alianora | xmmficathon: As Breathing

Title: As Breathing
Author: alianora
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: So not mine.
Summery: But she can’t forget who she had been. And her hands are always cold.
Written For:

mollita
Request: Logan/Rogue. Post X3, cure still working but things with Bobby not so much. Both of them dealing with grief and anger and disappointment of different sorts, and using each other to cope.

The first time she had put her gloves on to go down to dinner, Bobby had stopped her with a laugh. She had tried to smile, looking down in surprise, and stripped them off, one delicate finger at a time.

He couldn’t really understand that it is hard to change something so fundamental. Something she didn’t even think about anymore, that was as automatic as breathing.

Their kisses are brief and almost impersonal, because she can’t stop herself from jerking back after a moment. She searches his face anxiously, looking for any sign of stress or pain.

Bobby was very comforting for the first week. He was very patient. He spent a lot of time reminding her that the cure had worked. That she was no longer the Rogue. No longer poison.

After the second week though, when her shoulders still tensed when he touched her tongue with his, he had almost stopped trying.

But she can’t forget who she had been. Not even for him. And her hands are always cold.

Marie didn’t touch anyone carelessly after David kissed her, and she almost killed him. A three week coma, hysterical parents, and a town that watched her with distrustful eyes aren’t easy to forget. It’s hard to do, even now.

She can’t take the chance that the cure could fail. That she could kill someone. That she could kill someone important to her.

So, she wraps herself up now, when she goes to bed, when before, it had been the only time the Rogue let herself be uncovered.

She wraps herself up, and she still wears gloves to supper.

Marie smiles, and tells Bobby that it’s something her mama taught her. Her mama always insisted on her best manners at supper. It’s even true.

Bobby smiles and teases her about it, and they laugh. Marie’s laugh isn’t real, but he doesn’t seem to notice. And Marie tries to ignore the fact that instead of watching Marie and her gloves, the way he used to, Bobby watches a girl slide through the wall and into her chair. Marie forces a smile, and pulls her gloves tighter onto her hands.

“I’m cold,” she whispers, when Logan looks over at her from across the room. He raises an eyebrow, and his eyes are dark, but he nods like he understands. His face is unreadable, but she knows him, and she isn’t hurt when he looks away.

He can’t deal with everything that happened either.

Bobby slides his hands under her shirt when he walks her back to her room. His hands are cold, and she shivers. “I have to go to bed,” she whispers. “I’m tired.”

Bobby opens his mouth, and his eyes flash for a moment, but he doesn’t actually argue. He forces a smile and tells her goodnight.

When she looks out her door an hour later, he is standing close to Kitty, and she knows why he doesn’t fight her anymore. Why he doesn’t care that she still can’t let him touch her.

She wants to cry, but she doesn’t.

She curls up on her bed, in her gloves and her long sleeves, and she shivers with cold.

She tries to remember when it all started to fall apart, and she really isn’t sure. She used to think it was the day her mutation kicked in, racing through her veins and flooding her mind with power/pain/pleasure.

She still thinks it was where it all started, really.

But Marie (Rogue, something inside her whispers) knows that is selfish. She knows it isn’t really about her. It has nothing to do with her. It never has.

It’s about Jean.

It was Jean, when she died, Logan had said. He said she asked him to stop her.

He said that he almost couldn’t. That he wished the kid had died, that Magneto had killed him, that the Professor had killed her, instead of dying.

He had turned away, and his face was blank, and he said that he didn’t know why he hadn’t left yet.

Why they hadn’t left yet.

She shivers under her covers, under layers of fabric and silk, and wonders too. She has picked up her things several times, only to find herself staring at them blankly, unsure of when she last used this brush, or wore this top.

She fingers her clothes, her scarves, and wonders when she stopped wearing them. She should remember something like that. Some big moment, maybe, when she knew the cure had worked, knew she was no longer poison to touch. Some moment when she gave one to Bobby to cover his eyes while she kissed him, or had tied his hands with a laugh and a naughty wink.

She can’t remember, and the feel of them on her bare hands is strange. Like tasting a lemon when you expected a peach.

They should just leave. Logan doesn’t have a camper anymore, but he could steal one, or buy one, or however he comes up with the things he wants. Or there is the motorcycle. The one that has sat untouched for the past three months.

There is nothing left for either of them here, and Marie doesn’t have to open the door to hear Bobby laughing softly down the hall, leaning close enough in to Kitty that she can feel the chill of his breath (His kisses always sting) and the heat of his hands, even though he isn’t touching her.

She doesn’t have to open the window to smell the cigar smoke drifting upward. Outside, Logan paces while she is frozen. He hasn’t been sleeping, but spends his nights restless outside her window.

The garden is dead now, but the benches are still there, and sometimes he stops and sits and looks out at nothing.

Sometimes she slips downstairs, in her gloves and coat and sweater, and sits beside him while he smokes, one hand curled around a bottle of beer that she never drinks.

Sometimes, he talks. About killing Jean, about taking the cure, about leaving.

"We never did make it, kid. I wish we had."

His voice had been shaking, she thought, when he said it, but his face hadn’t changed. His eyes were still closed and dark, and his shoulders slumped where his body touched hers. She had leaned into him, and hadn’t cried.

Marie curls tighter into her blankets, and counts her heartbeats

Her hands ache with cold, and she breathes onto them to warm them.

She wonders if he will be there in the morning.

She shivers, and her breath steams in the air.

END