Terri's Peep Hut ~~ Fiction Archive

Comments: Yes, I know Logan horribly oversimplifies Plato's great work. Yes, I know he gets it a little wrong. No, I don't want endless e-mails debating my use of Plato here. Sorry - feeling a tad defensive today.......real life is making me cranky. Anyhow.....the book Marie reads on the trip up is Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, a complex, absorbing story about the WWII siege of Stalingrad, clocking in at 880 pages, every single one worth the time spent reading. Yeah, yeah, my masochistic passion for Russian Lit rears its ugly head again.......and if it can creep into this light, essentially foofy series, then nothing is safe ;)

"Yeah." Decided to take Marie *way* up north, up the Dempster Highway all the way to Fort McPherson. Crossed the continental divide three times and the arctic circle once. She loves it up here. Wants to go all the way to Inuvik, but I dunno. It's still technically "summer" - second week of September - but it don't get much above fifty, at best, and there really ain't that much to see. I've been up this road all the way to Tuktoyaktuk, and there's just not that much goin' on. She wanted to go that far, and was damn disappointed when I told her there's only winter roads - ice roads - that far north and we'd hafta wait another few months. She loves it up here, just lookin' at the scenery. And I pretty much like lookin' at her, so I guess it's a good deal.

"Yeah." She bought a little camera in Dawson City before we started up, just one of those real simple point and shoot things, and she's been taking pictures left and right the whole trip up. At first I thought she was goin' a little nuts buyin' eight rolls of film, but now I think she'll probably use up every last picture. Took some pictures of me too, but not touristy pictures. She mostly catches me off guard when I'm just sittin' or on the off times that I'm lookin' at somethin' other than her.

"Yeah." The far north always has a balancin' effect on me, and I think it's that way for her too. She's been real calm, real even, ever since we got on the highway. Bein' out in nature does that to ya, and I guess that's why I've always liked it out in the wilderness best. But I tend to like the forest - more cover, more places to hunt from and hide in - than bein' out in the open like this. On the other hand, there is somethin' to be said for big open spaces - reminds ya how small you are and how a part of somethin' huge you are all at once. Like I said, balancin'.

"Yeah." I like this life. The life I had before, pre-Marie, well, it was OK. But it's like the difference between color and black and white. And I never knew what color was like until I met her. She brings out all the good things in me, and suppresses all the bad things. And it's not like she even tries to do that. It just *is*. Just happens when she's around me. She once told me this long story that some philosopher came up with about people livin' in a cave and havin' no idea what's goin on outside until one day one of 'em steps out and the whole world's out there. No way he can go back in the cave, but all the other people, the ones still in there, they haven't seen anythin' outside of the cave and they think he's kinda nuts. That's how I think about our relationship sometimes. Like she and I stepped outta the cave when we found one another and everybody else in our life - even the ones like Storm and the Professor, even Jeannie, those people who don't disapprove of us outright - well, they just don't see what we see. All they see is the cave. No way we could explain it to 'em.

"Caught you. You *were* thinking. You know what? I think the highway makes you contemplative." She's sittin' down beside me, still smilin' that impish smile. Despite everythin' she's been through, she's still so open sometimes, so 'up'. Still finds enjoyment in lotsa stuff, still likes to joke and tease me a little. Light. She's still got a lightness about her.

"Oh, darlin', I ain't no deep thinker. Just thinkin' 'bout stuff, you and me, whatever.." She's the deep thinker of this partnership, that's for sure. Bought a book while we were watchin' the kids and read it through in one sittin' while we were drivin' up here. Musta been a thousand pages, thick enough to use as a doorstop. Some Russian novel by someone I never heard of and can't pronounce. But she likes things like that. She likes things that make her think, looks for them, whereas I just kinda fall into it every now and again.

"Well, no complaints about either of those here, sugar, but you're a thinker too. You just don't usually share your thoughts." Well, that's true. But, you know, I'd kinda like to start sharin' 'em with her. Maybe it's the tundra air or the long drive or the view, but I kinda feel moved to share. Huh.

"Sure, if you want." I like how she doesn't push. She lets me decide. I need that, ya know? I need to be in charge of me, and I think she really, really gets that. This whole me-and-her thing - good as it is - is still kinda different and not a little scary. Emotional shit - I don't like it and it don't like me, generally speakin'. She never pushes me to give more than I'm ready to, and I hope I'm doin' the same with her. Plus, you never know - maybe I'll say somethin' and she'll think - wow, he must be some kinda dumbass to be thinkin' that. I mean, I know she's smarter than me and more educated. I got a helluva lot more street smarts, but her brain power's a lot more than mine.

"See? Deep thoughts." At least she didn't think that was stupid. "And I think you're right - my whole life did change when we met. Not a single thing was the same after you. Everything, absolutely everything, got better." Aw. Now I gotta kiss her. "For example - that, right there? The kissing? Not so much of that before you."

"Better not have been, darlin'." She makes me light too. Sometimes I don't think it's such a fair trade - what I give her for what she gives me. I know on the outside, it'd look like I was givin' a lot more - riskin' my life for her, takin' responsibility for her. But if you think about it more, those're things that're easier than everyday things. It's harder to give everyday, to give when it's not so urgent that you do it, than it is just when a crisis or a situation calls for it. But that's what Marie does.

On the other hand, maybe it's the same for her as it is for me - it's relatively easy to give to her, even big things, even hard things. There's just somethin' about her, somethin' that I'll never be able to figure out. She's as different from me as night is to day, so it's not that we're alike or anythin'. But there's that somethin'.......somethin' that touches on all those things that people believe in. You know, God and a bigger force at work in the universe and whatnot. All those things I don't really believe in except when I think about the two of us. Except when I remember *feelin'* it, feelin' those things run through me the first time I saw her. Tried to fight it, tried to turn away. Couldn't in the end.

"You know I was made just for you." She's teasin' but there's a lotta truth in that, I think. Wait - now she's real serious all of a sudden. "Honestly? I can't even think about kissing someone else. I just don't even like to think that."

"Good. I mean, uh......good?" What I definitely don't buy into is all this 'there's only one person in the world for you' bullshit. There's gotta be a lotta people in the world that might match up. That's especially true for Marie. I ain't come across anyone yet that don't take to her pretty good. Magneto and those assholes - well, they're fucked up, you can't go by them. But they're the only exceptions I can think of. Even if she was made just for me, there's a lotta other people out there that'd fit with her too.

"Good." Hmm. I dunno if I believe in havin' a soul. I just dunno. Sometimes I think yes - only 'cause if somethin' ever happened to us, you know, one of us dyin', then there'd still be hope of seein' her again in some kinda afterlife. But sometimes I see all the stupid, mean, and just plain vicious shit that people pull on each other and think that creatures like us, human beings, could never have somethin' pure like that's supposedta be. We're just not made that way. "Hey - do you - whaddya think about that 'soul' stuff? Do you think we have 'em?"

"I'm pretty sure. At least I think some people do." She's ponderin' that. Like when we were drivin' up - sometimes she'd just look up or out the window or somethin' and you could almost see her brain workin' somethin' over.

"I'm pretty sure we do. There's this line in the book I was reading - 'He realized with sorrow and horror how incapable he was of protecting his own soul.' I remember that line, and I remember thinking that it rang true. It was right. It's how I feel with you - like you protect my soul. You protect it with yours. So I think we must have them, don't you?"

"Yeah." The trip is makin' me contemplative, like she said. For some reason, I don't mind it so much. I usually don't like to think about things too much 'cause I start thinkin' about bad things, upsettin' things, eventually. But this feels OK. And it feels like I've got some more things to think through.

The thing about Inuvik is that it's a real, honest-to-goodness town. You'd think that goin' farther north into the artic would mean fewer things with each kilometer, but that ain't necessarily so. Inuvik even has restaurants and hotels. I'm kinda glad we decided to splurge on a hotel tonight.

Marie's back to readin' - actually re-readin' that same book all over again, this time with a highlighter in her hand. Weird how she goes back over it like that, like she's squeezin' everything out of it. That's one of the many reasons she's smarter than me right there. She thinks about somethin', lets it sink in, then starts thinkin' 'bout it all over again.

I know she's been thinkin' a lot 'bout those two kids we babysat. She liked 'em a lot, but it was harder than she thought, seriously harder. I think it was hard 'cause she was so worried 'bout not makin' a mistake, 'bout doin' right by them. Things are always harder to do when you give a shit how they turn out.

Like havin' sex. So much easier when all I hadta give a shit about was me likin' it. Now, with Marie, there's all this other stuff. Does she like it? Does it mean somethin' to her? How does it feel to her emotionally? Am I makin' her love me just a little bit more by doin' it? All those things matter, and it makes it a damn sight more complicated than a quick fuck.

But on the other hand, there's the flip side of that - I do like it, it does feel good to me, emotionally too, and I do fall in love with her just a little bit more every time we do it. I usedta laugh at people who called fuckin' 'makin' love' or some shit. But that's what it really is. It's makin' her love me and makin' me love her just a little bit more every time.

And maybe that right there is a big part of why Chuck and Scooter got their doubts about me and her workin' out. They think it is just fuckin' to me, that I don't have it in me to do anythin' else. Maybe that's it - they don't believe in souls, or at least in me havin' one. Maybe they see Marie's but they don't see it in me. Shit, maybe it is just her who has one. Why the hell should I have one? Wait, wait - what'd she say before? I protect her soul with mine. Maybe that's why I'd have one. To do that. That's make a lot more sense than just me havin' one outta the blue 'cause it was when I met her that I -

"OK." Just a smile and back to her book. She's a good woman. A real good woman. And how she was in the bar - all those roughnecks flockin' to her - it's almost like the badder someone is, the more they crave bein' close to someone like her. Well, to a point. Again, you got Magneto and his merry mutants, who are just fucked up. Pisses me off to think about them to this day. Still want revenge for what they did to her to this day. Still feel my blood boil when I hear her screams, when I see her stuck in that machine in my nightmares.

That's one thing I don't think she really understands about me. As acceptin' as she is - of my past, of my personality, of all of my quirks - she's got a little intolerance of me gettin' so hyper over her. Like me givin' her the tags, like me callin' her my girlfriend to get her to say I'm her boyfriend. She's intolerant 'cause she thinks it's some kinda statement on her - that women are less than men somehow or that she's some kinda property. Not that she thinks I think those things, not like that, but it smacks of that to her and there's a part of her that don't like it one bit. Well, she's an independent person. 'Course she's not gonna like that. But that's not really what that's all about at all.

It's equal parts somethin' primal, territorial, somethin' that has nothin' to do with her at all but hasta do with me lookin' out for the most precious thing I got, and somethin' that's all about her - makin' her feel secure, like she knows where she belongs and like she knows I how much I want her in that spot. She's gotten so much more confident, more assured, even in the few months since we left the mansion. She went from barely bein' able to tell me what was really goin' on in her head while we were lookin' for an alternator to bein' my lover, bein' able to say and do whatever she feels like not just in my bed but wherever, and not just with me. She needed to feel like someone wanted her, loved her, was OK with lettin' her be who she was. And, sure, that someone's just me, but it still did her a lotta good. It's like havin' that as part of her identity, part of how she thinks about herself - freed her up. Security. That's what I think it is, and that's what I wanna give her.

'Cause I like who she is and who she's turnin' into. At first, I kinda worried - I knew she had all these feelings for me, and maybe they were just there 'cause of what happened and how dramatic and shit it all was. But after leavin' Westchester - actually, if I'm honest, as soon as she chose to go with me - I could tell there was more than just that. And maybe I took advantage by haulin' her off with me and keepin' her to myself. But I'm not wrong - there was somethin' real there - and I didn't wanna let that go.

And I know she's still changin', still growin' as a person and all that. But so am I. So am I, and maybe that's what Chuck and Scooter don't see either. Maybe they don't think I can change or that I would. Marie - well, she's young, and changin's what young people do. Me, I'm old as dirt probably, and set in my ways. Good theory, except I can't remember jack shit about most of my life. Yeah, I'm set in some of my ways, but not so set that I wouldn't let Marie in, and that shoulda told 'em somethin' right there. I can change, but it hasta be the right change, and, to be fair to them, it probably hasta be somethin' so powerful that I can't ignore it no matter how much I try. OK, so maybe I'm not Mr. Flexibility. Maybe they have a point. A little one.

"Sounds good." That big smile that lights up her face every time we're gettin' ready to do it just pleases me to no end. It's flatterin', sure, that someone is lookin' forward to bein' with you that much. But I think it actually means more to me that she feels that way about it, that she feels so happy about it. I'm lucky to have her, that don't take too much thinkin' to figure out.

Somehow, we managed to hole up in Inuvik for two whole weeks. That's a helluva lotta time in a little artic town. But it didn't seem like so long. We did a lotta just hangin' out, bein' together, thinkin' and talkin'. Well, OK, and spendin' a lotta time in bed.

Couldn't afford the motel for more than one night, really, so we went back to the camper. I worried a lot at first about us livin' outta that thing, 'cause I keep thinkin' it ain't good enough for her somehow. But she seems to like it-and to her it's the Logan and Marie Camper, it means somethin' special even if it is just a dingy little thing.

Gettin' ready to head on out today, so we'll be spendin' a lotta time in the Logan and Marie camper for a while. Back down the highway, outta the Northwest Territories and back into the Yukon. Might do some fightin' in Dawson City. She won't like it, but we could use the money, and I won't mind all that much.

Ever since I found out about what I did before, about all the things they made me do, fightin's been harder. I don't like thinkin' I'm some kinda animal, some kinda brutal killin' machine, or somebody that's inevitably violent. Maybe some or all of those things're true, but I don't like thinkin' 'em, and fightin' kinda brings all that home to me.

Marie don't like it 'cause I get hurt, and she hates that. I understand that part, I really do, 'cause if I hadta see her get hurt like that-even if she'd heal and be fine-I'd go fuckin' ballistic. But I'm different-I can take it, and I don't mind the pain so much 'cause the money's supportin' us, and I'm proud of that. I know she'd rather work-but it'd make a helluva lot less money than fightin' and it'd tie us down. I'm not opposed to the idea of her workin' entirely, but there's really nothin' she *can* do that brings in as much money and makes for as little ties as fightin'. Plus, I'm the man, so I bring in the money. I know that's-well, it's a little old-fashioned. But it is my responsibility to support us, and not just 'cause of that, it's also 'cause I asked her to leave Xavier's, I asked her to come out on the road with me so I gotta provide for her.

Maybe one day we will settle, and she'll get some kinda job, but I'm nowhere near ready for that. Maybe when it does finally happen, I'll get some kinda job too. Maybe that's what we'll do when we're ready to have kids. Yeah, that'd be a good time to settle down.

I don't really have any worries about her bein' a good mom, or me bein' a good dad. I can teach 'em how to fight and hunt and track things and all that, and she can teach 'em reading and math (well, maybe not math, she ain't so good at that) and music and takin' pictures or somethin'. We could have one of each, a boy and a girl, or however many she wants, but definitely at least two. Wouldn't wanna have just one-all alone without brothers or sisters or anything. So definitely two, at least, and hopefully one of each.

"Yeah, darlin'. Just thinkin' 'bout some stuff." I hope the kids get her brains and her disposition and her-well, just about everythin' from her would be OK by me. Maybe they could get my strength or my healin'. That wouldn't be too bad. I got a few things to offer.

"Kinda." I think she likes that I've been doin' a lotta thinkin'. I haven't really talked too much to her about what's all goin' through my head, and she's been real patient with me not really tellin' her too much of it. I think she just likes knowin' that there's somethin' goin' on up there and that I'm spendin' some time doin' somethin' she likes to do too, even if it's not really doin' it with her. "Hey-can I tell you somethin'?"

"Yeah." We're gonna be comin' outta the tundra pretty soon, and I guess I'll stop thinkin' so much then. But now I wanna think a little more. 'Bout her, 'bout her and me, 'bout our life, the universe, the whole nine yards. "I think so."