Marie and Logan: Playing with Fire

[x-traction.livejournal.com]

Marie has another heavy conversation on the same topic as her talk with Scott. This time, someone gets slapped.

Logan was spending some time in the gazebo, whittling on a block of wood and staring off into the dark sky. His hands moved on automatic, any accidental cuts healing over almost as instantly as they were made. Every once in a while he's pause, reach down, and take a pull off a bottle of beer in a cooler by his side. At this point the cooler, full of beer bottles, was 3/4 full of _empty_ beer bottles.

When Logan wasn't in his room, Marie knew where to look for him. Floating across the grounds, she landed on the floor of the gazebo. She raised an eyebrow at the cooler full of mostly empty bottles. "Ah'd ask how you're doin', but Ah think Ah already know."

Logan just _looked_ at Marie for a moment, then stopped his carving and sighed. "I'm happy to see her again." he told Marie defiantly. "I am, but I'm not."

Marie perched on the railing around the gazebo, unsurprised by the answer. "Ah think that's natural," she replied. "It's a mixed bag of feelings, her coming back." For lots of folk.

Logan nodded in agreement. "Beer?" he said, offering Marie one of his cold ones. "She's still a beautiful and smart woman with fire and passion." he said. "And she belongs to someone else."

"Yes, she does," Marie answered as she accepted the beer. Easily popping the top of the bottle, she took a swig. "You ready to accept that yet?"

"Nope." he said.

"Damnit Logan, what will it take?" The words were surprisingly said with little heat, despite the energy she'd used to defend him to Scott barely the night before.

"Dunno. Be a lot easier if she wasn't attracted to me." he groused. "What I want, I can't honorably have. And she's wasted with him."

Marie took another, longer drink. "But why do you want it? And what would ya do if you had it?" She shook her head, one hand circling the bottle in her hand slowly. "Is it more than you wanting what you can't have?"

"I don't know, kid!" he said, more stridently this time. “Maybe I do just want it because I can't have it. Maybe I want it because I want it. Why should you care?" he snapped.

"It's like talking to children," Marie muttered before taking another sip from the bottle in her hand. "Because Ah care about you and Ah don't want you to get hurt. Same goes for Scott. And Jean. And the way things are going, one or all of you are gonna get hurt bad."

"No offense, kid, but you don't have the experience to be able to judge." he said, not unkindly. "She's got a fire to her. She's passionate. Scott's such an old woman sometimes. He can't give her what part of her needs."

"You ever think maybe they balance each other out?" Marie said softly, Logan's word stinging despite his lack of intent. "Put two flames together and they burn bright, but they burn fast. There's no substance to hold them."

Logan scowled at Marie and took another drink of beer. "You make it sound like burning fast and hot is a bad thing." he said. "I don't age much. It's not like I can or want to grow old with someone."

"And what about her?" Marie went to take another sip of her beer and was surprised to find the bottle empty. "You might survive it, but how many times can Jean rise from the ashes?"

"What _about_ her?" he snapped back, then shrugged. "I told you, she's got passion. Fire. Nothing wrong with feeding it, letting it burn. When the time comes, either I put her in the ground and walk away or we break it off. Always have the memories of that hot, sweet fire."

Marie stared at him speechless for a moment before leaning forward and slapping Logan across the face. "Do you really mean that crap when you say it? Because part of me hopes you don't, but the other part prays that you do because it'd almost be worse if you don't and you still say it."

"Hit me again and you'll regret it." he warned. "And what do you want me to say, huh? She's married, she wants me, I want her, it's not gonna happen. End of fucking story." he growled. "Would it be sweet? Absolutely. Will it happen? I don't think so."

Marie glared at him, though her hand didn't move from her side where it had fallen. "You obviously don't care about her nearly as much as Ah thought you did. You don't care how much you'd hurt her. Guess Ah shoulda known that once Ah found out you already tried to kill her once."

"Who said anything about hurting anybody?" he said, puzzled.

"I put her in the ground and walk away," she said in a pseudo-imitation of Logan's gruff voice. "Or that time you tried to stab her when you thought she was acting off."

"I was referring to her dying of old age." he said, stung. "You really think I'd take her out?"

"Ah was told you already tried that," she said raising her eyebrow. A bit of doubt had finally entered her voice...after all, she'd told Scott he had to be wrong about that. There was no way the Logan she knew would have done that to Jean of all people.

"It wasn't her. My instincts told me it wasn't Jean, and I went with 'em. Turns out I was right, but didn't know it." he said. "Not something I'm real proud of, kid."

"So stabbing her was the first thing you thought to do?" Marie shook her head. "Ah know how much your instincts drive you Logan, but you gotta start forcing yourself to think before acting." She folded to sit on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees.

"It was my instinct that told me to take in a poor cold tired little girl who wanted to get away from Laughlin City." he said unkindly. "Instinct doesn't let me down."

Logan may as well have slapped her with those words and she visibly drew back and in on herself. Silence was her only response as a million thoughts raced through her mind.

"I hear what you're saying." he said, to try to mitigate things. "But instinct is all I really have."

"Why do you always say stuff like that?" Marie said, turning her face to look up at him. "You always underestimate yourself."

"It's what I was made to be." he said simply. "Instinctive."

"But it's not all you are!" she cried out in frustration. "You always talk about what you were made to be Logan, but Ah've always been more interested in what you make yourself to be. No programmer developed you to pick up a stray. No one made you to help save the world in your spare time. But those are the choices you made for yourself."

Logan thought about that for a second, then had to acknowledge she had a point. "True." he said grudgingly. "But if I lose instinct I turn my back on _who I am_ and _what I am_. What I've made for me."

Rising, she floated up, landing with one foot on the gazebo railing. "It's all about balance," Marie said placing one foot carefully in front of the other. "Ah'm not asking you to abandon your instincts. Ah'm just wondering if you shouldn't temper them slightly."

"With what?" he asked. "Reason? Logic?"

"Stranger things have happened," she said as she continued placing one foot in front of the other, walking off the railing and continuing the motions in midair.

Logan snorted. "Yeah." he said. "I'm not much of a thinker."

"And Ah know a Mississippi gal who used to think she wasn't much of a fighter," Marie said, pausing to glance at Logan. "Everyone can change."

"You're young." he retorted, but he had a small smile on his face when he said it. "Don't try to make me into some college geek."

"Wouldn't dream of it," she said, an equal smile reflected on her face. "But Ah'm also not gonna accept the BS 'Ah'm just what Ah was made to be.' Ah know better."

Logan got up, reached over, and tousled her hair. "You're a good kid." he told her fondly, then collected his empties and his half-done woodcarving. "Think I'm going to go inside, think things over."

She smiled and ducked her head, glad to hear Logan use the T word. "Think Ah'm gonna stay out here a bit longer. Breakfast in the morning?" It was her way of checking that they were still ok, after everything they'd said and done that night.

"Yeah, I think so." he said with another fond look. "Sleep well, Marie." he told her, then walked out of the gazebo to head back into the Mansion.

"You too," Marie said to his retreating back before settling into the swing. Closing her eyes, she rocked back and forth, enjoying the cold night air.