”A mall?”

We have spent good part of a week getting here, both finally comfortable enough to visit. I don’t know what we expected. Something. Anything. But a mall? Logan looks perplexed. Four years this place used to be our home. Proud mansion with sturdy stone walls, surrounded by impenetrable stone fence and ornate iron gates. And now?

“It’s a fucking mall.”
“I heard you from the first time. And I can see it myself.”
“A mall.”
“Yeah.”
“A fucking mall.”
“Logan? That gets a little repetitive after a while…”
“They built a fucking mall on their graves, Marie.”

Scott, Jean, Ororo, probably professor himself, and only God knows how many of them died here, and each and every one of them was buried in the mansion’s grounds. Now there’s a giant mall and a parking lot. From the looks of it they have been here quite a while already.

“I need a drink.”
“I think I saw a bar just down the road on our way here…”
“No. There’s a pub in there, see?”

Smack dab in the middle of Ororo’s rose garden. I have the strangest feeling, that if I were to peel off the concrete from beneath my feet, I would find fertile soil and blood red buds of roses. It’s kind of creepy. To think that there in the corner, just where the jukebox stands, used to be a stone bench. That’s where Logan proposed me all those years ago. Seven in the morning. I had my nightgown on, my hair was a tangled mess, and I don’t want to even think about the possible morning breath. It was Sunday. Logan had marched in to my room, yanked me out of my bed and dragged outside without saying a word. When we got to the garden he plunked me sitting to that bench and kneeled in front of me. Not that traditional kneeling. He got on his both knees, plopped his head on my lap and wound his hands around my waist. He was exhausted, barely staying awake.
“Kid?”
“Yeah?”
“Marry me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? You sure?”
“I’m sure.” Not the most romantic proposal, and I nearly froze my butt off when he fell asleep on me. I didn’t have the strength to move his carcass off from my lap, and I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if Scott hadn’t happened to return from his morning jog through the garden. Together we managed to wrestle Logan in to his own bed. I found the ring from his pocket when I undressed him and put it on. Later that day he came to see me and to make sure he hadn’t dreamt of it, that it had actually happened. Then he had to go to see Xavier.

That name still makes my blood boil.

“There’s a motel not too far from here. Want to spend a night, or do we keep going?”

Decisions, decisions… We have been driving around, visiting our old haunts. Only one place left. The place where this all started for me. My home. Or more accurately the place I was born and lived for the first fifteen years of my life. BM. Before Manifestation. Before Mutation. Before I became the life-sucking freak.

“I’m not sure…”
“There’s still few hours sunlight left.”
“I think I would like to sleep in a real bed for a change.”
“Then motel it is.”

As much as I love waking in a forest, birds chirping and sun shining through the open door flap of the tent, Logan sitting outside and smoking a cigar, my back is screaming for a softer mattress and a thick pillow under my head.

“I don’t fucking believe this…”
“Better believe it, honey, because I see it, too. And I don’t believe in group-hallucinations.”
“Do you really need that real bed?”
“Not that bad…”

We sit on the bike for a moment, both staring at the neon-sign blinking above the motel. Logan’s tense. He’s practically trembling, gripping the handlebars tight enough to turn his knuckles white as bone. Nausea is making a nest to the pit of my stomach. Realistically thinking it can’t be him. Must be some relative, maybe a grandchild?

Xavier’s Inn For The Weary Travelers.