I'm in pieces.  A hundred thousand fragments that reform whenever he walks into the room and smiles at me, reform, but jaggedly.  Like a broken vase that's been glued together, carefully, but not quite perfectly.  There are still cracks, and it's been made fragile, and the slightest breath could shatter it again.

And I know that the time is coming, the time when he'll drop down beside me on the couch, or the floor in the gym, and tell me the one thing I've always dreaded, yet have always known he'd one day say.

We'll sit in silence for a while, for a desperately aching time in which I'll devise all manner of ways to escape before he can open his mouth, to get away before...

But he'll lay his hand, his gloved hand, on my knee oh-so-carefully, and he'll tell me he's met someone, that he hasn't known her long, and it might seem sudden, but when it's right, it's right.

He'll say, his voice soft and gruff, that he cares about me, he always has, but he doesn't love me.

It's going to happen, I can feel it, sense it; I might well be a latent psychic, so certain am I of it.

It's a surety, a truth, one of those undeniable and excruciatingly painful facts that you simply can't hide from, even though you're all too aware of its existence.  Because, while I wish it with everything I am, I know that he doesn't love me.

I know it as surely as I know the sounds a woman makes when she comes, and what it feels like to have your life sucked out of you by a girl with big, frightened eyes.  I get that from him.  Second-hand knowledge is, in some ways, better than having experienced any of it.

At least that way the emotional pain is hidden inside, not on view for all the world to see as I fear it would be if I'd ever believed he felt more for me than he does.

He doesn't want to hurt me, I can see that, I heard it as a thrumming whisper echoing in my head and shuddering through my muscles when I opened my eyes one scream-filled evening, lifetimes ago, and found him washing into me like water through the gills of a land-locked shark.

I picture it that way, my gift; biting and tearing, a bloodless torture that can't even be explained away by instinct.  Logan, for reasons unknown to me, sees it as precious, a gift that allows him to heal me, to save me when he feels he's failed.

But the failure has always been on my part.  Childish naiveté responsible for the first: an accident, reckless stupidity for the second: an act of desperation by a fear-driven old man.  And the many times after that I've failed him: my inability to keep my crush from expanding, leaping into love, the way my heart pounds like a bass drum in my chest when I think of him.  The ways in which I hurt him by being who I am, because he knows one day he'll have to hurt me, and he doesn't want to.

On that day, no matter how he wishes it won't be so, his promise will splinter like glass beneath another woman's high heels, and I will shatter into shards of agony with his words.

And still, for all the vulnerability it causes, through all the heartbreak and changes I know will come, all the pain of being Rogue, the love remains.

So when he knocks on my door, asks if I'll go for a drive with him, I stand, straighten my ponytail -- though I know he'd never care how I look, be it scrupulously maintained or dreadfully disheveled -- and follow him from the room.

He leads me into the garage, opens the door of the Land Rover he bought when he returned two years prior to this day - The Day - and allows me to settle into the passenger seat before climbing into the driver's side and closing the door.

We sit there for a moment, a moment of silence, I think, for what will soon be lost, and he tells me we need to talk.

He glances over at me as he says it, and I know that it's because he wants to know I'll be okay if he tells me somewhere else, so far away from the mansion and the comfort of my room.

I won't be, but I have great stores of strength within me, his, in all probability, so I nod, firmly, and he starts the car.

I take a breath, release it, can feel my heart becoming more brittle with every mile we traverse; still, I say nothing, simply gaze out the window, wait to discover our destination, wait to have my heart broken... and let the pieces land where they may.

It isn't what I'd expected; the countryside, lush, rolling fields of green I've never seen outside of a television show or a perfectly glossed postcard.

We get out of the car.  I can see him on the other as I close the door, and I don't take my eyes off of him as we make our way to the front of the car.  We meet there, and suddenly I can't look at him anymore, I can't bear to look into his eyes and see the uncertainty, because he's never uncertain, and if he is, it can mean only one thing.

He's going to tell me something I don't want to hear.  I've known this day was coming for so long that I can't remember ever *not* being aware of it, I've prepared for this moment, but now that it's here I only want to delay it.  I want to walk through the grass and pick the small white flowers that are growing amidst the green, and I want to talk to Logan of nothing, of inconsequential things, because I know the important ones will hurt too much.  I know they'll break me, and I know I can't let him see that this little talk, so very uneventful in the grand scheme of his life, will be the cause of my destruction.

But he won't let it be delayed.  He takes my hand and I think briefly of standing still, forcing him to drag me to wherever it is he wants to go, but I'm no longer a child; at twenty-three I'm old enough to listen to him, woman to man, old enough, enough in love, to collect and neatly bottle my tears within my heart until I'm alone and can release them safely.

We walk an unmeasured distance before he stops, halts my movement by wrapping his arm solidly around my shoulders.

"Marie," he says, and his voice is filled with tenderness, which is perhaps a sort of pity.  My heart thuds in my chest and my breath feels as though it's trapped in my lungs; he's so close I can almost feel the timbre of his words vibrating in his throat.

I wonder, when this is all over, if I'll still crave as I do now, the touch of his hand, so strong, so true, or the sound of his voice, rough as tree bark and husky as a purr, and God, I need him.  I don't know how I'd ever convinced myself I could live without him, because the thought of not seeing him every day, of not ever hearing him say my name again, makes the pain I'd go through while watching him with someone else absolutely insignificant.  I can live with that, I can live with his loving another woman, I can live with seeing him kiss her, hearing him tell her he loves her, but I can't be apart from him.  Not knowing that we'd be separated forever, and over something as trivial - in the long run - as my unrequited love.

"Logan," I reply, and struggle from his hold, not wanting him to further feel my reaction to him, the fast-coursing blood, the arousal, the threat of tears.

His look of contentment, of peace, is wiped away by concern, concern I don't want from him because he'd probably be able to draw from me answers I don't want to give.

"You must know," I start, before he can, "how I feel about you, the way I've felt for a long time now.  And I know that that's why we're out here, why you want to talk to me."

He shoots me a startled look.  "You... you know?"

His voice is hoarse with disbelief, surprise, and I smile, hoping my lips won't betray me with a quiver, or worse, a frown.

"Yes.  And it's okay.  I understand.  You deserve someone you can hold, someone you can love.  Someone... who can *touch* you."

He's quiet, and I think he's relieved I've said it for him, made it easier.

"Yes," he agrees.  "I do.  And I've found her."

It's amazing how much it hurts, how the pain just pours through my body like poison, locking my muscles and filling my every particle with tiny, individual explosions of pure misery.

I manage to ask, "Who is she?  Someone I know, or..."

He reaches out and places his hands on my arms, slowly pulls me forward until we're mere inches apart.

"I meant you."

My heart, fragile as delicate china, stutters dangerously.  "What- what do you mean?  I can't tou- "

"I can hold you, I *do* love you, and baby, you touch me like no-one ever has before."

The words have been said, and they burn with a different sort of hurt, because I've never prepared for this, never expected it.  And it can't be true.  It simply can't.

I look up, into his eyes, his nerve-filled eyes, ready to tell him I don't believe him, don't understand why he'd lie to me, when I see it.

And it isn't the caring, the love, that shines there bright enough for even the most slow-witted to see that convinces me, it's the tight set of his mouth, the strain around his eyes, the tautness of his skin, the pressure of his hands on my arms.  It's the nerves that reveal everything, that convince me, because there are many kinds of love, but he'd have no reason to be nervous of revealing any kind but one.

I think I'm smiling, I know I'm crying, and when he holds me, as though I'm precious to him, I feel the hurt slowly drain to my toes and disappear into the earth.  Perhaps this is why he chose such a deserted place, perhaps he knew all of my pain, self-caused, would need release, and that grass, though it appears delicate, is resilient, far stronger than it looks, stronger even than it might feel.

I think I manage to sob out that I love him, that I'll always love him, before he removes a scarf from his jeans pocket and kisses me, deeply, the final and only assurance of his love I'll ever need.

His arms are around me, then he pulls back briefly and stares into my eyes, serious, so very serious as he asks if I'll be his wife.

My "Yes" comes out as a gasp, but I think he understands what I'm saying because he pulls out a ring, pale and golden with a gleaming, fiery sapphire nestled into the band.

He slips it onto my finger, and I wrap my arms around him; I stand on my tiptoes and my head rests in the hollow beneath his collarbone as though it were made just for me.  His hands tangle in my hair, and he whispers of his love for me as I listen to the none-so-steady beat of his heart and muse on the difference a day can make.

The jewel of my engagement ring catches my eye, and I can see glimpses of my hair, of Logan's shoulder in it; it shimmers with the blue light reflections of the future, and the beauty of it awes me.

It feels as though all of my life I was in pieces, so many pieces of a broken dream, of a fractured heart, and then Logan touched me, he loved me in spite of who am I, because of it, and in that sparkling instant of realization, I am made whole.
 

~end~