pointing out either A) he hadn’t paid that much attention to when she was due or B) he hadn’t felt that his presence should be required — or worse yet both — would be unwise. Truthful, but incendiary.
Still frowning, "Supposedly Scott actually got through to you on the phone. Told you to get back here."
[Damn.] "He tried to pull some team leader bullshit on me. I hung up on him without letting him finish." [Maybe if I’m *really* lucky she wasn’t told that I knew it was time and refused to come home anyway...]
"Hmmph."
At the moment, his luck seemed to be holding.
"Have you seen him?" This in a softer tone.
"Yeah, I was just in there when Jeannie said you wanted to see me."
Another frown at that, though it was a matter of speculation as to whether Ciss was displeased that he’d wanted to see the baby before seeing *her*, or just annoyed at the mention of Jean. His attraction to Marie having been kept strictly to himself, and his flirtation with Jean having been extremely public — the better to harass Scooter — Cissy remained under the delusion that her major competitor for her husband’s affections had been the redheaded doctor.
"Did you have a nice little talk with ‘Jeanie’ before you came to see *me*?" Yep, that was it — Ciss’ Jean issues were showing.
"Nah, she just showed me how to hold him and then left me and Marie to it."
Cicely’s face softened. "That poor girl." Never mind that Ciss was *maybe* two years older than the ‘poor girl.’ "She should have had her own by now... If it makes her feel any better, we’ll have to let her babysit as much as she wants to."
Yep, there it was — Cissy actually *liked* Rogue.
Which only went to show how little insight she had into her husband’s inner workings.
Logan briefly considered mentioning that with luck Marie *would* have her own within the year, but decided not to. It was Marie’s news to share — and Remy’s, he reluctantly had to admit — not really his. It never occurred to him that Marie might have expected him to tell his wife — he didn’t have that kind of relationship with Ciss, and Marie knew him well enough to know that he didn’t.
Either Cicely got tired of waiting for Logan to respond in some way, or she recalled that he was in the doghouse, because the compassionate expression disappeared. "Didn’t it occur to you to ask me how I am?"
Logan shrugged. "You look fine now." Which was true enough as far as it went, and hopefully less likely to get him attacked than telling her she looked like she needed a shower and a week’s worth of sleep.
Evidently it was the wrong answer, because Cissy’s gaze sharpened further. "I ‘look fine now’? I just went through twenty-two hours of labor *without drugs* before having to force an eight-pound-nine-ounce *person* out a very sensitive opening *much* too small for him to comfortably fit through — *again* without medication of any kind — and all you have to say is that I ‘look fine now’?!"
Logan sighed. "You look tired?" [Geeze, I’ve gotten *set on fire* without making this big a fuss about it...]
"I *am* tired — didn’t you hear what I just *said*?!"
Another sigh. "I heard, I heard..." [Right, twenty-two hours, trying to be nice. Getting barbecued only hurts a few minutes before I heal back up anyway, so I guess I’d better not bring it up right now.]
"*Well*?!"
"What do you want me to say? I’m sorry drugs don’t work with a healing factor? Sorry you got pregnant?" [Oh, *God*, am I sorry about *that*.]
The glare went from searing to frigid. "You *might* have expressed *concern* — maybe apologized for not having been present when *your family* needed you."
Logan was too struck by the realization that he had a "family" now to devote more than an ironic passing thought to the question of whether his cranky, non-medically-trained presence would have been *needed*, so much as desired as a target for frequent invective during the aforementioned twenty-two hours. "Sorry," he said absently, still pondering the implications of the Family Logan.
"Is that all you have to say?"
"Pretty much."
"Hmmph." Rolling over onto her side — the only available way to turn her back on him — she added, "You might as well go, then. Let me get some sleep..."
He shrugged and left the room. [I guess that could have gone worse.] Brightening as he closed the door to the dragon’s lair behind him, [Hell, that could have gotten a *lot* worse.] By the time he reached the room with his new son — good God, he had a *son*, and he still kept tripping over that realization from unexpected angles — he was almost smiling.
Behind him, alone in the now-darkened room, Cicely sighed shakily to herself. [That could have gone a *lot* better...] Shifting herself back over onto her back, she wondered, [Why doesn’t he ever seem to *care*?] Another unhappy sigh, tears in the sound if not actually in her eyes. [Why do I always seem to wind up with the men who wouldn’t tell you what they were feeling if you lit them on fire?]
* * *