“Jesus! I said everything important! Not everything!” she heard Logan huffing. She eyed her coming mode of transportation with suspicious eyes. It looked like somebody had taken fairly decent pick-up truck, added generous amount of rust and one banged up camper van and stirred briskly. Then, as an afterthought that somebody had added several packets of bubblegum, spit and wire. She hadn’t seen more horrendous excuse of a vehicle in her whole life.
“You drove that from N.Y. to here?” She asked.
“Beats walking. And back pains from sitting too long on the bike,” Logan grunted, throwing off the tarp that had been covering a trailer hitched to the back of the heap of rust and started packing boxes and suitcases next to his motorcycle.
“You drove it all the way here?”
“Yeah.”
“It just… It looks like you could maybe get it past my driveway if we both gave it a good shove…”
“Looks worse than it is. Keep nagging and I’ll ditch you to the nearest buss stop…”
“It’s fine. It’s… It has four wheels and it’s probably moving.”
“Five.”
“Huh?”
“Five wheels. Always keep a spare in the back.”
She climbed to the passenger’s side and tried not to think too hard about the stains on the seat when she sat down. Logan climbed to the driver’s seat. She reached for the door handle.
“Be gentle. Truth to be told that door hasn’t been used for a while. Might fall off if you slam it too hard,” he warned her. She swallowed and closed the door as carefully as she could, buckling the seatbelt immediately. Logan started the engine, then started patting down his pockets.
“Now where the hell did I put them…”
“Lost something?” She asked.
“Yeah. My glasses. I’m blind as a bat without them. Well, can’t be too hard to go without, as long as we stay out of the main roads…”
“Oh, God…” She grasped the door handle when the truck lurched forward and spluttered and shook like it was going to fall apart at any second.
“Relax. It gets worse only if we go faster than sixty miles per hour. I have earplugs somewhere in the glove compartment…”
“Oh, God…”
They had driven about half an hour when Logan suddenly turned the truck to the side of the road and turned off the engine.
“What?” She started to panic. They had left the town for good while ago. She was in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger, and that said stranger was sitting behind the steering wheel, wide grin on his face and staring at her.
“This is fucking priceless.”
“What? What is priceless?” She asked, rolling up her sleeves, baring as much skin as she could without compromising her modesty.
“That look on your face when you saw this piece of utter crap. You really thought I drove this heap of junk from N.Y.?” Logan asked.
“I don’t know. That’s what you said. You didn’t?” She asked relaxing slowly.
“Hell, no. God, I was afraid that this would fall to fucking pieces to your front yard!” Logan huffed.
“Then… How… what…”
“I came here with my bike. I called to Xavier from the motel and asked him to send somebody to pick us up.”
“But what about this truck and…”
“I won this last night in the cage. Guy got in with nothing but this heap of junk to back him up.”
“In the cage? You fight for money?” She asked.
“Occasionally. When I’m bored. But hey, we should get our stuff from the trailer. Better get ready before Summers gets here…”
She could only stare in awe her new mode of transportation. Sleek, dangerous-looking black jet had landed on the field not far from the truck. The pilot was currently helping Logan to load his motorcycle and her belongings in to the loading bay. For some reason both men looked awfully tense and uncomfortable, trading words only when it was necessary and avoiding each other’s gaze. When they were ready the pilot stomped in to the jet first, leaving it to Logan to help her in and seated.
“Strap your ass down, Wolverine. Don’t want to scrape your carcass from the back wall after we get back home,” pilot’s voice came through the intercom. She glanced at Logan who sat obediently and buckled his seatbelt.
“You have strange friends,” she noted.
“Can’t blame him. After all, I killed his wife,” Logan grunted, then the lift-off prevented her from speaking.
Killed his wife? She was about to speak up when the jet leveled, but Logan opened his seatbelt and stomped in to the cockpit, closing the door behind him. She could hear sharp snap from the speakers when somebody turned off the intercom. That move left her alone with her thoughts.
Her Vagabond was a murderer? What kind of people she had gotten tangled in to? What the hell was going on? She peered through the small window on her right and saw nothing but clouds. She tried to reason. Perhaps it had been an accident. Those things always happened. At least in the movies. Logan didn’t seem like a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe it had been a car accident and the pilot blamed Logan for it. A car accident. Or something else as easily explainable. Had to be. Or else she was in deep shit. Drowning in to hot steaming pile of crap. Had she really been that stupid that she had left her home with a stranger without telling anybody where she was going?
She rolled her sleeves even higher. It had looked earlier that now her best defense was her skin. Until she knew better she’d keep her hands bare. Logan had touched her only briefly; fleeting brush of his fingers and in his own words it had hurt like a bitch. Surely she could fend him off, fend off anybody who tried to hurt her now?
Intercom rattled bringing her out of her thoughts, and she shrieked from the surprise.
“We’ll be landing soon, miss D’Ancanto. Fasten your seatbelt, please,” the pilot’s voice was calm and professional. She felt the jet tilting forward and peered through the window again. Clouds disappeared to somewhere above her. She could see a huge mansion down below, in the middle of lavish looking gardens. She spotted a stable, several tennis courts, and something that looked like a basketball court. It parted from the middle, opened like a flower, revealing a large, metal-coated hall under ground. The jet hovered above it for a while, then landed slowly. She felt a soft jolt, and soon after the door of the cockpit opened. Logan walked towards her with a deep frown on his face.
“Scott… The guy with the visor… He’ll take care of you. I have something… Something came up. I’ll see you later…” He stuttered, then jumped off from the jet and disappeared from her view.
First hour she spent with Scott Summers eradicated all her fears and doubts. The place she had gotten in to was actually a school for mutant children. The people she met were happy and friendly, and if Summers had seemed uptight and gloom at Logan’s company, he was quite the opposite now that Logan had vanished. She took instant liking to the man. He had given her a brief tour around the campus and they were sitting outside in the garden when Scott suddenly stood up. A woman was approaching them. A beautiful black woman with hair as white as snow. Scott was smiling at her.
“I want you to meet somebody. Ororo was teaching a class when we got in here… Honey!” He called the woman. The woman smiled and waved at them.
“Ororo, I’d like you to meet our new librarian, Marie D’Ancanto,” Scott introduced Marie.
“And this is my wife, Ororo summers. Or Storm, as kids like to call her.”
“Your wife? But… But I thought… Logan said… Isn’t she dead?” She stuttered perplexed. Both Ororo and Scott cleared their throats, looking uncomfortable. Finally Ororo spoke.
“Logan may have said something. It happened many years ago, and there’s no reason to discuss about it further. Now… Tired of Scott’s company? Hungry?” She asked. Marie nodded. She really was hungry, and she had a feeling that it would be for the best if she followed Ororo rather than stayed with Scott who had suddenly lost his interest to her and was staring at the toes of his boots.
“I’m sorry if I said something wrong. It’s just… Logan said something on our way here, and I assumed…” She started to apologize when she walked side by side with Ororo towards the main building. Ororo sighed.
“Maybe it’s better to clear it up for you. But remember. We do not talk about this thing,” she said sitting down to a stone bench next to the front door of the mansion. She sat next to the woman.
“It all happened several years ago. We had just met Logan. Or more accurately, we had just found him. Something bad had happened to him. He was a wreck, emotionally as well as physically. We brought him here to get help and to recover from his ordeal. At that time Scott was married to our doctor. Beautiful woman called Jean. Jean Grey. She was a telepath among other things. She could see and hear what other people were thinking. It was her gift and curse. At first everything was going well. Logan was making progress. Therapy with professor was helping him when he was tackling with the trauma inflicted on him. Then he started getting nightmares. He was dreaming about things that were done to him. Every night. It was better for all of us to let him deal with those dreams on his own. Safer for everyone. We still don’t know what happened that night, but for some reason Jean had woken up. She had probably thought that Logan was awake. Or she was going to wake him up. That’s the kind of person Jean was. That’s what she did best. Took care of other people. She had probably gone to Logan’s room to wake him up, because she could see glimpses of his nightmare in her head. Logan… Logan thought that she was one of the people that had hurt him. He… He killed Jean. And left soon after that. Nobody blames him for what happened, not even Scott, but Logan couldn’t cope with what had happened. This is the first time he’s back here after he left.”
After Ororo finished her story they sat in silence for a moment.
“Still hungry? I sure do hope you are. Our cooks make mean meatloaf…” Ororo said, small smile on her face. She thought about it for a while. Then nodded.
“I guess I could eat. I just feel so stupid… Butting in to things I shouldn’t… I’m not usually this nosy and blunt, you know?” She whispered. Ororo nodded.
“But now it’s all cleared up. Come on. Lets go and grab us something to eat. We have to hurry, though. I swear these kids could easily be mistaken as a swarm of grasshoppers…”
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