Chapter Text
Logan loves this new world. While he could do with a bit more quiet, he enjoys seeing the students happy. He does eventually have to go back to teaching History and spends much of his free time relearning it. He doesn’t even mind doing it.
Charles helps the others give him their memories over the course of a few months. Jean is first. She shows him that day in Alkali when she helped free him. She shows him arriving with the young Rogue and protecting her. Logan realizes how much he watched her when he was there. He still left for months on end in search of his memories, but Charles was able to help him find those much quicker this time around.
Logan takes time to think after that session. He thinks about Jean and Rogue. Did he really want Jean that much? He knew she would always choose Scott over him. He knew that going after a taken woman was safer than going after a teenager. As she aged, Jean’s memories showed him staying at the mansion longer and longer. Eventually taking over the older history classes, including the college level ones. The one Rogue took.
Scotts memories show him Liberty Island and the flying woman who kicked their asses. Logan learns that that was Rogue. He sees Stryker’s failed attack on the school. No one was out that day. Kurt already lived in the mansion and Charles was not visiting Erik in prison - because he was never in prison. Rogue had helped him escape Liberty Island. Stryker and his men were arrested for the unauthorized attack on the school and are sitting in some military prison.
Storm shows him teaching Danger Room sessions and hanging out with the older Peter Maximoff, who had apparently been told by Rogue and the Professor to pretend they had never met before. His memories of Egypt were altered like everyone else's to protect Rogue’s identity, but they never altered those.
Hank showed him fixing motorcycles and his struggles to regain himself. That session forces Logan to lock himself in his bedroom for a few days. Rogue brings him trays of food and leaves them outside the door.
Raven refuses to give him any memories. I will not support this. He wants to rut with my kid.
Eventually, Logan knows almost everything about what he missed.
Rogue is the final piece. Charles explains that when she merged with her younger self, she lost all mutations except his and Erik’s. She cannot give him her memories on her own.
Seven months after waking up in the new timeline, Rogue and Charles sit next to him in Hank’s lab.
He sees everything from Rogue’s eyes. Finding young Jean Gray and promising to keep her safe. Running after him in Alkali. Fighting Apocalypse. Training with the X-Men. Hiding herself. He sees her fight to protect and help the students control their powers. Getting the postcard from Raven. The pain in realizing that the woman who raised her gave her to Magneto. He sees Logan save the younger girl on Liberty. Everything for the past thirty-five years.
When Charles disconnects their minds, Rogue runs.
Rogue runs and steals one of Scott’s cars. She disables the tracking device.
Logan knows where she is going.
He follows her to Canada. To that seedy bar where he first saw her sitting at the bar, drinking dirty tap water.
She is drinking whisky and watching the fights. She doesn’t seem to notice him when he enters the bar.
Logan signs up for the fight.
He can smell her excitement when his name is called over the speaker.
He can pick out her labored breathing as he knocks out every opponent.
When the matches are over and the bar clears out, Logan sits next to her at the bar.
“What are you doing here?” He asks as the bartender pours him a glass.
Rogue smiles wryly, “Didn’t know where else to go, really.”
Logan downs his drink and slams a few bills on the bar. He leaves her sitting there. He climbs on the motorcycle he stole from Scott and waits.
Rogue follows him out. When she sees him waiting, she pulls up the hood of the beat up army jacket she is wearing.
“What the hell are you doing?” Logan asks, with a faint smile.
“I’m sorry. I needed a ride. Thought you might help me.” Rogue says for the third time in her life.
Logan smiles and leans forward on the bike. Rogue climbs on behind him.
“What about Scott’s car?” She points at the little red sports car.
“If it’s still here in the morning, I’ll call him and tell him where he can find it. I’m sure Hank or Storm will fly him out here to get it.” Logan shrugs and starts the motor.
“Where are we going?” Rogue’s voice is almost fully carried away by the wind.
“I had a cabin up here before. I assume it's still there.”
Logan drives them to a run down cabin far away from the bar and deep in the woods. When they enter, it is full of dust but not thirteen years worth. The other Logan must have come here in the past few years.
The cabin is one large space with a king sized bed on the farthest wall. There is a door that leads to a bathroom, but everything else is fully open concept. Logan starts a fire and finds clean bedding in a wardrobe against a wall.
He silently makes the bed while Rogue sits in front of the fire and stares into the flames.
“Why’d you come after me, Logan?” Rogue breaks the silence.
Logan sits on the floor next to her. “You were right.”
Rogue smirks. “I usually am. What about this time?” Logan loves hearing her true southern drawl. After all those memories, he was sick of the French accent.
“Jean and you. The Wolverine and me. All of it really.” Rogue can hear the defeat in his voice.
“Logan, if you don’t want me, that is fine. It really is. I am a big girl. I can handle rejection.” But inside her heart aches at the words.
Logan can smell the lie. “You don’t mean that. It was just seven months ago that you were yelling at me about being a coward.”
Rogue bristles at the mocking tone. “Screw you, Logan!” She snaps and finally turns her head to look him in the eye. What she sees there isn’t mocking though. It’s something she thought she’d never see directed at her. Longing. Lust. Desire. And dare she think it? Love.
“What do you think I’m trying to get you to do, darlin?” It is low and dark and full of promise.
Rogue snaps and launches herself at him.
This is nothing like the kiss on the tarmac thirty years ago. That was a goodbye. This is a hello. A hello that was years overdue.
Logan picks her up easily and stands to move across the small room. She lands on the bed with a huff and bounces slightly.
“Logan!” She giggles as she lands.
“Your skin has tormented me since the day we met. Since you took off those gloves to eat old jerky out of the glovebox. Since you were gasping for air and my claws her in your chest. Since your heart stopped on Liberty. Since you got that fucking Cure and touched the Iceprick. Since you touched me in ‘73 in Charles’ study. Every moment in the past, knowing I could touch you but not having the time.”
Logan knows that he is fighting a losing battle for control of The Wolverine, but with every word, Rogue’s eyes darken and her heart rate increases.
When his claws slip out and cut her clothes off, there is no fear in her scent. She lets out a complaint about not having anything else to wear, but nothing about stopping.
Rogue uses Erik’s power to remove Logan’s belt and start undoing the fly of his jeans.
Logan claws off his own clothes seconds later.
There are growls and pants and whining sounds, but no words. Words aren’t needed anymore.
Logan touches and licks every inch of her. When she hits her first climax, her control of her skin slips a bit and she feels herself taking in Logan’s mind again. All of his thoughts are of her. She turns off her skin again.
Logan doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop when he smells her blood after he seats himself fully inside her. He didn't stop until he emptied himself inside her and rolled her onto his chest.
Through the haze, he makes sure she is breathing softly before he follows her into sleep.
Throughout the night and into the morning, when one of them wakes up, they wake the other up and they go again.
When the sun rises, Logan gives her some of his old clothes that he keeps there and they go back into town. Logan does call Scott when they notice the car is untouched in the bar parking lot. He tells them not to come looking for them for a while.
They hit up the small grocery store and buy the essentials and some food. Logan says that they can hunt in the woods for more meat as they need it.
When they are sipping coffee naked in front of the fire, Logan remembers what happened last night.
“You bled.” It comes out gruffer than he meant.
“Well, yeah. She didn’t have control yet. There was never a Cure here. She never slept with Bobby.”
Logan groans. “Raven is going to find a way to murder me. She’ll have Erik come rip my head off.”
Rogue distracts him with another round in front of the fire.
He resists the urge to let The Wolverine take her the way he wants. He wants her marked and covered with his scent. He wants The Man to place a ring on her finger to show that she belongs to them.
Logan pushes those thoughts deep, deep down. Instead he says, “we saved the future.”
Rogue places her head on his chest and listens to his heart. “Yeah, I guess we did.”