As time ticks by and still I try, no rest for crosstops
In my mind – on my own, here we go
Green Day
Fall 2010
Head back, veins corded to snap, esophagus raw with the acidic taste of bile, the Wolverine howled. Senseless. A godforsaken animal. No future, no past. The present burned, blistered like the skin of his arms. Cradling a dying body on fire from the inside.
She begged him. For days, she had begged him. Always, always that voice echoing in his head: “Kill me.” Jean’s voice. Begging. The Phoenix didn’t beg, she taunted. “Kill me.”
Animal, animal, animal – the howl of the Wolverine. Familiar? She showed him how he was now – soaked eyes clamped shut, bared teeth open wide – and how he would look again. Kneeling in a forest, another woman in his arms. Long brown hair, youthful bare skin. He thought this was his future. Howling, because if there was a next time he wouldn’t be able to cheat her death. But no. No, this was the past. His past? Who…Scarless brown hair. Wide-set, compelling features. Who was she? He was howling, was howling again. Guilt suffocated him. Burned his nostrils. He’d done that, and he’d done this.
Why?
There was reason, but it was infuriatingly beyond him. Above him. He opened his eyes to gray ash swirling against a black sky. Swirling and plummeting, compacting. Bodies remade and dropped to the ground.
He saw the Professor, his deliberate smile. Jean’s in the face of tragedy.
When he looked down, the curve was still over her lips but there was no emotion in her stare. Her chest fell and collapsed in on her last breath.
Jean became a puff of dust so fine he couldn’t even feel remnants on his bloody, empty hands. Lightening threw them into harsh relief. Thunder growled under the Blackbird’s muted engines. In the distance, helicopter blades beat against the rapidly cooling sky.
He had been struck silent.
Rushing blood beats in Logan’s ears, amplifying the soundlessness of unified sleep. One long, unwinding breath for every two and half of his.
The wood paneled halls of the Professor’s broken refuge are warm and dim. His children are tucked into their beds, sleeping soundly. Logan passes their closed doors with an ear toward trouble, the way he didn’t bother doing the night Stryker came after them. Fact that it wouldn’t have done much good is no excuse for shitty security. Place has gotten bells and whistles since. Wasn’t around much before or after, but Logan made time to see to that personal.
A whiff of lingering smoke has him flaring his nostrils as he rounds the corner. He approaches a window, remembering the butt of a gun cracking his nose and, right above him, glass shattering underneath Marie’s scream. His fingers find the loose seam letting in stagnant air. He stares past the reflection of his darkening scowl and out onto scorched grass along the tree-line. Where not two hours ago a burning cross dripped fire and ash, a blunt shorthand for all the pissant, coward-fuck violence that never happened here on the Professor’s watch.
Logan scratches at the too-new skin under his shirt, just thirty hours old. Bastards would’ve had the guts to claim their threat, he’d have given them six razor-pointed reasons to show some goddamn respect.
For now, all he’s got is an impotent note to self to have Storm upgrade the windows once she makes it through her first hell-week as Dean Munroe. Grade A security is all in the details. There’s got to be thicker glass than this flimsy crap out there. Get that guy Forge back in here, and he can amp up the Danger Room again while he’s at it. Tyke squad held their own, but next time they got to do better than survive. Candy-ass bigots setting fire to plywood is proof enough that nothing’s over. Alcatraz was just the last stand before the all-out war. Whether the law will fall on their side or the X-Men’s is fucking politics. Nothing for Logan to do about it.
His blood keeps pounding anyway, down his legs, forcing him to keep circling. He takes his prowling to the second floor. The steadying sound of breathing drops off abruptly. No surprise, Xavier’s soldiers ain’t sleeping.
Emptiness sucks him in like a vacuum. All the doors are open, all the rooms are blank. Same off-white walls, same upscale hotel furniture. Only difference is the scent. Jean’s and Scott’s, faint but still all wrapped up in each other. Two pictures on the nightstand – teenagers mimicking adults dressed up fancy, adults smiling like teenagers with their whole lives to live – are the only hint that this was home to somebody. The kid’s room is like Logan’s, nothing more personal than clothes in a drawer. People don’t live in these rooms. They’re where they stay because the world outside told them they got no place else to go.
He sets his weight a little against her doorframe. She packed a bag. Didn’t think to ask her when she’s coming back.
A beeping sound slants his eyes down toward her desk. He’s annoyed Marie left her phone, until he slides it open and sees that it’s the one the Professor outfitted him with. The one he wasn’t too broken up about losing a couple months ago. Without it, whenever Xavier succeeded in getting a hold of Logan they both knew he was the only man for the job.
So he either left the phone here or the kid swiped it. Either way, she set it out collect dust where he should’ve noticed it a long time ago. Another one of her tests he didn’t even know he failed.
Third button on the right takes him to her message: ‘i’m sorry’ – two little words sent at seven p.m., right about the time the National Guard closed the search and rescue to let reporters in to vulture-pick the scene.
Annoyed, he punches out, ‘nothin you couldve done’ and hits send before he realizes how much of a repetitive dick he’s become. It’s what he said to Kitty when she broke down in grief-guilty tears after the tyke squad took a skip down what-if lane. It’s how he responded when McCoy confessed he felt like he’d disappointed Xavier.
The sound of sneakers on the stairs, and a light flips on in the hallway. Colossus – Pete Rasputin, Logan never bothered catching his name until today – nods his way. Bobby’s got a phone to his ear, saying, “Me again. I just want you to know that Dr. McCoy got the government to issue a warning after what happened tonight. Try to stay away from any of the International Mutant Rights Initiative offices or Department of Mutant Affairs outposts…and definitely stay away from cure clinics. They’re especially not safe, not even from mutants. Okay? Take care of yourself, and please, please call me tomorrow. First thing. I – ” He closes his door behind him before he finishes, “I love you.” Kitty passes with her forehead parallel to the carpet.
Storm watches her squad into their rooms before turning to Logan. “Nobody’s heard from Rogue.”
He holds out his phone to let her see the mail icon marked, ‘Kid.’
“You told Charles you lost that phone.”
“Found it.”
“Is she…” Storm massages the deep circles under her eyes. “Where is she? Is she somewhere safe?”
“’Course she is,” he says, though he’s wary of her asking where, exactly, since he doesn’t have the first clue.
“I don’t suppose you would’ve let her go if you didn’t think she’d be safer out there. You never wanted Rogue on the team. You didn’t hide that from her.” Said like an accusation. Like he should feel guilty for driving her to the cure or something.
“Hey, I don’t make anybody’s choices for ’em.”
“You really believe that?”
New adrenaline kicks in, raring for a confrontation. “Weren’t you the one all worked up I wouldn’t be ready to do what had to be done?”
Her expression hardens and softens at the same time, though her gaze remains steady. “The truth is, I was worried about myself. And I was right to be.”
“Nothin’ you could’ve done,” remains Logan’s knee-jerk, jerk-ass mantra.
“That used to be the case,” is her proud response. She sizes him up and down, not without sympathy. “You look…restless. Hank offered to have National Guardsmen posted here, but I’m calling in a few of the Professor’s favors instead. When you need to take some time, it’s not a problem.”
She leaves him with a pat on the arm and no outlet for the nameless ache that’s burning him up inside.
Logan stands at Marie’s door. He stares at the phone in his hand, sleek black-gray and so thin and light he can’t hold it naturally. He almost drops it when it buzzes and starts beeping again.
Her message is a clarification: ‘i’m sorry it had to be you.’
The box springs on Marie’s bed creak under his weight as he sits for what he thinks is the first time since the flight from San Francisco. The pulse in his ears winds down, threatens to unravel something coiled heavy inside of him. His hand goes up to cover his mouth. He hasn’t slept, he remembers now. Not in days.
No voice to call, he types, ‘comin back?’ Shouldn’t matter that he leaves off the ‘when are you’ part. She knows how much he hates the damn keypad.
Logan expects an instant response, so he waits. He drops onto his back, the heels of his boots still on the floor. Minutes, hours stretch out like the colored lights his strained eyes stain the ceiling with. The waiting makes him feel that he’s reaching out. That he’s trying to grasp tight onto nothing.