Fugitive
by
Elizabeth Wilde
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of these characters. They are all copyright... Marvel and/or Twentieth Century Fox and possibly even other places or people. Point is, not mine. I make no money from this site and I don't have any to give, so there's no point in suing.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is my second X-Men fic, and it was inspired by the song "Fugitive" by Indigo Girls off of their album Swamp Ophelia. It seemed only natural to do Logan's persepective, since I'd already covered Rogue.
I'm harboring a fugitive
Defector of a kind
And she lives in my soul,
Drinks of my wine,
And I'd give my last breath
To keep us alive.
Wolverine had assumed that when he went roaring away from the Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters on Scott's bike that it would be Jean's gentle smiles and ample curves that would be haunting his memory and calling him back. Instead, a small girl with white streaks burned into her shining hair and dark eyes that held all the pain of the world followed him. She lay down with him at night when he checked into the cheapest motel he could find and drank bitter coffee with him the next morning.
He could almost hear her voice in his ear as he sped down the highway, "Runnin' again?" Try as he might to ignore it, Marie was always there. Her powers were only supposed to be a one-way transfer, but somehow the kid had gotten into his mind almost as much as he had into hers. He fought against the connection and found comfort in it at the same time. Being alone had never been anything Logan gave a second thought. Loneliness was his way of life. Rogue didn't know that sort of isolation yet, and she looked to him for shelter even after finding new friends, kids her own age.
He silently cursed himself for hurting her, then chanted over and over, "It's what's best for her."
Baby, I'm so sorry
Now it's coming to you;
The lessons I've learned
Won't do you any good
You've got to get burned.
Well the curse and the blessing,
They're one in the same.
Baby, it's all
Such a treacherous gain.
Another bug whizzed by Logan's face and he scowled, wondering again how knowing what caused the nightmares that kept him from a decent night's sleep could help. Now Rogue knew the dreams too. He wondered if they kept her awake, if she feared sleep as he did. Sometimes when he sat bolt upright in the middle of the night, sweat trailing down his body, he could almost feel her doing the same thing. Logan could never be sure whether the feeling was real or imagined. He assured himself that there was no way they could be so connected.
Either way, he hated thinking that she felt that pain, hated thinking she knew the terror of the cutting and prodding and helplessness. She couldn't understand what it all was. It reminded him of who he was, what he was. For her, it was only pain. Because of that pain, she knew him better than anyone had in his entire life. It was almost as if she had been there with him. He would never have to pretend it didn't matter or hold anything back around Marie. She understood.
And he had run away from her, too scared of himself to reach out and make the effort, to offer her the friendship she still needed.
We are fortunate ones,
Fortunate ones,
I swear.
Logan pulled over to the side of the road and covered his face with his hands, fingers massaging away the edges of a headache. His quest for the past was just another way of holding the future at arms' length. Always he had felt that if he knew his past, maybe he could finally have a future, but he had stood staring at a bright future, one that would allow him to do and learn things impossible anywhere else, and he had closed his eyes and walked away. Maybe Cyclops drove him crazy. Maybe living so close to Jean without ever having her would be torture. Maybe Storm seemed strange to him. Maybe Xavier dug deeper inside Wolverine than he liked. It was still the best chance anyone had ever given him.
Turning the bike manually, Logan began back down the road he came from, repeating to himself that it had nothing to do with a certain young girl with white hair and memories of a life that wasn't her own.
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