*****
"I am too connected to you to
Slip away, to fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,
And considerately killing me."
— "H." by Tool
*****A few days went by — time for Subliminal Logan to quiet down and for Real Logan to go around giving Marie thoughtful looks, though not mentioning their little practice sessions at any point. Marie missed the acerbic grumble in the back of her head when it faded from ever-present to occasional, and missed the little buzz she got from absorbing Logan's sharper senses and restless energy in small regular doses.
It was when she realized just *how* much she missed borrowing little bits of Logan that she got an inkling of her real problem. Her gift may have been painful to those she touched, and on a conscious level she was horrified at what she did to those she absorbed energy from — but to her it felt good, even wonderful if what she was absorbing came from someone whose thoughts she didn't mind sharing. Logan was already in her head in residual form, and she *knew* how much she liked having him there. Absorbing his abilities was a joy, and the urge was there every time she touched him or he her — to *keep* touching him, to take him into her until he would always be there, and never fade.
Now *that* was a kicker — that the one person willing and able to practice touching her was the one person she was most tempted to use her power on. [Maybe I shoulda started visiting Eric in his plastic cage and practiced on *him*,] she thought wryly to herself. (The idea had certain merits. Having already absorbed him once, she wouldn't exactly be getting anything particularly new and damaging from further contact, and his powers were a lot less nasty to pick up than, say, Cyke's uncontrolled eyeblasts.)
On the other hand, secondhand Magneto dreams weren't half so pleasant as some of the ones she had gotten from Logan's mind. Oh, sure, there were his nightmares, filled with pain and violence, of being in that mysterious lab or in any number of half-remembered battles — but then again, there was the ever-so-odd schizophrenic pleasure of erotic dreams from Logan's point-of-view starring herself as the guest of honor...
*****