Six White Horses

~*~

My father appears in the living room window before I get halfway up the drive, my mother seconds after. He'll have called her over, demanding to know who's come to call, even though he knows it's me. He knows the sound of my car.

My mother stands behind the screen door, smiling at me as I cross the porch. Daddy looms behind her, muttering that I damn well better have gotten that leak fixed, because he doesn't need another oil stain on the driveway.

"Of *course* I did," I tell him as I hug Mom.

He snorts. "You're about as truthful as your mother," he says, a reference to the fact that she's hidden the keys to his motorcycle. Still a sore spot with him.

Mom rolls her eyes and he says, "Don't roll your damn eyes at me, Marie. I told you I'd stay on the driveway." Just like Rain Man, I think, but don't say it. I doubt he'd appreciate the comparison.

Mom doesn’t say anything, just slips past us on her way to the kitchen. Daddy slaps her lightly on the butt as she passes by him, his aim still dead-on. "Bring me a beer, wouldya?" he tells her.

"Oh, right away, Logan," she replies, and I know there's no way in hell he'll see that beer before she's damn good and ready to bring it to him.

"Damn woman," he grumbles, then turns and makes his way to the living room. He's still tall, his back still ramrod straight, and he moves so easily and confidently through the house that it's hard to believe that he's been blind for almost a year.

Most people who know my father only through legend would probably be surprised to see him now. They probably expected him to die dramatically, not as a mellow old man, fading away as the metal in his bones steals his life from him an inch at a time.

My father is dying.

Most days, I can't believe it's true. Some days I do, and I find those days are coming closer together now.

By the time my brother and I came along, the world was a different place, and so was my father. By then, the wanderlust and rage that had defined his early years with the X-Men were largely gone, either through practice or age. Once peace between mutants and humans was a reality, my parents left Xavier's and set about raising a family.

They've lived in this house my entire life. Once my brother and I were grown, Mom suggested that they find something smaller. Daddy adamantly refused, on the grounds that it would be a huge pain in the ass, and cost him too damn much money.

But I know the truth. I know that he has almost no memory at all of his life before he met my mother, and what he does remember is horribly unpleasant. For a man like him, who has lived with many broken and painful memories, the thought of voluntarily leaving a place that holds an abundance of good ones is absolutely repellent.

So they stayed. And Mom never brought it up again.

And now here I am, watching my father, the infamous Wolverine, waste away in the suburban home in which he will most likely die.

~*~

He settles in his battered recliner, the one Mom's threatened to get rid of every spring for five years now. He claims to know she's just teasing him, but I can tell he worries, just a little, that she might actually make good on her threat.

I sit down on the floor next to him and prop my chin on the arm of his chair. "What are you watching?" It was awkward at first, when his sight began to go. You never realize how much of what you say revolves around the sense of sight until you say those things to someone who can't see at all.

But it bothered me more than it bothered him, so I stopped worrying about it, and he still enjoys his movies. I still make fun of his DVD player, and the enormous discs it plays. If that thing ever wears out, there's going to be trouble.

He lifts his hand and rests it on the top of my head, messing up my hair a little with his fingers, and looks down at me with eyes that no longer show him anything at all. Even so, he smiles like I'm the best thing he's seen in ages.

"Some stupid movie," he says, finally. "You don't have anything better to do today than hang out with the old people?"

"I heard that!" Mom yells from the kitchen, and then bangs something extra loud, just for good measure. I can smell cookies, and a pot roast. Dad's losing his appetite, and she's fighting it every step of the way, tempting him with any and all of his favorite foods.

"Not really," I say, and the hand that's been toying with my hair stills, then floats down to my face. He touches my face gently with his fingers, smoothing them over my cheeks, my eyelids, my forehead.

He tips his head, considering, then says, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, Dad," I say, catching his hand in mine and kissing it before I tuck it under my chin.

"Hmmph." He's obviously skeptical, but he lets it pass. I'm sure that'll last about five more minutes or so, and then he'll try again. He knows I'm feeling low.

His sense of smell may not be as sharp as it once was, but it's still better than mine, and better than then average person's by far. It's fading, and his sense of taste along with it. I pray he dies before it deserts him completely. For a man who has lived through his senses for two centuries, losing them all will be devastating.

Still, he's handled the blindness well enough.

"I just wanted to see you," I tell him. And it's true. I want to see him all I can, before I can't see him at all anymore.

I know he knows exactly how that feels.

The End