The Phoenix Compound
December 12
I stand, ignoring the protest of various muscles, pacing the floor in front of the bed, trying to think of words. A naive stab at hope.
"You examined her?"
She shakes her head, speaking very low.
"No. They wouldn't let me. They threatened to take the baby...I had to let them do what they wanted. They made me leave and that was when I came back and cut out your implant. So you could stop them. But it was too late."
"I'm taking it real nice and slow when I kill them."
"You can't."
"What?"
"If we interfere, we'll be banished. Scott, me, the baby. We won't have anywhere to live..."
"This ain't living, Jeannie. This is as bad as anything they could do on the outside. Worse, because they're our own kind."
"If we just let it ride out...they won't kill them. They need her womb..."
"Need her what?"
Choke on the words, on the implications, on the resignation I see in her face that isn't fair, isn't fair at all. Not to Marie, not to her, not even to Scooter.
"Are you listening to yourself? These freaks aren't our brothers any more than Magneto and his crew. In fact, I'd prefer Magneto. And have you looked at this place?"
My hand sweeps the room, the cracked walls, the windows that look out onto the barbed wire.
"What makes it any different from the camps?"
She glares at me, half-wounded, half-angry, her chin jutting out as she holds the bundle in her arms toward me.
"My son. They aren't hurting my son."
"Not yet."
She flinches again but does not crumble; Jeannie has always been stubborn when it comes to these things. Justifiable sacrifices, she called them. She and Scooter threw that term around a lot, in the early days of the war. It always meant our sacrifices, our attempts at justification, not those of the other side. They thought they were being noble, now I realize they were just scared. Like we all were.
"Please, Logan. Promise me you won't interfere. It looks worse than it really is. I've survived the worst part of it, Scott's survived it, we can beat the system. At least we're not hunted here. At least we have small moments of peace."
"Small moments of peace. For that you're willing to stand and watch while they beat your husband? To do nothing?"
"Take a glance at my forehead...does it look like I stood and watched anything?"
Her voice sharpens, and it is the most alive I have seen her tonight. I may have pushed too far; she would let me call her a cheap whore before she let me doubt her loyalty to her husband.
"There are ways of doing this without a fight. You are Rogue's bondmate. If you talk to them, they have to listen."
"If they want to get back at Scott so much, they aren't exactly going to be open to reason, are they?"
Not that these are the most logical people to begin with.
"They can't hurt her, if that's what you're afraid of. And I know it is. I feel it."
Afraid? Haha. Not me, the Wolverine, the Man of Steel. I'm not even mildly concerned. I bypassed concern and went straight for the gut-wrenching terror part. Never was much on middle ground.
"You gave her healing," she says. "She'll walk away without even a bruise."
"Two days, Jeannie. She ain't going to be protected from anything. And neither is Scott."
Her eyes glaze over in that defiance again. She's on her feet, face to face with me, squaring off.
"Scott knows that we all have to make sacrifices." The words rapid fire, mechanical like she's trying to convince herself as well as me. "He did when I was taken. He allowed it so that we could stay safe. Now I'll do the same for him."
"So that's what this is about." I growl. "You want him to have scars to match yours? He let you down so now you think you'll even the score no matter who else gets hurt--"
"Stop--"
"No, Jeannie, you stop. Stop calling it noble things and come out with what it really is-- revenge? Payback? Or are you just afraid to do anything because it might actually cost you something--"
"You don't know--"
"Yes, I do. You had it bad, but so did Marie and if it was you and me in a cell she wouldn't cower behind justifiable sacrifice--"
"I said stop!"
A chair hurtles across the room to smash into the far wall, caving in the plaster.
I've never seen her lose control like this before. Never seen it this strong. The cabinet doors open, shut, open, shut, the glass in the windows rattles. Every bone in her body is rigid, sharp, waiting to snap. I begin to wonder what the procedure is for calming down a telekinetic on the rampage; maybe I should just duck and hope she doesn't aim...
But then the baby begins to wail. Thin, pale cries of discomfort and fear, as if he can sense his mother's anger. This deflates her; she sinks back onto the bed, but misses the edge and ends up on the floor. A hard bump, her teeth rattle together when she hits the pavement. She ignores it, hugging the bundle to her chest, rocking him, whispering things that mothers whisper to crying children.
(Hush little baby, don't say a word...Momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird....a mockingbird....Momma's gonna buy you the whole flock....don't say a word...)
I am not a father; crying babies create definite flight instincts in me, but I resist them. I should do the heroic thing and kneel beside her, hold the baby with one arm and wrap the other around her and tell her that I didn't mean it. That I am angry, like she is, and scared, like she is, only worse because she has the excuse of trying everything she could. I, on the other hand, have been flat on my back and unable to defend so much as a flea.
But as Scooter's is so fond of pointing out, I'm not a hero. Whatever I say will come out wrong, whatever I do will be misunderstood. I'm better at breaking things than fixing them; look at the bang up job I've done with Marie. So I stand and watch, hands in my pockets, boots wearing a path into the cement, conscience building the justification that at least I didn't run.
Three minutes, five minutes later-- though it feels more like twenty years-- the bundle stops squirming and squalling and begins to suck intently on his pacifier. Thank heavens for modern science. She looks at him a moment longer, her fingers smoothing his eyelids and the tuft of brown hair in the middle of his head. Then her eyes lift to me, holding none of the expected things. They are softer, tired, asking me to understand.
"I love Scott. If I could save him, I would. But I love my son too, Logan, and he loves his son. He is all we have for a future. No more Xavier, no more fighting for the Cause. Just a little boy. We can't risk losing him on the outside."
She pulls the blanket tighter around the tiny body.
"Do you have any idea what the humans would do with a mutant baby? I've heard the stories. They make me sick."
"And Marie is all I have. All I've ever had. What do you want me to do...stand by and watch?"
"There's no other choice. I know it's hard, but if you want to save her life, you have to let this happen."
"No." One firm shake of my head. "I tried to save her life that way once before and it nearly killed both of us. Don't ask me to do it again."
"If we leave the compound, the Registration Bureau will find us. This place is monitored that way. At the most it'll only be a matter of days."
"I have connections. I did some fighting for a man who can smuggle us out; he owes me."
"And you trust him? You have proof?"
"And you trust these freaks here? You have proof that they won't take your son, or kill your husband?"
"They won't. We have a use. We're safe. It costs us something, but don't all sanctuaries?"
Our eyes meet, lock. I unfold my mind to her in a gesture of trust, she needs to know how much I mean this. I could do this without her-- take Marie my own way, have my fun with the freaks while I'm doing it, and then leave her and her husband behind to face the fallout-- but I won't go to that extreme until I can justify it by the knowledge that I've done everything possible to get them to come with us. I can't just leave them behind. Not her, not her child. Not even Scott.
This is why I don't answer her right away; inspiration was never my forte. Charles was the one who gave the speeches before the missions, who painted it all in red and white and blue and made us believe it. I always saw the Cause in two colors-- gray and grayer-- but when he talked, I saw it through his eyes. And I fought from that viewpoint.
"It's not worth it. Even though you're right, even though your son is beautiful and deserves to be protected and loved and given a chance."
"That's what we've given him. Here."
"Be honest, Jeannie. You think he's going to get it?" I say. "Life on the outside is hard, yes. The risk is always there, it's real, but look at what he'll be missing here. He'll never know what it's like to decide who he wants to be or what he wants to do with his life. He'll never be able to go to sleep without wondering if his mother will be taken from him or if his father will be killed in a fight."
Her face clouds, wrinkles at the corners of the mouth, but she doesn't stop me.
"He'll never have freedom here...that's what he deserves most of all." My gaze drops back to the baby. "Because if he doesn't have it, he won't be alive. Just like we aren't alive, you, me, Scott, Marie. Don't let him become us. Let him become something better."
She holds me in a steady gaze, the expression on her face not so much as twitching. Granite, unreadable, opaque. She kisses her fingertips then slides them across her son's forehead, down the bridge of his nose. Something in her twists, snaps, breaks and reforms into new thoughts before she speaks.
"Let me go home, Logan. Back to my apartment, where it's quiet and where I can drink a cup of coffee and think."
She rubs her temples with her hands; I wonder how much of Scott is up inside her and how much she's hurting with him. Maybe I pushed too hard, too soon.
"Give me two hours." She says. "Two hours and if I'm not back then you can do whatever you need to do. Then I won't try to stop you. But promise me you'll wait."
I nod.
"Say it out loud."
"I promise."
She walks away, the door shuts behind her and I start waiting. Why do we call it killing time? Is it because we all realize that we are helpless against it, impotent and paralyzed, and so we hope that it is a way of revenge? An ant shaking a fist at the sun. I kill time; I hunt down individual seconds and pound them out into minutes, hoping to link them all together to form hours. 3600 seconds flattens out to 120 minutes, which can be squashed together to form two hours.
At the same moment, time seeks to kill me. It slows, it bends, it lasts forever. But I'm used to this. Every day was forever when I wasn't with Marie. In that sense, I've already survived eternity.
I refuse to die by minutes.
The door opens; Jeannie walks through smelling of gasoline, of dried sweat, drug store lipstick, and a man who isn't Scott. She's carrying a cheap handbag-- cracked orange vinyl with one strap missing-- but wearing her best dress, or what passes for best in this place: thin blue cotton splattered with pink and white flowers, held in place by two straps tied in a functional knot at the back of her neck. White trash clothes; straight out of a West Virginia trailer park, only she carries herself like it's the tailored Gucci wardrobe her husband used to buy her on a regular basis.
The baby is still on her hip, an accessory to the outfit that is laid on the table beside the purse as if she is tired of wearing him.
"Didn't think they were big on dresses like that around here." I say.
"The rules only apply if you turn them down while you're wearing it."
"Right."
"Whiskey," she says, "and don't pretend you're a boy scout because I know you have it here somewhere."
"No whiskey, but I got Scotch. That do?"
"Get it."
I open the cabinet underneath the sink and grope around in the cobwebs until I find the bottle and one shot glass. As I pour it for her, I notice secondary details of her appearance that my initial surprise kept from notice: the smears of red lipstick at either corner of her mouth, the smudges of oil and engine grease on her left elbow and on the side of her neck.
She picks up on the stare, doesn't look me in the face when she takes the whiskey. Instead she tosses the whole glass down her throat in one curt motion...a defiance though of what I'm not sure. Her face wrinkles.
"Disgusting."
"Sorry if it ain't as classy as you--"
"Not the Scotch, the other taste. Doesn't matter how strong the liquor is I can't get that taste out of my mouth."
"Taste of what?"
"Anyone who isn't Scott."
She slams the glass down on the table, but not so hard that it will crack; she's been taught the graceful ways of expressing rage, and even now they remain in the background like instincts half-forgotten.
"Don't tell him about this. He's still a boy about these things, he'll overreact."
She wipes the corners of her mouth with a restrained frenzy, the lipstick comes off on her fingertips like colored lard. Oily and thin.
"I got us a vehicle," she says. "A way out. And five extra tins of gas for the road. It'll be waiting for us at ten o'clock at the west gate; we have a five-minute window when they change the sentries. We should be able to make it a couple hundred miles or so before we have to stop."
"How?"
"Does it matter?" She rubs the lipstick from her fingers onto the tabletop, ridding herself of the stain.
"You don't owe me any explanations."
This isn't entirely true, I'm itching in my bones to know what turned her around so fast and what she's been doing these past two hours, but I have enough common sense to know that if she wants to tell me, she will. And if she doesn't then it isn't my business to ask.
"Money. I knew he'd do it if I promised him enough money, only I had to be sure. You understand that, right, I had to let him--"
"Jeannie."
I raise a finger to my lips to stop her because she's flirting with incoherence as it is. Don't want to push her this time.
"I told you, you don't have to say it. You did what you had to do."
"I made him think I liked it."
"You saved your husband."
"He wouldn't look at it that way."
"Doesn't matter. He won't know."
"A beat up Jeep and five tins of gasoline." Her smile twists down, the way Marie's does when she remembers the bad times. Broken ice, cracked glass. "I guess I've been sold for less."
Don't know what to tell her on that one.
I take a step closer to her and rub the smudge of grease from her arm with the end of my shirt. She flinches out of my reach: walls of surprise but also of defense. Her skin is tight with gooseflesh and I don't know if it's due to the wind outside or something else. Answers arise to my question in the form of echoes of Marie telling me the story behind all this. (Last month. It was...bad.)
When it's finally over, we will reckon this as our greatest loss. Not the burned-out mansion or the forgotten quest or the men we've killed. We won't regret those things because we have too have been burned down, forgotten, killed. No, the greatest loss for men like me, men like Scott, won't come until we reach out to touch the women we love and respect, only to watch them pull away. Unintentionally, a gut-reaction. The lingering regret will be the shadow in their eyes; the one thing we will never be able to erase totally.
Of course we'll never believe that, we'll never stop trying. Maybe that's the penance.
"Go home, Jeannie."
I want to squeeze her shoulder, to put my arms around her and tell her that she makes the dress beautiful and that Scott would still love her if she ripped out his heart and threw it against the wall. I want to tell her that it's not fair, that it will never be fair, that she's worth more. She and Marie are worth so much more than this.
But it's not allowed. That's something else we've lost-- the ability to comfort through hands and arms and touch. We are contained to the long-distance solace of words, and we know it will never be enough.
"Take a shower." I tell her. "Drink your coffee. Don't worry about this place; don't even think about it anymore. By tomorrow morning it won't exist, for any of us. And don't worry about Scott. I'll bring him to you; in one piece even."
We attempt, and nearly succeed, to share grins.
"Thank you."
She nods, graciously, then picks up the handbag and the baby and walks toward the door. She pauses, at the last moment, turns around and presents me with the gift of a smile.
"It wasn't just for him. For her too. If it matters to you."
She doesn't give me time to thank her, she's gone and the door shuts behind her. It leaves me with the question of whether or not I would have tried to stop her, if I'd known. Protested, argued her out of it, popped the claws for emphasis? No. I would have let her do it because I'd have known she'd win. That's Jeannie for you-- she may be a slow starter but once she's with you, she'll play it to the bone, no holds barred. That's what you have to do in this kind of mission. It's always easier to think of it in that way: another mission to be completed, another justifiable sacrifice.
Of which I have just about had my fill.
Double Violin Concerto, Reprise: Logan
You'll never be able to remember it exactly as it happened because it is not a memory. It has never happened to you and it has never happened to her, but you are aware that this is not the point. The point is that you are here and so she must be here, somewhere, and when you find her, both of you will be able to understand what you are seeing. There is nothing so simple as dreams and reality, but rather endless variations on the stages between. Something is being shown to you; you don't know what. The only key is the vague premonition that surrounds you with a sense of ominous invisibility, like the summer air before a thunderstorm hits. You are looking over your shoulder, waiting for the lightning.
The earth moves under you: no, it's reverse. You move, too fast, and it makes it look like the earth is sliding out from under you like liquid. You watch it drain away outside the window: stubble fields where a black rain falls in sharp hard pellets, brown trees that stand alone and naked apart from the gray soot that covers the branches. Somewhere in the world, the sky has burnt through and now it's snowing ashes. You watch the child stand at the edge of the tracks and wave at you as you pass-- a little girl in the dark blue polka dot dress. Soot clings to her hair and some of the polka dots are scorched brown instead of white. She smiles; do all children smile because they are oblivious, or sometimes is it because they realize everything and know that it is all they can do? What would you have done, when you were her age? Of course, that would require remembering childhood. For you it is impossible, so you determine to remember hers instead. You determine to smile back, but she's already gone. Liquid, streaming out from behind you in waves.
All you see is your face in the night window, smeared with beard stubble and the greenish-black glow of the ceiling lights. Two holes have been punched into your forehead and in these holes a dim black light is glowing: you realize they are your eyes but cannot remember how they came to be so empty. The pupils reflect dark shapes of the liquid earth that rush past at breakneck speed.
You realize you are on a train. Alone. No, you are not alone. You know because you hear her violin.
A melody that is clean, sharp on the edges, a song you have only heard twice before. Once by a lake, once in a concert hall. At first, surprise-- she has convinced everyone that she no longer plays but this song is meant to be a secret. No one else will hear it but you. This is not selfishness on her part; she knows that you are the only person who needs to hear the song. Everyone else in the world has moved on to louder, brassier music: machine gun rattles in city streets, grinding machinations of tanks, screams in the night. But she needs something softer, something spun from glass instead of wire, something that will not cut the fingers when played. She needs it just like you do.
(Marie is in the next car.)
Charles anticipates your question, again, even though he is dead. The dead have that sort of habit; insinuating themselves into your subconscious until their voices well up all at once in your dreams. At times the roar can be quite deafening. Charles, at least, has the courtesy to whisper.
You want to close your eyes and find her just by the sound of her magic, but you could not do this. The train is unfamiliar, alien to eyes and ten times more to touch. You have to peel back the eyelids, catalog every door and seat and window frame, keep on alert for the monsters. This is a dream, after all, and they are inevitable. You follow the melody towards the door that connects the cars. The aisle smells of coal, of stained upholstery, of cigarette smoke and stale bread.
A step, another step, and you open the door. She is standing in the middle of the car, feet firmly planted on either side of the aisle to brace against the rocking of the train; face crumpled inward as if she is fighting to remember the notes. She never had to fight before.
The song snaps in two the moment she sees you; her face smoothes out into a flat white sheet creased at the bottom with an odd grin. Like she has been here for some time already and has expected you.
(I knew you'd find me here. If I played my violin long enough, I'd knew you'd come.
What's going on here, kid?
Maybe we're dreaming.
At the same time?
Hey, you were the one who jumped inside my head, don't complain if weirdness ensues.)
Her eyes sparkle; she's teasing you again.
(Wonder what made us choose a train. Not exactly a pleasant memory. If we're going by memories.
Guess this is the only way to get where we're going.
Didn't think travel was safe these days.
It isn't.
Well at least I know we're not getting boring in our old age.)
She walks toward you; takes your hand between hers and leads you to a nearby seat. Your ears ring with the beat of the wheels along the iron track; an oppressive rhythm frantic like an out of control metronome. The seats are stiff and uncomfortable: horsehair bristles irritating the back of the neck, hard plastic armrests that grate against the elbows in all the wrong places. You are too hot and too cold at once, sweating and shivering, burning and freezing.
You turn her hand over, trace finger circles on her bare palm. This time you wore the gloves, because you knew even in a dream that she frees her hands when she plays violin.
(Last time I dreamed, I watched a girl set herself on fire.
Anyone I know?
I think it was you.
I must have had a good reason for it.
You said you had to give them a witness of us.
Then there you have it. Justifiable sacrifice.
I never believed in that.)
Never when it came down to her. Your fingers wander from her hand up to her face, the curls of hair framing the skin, falling down over the eyes.
(Neither did I.) She admits. (Some things you can never justify; you're not even supposed to try. Like what happened to us.
You mean what happened after I left you?
No, I mean what happened after I stopped wanting you to come back. And after you stopped wanting to live.)
You are no longer satisfied with the communication of fingers; you lean forward and plant a kiss on the side of her forehead, through her hair. Then another, then another. Morse code-- does it spell out I Love You or SOS?
(In the dream you told me sometimes you had to set fire to yourself to stay human.
I was right. Something has to be given up, something has to be consumed.
What if they're waiting for us at the station? What if they catch us again the minute we arrive?
Then we'll be caught.
Do you want to jump the train?
Not particularly.
I'd hold onto you; you wouldn't break bones.
That's not the point. It's our stop; if we don't show up then they'll just find someone else. And no one else deserves it.
Doesn't mean that you do.
No, it doesn't. But neither do you and we might as well find out together.
Maybe they won't be there. Maybe we'll be somewhere that they can never go.
I don't care where we end up as long as we end up in the same place.
Good, because I don't plan on leaving again.
They could make you leave.
They could try. Maybe they'd succeed, for a while, but no one can keep me locked up forever. Not when I know you're out there.
Why me?
Because you're the only thing in me that's alive.)
She leans against your, her head on your shoulder, your hands on her face, covering her eyes. She doesn't have to see whatever's coming; you'll see it for the both of you.
(Does any of this count if this is a dream?
Why should it matter?
Because I want to remember it when I wake up, and I want to know it was real.
You'll remember it.
How do you know?
I'm inside your head and I won't let you forget. I'll take care of you.
Promise?
I promise.)
And you hold her by the window and the earth pours itself out around you and you are both rushing toward the end of your journey, only you don't know what it is. It is vapor, the future is, a shimmering iridescent vision that changes shape every time you think you've got it figured out. Only you're not so concerned with prediction and prophecy. Or even with the more absolute things, like life and death and escape and capture.
You are with her.
She's right; you don't have to justify your sacrifices. You have her and she is more than justification or hope. When you are close enough to touch her and she is close enough to smile back, you both transcend hope. You are all that is left when it is gone; you are the light that glimmers from the void.
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