An icy breeze shivered across the lake and caressed his face. It felt like a sign, a touch, her disembodied touch, from beyond the grave. Logan took a deep breath, resisting the impulse to pull his jacket tighter around his neck. He had been numb inside for too long now to let a little cold get to him on the outside.

The silence appeared absolute but was deceiving, his heightened senses attuned to the sounds any normal person would be oblivious to: the hushed whispers of the wind, the subtle shifting of snow, even the steady beat of his time-wearied heart. And then, suddenly, there was something else...something new...the sound of distant footsteps.

"Jean..." he whispered beneath his breath, her name slipping out from between his frozen lips before he could stop it. "Jean?"

Hazel eyes, feral and guarded, scanned the vast expanse of water as it mirrored a grey cloudless sky. It was eerily still, like a suspended moment of time, and it was hard to comprehend all that was lying beneath it now: the place of his nightmares, the key to his past, the woman he thought he had loved.

The footsteps, delicate shuffling through the deep snow, drew closer and he was unable to stop a small smile from tugging at the corners of his mouth. But he didn't turn, continuing to concentrate on exorcising his demons once and for all during this final confrontation. Coming back was important - vital - if he was ever going to move on. If he was ever going to find peace.

Peace? A frown darkened his face as he remembered the Professors recent words, the man's belief that Dr Jean Grey wasn't dead, that she was going to return to them. For some reason the idea left Logan uneasy, stirred his gut, but not in a good way. The fact was, he knew instinctively that Jean had died that fateful day almost a year ago, but he was also aware of the Professors powers. The man was rarely wrong. He didn't know what it all meant but he had a bad feeling about it. It scared him in a way that he couldn't begin to explain, even to himself.

The footsteps finally became a presence, a figure that lingered behind him now, only a few metres away, but always intent on giving him the space, the time, he needed. Her warmth enveloped him like an embrace and he inhaled her scent as if his life depended upon it, accepting that maybe it really did, for there could be no denying that she had saved him; affected him in ways he never thought possible.

She was the spring, sent to thaw his winter heart.

Determination surging through him, he swept a steely gaze across the lake one last time, finally acknowledging the true reason why he had come back.

To beg someone else not to come back.

"Jean," he repeated, his tone bittersweet: a warning laced with guilt and a slither of regret. "Don't ruin things for us. For her."

He turned then, to face her. The young girl who had become the woman he really did love.

She smiled gently at him although her eyes betrayed her true feelings, the fear that she might not be what he wanted after all. "Ready, sugar? Or do you need more time?"

His eyes locked with hers, raging with a desire, a need, that he hoped would reassure her, and as he reached out to clasp her gloved hand in his, he felt his heart, as well as hers, kick up a notch.

"You're my time now, darlin," he growled softly, and as he and Marie walked away he prayed that whatever incarnation of Jean might still be out there, that she would hear and understand.

That she would leave them to their peace.