“Come on, Logan! Water’s warm!”
“I don’t swim.”
“You can’t swim?”
“I can. But I don’t swim. I’m just fine over here…”
“Suit yourself…”
She threw one last glance to Logan who was sitting at the edge of the water, dangling his feet under the surface, jeans rolled above his knees. They had arrived few hours ago. Sun was shining, and weather was scorching hot. She had been more than pleased to shed off some clothes and change to her swimsuit. Logan had opted to fill a cooler with beer and sit on grassy edge of the pond, watching her and the forest surrounding them, taking small sips from the beer and dozing off when he felt like it.
She dove underwater, and enjoyed the cool feel of it sliding over her skin. It was quiet. Water blocked off all noises, pressed against her intimately, cocooned her. She was slowly starting to relax. She hadn’t even realized how wound up she had been. If she felt like shit for staying up few nights every now and then, for Logan it had to be absolute hell. Waking up every night. For not being able to sleep. Hearing, seeing, smelling and feeling everything around him. Sleepy scents and sights at night, restless energy radiating from the kids and staff of Xavier’s during days.
When she surfaced Logan had emptied his beer and lay on his back, his hands crossed behind his neck, eyes closed. He appeared to be sleeping. There were still sharp lines of tension on his face, but he already looked more at ease.
“Logan?” She called his name.
“Yeah?” Sleepy mumble. Like a big, lazy cat purring.
“Thanks. For bringing me here.”
“You’re welcome. Think you could let me sleep now, kid?”
“Sure.”
She swam until her fingers and toes turned blue. She rose from the water teeth chattering and grabbed the towel she had brought outside with her, rubbing her skin vigorously to warm it up. It felt absolutely wonderful. Even when sun was doing its best to burn her up, she felt cool and relaxed. Logan was snoring softly, his feet still in the water. Something in that bugged her brain. Something was wrong in the way his feet lay under the surface. She couldn’t quite put her finger on to it, so she shrugged the thought off as irrelevant. Her mind was probably just playing tricks at her. Sure sign that she really needed this mini-vacation. She left Logan sleeping and went in to the cabin to change off her wet swimsuit. When she got back out Logan was standing up, stretching his back and yawning, rubbing his stomach and chest sleepily.
“Slept well?” She asked.
“Fine. Xavier’s blocks… They’re amazing. Almost nothing comes through. You hungry yet?”
“I could eat something.”
“That diner down the road okay with you?”
“Yeah. They make mean burgers.”
“That they do. I swear that cook must be a mutant. No normal human would be still alive and kicking at her age. She was old when I first found the place!”
“When was that?” She asked.
“Must have been nearly twenty years ago. I had just started working for Xavier. She had that same grey hair. Those same shoes. And she knew how to flip burgers.”
“Well, we have to go and make sure that she hasn’t forgotten. After all, it has been almost a week when we last visited…” She giggled. Logan finished tying his shoes and rolled down his jeans.
“About mutants… How come you don’t have a tattoo like the rest of us?” She asked when they were sitting in front of the diner, on a garden chairs, waiting for their burgers.
“I have this instead.” His dog tag. Thin metal plate.
“So you are registered?”
“Kind of. They know about me. Probably even more than they know about you. And I don’t think ‘registered’ is a proper word to use. They don’t ask if you want it. They examine you, label and categorize you, and mark you. After that you’re ‘free’ to go and do as you like. All people have to do is to look at those numbers on your cheek, and they know exactly what you are. After that they rarely even bother to find out who you are.”
“It’s not that bad. I even have some human friends…”
“Not that bad? It’s fucked up. That’s what it is. We should have a right to choose if we want to register or not. They don’t walk around branding ordinary people from alcoholism. They don’t tattoo cancer patients or mentally ill. They don’t do that to rapists and murderers. Yet they think it’s perfectly okay to stick a needle and color to a helpless little kids who have done nothing wrong.”
“I… I have never thought about it like that.”
Registering was just something that happened. One event on your life, like getting your tetanus shot, or choosing to which school you were going to go. Government wasn’t openly prosecuting or harassing mutants, just keeping track of them for the best of their abilities. It was the other people, the normal ones that were the problem. The ones with twisted ideas and minds. People who organized parties and meetings in the name of pure race and humanity. It had never even occurred to her that without registration act those people wouldn’t even know about her status as a mutant.
“That’s something Xavier’s trying to change. To make them see that they don’t have the right to brand us like cattle. That shit he’s digging from my head… It’s supposed to prove that some people are actually using the intel they gather from mutants.”
“Using? What do you mean?” She asked puzzled.
“That’s not important. But the point is, they’re using something, doing something that they shouldn’t do. What they wouldn’t even be able to do without that registration act. To me, Xavier, you… All of us alive now it’s already too late, but if Xavier manages to guarantee the congress about how wrong that act is… It might save our children some day.” Logan finished his little speech when waitress came over with their burgers.
“Not that we would have children. But figuratively speaking…” He said smirking.
“Of course! Of course! I… I knew you meant it like that…” She stuttered and hid her burning cheeks behind the wide brim of her tall glass of soda.
Rest of their meal they spoke about lighter topics. Weather, her job, about what they were going to do for the following days. Just friends exchanging pleasantries over burgers, taking a short lunch break before returning to doing nothing on this pleasant, hot summer day.
Words he had chosen, and that smirk of his lingered in her mind well past that day. She noticed that she was still mulling them over when they were sitting at the front porch of the cabin, enjoying the view the setting sun offered over the pond. When Logan threw his arm around her shoulders, urging her to lean on his side, she couldn’t help the nervous flush that crept over her cheeks. If he noticed, he didn’t comment it. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply his scent, wondering how different reactions it woke in her now compared to those back sixteen years ago. He still felt like safety, but there was something more underneath.
“Naptime, kid,” she heard Logan whisper. She was floating in that pleasant place, just between awareness and dreams, her whole body numb and lax. She was quite sure that it would be impossible to move from where she lay, legs spread on the porch, her upper body and head cradled against Logan’s side. Logan seemed to read her mind. He gathered her carefully on his arms and carried her to bed, tucking her under covers and brushing a strand of hair off from her forehead.
“Good night.”
“Good night, Logan…” Her hand crept out on it’s own volition and she squeezed his wrist briefly.
“I’ll be here if you need anything…” She muttered sleepily and curled on her side, letting his hand go and tucking her hands under her chin. She heard him leaving and closing the door. Lock on the door next to hers rattling. Little later soft creak of the bedsprings when he lay down.
She woke up some time during the night and sat up, blinking her eyes in the darkness. At first she wasn’t sure of what had woken her. She sat there, listening the silent cracks and creaks of the cabin. Owls calling to each other outside. Small insects pinging softly against the window. She strained her hearing. Just silence. Almost complete silence. Clock on the bedside table announced that it was four-thirty in the morning. Suddenly she realized. She had become so attuned to Logan’s fragmented dreaming habits that he managed to wake her up even now, when there was nothing wrong, nothing to worry about. No reason at all to get up from her warm bed.
“Crap…” She muttered slightly annoyed. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore.
“Might as well get up…”
She wrapped her bathrobe over her nightgown and opened the door carefully. Logan was a light sleeper. Even the tiniest noise would bring him out of rest, and he needed to sleep. She could stay here for the rest of the week, but he would have to return to the mansion soon. Xavier had already called him, anxious to continue their meetings. Logan had agreed to return on Thursday morning, and it was already Wednesday.
“Couldn’t sleep?” She jumped in the air and nearly screamed before she realized that it had been just Logan. She had crept as silently as she could to outside, intent on staying there until he woke up, only to find him creeping up on her and scaring her out of her wits.
“Jesus! Trying to give me a heart attack?” She hissed and swatted him. Logan smirked.
“That’s what you get from sneaking around. Had troubles sleeping?” He asked again, taking a drag from a cigar that was dangling between his fingers.
“Sort of. But it doesn’t matter. It’s beautiful around here at night.”
“Quiet… Well, almost,” he chuckled when an owl flew past them and let out a loud shriek.
“It must be difficult for you. To live in there with all of us.”
“Well… I have lived in worse places. And Xavier’s looking up a way to soundproof my room.”
“You’re staying?” She asked surprised.
“Yeah.”
“I thought…” she had expected him to bolt out back to road again as soon as he had things settled with Xavier.
“I’m through with the road. Besides, wouldn’t that make me quite a shitty friend? If I just took off like you meant nothing to me?”
“I…”
“Of course if you don’t want me here, I’m sure I could find something else…”
“No! Of course I want you to stay!” She practically attacked him, plastering herself over his chest and hugging him against her tightly.
“I missed you all those years. Waited for you. I knew it was stupid, I was just a little kid and you were… Well, you were you. But I still waited the day you would come back to see me.” Strange tightness in her throat made it hard to speak.
“I was waiting for that day, too. More than you can imagine…” Logan murmured discarding the stub of the cigar and answering to her hug with an embrace of his own. She could feel his face pressing against the crown of her head, and she heard him inhale.
“You still use the same shampoo.”
“Huh?”
“Remember when you asked how I always found you?” Logan asked.
“You said it was magic. Are you going to crush my dreams and reveal the great secret now?” She asked, and heard Logan chuckle.
“Not too many little girls around here used vanilla-scented shampoo. You were easy to track down. Though I must admit I made a mistake couple of times. Found an old lady wearing a blue dress with flowers on it instead of you.”
“That must have been my grandmother. She gave me that shampoo. I like the scent of it. She always bought two bottles at the end of every month, and gave one to me.”
“Your grandmother?” She could hear surprise in Logan’s voice.
“Well, she wasn’t my real grandmother, but I liked to pretend that she was. She was just a nice lady from the next door. Came to see me almost every day. She had grandchildren, but they lived in Canada, and she didn’t get to see them so often. We kind of adopted each other I guess. When they tattooed me she stopped coming. And that night… She was in our garden with the rest of our neighbors. I think she was the one who set our house on fire.”
“I’m sorry. Sorry that I couldn’t do more. I would have if…”
“It wasn’t your fault. I know that. They were just stupid people. Most of the times they were just afraid of me. They just wanted me to leave.”
“Doesn’t make it right. They had no right to scare and harass you. They have no right to do that to anybody. That’s… That’s why I had to leave. Why I had to stay away all these years. I want to make sure that in the future they have no chance to hurt us anymore.”
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