I woke up that next morning still thinking about Logan, and how well I really knew him versus how well I should know him by now, and how many times I’d thought I’d gotten realistic only to fall back into denial.
Cocooned in a tight ball under my covers and not wanting to peek out from the warmth, I conceded that this was pretty much how I lived my life. Comfortable and contained. Untouchable. Alone, even if the dip in the mattress and the snoring told me that Peter of all people had crashed on my bed.
With my comforter wrapped securely me like a tent, I waddled into the hall bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror, I dropped my covering symbolically.
The metamorphosis was unspectacular.
I looked not so much wizened by experience than tired and unkempt. Sighing at my reflection, I got into the shower. Where had I picked up the notion that change was instantaneous?
People change, I thought. Forwards and backwards and sideways. Moreover, they’re not consistent. Every single person I had ever known had surprised me at some point, either by doing something incredible or acting out of character. I knew that. Yet I was guilty of assuming that the people around me would always match up with the idea I’d created of them. Change is the only constant. There was no such thing as a static human being. If someone seemed that way – if I thought Logan was that way – it was only because I’d failed to notice their dynamics.
I lectured myself, One-dimensional caricatures make for fine acquaintances, but true friends should always be three-dimensionally real. They’re so much more fascinating that way. Real people have intricacies and secrets and are constantly evolving right before my eyes.
Logan – who I thought of as a rock, who I thought I understood because I had snapshots of him, a photo album of conflicting thoughts and memories collecting dust in my head – had changed more than anyone I knew. He came into my life completely out of left field. I never could have predicted that some guy I happened to see cage fighting in a backwoods Canadian bar would turn out to be so irreplaceable in my life.
Honestly, the first things I’d noticed about Logan were that he was extremely violent and extremely hot. I’d stood in awe of both those things, but I didn’t thought to myself, Gee, I bet that he’s really caring and noble on the inside. No. It was more like, Oh my God, he’s kicking that guy’s ass, and, Damn, look at those muscles. I hitched a ride with him because he’d seen through me. Because of that, I was much less afraid of him than I was of being left alone with a bunch of gun-toting, anti-mutant bigots.
Lo and behold, he turned out to be a nice guy. Rather brusque, but he fed me so I decided to overlook that little flaw. Really, I was prepared to forgive him all sorts of things. It had been some time since I’d come across any other mutant, let alone one who was older than I was. Logan was obviously strong and, despite my brave front, I wasn’t. I figured that if I could get him to like me, he’d let me borrow a little of that strength. Maybe even let me tag along for a while. Had Sabretooth not attacked and Scott and Storm not taken us back to the school, would he have gotten rid of me at the next town? I never used to think so, but now I thought he would have. The Logan who grudgingly gave me a lift wasn’t the same Logan who tried to die for me on the top of the Statue of Liberty.
Two days, and he’d changed. Suddenly, we were in this whole new world of superheroes and villains, and our vague relationship as driver and hitchhiker transformed into a friendship based on mutual understanding and loyalty. Fierce loyalty. As far as I know, he never even questioned it. I brought out his intrinsic protective streak and he made me feel wanted. Everything between us developed from there. Our foundation.
The fact that four and half years later things between us were still in development was not something I should be resentful about. I figured that’s just how relationships work. There’s no pause button and there’s no fast-forwarding to the good parts.
I learned that one the hard way, I thought, because I hadn’t been able to fast-forward these past two years. But shouldn’t this be the good part already? Maybe it was past due. Or maybe I didn’t deserve it.
In the time we were apart, we’d both changed. Logan had finally gotten the answers to some of the questions that had been agitating him for two straight decades, and the knowing had aged him significantly. As for me, at twenty-two, I had two jobs and my own apartment. I was as much of an adult as I ever had been or could imagine myself being, although I knew there was nothing in front of me but a endless change. It was exhausting to think about how far I’d come since eighteen. I could only imagine what I’d think of my past selves at forty.
I knew how I felt about myself at twenty: betrayed. I’d truly thought Logan had done me wrong, that I was a victim of some frustrating mix of a hero complex and an age discrimination, and that my forgiveness was a sign of maturity. Not so. Truth was, I’d done him wrong and been all the blinder for it.
The one thing Logan remembered about sleeping with me was that my eyes had been closed. I could picture how I must have seemed to him. Even while touching him, responding to him, I’d been self-contained. In trying so hard to preserve the experience, I’d taken everything he had and given back nothing of myself. And, not only had I not realized what I’d done, it was last thing I’d wanted for either of us.
Yesterday morning I’d felt so close to him, caught up in a hug so all-consuming my feet had left the floor, literally feeling his feelings with him…That side-effect was so sporadic, it’d only happened, what, three times? Was it possible to control? Dr. McCoy might have written something about in my file.
Even now I didn’t want to read it.
So I resolved to do so. I put the binder in my messenger bag when I went for brunch with the gang. When they were on their way, I went to the National Mall sat down and opened the first page.
Charts and graphs. Statistics. There were notes, too, but all of them tempered by Dr. McCoy’s grand sense of acceptance and generosity. During the trial period between eighteen to twenty when we worked the most closely together, he referred to me as exceptionally patient and accepting. During the Warbird period, he actually called me brave.
I was crying by the last page. I’d been so afraid of this file as Truth, but was a lie. Saint Rogue, mired in tragedy and but strong to the core. Bullshit. I wasn’t like that – maybe I seemed that way to Dr. McCoy or maybe he was just trying to be kind. What a sad, unintentionally cruel joke. “Knowledge is Power” my ass. This wasn’t science. This was a whitewashing of history.
Gripping the binder in my hands, I could have broken it in half. I was so angry at it. It was supposed to have been a grail, holy in writ. But it was just another misrepresentation, more slant interpretation. After all that angst, the damn thing didn’t even have any power over me. And I was angry because of it. How perverse.
An epiphany shot through me in a sudden burst. It was nebulous and inarticulate, but it was powerful. The only thing better than knowledge: understanding.
The bus stop was only a few blocks away, so I started toward it. My brisk walk soon turned into a jog, which turned into a sprint, which made my feet leave the ground –
I was up!
Two little girls looking up at their kites. One pointed and yelled, “Mommy! Mommy!” The other waved and grinned, so I did loops that made them both jump up and down and clap. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so thrilled to be a mutant. Different, yes, but special and in a good way.
And why not? This was my country. I spiraled up the Washington Monument and dove back down, gliding low over the Reflecting Pool. I was getting “oohed” and “awed” at, pictures were being snapped. As I arched over the Lincoln Memorial, I wanted to yell, “Freedom!” or “God Bless America!” or something stupidly patriotic, but I just laughed.
I bet at least one person down there was ardently wishing he or she could shoot me right out of the sky. They could kiss my aerodynamic ass. It was partly because of people like them, their hate and fear driving everyone to the edge of the extreme – breaking the nation into us and them, pitting us against ourselves – that I even had the power to fly.
That realization gave me an extra burst of energy that took me all the way back to my apartment. A lesson that hit me by way of epiphany but one that I’d learned and accepted only over time: share the burden.