Learning How To Smile
by
Donna Bevan


Disclaimer: Not mine. . . for the thirtieth time. Sheesh.

Dedication: This is for everyone who said kind things bout Easy Tonight, even though I was playing the sadistic meanie when I wrote it. :) Thanks, babes, though I warn you - this is not much better. For Diebin, my very own Tyler, who thoroughly deserves the eight million hugs I've given her over the past few days. Oh, and to shipperchick, who is the GODDESS of feedback. She just sent me the most AMAZING email, and I must respond to it tomorrow...when my brain is not fried like chicken. <grinning>

---

I don't think you notice
when you see my face
I guess you're waiting
to spin me around again

wheels I guess are turning
somewhere inside my head
I know that this is
deeper than you get

~~x~~

Why?

How could you?

Why?

Those questions had been bouncing around inside Rogue's head for the past three weeks. She ran and ran, and she still couldn't escape them. Down the eastern seaboard, then through the distantly familiar locale she used to call home.

And she couldn't escape them, because Logan wouldn't let her.

He'd been strong in her head ever since the day she woke up with fluorescent lights stinging her eyes through the lids. It was the second thing she noticed.

The first was that there was light at all, and there wasn't supposed to be.  Not when the last thing she remembered was the searing pain of drawing a new razor blade unsteadily across her right wrist, the metal cold then warm against her bare fingers.

There wasn't supposed to be light.

There wasn't supposed to be *anything*.

But there was, and that would have told her that Logan had found her, had interfered, even if he hadn't immediately been screaming inside her head. And loud, he was so loud. . .

Angry.

Scared.

That fear became hers, because he shouldn't have been so frightened. Angry, yes, because weakness had always angered him, and there was nothing weaker than deciding that it was too much trouble to live. But his voice inside her wasn't just enraged; it was shaky with horror, and Rogue didn't want to think that maybe she had been wrong.

He shouldn't have cared so much, not when she knew he didn't, not really.

But the voice inside her head didn't lie. It couldn't.

<Why?>

And you'd think that, being inside her head, he would know. He would already have figured out that she'd taken stock of her life, of what she'd become, and realized that it wasn't worth it. That, when you added the good and bad of her life, when you looked at the bottom line, she was so far in the red that she'd never be able to climb out.

It just wasn't worth it.

*She* wasn't worth it.

As the thought had come to her, the Logan in her head started screaming louder. Louder and louder until she could barely see the looks she was getting from everyone else - the gentle, almost hesitant concern, everywhere she turned. God, the concern was even worse than the blatant speculation.

But she could barely see any of it through the haze of fury in her head.

She hadn't hated herself before she tried to die; there hadn't been enough energy or interest left for her to bother. But she hated herself after waking up in the infirmary. She hated herself more than anything, and she wasn't sure why. She couldn't tell if it was just Logan railing about in her mind, or if her self-loathing meant something more. If, maybe, it meant that she'd been wrong, and she'd been selfish, and maybe someone *did* give a shit whether she lived or died.

And, just like that, she woke up. It never occurred to her to try again, while Logan was unconscious and unable to stop her. She couldn't have, because Jean had her under constant watch, and she knew the Professor was keeping tabs of his own. But the fact that they would have stopped her, with or without Logan's help, didn't matter.

What mattered was that she didn't even *think* about it.

It was morbidly funny, in a way. She'd been fighting her exhaustion for months, turning over in her head the hows and whens and particulars of making it all just fucking *stop*. But she woke up with those lights in her eyes and Logan inside of her, and hatred. . . everywhere.

And she wanted to live.

She wasn't ashamed of what she'd done, and it bothered her. She knew she should have been ashamed. Instead, what got to her most was the way everyone was even more careful around her than before. She didn't like it; once again, she was reminded on a visceral level of how different she was.

So she started thinking about leaving, going someplace where no one knew her, knew what she could do. What she *had* done. It wasn't enough to motivate her, though.

The fear was. She was piss-scared of what Logan would do when he finally dragged himself out of his coma, and so she ran. She took what she needed, not caring if it really belonged to her or not, because nothing did, not anymore, and she left. A calm, reasonable note on the Professor's desk, and she headed out.

And Logan yelled at her the whole way, just under her skin, and she almost smiled, because it was the first time either of them could remember that he hadn't wanted to go.

~~x~~

The Logan in her head never really stopped his ranting, and that was what made her stop just past Richmond and circle around, where a gas station attendant told her yes, a big, rough man *had* been in, asking about her.

And it was such a Logan thing to do, follow her, that she had almost smiled for the second time, and she wondered how fast she'd have to run, how far she'd have to go, to get away.

Then she wondered if he would let her.

She had a lot of time to herself on the road, with nothing but the radio and Logan to keep her company. She gave him free reign of her head, and he eventually quieted, enough so that she could think.

When that happened, she tried to. She tried to look at the world with new eyes, ones that could appreciate why life was so precious and beautiful, even hers, that ending it deliberately would be a travesty. But all she could remember was the minister from her childhood church preaching that suicide was a sin, and that you'd burn in hell for it, and that it was worse than rape and adultery and murder, because you'd never have a chance to repent for what you'd done.

Her eyes felt the same, and she saw what she'd always seen. The world around her, so close, never quite reaching her. The same things that, days before, had driven her to her knees - isolation, loneliness. Despair. Oddly enough, those things didn't trouble her anymore. When she sat back and really looked inside herself, she found that nothing, not even the threat of eternal damnation, had the power to worry her. Not anymore.

But she had to be careful not to think, "I don't care," because she found out one night in Augusta that it was the fastest way to get a headache, because Logan hated it when she even thought about thinking that. He didn't like those words. And Rogue wondered why, because in the seventeen years of his remembered life he'd made them his own. It was his mantra, but *his* words in *her* head. . .

It made him livid.

She wanted to think about what that meant, but she couldn't.

So she made a deal with herself. She'd think about it all - about the meaning of life, about Logan, about *suicide* - later. Not now, because now was reserved for the open road and the stations fading in and out of existence on her FM dial. Now was set aside for just *being*, because thinking so damned much had gotten her nowhere.

She didn't have a plan for where to go, she just knew that heading north into Logan's territory was out of the question. And if you don't head north, then you head south.

So that's where she went.

Maybe she thought he'd give up. She didn't know; knowing would come only through thinking and she wasn't going to do that. So it wasn't until she hit a diner in the middle of night with Logan hot on her heels that it really hit her.

He wasn't giving up, and he wasn't going back without her. For whatever reason, Logan wouldn't - or couldn't - just let her *be*.

The waitress was nice to her because she could sense pain, and the woman twisted and interpreted it until she made it something she could identify with, something that had been her own. Rogue didn't bother to correct her assumptions, and so she found herself lying on a lumpy cot in the back room with the smell of stale grease and frozen French fries weighing heavily on her resolute decision not to think.

She stared at the water spots on the old, old ceiling. . . and thought.

Though it had only been a few weeks, not thinking had become a habit already, perhaps because it was an old one of Logan's, one to which he probably always secretly yearned to return. So, when she started thinking, she started small.

She started wondering what would make Logan go away.

Five minutes later, her shaky hands tacked an old gas receipt on a bulletin board, and the scribbled sentence on it read, "If you see Logan, tell him I love him." The words were true, but she had selfish, not-quite-admirable reasons for writing them.

She didn't do it because she wanted him to know; she figured he did already.

And she didn't do it because she just wanted to say it; the admission made her sound pathetic and small, and so very young, like the girl whose life he'd once had to save. A girl who had been too defenseless to save her own damned hide.

No. . .

All Rogue wanted to do with that tattered note was make Logan run away, as far away as he could get, because entanglements and emotions were not his style.

But she felt disconcerted and strange as she cranked the car, because the Logan in her head wasn't freaking out or running or even gently apologetic.

He seemed grateful.

And Rogue knew then what she had to do.

She stopped in Riverside to top off the gas tank and buy a phone card. Then she called Mrs. Richards, and for a moment she couldn't speak, because Natalie's mother had the same softly scratchy voice as her own mother, and she felt like a tiny girl, a child. When Mrs. Richards asked her name, she pretended to be another friend of theirs, one who'd moved out of state just months before she'd left home.

Then she called Natalie.

~~x~~

I've already given
up on getting through
I never question
who I'm talking to

oh so much for nothing
but nothing means so much
I know it's touching
but I've been out of touch

~~x~~

The plan was simple - she would just become Marie again. After all, Marie had never had Rogue's problems. She'd been happy. And two years as Rogue was nothing; it would probably be better for everyone if she just pretended those two years had never existed.

So, she told herself, in a way. . . Rogue *had* died.

But Marie was going to live.

Somewhere in her mind, it made sense, and she waited for Logan's voice to argue with her, to refute her logic.

It didn't.

Natalie welcomed her with tears and open arms, but with no questions. Those didn't arise until Rogue - no, *Marie* - instinctively flinched away from the simple embrace she offered as a hello. That's when the questions made it to Natalie's eyes, though they never found voice. Marie was glad; Natalie had once been her best friend, and she didn't know if she could say the things that would need to be said, not if she wanted to really answer.

Natalie's roommate was gone for the month, and Marie found herself sitting on an invitation to stay as long as she liked. She accepted, and she and Natalie fell into their old routine of giggling and talking until all hours of the night.

And Marie was happy.

She didn't lie to Natalie about her mutation, and she was always very careful not to create any accidents, not to hurt Nat. But her best friend reminded her why they *had* been best friends when she griped over dinner that she should "lose the gloves, at least."

It seemed so small, so insignificant, but it was like shedding a skin. It was suddenly worlds easier to be Marie than Rogue.

The questions were still there, every time Natalie looked at her, but all she ever said about it was, "You'll tell me when you're ready, right? So why push things?" And Logan, who had been mercifully silent for days, growled at that and tried to insist that Marie was just hiding. He didn't understand Natalie's willingness to let the explanations slide for the moment.

But Marie was once again relieved, because she still hadn't gotten around to thinking about everything that had happened, and she had to do that before she could open it up to another person.

So she and Nat went to the art museum and stared sideways at the abstract paintings, and they went roller-skating at an old rink that still rented the kind with four wheels. They argued over who was going to make the macaroni and cheese for lunch. They talked, about everything trivial and nothing that mattered, and life was fine.

Logan died down even more, but she sensed that he wasn't gone. Instead, he seemed content for the time being, his anger and fear and irritation assuaged, though Marie couldn't have told you why.

She felt more and more like the girl from Meridian again and, as she grew more comfortable, her laughter became easier, her moods lighter. She danced on the kitchen floor in socked feet, singing "Sweet Caroline" at the top of her lungs. As her voice joined with Natalie's to completely drown out Neil Diamond's, she felt *free*.

Life didn't always have to be a struggle, and it didn't always have to be complicated.

She liked knowing that again.

~~x~~

I don't think you notice
when I can't reach out
I guess you're waiting
on somebody else again

oh so much for talking
it's all been said before
I'm hearing something
but I wish you'd just say more

~~x~~

But the happiness couldn't stop the inevitable, and she had to think.

One day, while Natalie was at work, there was a call from Marie's dad. She stared at the answering machine as it recorded his words, listened to the way he sounded stoic and sad all at once, and she cried, because she knew that they knew, and *damn* Logan anyway. . .

For the first time since waking up on that table, she cried.

She'd made a deal with herself, and it was time to live up to it.

So she told Natalie that evening after a movie, as the sun was fading below the horizon, what had happened. She didn't sugarcoat or euphemize it - "I tried to kill myself, Nat," was what she said, and she watched her best friend grow shocked and then tearful. Marie sat next to her on the sofa as she sobbed, wondering if she should be doing the same. She felt bad then, truly horrible, for the first time, because it made her wonder if her classmates had suffered a similar reaction.

If Logan had.

But she already knew what Logan felt about it all, and she understood the fear that had shadowed her for weeks. And the anger. . . It was all about hating that she didn't know her own worth, and what she'd meant to *everyone*. . . but especially to him.

She knew it now, but she still couldn't grasp it. She hated herself all over again for that, because knowing that Logan loved her should have felt good, and she needed to feel that way. For weeks, she'd been so careful, feeling nothing, and now she was just awash with all the pain and shame and guilt she'd tried to squelch.

She discovered that she missed not caring.

That made her cry all over again.

She and Natalie stayed up all night, until the sun was climbing the sky again, and Marie told her everything that had happened since the night she left Meridian with the contents of Mr. Whittles, her piggy bank, in one pocket. Natalie listened without judgment, commenting occasionally, and finally. . .

Finally, Marie felt better. Not good, but better, and Natalie assured her that it had to start somewhere, the healing.

For once, the Logan in her head agreed.

Later, as Marie stared at the water-splashed tile in the shower, she wondered how long it would be before Logan showed up. When he did, it would be much of the same all over again, except that Logan wouldn't be as easy to talk to as Natalie had been. Because Logan would want to know more than if she wanted to keep on living.

He would want to know if she *believed*.

And she still didn't.

~~x~~

don't tell me how to be
'cause I like some suffering
don't ask me what I need
I'm just fine
Here finding me



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