Next morning found them from a tangled heap of limbs on the cold floor. Either Marie or Logan was what one could call a peaceful dreamer.
“Oww...” Marie groaned, sitting up gingerly.
“Hangover?” Logan asked, climbing on to his feet and reaching for his clothes.
“No... But my back is killing me. I slept on it for the whole night, and hard wood isn’t the best possible mattress...” She whined and stretched her shoulders, trying to get comfortable enough so she could get dressed.
“We have to find a better place to sleep. But that has to wait. We’re going to check up that hardware store you talked about last night.”
“We?” Marie asked.
“I’m going with Scott. It’s up to you and Jean to hold the fort.”
“Okay.”
On his way out Logan saw Jean. She stumbled down a flight of stairs, just narrowly managing to avoid breaking her neck.
“Jean! Shit... Jean, are you okay?” He shouted and hurried after her. The woman was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing her forehead.
“I’m such a klutz sometimes, Logan. I’m alright...” Jean chuckled weakly. The bridge of her nose had a deep gash, and there was a large bruise adorning her forehead.
“Doctor, heal thy self... Better yet, tell me where the first-aid kit is hidden. I’ll go and get it for you.”
“It’s alright, Logan. No need to make such a fuss about this. I already called Scott... Oh, hi honey! Did you bring the band-aid?” Jean waved at Scott who hurried to them, striding down the steps two at time.
“Jesus, Jean! You really are bleeding; let me take a look at it...” He huffed, then glanced at Logan quickly.
“I’ll come with you as soon as we get this sorted out,” he promised, effectively dismissing Logan after those words, his whole attention turned to Jean.
He walked out to greet the rising sun, debating internally if all the commotion he had faced when getting up was a good reason to smoke his last cigar. It was well hidden, sealed in to a steel tube and sown inside of his jacket’s inner lining. Perhaps the last Cuban he’d see, ever. He hadn’t yet decided when the door behind him opened and Scott walked out, slightly nauseated look on his face.
“Ready to go?” Logan asked. Scott nodded.
“Is Jean okay?” Again Scott nodded.
“You need to puke?” This time Scott shook his head.
“She... She told me what happened. She had been on her way down here, in a hurry because she thought that she heard a noise from the outside... Her foot caught to something and she... She...” Scott stuttered, then fell in to silence. For a long while they walked in the woods, side by side. swatting mosquitoes and Logan keeping up the pretence that there actually was good and constructive conversation going on while he was the one doing all the talking, blabbering a mile in a minute about this and that, trying to find a topic that would take Scott’s mind off from what happened.
“She could have died.” There. One simple phrase cut trough Logan’s ramblings. Scott had stopped walking, his face ashen and his eyes staring in to nothing.
“She could have died and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“She’s alive. We’re all alive. We can do something. We can try to make sure that we all stay alive,” Logan said and nudged Scott’s shoulder, trying to jostle the other man out of the trance-like state he had fallen. When it happened, it happened so fast that Scott managed to surprise Logan.
Suddenly his hands were full of kicking, screaming and biting Scott who tried to grasp his throat.
“She could have died! She could have died and that’s all your fault! You made us land here! You made us stay in that death-trap you have the guts to call a fort! If any of us dies in here, I’ll kill you!” Scott screamed and spat on his face, his skin reddening from exertion and sheer rage until Logan was worried that the former team leader would pop an artery.
“For fuck’s sake, Scooter! The jet broke down! Get over it already!”
“I won’t get over it! You put us in danger! We could all get killed at any minute! We all...”
“Shit.” Logan tuned out Scott’s screaming and focused on containing his grasping hands and flailing feet. It wasn’t working very well. Back in their days as teacher and instructor Scott had been a considerable adversary in wrestling.
“Sorry about this, Scooter...” Logan grunted and head butted his raging teammate, fully expecting him to drop from the first hit. That didn’t happen, but suddenly Scott fell silent and wrenched away from him, his hands rising to cover his face.
“You fucking idiot! You broke my visor! Happy now?” Scott hissed, crouching on the ground, his eyes pinched tightly shut and cracked pieces of his visor hanging from his clenched fist.
“I’m not happy about it. But I’m sure we can find a way to fix it...”
“Fix it? Fix it? Unless you happen to know where we can find just the right kind of rubies, and the equipment to turn them in to a lens there’s no fixing it! I’m fucking blind!”
“Well, excuse me for trying to defend myself!” Logan huffed silently wondering how long it would take before Scott would decide that the war and the following apocalypse complete with the legacy was also his entire fault. And what was Scott doing now? Was he really crying?
“I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m so sorry...”
“Come on, Scoo... Scott. I’m sure we’ll find a way to fix that visor. Or we could find something to replace it with,” he tried to console him clumsily. With Marie it was easier. Whenever she broke down he could just hold her and let her pick up the pieces by herself.
“Come on. We better get going. Girls are going to start to wonder where we are if we sit here much longer,” he urged Scott who stood up and straightened his back. Wiped his face to the sleeve of his jacket and drew a deep breath.
“Let’s go and get those tools we came to look for,” he said with a stern voice, and Logan couldn’t help smiling. That tone belonged to the Scott Summers he knew. Anal asshole, eternal pain in the ass and an irreplaceable member of their little team.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry for the delayed update. I have spent quite some time checking up our apartment and trying to figure out what *really* needs fixing and what just looks like that. Teaches me to buy an old apartment...
Chapter End Notes:
I have few more chappies written, but they need checking up, too, and I should decide which way to go since I have two possible plotlines. So next updates might take few days.