Chapter 7 Getting What I Wanted
I'd been working on finishing a few extra rooms for the mansion a few years back. I never finished them the way they should have been, so now that I'm back, I pick up where I left off. A space on the third floor. Two rooms, and lots of distance from most everyone else. I spend time making them look more like a part of the house, not just a hole an animal would live in. Gambit and I had gotten sick of the rules of the teachers wing. Most of the kids didn't even know how to find the stairs that go up here, so it's my oasis at least, away from the squeals and giggles. It also gives me a better vantage point of the grounds, being as high up as we are. I've made it feel more like my own--no glossy paneling, no paintings worth more than a year's salary. Everything has a function, simple. The quietness is real. I can hear the birds in the morning before the sun comes up. I can smell the snow coming from the north, bringing an end to fall.
I've kept a pillow from Marie's bed. It's the only thing that still smells like her. What's left of her is fading in the rest of the house. No one else has noticed. The Professor left her room as it was, even though the space would have been nice for some of the older kids. No intrusions are made. Marie still has a place here; she still belongs. I don't feel as if it's a fight to remember she's still out there. Jubilee grabs every call in one ring. The Professor keeps his ear to the underground. A simple glance toward him always followed by a small nod, no.
I stay back a bit more for missions. I'm not sure if the kids are actually getting older and more experienced than I remember them, or if baiting the whole team out seems a bit too dangerous. We've been doing more, intervening at riots, picking up kids on the streets, and those seem to be getting younger and younger. I've been teaching defense classes, History of War and Strategy, and Phys. Ed. for the little kids. Every once in a while a kid will cling to me while I work in the shop on one of the cars, so even that turns into a lesson. Remy is the one to get me out and away. He always knows where the card games are. I don't know how he does it, but I never leave with less than I came with to those things. The Professor turns a blind eye, or he never chooses to see what we're doing. We never draw attention to ourselves. No fights have to be broken up.
I fall into a rhythm. Maybe I'm lying to myself, but the animal lays low. It becomes comfortable. It doesn't get easy, sometimes a mission puts me out for a while. There are times I would rather burn my eyes out than see some of the things labs do to people, little reminders we're still hated, or seen purely as lab rats. Less than human.
The call comes in just as I'm getting out of a class. THE call, the one I had been waiting for, for too long. Jubilee comes running around the corner from the kitchen, grabbing my arm as she goes.
"You gotta come with me. She called. I only had her for less than a minute, but she called. Colossus is tracing the cell towers right now to get a better location to start out with." We burst through the doors to Chuck's office together. He looks up from some papers, more annoyed than anything.
"Professor, she called. She called the mansion just a second ago. I've got Colossus pinpointing her location right now. But she called. She's OK-"
"Where was she? What the hell was she doing-" She couldn't tell me anything good. "Tell me everything!"
"Logan!" Chuck stares deep into my eyes, chilling, but it shuts me up.
"She said she was looking for info on the West Coast Home, the orphanage. She was doing OK on her own, and wanted to donate money, but that's all I got out of her"
"Thank you, Jubilee. Go to Colossus, and see if he has been able to triangulate her location. Did you get the number?"
"Yes, here!" She hands a folded piece of paper to the professor. I can see her hand shake a bit. "I'll go check on Piotr."
Only the professor and me are left, tension building a brick wall between us. His hand covers the paper, like he is the gate keeper, dangling the keys inches out of my reach. It's what I've wanted for so long, I've stretched every imaginable muscles of patience, waiting for this.
"I do believe it would only be right for you to be the person to call her. I am not sure it would help the situation any if it came from anyone else." His brow lifts slightly., He's trying to hide his fear, lack of control. "You can use my office, for privacy." He doesn't look me in the eye, his swift exit leads me to believe he's scratching at curiosity.
I sit at his chair, staring at the phone. I feel anger being to rise. Why wasn't it me, being the first for her to call? Why couldn't Jubilee get any more information out of her? It seems so cryptic. My hand tries pushing the buttons, but my fingers are sliding from sweat. This is not me, I can't fuckin let her do this to me. I can feel my senses getting stronger. Tthe ring seems piercing through the receiver, the claws itching to be released.
"Hey sugar. Battery must be-"
"Where the fuck are you?" Does she think this is a prank call? "HEY sugar". Who in the hell does she think she is?
I focus, for a second, I hear a gulp, I can make out her pulse in her neck, a constant wind in the background. "You there?"
I know she is. I know I shocked her a bit. I"m the last person she expected. I never was mad at her; she knew I went off on other people, but never her.
"Marie?"
I can hear her inhale deeply, like she's getting ready for a fight. I have to remember not lose it.
"Logan."
I can't tell if that was a question. Yes, it' me, why wouldn't it be?
"Why the HELL did you leave?"
"Felt like a road trip." Very crass, said the same as all those ditzy girls that practically begged for it at the bars.
"Road trip?" Like she didn't have any responsibility, just on a fucking whim, oblivious to everything else going on in the world. "You get your ass right back here NOW, y'hear me!"
"You sound like my father. No, wait, it's worse than that. You sound like Scott."
She didn't just use my words against me. "I'm not your father, I'm your friend…' That's not like her, she really must have been hurt, but right now, all she wants to do is piss people off.
"Look, come home." Don't fuck up, don't fuck up. Control. Control! "It ain't safe out there."
"Logan, I would have thought you of all people would understand."
"Understand what?"
"The need to escape. A chance to get the hell out and live. I'm not coming home. I'm happy as I am."
"Marie, -"
"Sorry, gotta go."
"Kid, listen. The Professor-" She cut me off before I could explain anything. DAMM HER! God, I want to throw something out the window so hard. I don't need this. I haven't waited this long for a conversation like that. She doesn't know what she's doing to anybody. But what did I really expect, her on the side of a snow covered road, trying to hitch a ride to anywhere else, anywhere I was going?
I never did figure out what I was going to say to her. Why did it mean so much for me to find her? It burns, those words 'I'm not coming home. I'm happy as I am.' She is such a bad liar, the pinched tone, how she forces the air out of the back of her throat.
Leaving, she got what she wanted, but my life is a living hell, until she's home.
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