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
Skin, muscle, ligaments seared away. His blood evaporated. Adamantium was exposed and dangerously pliant. Every excruciating push forward he made is a testament. In the hottest, cruelest pit of agonizing hell, the Phoenix was holding court on the nature of sacrifice. Jean Grey and Charles Xavier were on trial. Logan, he was the evidence. Or the hostage. He couldn’t know which, because the telepaths battled on a plane far beyond his five howling senses. He was no more than a body. A weapon.
If you know that much, why keep secrets?
The Phoenix tore open his mind with the same calculated ferocity she tore apart his body. Her torture had deliberate design. Near-boiling metal burning away layers of bone, his airless yells of suffering beyond reason – He was in their tank, under their control, and they were celebrating the fact that he wouldn’t ever know why.
She knew why. It was the goddamn reason that demon inside Jean, with her past-present-future all-knowing mind fuckery, had chosen this moment in time to come back. Chaos was her vengeance on control.
On Jean. That was who the Phoenix hated. Not Charles, not Scott. Herself. Jean. Jean and the Phoenix. Logan and the Wolverine. The Phoenix wanted him separate, as at odds with himself as she had always been.
She was giving him what he’d demanded from the Professor with less and less insistence since that forty-eight hour ultimatum – the truth about his past. The vicious, violent truth.
Not truth, the Professor cut in. Memory never exists in absolutes. He held Logan together on a moment. His mind was filled with Jean, with a scene that was bright and static. Hers. She and the Professor holding their own court about Logan. Jean sincerely drawn – “He has such a sense of honor about him” – not by danger, not by duality. Or chaos to her control. Honor.
Another step forward. Another testament to sacrifice. To who was worth it why. To the ones who could see the part of a man he never thought showed through.
Fucking nightmares. Waking nightmares at that, so he can’t even call them sleep. He’s running purely on adrenaline, and it aches. Four straight nights he’s been doing nothing but scratching and biting and licking his wounds.
He picks up his phone and sends, ‘cant wait no more kid headin out.’ No response as he packs up. No questions from Kitty or Pete, though they stop their conversation as he passes her open door. Scott’s bike is in the garage. Storm saw him tune it up today and didn’t say much about it. Why would she? Nothing less than anybody would expect out of him.
Logan grits his teeth. He ditches the front door to hit the back garden. A commemorative cemetery with three new headstones over three vacant coffins.
Silence hangs over him, closer and darker than the heavy clouds over his shoulder. Logan stands on the Professor’s empty grave, waiting one final time. Thinking, what’s next, old man? Speak up.
He’s been following Xavier’s plan since the day he let the Phoenix blast his body into nothing. His voice has guided him like an explanation. The truth of it dropped square in his gut, weighing him down in a way that kept him centered. Variations on a theme: X-Men stand together. Sometimes the beast needs caging. Yeah, Logan swallowed the damn mea culpa the Professor thought he owed him whole, and now he’s having a hell of a time digesting it.
Old man, speak up. Sure as shit know death ain’t the end, not for telepaths.
Any second the silence could break. Except Xavier’s a hell of a teacher. Up there in the clouds Storm’s keeping all her anger, all her grief hemmed in. It’s one a.m. and Charles Xavier’s students – her students – are sleeping. She won’t disturb them for a moment of release. Even if she needs one as much as Logan does.
So here he is, about to leave the house that Charles built once more, asking his tombstone, What you do expect me to do now?
Nothing seems to be his only answer.
To say to hell with him and leave, Logan has to turn his head. He has to look at her name etched in marble. He feels the guilt and the loss of what he needs to have been between them. Familiar regrets, months old, only piled on top is the sickening lurch of what she had him prove to her.
A chill creeps into his metal bones as his breath becomes visible. Bobby is coming up toward the bushes at Logan’s back, his inaudible mutterings turning clear and sharp. “You took off without saying anything – no note, nothing. Now you don’t have the decency to call me back when you know I’m worried sick about you? It’s been days, Rogue. I don’t know where you are or if you’re gone for good – ” The sound of his righteous stomping halts. Somewhere in the dark silence, Bobby breathes hard. “You’re cutting me out of your life, and you won’t even tell me why. How can you do that to me?”
Jesus, that’s a lot of hard shit packed into one angry line. Lot of accusation. Aren’t you the person I thought you were? Can’t I make you feel guilty? Why don’t you think I deserve better?
Charles Xavier’s etched profile, somber and shadowed in the half-light, is back in focus.
“I love you,” Bobby spits at Marie’s voicemail.
Logan said those words before he ended Jean’s life. He meant them as a shield, but that isn’t what they are. Those words are a weapon.
He throws his leg over Scott’s bike. He’s left the Mansion countless times and didn’t always say goodbye. But he did always have a reason for going and an idea of when he was coming back. And what for.
He made lists of security upgrades to oversee. He made sure the new Danger Room could handle his worst. He made deals with Xavier. He made a promise to the kid. He made Jean believe it when he said his heart belonged to her. He made himself believe it after she died.
The roar of an engine turned over in disgust almost covers a low ring, but it vibrates against the metal in his chest. He cuts the bike before he pulls the phone out of his inside jacket pocket. He stares at it like he doesn’t remember what to do with it, before he presses a button and hears her breathe his name.
The bike’s shocks creak under him. “Kid.” He scrubs at his eyes, heavy with remembered exhaustion. “You safe?”
“I am. Where – ”
Logan talks over her. “Where are you?”
He can hear her teeth chattering through her irritated pause. “DC.”
“You on the streets?”
“No, I’m at hostel for mutants who took the cure. Where are you?”
Just like that, she tells him she went through with it. He reminds himself what he knew when she left: Not his place to have an opinion.
Gruffly, he replies, “’Bout to leave.”
“Why’re you leaving now? You’re tired.”
Hearing her say it makes him want to put his head down on the handlebars. He listens to her shiver for a minute or two instead.
“I know you – you deserve a break. But I – ” She cuts herself off, her voice miserably small. “How’re you doing?”
“Kid – “ His eyes itch something fierce as film of moisture settles into his dried sockets. “I am. I am tired.” Without meaning to, he makes it a confession.
A beat too long. Then, “Okay.” She’s definitely crying now.
“You get my message about comin’ back?”
“I-I want to…”
“Then you should.”
Marie turns a hiccup into a sound of agreement. “Whenever you decide to come back, I will. I can’t be there alone.”
“What’d you say?” Logan chokes on the question.
Through an angry clot of snot, Marie replies, “I said, I’m a selfish coward and I can’t stand the thought of facing them if you’re not around to…just to be there. For me.”
Logan presses the phone against his forehead, making the metal there thrum. His muscles ache with the sting of uncoiling tension. He clears his throat.
“Gimme directions, Marie. Pick you up tonight, and we’ll get you home.”