xp_logs | [Heather, Marie] Sunday morning phone call.

Heather calls on Sunday morning looking to talk to Logan and ends up talking about Logan with Marie instead.

Marie was still curled up in bed at almost noon, half-sleeping in a nest of pillows and blankets. Logan wasn't there, she'd kicked him out of bed not ten minutes earlier on the grounds that there was no way she could function without chocolate croissants from the bakery down the road. He'd grumbled at her but crawled out of their warm bed without too much complaint to go and fetch them. So it was that she was feeling smug and sleepy and utterly content - though lacking in chocolate and french pastry - when the phone rang. Marie reached for it automatically.

"Hello?" she said sleepily, wondering who was calling this phone at this hour.

"Hello." A short pause, then, "Is Logan there?"

A woman's voice that she didn't quite recognize. "No, I'm sorry, he's not. Can I take a message for him?" Marie rolled over in bed and fumbled in the bedside table drawer for something to write on.

"Marie?" Finally, the pieces fit together. Well, almost. "This is Heather Hudson. We met a few weeks ago..."

"Heather!" Marie was genuinely delighted to hear that she was calling. "Hi there. Nothing's wrong, is it?" She sat up, frowning, and pulled a blanket up over her bare shoulders.

"Not this time," Heather laughed quietly. "Mac and I were talking about Logan last night and I decided to call today, to see how he's doing."

"Aside from being dramatically grumpy at being kicked out of bed to go get things from the bakery this morning, he's fine," Marie said, stifling a giggle at the memory of Logan's theatrical grumbles and playbites when she was convincing him that she really did /need/ chocolate croissants, or /else/. "He's even surviving his teaching experience admirably, though he may want to put a few disclaimers on the controversial art project next year."

Heather's voice betrayed her smile. "Oh?"

"One of his female students showed up naked to discuss nudity and decency and societal norms in art. I was very proud of her," Marie said, a little smugly. "She's a smart girl and a fast learner."

"Oh. I wish I could've been there to see that." Heather's words were awash with giggles. "I'm sure that's not what he was expecting at all."

"Jane's a sweetheart," Marie said, snuggling back into the pillows. "If anyone could get away with it, it's her. I know that when Piotr left for extra training, Charles gave Logan that class as part of a little running joke but it's good for him. He's so non-judgmental and so bad at following the rules himself that he pretty much lets them be as creative as they want to be, and that's good for them."

Heather was glad to hear that Marie understood Logan so well, and that his time at Xavier's wasn't unhappy. "Changing the lives of the leaders of tomorrow, hm?" She chuckled quietly into the receiver, not sure if she should count the children lucky to have him as a teacher, or lucky to survive the experience.

"Something like that," Marie agreed. "I don't think that anything could shock him more than the moment Charles told him he'd be taking that class over. Usually he teaches self-defense and survival training, which are in his comfort-zone as much as anything in this school is. Some of the kids are pretty fond of him, especially some of the younger ones, which confuses the heck out of him at times, in a sad but sweet way."

Heather nodded in understanding, then remembered that Marie couldn't see her. "He's always been like that. Unsure of his appeal." She was silent for a second or two. "I think he looks at the things he's done, rather than why he's done them, and can't understand why people aren't afraid of him. And," she sighed, "So many people /are/ afraid of him that there's really no chance to convince him that he's wrong."

"I know." Marie said sadly. "He's so ready to believe the worst about himself and ready to let other people think it. I hate it when people expect him to have no control when he's usually one of the best disciplined people I know." She curled up in bed a little, reaching over to run her hand over the empty place where Logan should have been. "I've never been afraid of him, not even in the beginning. We've had our share of discussions about it. At least he can't tell me that I don't know /everything/, so I can't be right. He lost that argument a long time ago."

Heather nodded again; Marie was helping to confirm one of her theories about their relationship. "I think...I think that he knows that getting through a single day without killing someone or something takes an unbelievable amount of control, for him, and he sees that as a good enough reason to let people fear him. He's afraid of what would happen if he ever lost that control, I know."

"He's not the only one with that fear about themselves. I know what it takes for him not to act sometimes." Marie snuggled up to Logan's pillow, comforted by his scent lingering on it. "Still, I'm not afraid of him losing that control. Not at all. Not now, not ever. And if he did, I'd stop him," she said simply. "I won't let him have more reason to hate himself."

"He tried to kill me, once. The first time we met." Heather smiled sadly at the memory; it seemed almost amusing, now. "You'd think if I could still care about him after that, he could stop worrying so much."

"He told me about that." Marie thought back to the night Logan had nearly killed her. "How he can blame himself for anything under those circumstances is beyond me. Sometimes, I think it's a perverse hobby of his, coming up with reasons people should hate or fear him. I think he's losing ground on that front, slowly. He's had his moments with me and I haven't gone away either. We'll wear him down in time."

"I hope so," Heather said with a smile. "He's good people and he deserves to know that about himself."

"It gets very hard for him to argue that one these days. Anyone who can drive five hours with two little boys playing video games in the back seat - and acting them out no less - and not lose their temper once is a saint." Marie said with much amusement. "Even if only one of the two can speak, Miles and Artie make a lot of noise and you can imagine what five hours of video game music is like for Logan. And that was just one way."

"That he's never once followed through on his threats to throw Puck through a wall was enough for me," Heather said, laughing. "You'll see, if you watch them play poker together, that Puck is uniquely capable of simultaneously driving Logan mad and making him laugh. It's really something to see."

Marie started to giggle. "That means we have to come back up, then, just so I can see that. Not that I'd let him get away without visiting you more than once a year. He's terrible about that. We'll have to work something in so that he can recover from when my grandmother and great-grandmother come to visit. Poor Logan. My family decided they're going to keep him."

"God, I'd pay to see that." Heather laughed. "Yes, you two should come up and see us after that, and before, too. We've got a spare room, if you need it."

"Oh, well, knowing my family, you will see it at some point," Marie said dryly. "Seriously, the moment Mama finds out about you and Mac, she'll be inviting you down to Mississippi. We'll definitely be back up, though, and soon. It's so good for Logan to get to see you and Mac. I wish I could convince Logan to fly, still working on that one, but it's not a bad drive. It's eighteen hours to Mama and Daddy's place, and that's a pain."

"Logan refuses to fly, hm?" Heather asked with amusement. "He used to do it all the time. He had quite the jetset lifestyle, there for a few years. Not really by choice though, it was all for work."

"Oh, he'll get on a plane for work," Marie said. "Though he'll bitch about it. He comes back and I ask him how it went and all I get is "Went onna plane." as though that were all that mattered about the whole thing." She laughed lightly. "He's awful about it. If it's not for work, he'll just find some other way to get there. He'll drive the whole way to Meridian, straight, on his own, before he'll look at a plane. I don't know what he's worried about. Still, we'll work on it."

"I think he's cultivating his humanity," Heather said with a laugh. "He probably read somewhere that people have phobias and so he decided to have one, too."

"Well, he could have picked something like spiders instead of something I can do," Marie said with a mock pout. "I /love/ to fly, with or without the plane. He's so difficult."

"I think we're just lucky he didn't decide to be anthropophobic, or something," Heather said, still laughing. "Though, from the way he acts sometimes, I wonder."

"I don't blame him," Marie said, sobering a little. "People aren't good to each other, and he's an outsider by nature. I think, though, that it comes from how he feels about himself, not from how he feels about other people."

Heather nodded, saying, "It does, I'm sure. You know, SHD," which she pronounced 'shad', "made him see a psychological analyst once -- it's procedure -- and the woman took a leave of absence afterward. She was a telepath and I don't think she was expecting the...rush of information?" Heather didn't sound sure of herself, but she continued. "I don't know what happened in that office, but it probably didn't help his self image any."

"I can see why someone might need to take a break after that," Marie said very quietly, remembering her own mind after her first contact with Logan. "It's not a very pleasant thing to experience. I can see why he was so upset when he realized what he'd done to me. But I've always managed. I think that's helped some."

Heather sighed. "He was young, then, if he's ever /been/ young, and he threw himself into his team, after. I'm glad it was better for you."

"It hasn't been easy. But I understand him now, better than anyone. And it's the price for staying alive, a small price for all the benefit." She echoed Heather's sigh. "He /is/ young sometimes. It's a little unnerving. He's so fragile."

"Full of contradictions, in his way," Heather agreed quietly.

"It was kind of reassuring to get to meet you and Mac," Marie said, pulling up another blanket. "I used to worry that he didn't have anyone else to be his family. Made me really happy to see that I was wrong."

Logan pushed the door open, eyebrow raised when he saw she was on the phone. He walked over to the bed and put the box of pastries down in front of Marie, crawling in beside her and putting his cold hands on her warm belly.

"I worried that we'd be all he ever had," Heather responded, looking up to smile at her husband.

Logan's eyebrows moved up a little further when he realised who she was on the phone with. 'Heather', he mouthed at Marie, wiggling his fingers against her tummy.

Marie couldn't stifle her giggles and she wriggled to get away from his fingers "Logan, cut that out," she said, laughing. "Sorry, Heather, obviously he's back. And he has /very/ cold hands. Thank you for sharing, dear." She offered him the phone. "Here, it's for you."

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Yay! I am so happy to get glimpses of Heather and the rest of Alpha Flight from these logs. I have the ALL of the original AF series. Fav Marvel comic of all time. *happy sigh* Yay, Heather! *claps*