Marie was huddled in a corner of Logan’s magnetic prison when they found her a short while later. She was rocking back and forth slightly, her lips moving silently. Marie was trying to force her connection with Logan. Get back inside his head and find out where he was being taken. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working. Marie had no idea why she could connect with Logan and that worried her. She longed to hear his voice in her head, if only just to reassure herself that he was still alive.
“Rogue, we should head back to the mansion. There’s nothing we can do here,” Storm said softly as she knelt down in front of the younger woman.
Very slowly, Marie raised her eyes from the tops of her knees to look at her friend. “We were so close. Logan was here. Ah can still feel him in here. He was waitin’ for me ta come, but Ah was too late.”
“It is not your fault, child,” Storm tried to placate her. “You did the best that you could. It will just take us a little longer to find Logan now.”
“We’d better cause Logan’s coutin’ on me t’ find him,” Marie whispered, tears in her eyes. “He’s been waitin’ for me fer four years ta find him so Ah can’t let him down.”
After such a big disappointment, Marie felt utterly exhausted. She just wanted to curl up, Logan’s jacket pressed to her face, and sleep for a long, long time. Maybe in her dreams, she would be able to connect with Logan. In her dreams, she could hold him in her arms like she was unable to in the real world. At least until she found him. Once they got Logan back, Marie didn’t plan on letting him go for a very long time.
“Ah’ll be in the back,” Marie whispered as she boarded the Blackbird.
Not waiting for a response from the others, Marie headed past the front sitting area to the sleep compartment that housed several cots for trips that involved sleeping on the high tech jet.
Still wearing her white runners and Logan’s enormous jacket, Marie laid on the first available, clutching Logan’s tags in her gloveless fist. Unfortunately, she was too wound up to fall asleep as quickly as she would have liked. For what seemed like hours, Marie tossed and turned on the narrow cot, searching for the ever elusive oblivion.
“Sleep, sleep, Ah need to sleep,” Marie whispered under her breath in a singsong voice as she rolled over to face the wall of the jet.
Lying there, listening to the gentle, almost inaudible hum of the engine, Marie slowly began to fade away into Morpheus’ dreamscape. There was no welcome oblivion with its endless darkness. Rather a hazy confusion of shapes, movement and noises that she could decipher.
“Hello? Is someone there?” Marie shouted as she made her way through the confusion.
Through the haze of noises, one particular noise stood out. It was just as hard to understand as the rest, but it sounded familiar to Marie.
“Logan, is that you?” Marie shouted as she jogged through the mass of confusion. She spun around, searching through the fluttering images for the familiar form of the man who had stolen her heart when she was till a teenager.
Hearing the disembodied scream coming from somewhere to her left, Marie made a sharp turn. She sprinted towards the source of the scream, her legs pumping furiously. Her advance was slowed by the strange landscape that she was trapped in. Shapes popped up out of nowhere. Solid shapes that she would crash into or trip over. Each time she was slowed down, the scream returned, louder and a little more defined each time.
“Marie!”
“Logan, Ah’m comin’! Just hold on, sugah!” Marie shouted as she dodged the dark shapes that seemed to be appearing more and more frequently.
The darkness came so suddenly that Marie stumbled to her knees as she was plunged into an inky blankness. When she stood back up, Marie came face to face with a single spotlight illuminating a cold, metal door. Marie glanced around nervously, hoping that she could avoid opening the door. Whenever a door was opened in a dream, something bad always happened afterwards.
“Marie! Help me!”
Logan’s panicked cries made the decision for her. Regardless of what dangers lay inside, she was going. Logan was in there.
Chewing nervously at her bottom lip, Marie inched her trembling fingers towards the doorknob. The chill that Marie had expected to feel when her skin in contact with the door wasn’t there. Instead, it was so hot that it nearly burned her skin. Biting back a yell, Marie clutched her injured hand to her chest.
“Marie, please!”
Steeling herself, Marie took several deep breaths. Marie let out a loud, savage cry as she gripped the doorknob tightly. At least she attempted to. Instead, her hand passed right through the door as it faded into nothing. The darkness faded as well, leaving Marie bathed entirely in an intense white light. She blinked furiously in an attempt to block out the stinging pain and adjust her eyes to the new light source.
When she was finally able to see clearly, Marie instantly wished herself back into the oppressive darkness. At least in the darkness she couldn’t see Logan trapped in a large cylindrical tube filled with water. Pounding against the glass, the only evidence of his screams being the air bubbles that poured from his opened mouth.
“Logan!” Marie shouted, rushing forward instantly.
Halfway to where Logan was trapped, Marie was overrun by a swarm of doctors who were pushing her away. No matter how much she struggled against them, Marie inevitably found herself pushed back further and further from Logan’s floundering body. Tears in her eyes, Marie watched as his movements became more sluggish. The breath escaping his lips becoming less and less.
“Ah’m comin’, Logan!” Marie screamed, shoving her way through the throng of doctors.
“He brought this upon himself,” Magneto informed her, appearing in front of her suddenly.
The doctors all faded the instant the aging mutant appeared, giving Marie free and complete movement. Completely ignoring the stately looking man, Marie rushed to Logan’s water prison. Barely conscious after all this time, Logan could only manage the briefest of movements.
“He sought the answers to questions he should not have been asking,” Magneto said, doing nothing to stop her frantic pounding on the thick glass that encased Logan.
In a move that shocked Marie to no end, Magneto waved his hands, creating a metallic console that hovered in the air in front of him. As he laid his palm flat against the black metal square in the centre, Marie could see the air around his hand shimmer, a sure sign that he was using his powers.
Before Marie could completely comprehend what he had done, the glass surrounding Logan disappeared and he crumpled to the ground amidst the rolling waves.
“Logan!” Marie cried, falling to her knees beside his prone body and gathering him up in her arms.
Logan made no movements besides those she created as she jostled his body. He was breathing-- very slightly --and Marie took small comfort from that. She held him close, running her fingers through his soaked hair and along the sharp lines of his face. Tears filled her eyes as she watched him struggle for every breath that he sucked in past his blue tinged lips.
“Ah’m so sorry, Logan. Ah came as fast as Ah could,” Marie whimpered, pressing kisses to his forehead and cheeks. “Ah just wasn’t fast enough....”
“Rogue.”
Her head jerked up at the sound of the voice. To her disappointment, though, it wasn’t Logan who had spoken. He always called her Marie.
“Rogue, wake up!”
This time the voice was more insistent and Marie glanced around frantically in search of the voice. When she looked back down at Logan, she was horrified to see him fading before her eyes.
“No! Logan!” Marie screamed, clutching at him tighter in an attempt to hold onto him. She wasn’t going to lose him so soon after fighting so hard to save him.
Logan had almost completely faded from sight when Marie saw his eyes flicker open, relief evident in them as he surged back into full, living colour. “Marie....”
“Ah’m here, Logan. Ah’m here with ya right now,” she whispered, leaning over to press a soft kiss to his lips.
Logan returned her kiss weakly, his fingers curling lightly about her arm which was draped across his stomach. “Please come, Marie. I need you so much.”
“You know Ah’ll come for ya, Logan. Ah love ya,” Marie murmured, smiling despite the tears that filled her eyes.
“I love y--”
“Logan!” Marie sat bolt upright in the small cot at the back of the Blackwing, gasping for breath. As she calmed, Marie noticed that the front of her shirt was dripping wet, as was her face and some of her hair.
“Rest easy, child, it is over now,” Ororo soothed, wiping her wet hair from her face.
Marie practically flew from the bed, running her fingers through her tangled hair. “What did ya wake me up farh?”
“You were having a nightmare, Rogue. We could hear you screaming all the way at the front,” Ororo said calmly, rising from the bed.
Legs suddenly weak, Marie collapsed onto the ground in a sobbing heap. “Ya shouldn’t have woken me! Logan needed me! He was so scared an’ now he’s there all by ‘imself!”
Kneeling down beside the weeping girl, Ororo pulled Marie into her arms, her hands brushing the wild mane from her face. “Logan is strong. He’ll be fine.”
“Ya don’t know that,” Marie whimpered. “Ya don’t know....”