The Girl: Chapter Seventeen
The days continued their ever-onward, indefatigable march. Her routine varied little, a few occasional drops of excess paint on the canvas's otherwise repetitive pattern. A predictability that she wanted badly to trust. Classes, meals, trips to the library, showers, cocoons and caves of bedsheets.
It was a week before Logan broached the topic of her skin, before he made any allusion to the afternoon in the supply closet. She'd thought about it, wondered, worried. But discussing it with him, with others, had never crossed her mind. The girl had never been taught that method of problem solving. She waited for cues from him, and did not consider that he might be doing the same.
He told her that the people here were good at helping students manage their gifts. Logan faltered over the last word, but otherwise his voice was smooth. Casual. Offhand. All the adjectives that meant he didn't want her to be afraid. Relaxed, as if this mattered to him no more than what they were having for dinner. He said that Xavier would be happy to help, if she ever wanted to better understand her mutation.
And then he'd turned back to lighting his fresh cigar, to watching the game, to waiting on her. The night after the next, when she'd examined the dangers twice from every angle, she told him yes, okay.
Logan nodded, said he'd mention something to The Professor.
But first--first, he wanted to touch her.
They were in the library, in the overstuffed chairs that matched the color scheme of the rest of the mansion, when Logan asked her. he said, "It's alright, honey. I just want to see..." He assured her, swore that it would be fine, that it'd only take a second, that he wouldn't hurt her, that she wouldn't hurt him.
He was sitting back in his chair, comfortable, elbows resting on the arms. Gaze fixed mildly on her, serious but not apprehensive. And after the usual, initial tensing, and reflexive shakes of her head that Logan waited through and recorded somewhere in his ind without comment, his lack of fear soothed her own. Made her agree.
Logan quirked his lips, pulled his seat closer to hers. Now?, she thought frantically, balking when he held out his arm--bare; he wore only his much-abused tank top. She froze, stared at the planes of muscle, the thick vein, listened to his sigh.
When she continued to make no move, Logan picked up her wrist from it's stiff position on her lap, slid one of his hands into hers in a gentle hold. As if he were going to shake it, to seal an agreement, turn it over for a gentleman's kiss.
The grip was not one she could pull away from.
The fingers of his other hand pushed her sleeve up, up. Her breath tripped over itself. Hazel eyes monitored her reaction, smiled kindly when they met hers. The girl saw curiosity in his face (nearer to her own that she would permit from anyone else). And in the instant before his palm closed over the the strip of her exposed skin--a tightening. A clenching of his jaw, slightest bunching of his brow, bracing himself. The reluctance and anxiety he hadn't wanted her to see.
Faintly creased flesh, tougher than leather, pressed around the frail bones of her wrist. Pink and white skin swallowed by brown.
And in the crucial seconds after his flesh met her own, she felt his pulse, felt her own, hammering. Felt the back of the chair, both soft and too firm against her lower spine. Felt the urge to kick, scramble over backwards, do absolutely anything to get out of his reach...and at the same time, nothing. Another part of her was almost comfortable, as calm as she ever was because of all the times he'd gotten close without pain following.
How shocking, that the latter was stronger. Much.
She felt the heat of his breath and then it's absence; he was holding it. She felt the weight of his stare, a pressure that was almost physical. She felt the cracks in his callouses. She felt every stitch and every seam of her clothing.
And after their hearts had pulsed a few more times than they should have without the interruption of that burn, that unforgettable rush and a rise in pitch to the babble in her head just when she though the volume couldn't be upped any further....After, the girl continued to feel those things.
Another handful of half-moments, and Logan smiled at her. He patted her wrist, once, and drew back. A little quickly--perhaps not wishing to press his luck.
"There, Darlin'. Good girl. Thank you." They stared at each other until the reality of what she didn't do sank through the shock.
"Oh," the girl gasped. She shivered, relieved and terrified and--what? What was that? Disappointed, just a little, that she could not rely on being able to hurt the ones who touched her? The last emotion was too fleeting to catch in the swell of others. Her lips wobbled. "What does....w-why?"
The tickle of a cold tear. If the girl had been one to cuss, she would have. Why was she always crying? Why?
Logan's hand rose; she saw the cuticles of his fingers, the swirling pattern of prints on each digit. They came toward her face and then hesitated. Too much for one day.
He touched her shoulder, briefly. Repeated, "Good girl."
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Jubilee dropped the bags to the floor, a crinkly little mountain of plastic. One was pink, said Bath and Body Works across the side. Restocking her supply, the girl guesses. Bubblegum shampoo and Moonlight Path body spray, Jubilee's current favorite--half of which will be gone by tomorrow evening. The mattress gave a tired squeak when she flopped down upon it, legs and arms displayed as limply and carelessly as string.
The girl tried to ignore her, keep her eyes on the trails of black ink in her book. Her knees were drawn up to her breasts, a position that had been less defensive than comfortable before her roommate had returned.
Jubilee's immobility didn't last long. She rolled over, slapped her bedside table for her phone, a perk of the junior X-team. Shrill, staccato key tones. Calling her friends after spending hours in their company at the mall, saying goodbye to them just moments ago. She could not bear to spend a single conscious moment unoccupied.
It was hard to tell which of the two girls better handled their loneliness.
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Logan's thumb moved up and down on the girl's shoulder. A reminder: I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.
Chuck's little coffee room was a nice place. As informal as the mansion ever got. Couches and bowls of popuri, a fireplace, bookshelves whose antique contents were intended for decoration than actual reading material. Comparatively one of the better, nonthreatening choices of settings for this.
Jean wanted to try.
He'd pulled her aside, when the girl was not around. Let her know that this was not something anyone would stand in line to feel. He said he'd seen its effects on someone without a healing factor, that she might not recover.
Jean wasn't an idiot; she knew when The Wolverine meant his words to be taken seriously. He'd watched self-preservation war with the curiosity that years of medical training had instilled, until Logan suggested that Scott serve as a replacement test mouse. Her eyes hardened; her lips pulled up into a smirk. The challenge was too much to refuse.
"And have her cut the house in two? Who knows how long she'd have to wear glasses like Scott's, is she draws on mutations like you think? No. No, we're at a dead end. For the safety of the students, at least, we have to understand what her skin does, if it is constant or can be controlled. We cannot assume anything based solely on what you say happened."
Jean raised her chin, smiled, proud of her own bravery and the logic of her speech. And Logan acquisited. Walked away, and left the redhead first smug, and then wondering (correctly) in the back of her mind, if Logan simply hadn't been interested enough to push the subject. The latter was not an idea she entertained for long.
She was right, though the well-being of the other teens meant next to nothing to him. They couldn't judge what the problem with the girl's skin was with the little he'd experienced and the even less he'd been a witness to.
Logan would not have cared, though the success in the library had given him a thrill too acute for contemplation. It would not have mattered half as much to him if it did not matter to her. The girl wanted to know. Therapy sessions with The Professor, some private but most accompanied by Logan. Questions, an examination of her memories that she had given permission for. Bandages from the skin sample and blood that Jean had taken, that Logan couldn't look at, couldn't think about too long. No two of these ever in the same week, because he did not want to overwhelm her.
And she still said yes, still agreed to continue. It was only this that made Logan do so as well.
Now here they were, trying to ignore the audience that this little experiment had drawn. The girl, because they made her nervous. Logan, because they pissed him off. Xavier was present, of course, an overseer of the fields, there to fill any telepathic needs. Scott, to be with Jean. Lensherr, for sheer curiosity.
He was closer to anger than worry by the time Jean offered her martyred expression and a lotioned hand, palm-up, to the girl.
"After this, we'll get ice cream," he promised the pale figure at his side. She turned her face up to him, pressed a bit closer to him--so minutely that it could barely be separated from his imagination. Her hand, tiny cushions and lines of skin, extending toward Jean. Hardly any hesitation--I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.--the girl's hand meeting Jean's. A child measuring her palm against her mother's, a bizarrely slow low-five that did not break apart. The smooth, glistening polish of the older woman's nails and the blue Y of a vein in the girl's wrist. Avid stares and Logan's nostrils twitching as they monitored the situation.
As agreed, the contact was maintained longer than Logan's test, much longer than his accidental brushes. Seconds ticked by, and the air seemed to grow only thicker, their expectations winding only tighter. Certainty that it would start now, then now, then now. Jean's face shifted from bracing, to fearful, to wary hope, and he knew all she wanted was snatch her limb away. Xavier had known from his foray into certain memories that there had been no exaggeration in the description of her mutation. But in the silence of those waiting, Logan could feel the others wondering, wondering with him, if he had been wrong. If--
The slap of something heavy striking the hardwood, a crack like a gun. Logan did not flinch, but he was the exception. He saw The Professor's gaze flash over his head, behind the couch, twisted in time to spot the innocence of Lensherr's expression , the thick book on the floor. His lips drew back in a snarl, but he had to turn back before the angry sound could be released. A hiss, a choked gasp, the utterly inhuman noises of pain.
Scott's horrified cry of his wife's name. The doctor's face, bulging veins. Bloodless lips and eyes whose whites were stained with the spider-webbed pink of breaking vessels.
Logan pulled the girl's arm down, away, roughly. She was whimpering, shaking with all the helplessness of a flag in a tornado. He wound his other arm around her, hugged her flush against him. Soft brown head tucked under his chin.
Scott was beside Jean, calling her name, touching her hair with a panic that Logan inwardly mocked, even as he stroked the girl's back. The redhead lowered her head to her knees, displayed the dual peaks of her shoulder blades. She swayed, shivered. Coughed raggedly and wetly. Moaned, but took a long time to reply to any of the groups frantic questions with anything faintly shaped like words.
Only when Scott began to talk about stretchers and calling Hank did Jean speak. "I'm okay," she mumbled. Then, as if unable to stop herself, "I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay."
She straightened up, a pallor to her face that Logan was used to seeing in bodies that had stopped moving long ago. The doctor shook off her husband's offer to help her upstairs, slumped back against the couch with the nauseous look of one not going anywhere anytime soon.
Logan ran his palm down the girl's bumpy spine.
So astoundingly little time had passed, a handful of centimeters covered by the clock's minute hand. It took longer to notice the cloth-bound tomes vibrating in their cases. The trash can, rising a few inches into the air and then crashing down, over and over. When it did come to their attention, those present were shocked-- not so much at the sight itself (on a normal day here at the academy of mutants, it would barely have caused a blink) but because of who the display of telekinetics was coming from. Four pairs of eyes flickered from Jean, barely strong enough to lift her own head--to the girl.
Logan felt odd. Like a glass wall had fallen between himself and almost everybody else. Neither an entirely new or entirely similar sensation from what he usually experienced in that now, he was not the only one behind the wall. Suddenly the situation, Jean, all held much less interest for him that it perhaps should have. Much less than the question of when the girl would stop trembling.
"The fuck was that?" he growled at Lensherr later, as they left the room.
The old man pushed the book he had dropped back into it's slot on the shelf. He held his hands up, placating, to Logan.
"Just an idea," he said.
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Sand was getting into his clothes, though he'd laid a towel down. Each grain wet and gritty and distinct, burrowing deeper. Overly bright sun hanging in the perfect position to hit his eyes, no matter where he looked. Heat sitting smugly on his shoulders. The smell of hot-dogs and sweat and vomit. Squealing kids, the shrillest of whom Logan was busy fantasizing drowning in the salty water.
The girl appeared to be enjoying herself, though. She sat a few feet away on a towel of her own. Fully clothed and showing no intention of entering the ocean or building a sandcastle or any of the activities her fellow classmates were engaged in...But looking on intrigued, half smile and the kind of wide eyes that he liked. And that made the rest, if not worth it, at least bearable. She'd had a rough time, since touching Jean. Rough enough to make Logan say yes, for the first time, to Chuck's obligatory request for his presence on the field trip. Hopefully it would not set a precedent.
He'd coaxed, and then ordered the girl to go as well. Drove her in his pickup so she wouldn't have to sit with the others in the van.
Logan watched her trail her fingers through the little hills of sand. The sheen of sunblock on her cheeks and underneath a blossoming redness. He'd get her some Aloe Vera later. Her hair pulled back in a clip. Eyes darting to a thousand points on the beach and back to him--look, Logan, look. Neither spoke, neither felt any need to. Only a foot of space between their towels, their jean-clad knees.
Footsteps pattering on the soft, unreliable ground. Too close to their spot; if it was another Frisbee enthusiast the claws were coming out. Logan half-turned. A blond boy, running from the cluster of X-geeks and ice coolers and top-of-the-line swim apparel. It took much longer than it should have for his grin to fall, as he approached The Wolverine. He even managed to pick it back up, a nervous version, upon reaching them. The fact that the smile was directed at the girl did not help either Logan's mood or the boy's safety.
"Hey," he panted. Breathless after only fifty yards or so. Pussy. "Mr. Summers is passing out drinks and snacks. Do want a coke or some Fritos or--or anything?"
The boy included Logan in the query with only a polite flick of his gaze, otherwise the sky blue orbs remained fixed on her.
"I've already gotten her what she wants," Logan grunted. A little pile of foil and tin-wrapped treats on her towel, just behind her back. In plain sight for anyone with the bare minimum of observational skills. All the boy needed to do was to stop staring at her.
Logan didn't like how he scratched his stomach. He didn't like how the boy stuck out his chest, as if hairless was a thing to be proud of. He didn't like how he shuffled his feet, searched awkwardly for a reason to stay. He didn't like how the girl flushed brighter than her sunburn looking at him.
"Bobby," called a voice from the water. The girl's roommate on the shoulders of another boy, squealing with every wobble. More cleavage than cloth to her yellow bikini. "Bobby, come--come play--with us! We're--watch it, John!--gonna chicken fight and Kitty--needs--a partner."
The boy smelled and looked relieved for the excuse to escape. He smiled at the girl, one last time. "See you later, okay?"
"Okay."
Logan spent most of his time trying to get the girl to talk to others. Why, then, was he not happy with her speaking one word to this kid? Then he was finally gone, off to splash in the water with the other tots. He could feel the girl's eyes on him, and did not meet them for fear of what he might be found.
He asked if she was sure she didn't want to swim a bit, wade in the shallows if she couldn't. Logan said she didn't have to do it around the others if she didn't want. They could walk down the shoreline a bit, find a more private spot. He said she did not need to wear a swimsuit, didn't need to undress. He didn't care if his pickup got a bit; it had seen worse.
The girl's quiet voice told him, maybe later. She was fine here.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Hello! Surprise! The words you are reading now? Typed from my new computer. The words you are about to read? Typed from *my new computer*!!! Not borrowed, not stolen from my siblings, not rented from the library. *Mine*. No more waiting, bribing, begging for enough time with a keyboard to be able to make these updates--I can just *do* it. I can't begin to tell you how happy I am. The "O's" in my 'Sooooooo happies" and the "A's" in my "Yaaaaays" would stretch longer than this story.
With all the madness of the approaching holidays, and some errands I'll be running Sunday, there was no other time for me to type this up but today. Hope you guys don't mind. ;~) Though I was really hoping to cover much more ground in this chapter, that proved impossible. I'm pretty satisfied with this section anyway, after my usual picking it still feels *right*. I hope you all will agree.
Chapter Seventeen is dedicated to my new netbook, without which it literally would not have been possible. To Moviemom, for inspiring the last scene (don't ask me how, just did). Thank you, Wendie. And to Sahara, for supporting my whining, never telling me to shut up, and for providing many beautiful hours of procrastination. I'm very grateful.
With all the madness of the approaching holidays, and some errands I'll be running Sunday, there was no other time for me to type this up but today. Hope you guys don't mind. ;~) Though I was really hoping to cover much more ground in this chapter, that proved impossible. I'm pretty satisfied with this section anyway, after my usual picking it still feels *right*. I hope you all will agree.
Chapter Seventeen is dedicated to my new netbook, without which it literally would not have been possible. To Moviemom, for inspiring the last scene (don't ask me how, just did). Thank you, Wendie. And to Sahara, for supporting my whining, never telling me to shut up, and for providing many beautiful hours of procrastination. I'm very grateful.
Chapter End Notes:
Alrighty, then. I'll see you cats as soon as possible (hopefully on the review page). This month's calender page is pretty jam-packed for me, but I promise to do everything I can to get the next chapter up quickly. Thank you for reading!