It took three days before he went to Xavier -- three days of torment. He didn’t know if ‘Ro had been trying to help or torture him by giving Marie the room upstairs, in the hall unoccupied except by Logan’s room at the other end. Four empty rooms between them, and yet Logan found himself constantly listening for the slightest sound from her end of the hall.
Her muffled voice, sometimes angry, sometimes tearful as she spoke back to the voices in her head. The mumbled pleas and whimpers and sometimes even screams when the dreams consumed her. Occasionally the sound of her breaking things, or a solid thump against the wall. Her fist? Her head? Logan sat in the darkness of his room for endless hours, every muscle in his body tense as his ears strained towards her every sound, unwilling to break his futile vigil for even a moment.
Sometimes he would stand outside her room, tasting the air, deliberately tormenting himself. He became a connoisseur of her misery, measuring with exactness the relative proportions of despair and pain and anger and exhaustion in her scent as it seeped out from under her door. Aside from a few brief words to ‘Ro, who brought her meals, she spoke to no one.
______
“You have to do something.” He glared at Xavier, his hands clenched at his sides.
“I have promised her privacy, and solitude. I do not believe that she would welcome interference from either of us right now.”
“I don’t give a fuck what she wants. Healing factor or not, she can’t keep going like this. It’s killing her.” Logan felt an unfamiliar bubble of panic welling up in his throat, squeezing the breath from his lungs. “I’m killing her.”
Xavier looked taken aback. “Logan...” he began.
“Just talk to her,” Logan interrupted gruffly. He looked out the window, hunching his shoulders, unable to meet Xavier’s eyes anymore. “Please.”
A pause that seemed endless. “I will.”
_________
Logan prowled the confines of his room, ears straining to make out the muffled voices of Xavier and Marie. He hadn’t been sure that Marie would even let Xavier in, and he kept expecting any moment to hear her voice raised in anger. Instead, all he heard was the ever-calm drone of the Professor’s voice, interspersed with a subdued mumble from Marie. Eventually, both voices fell silent. Logan heard the hum of Xavier’s wheelchair and yanked his door open without waiting for the knock.
Xavier navigated inside, closing the door carefully behind him. He looked a bit shaken, and Logan’s guts twisted further.
“She is asleep now. She will sleep without dreaming.”
Logan felt something in his chest unclench. He sat down heavily on his bed, the springs groaning from the strain of his weight. They both sat in silence for a moment.
Finally, Xavier spoke. “I have misjudged this situation every step of the way.”
Logan looked up in surprise. “Chuck...”
“No,” Xavier interrupted angrily. “Do not deny it. I was wrong to delay you from telling her our purpose. I was so concerned that she might be connected with the Brotherhood that I was blind to anything else. Even now in my own house...” he broke off, taking a deep breath in an attempt to lessen his agitation. “I did not recognize the severity of the situation.”
“We both fucked up, Chuck. And she’s the one paying the price.”
“I have caused you both untold pain.” Xavier rubbed his forehead and sighed. “I do not know how to fix this.”
“Why can’t she get me out of her head? Lock me away like the others?”
“She is trying. I suspect that the…intensity of her feelings regarding you are creating a considerable obstacle. She is unwilling to access your memories and emotions during your time together, and that may ultimately prove to be a necessary step.”
“You can’t tell me there’s nothing we can do. We’ve got to help her, whether she wants anything to do with us or not.”
“She has agreed to meet with me after she rests. If she will trust me to do it, I may perhaps be able to help her establish and strengthen her mental barriers. In the meantime, I can help her sleep without dreaming. Otherwise...” Xavier gave Logan a keen glance. “I think that you are the one who would know best what she requires.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Fight it as she will, you are still very much present in her mind. Your needs, and those of the Wolverine, are hers for the moment. So what will help her?”
Logan ran a hand through his hair, unsettled. “Jesus Christ, I didn’t...I never thought of it like that.” He thought for a minute. “She needs to get outside. Being penned up in that room the whole time...it would drive me crazy. With Magneto still after her it’d be too dangerous for her to go into the woods, but maybe the garden with ‘Ro? She likes her. She...” he stopped, embarrassed, but then continued. “She smells happier when ‘Ro comes by.”
“Consider it done.”
“The Wolverine...he needs to fight.” And fuck, he thought to himself, but he was pretty sure there was no solution for that one forthcoming. “We could program something for her in the Danger Room.”
“Perhaps Scott...” Xavier started, and Logan clenched his fists, the claws snicking out a few inches involuntarily at the thought before he was able to pull them back.
“Ah. Perhaps not.”
Logan cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. “No, it’s a good idea. She needs to trust us, and for that she needs to get to know us. All of us. I’ll deal.”
_____________
Rogue paused, her spade half-buried in the dirt. She closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of wind and sun on her face, breathing in the crisp morning air.
When Xavier had first suggested that she leave the confines of her room she had been reluctant. She still found herself speaking aloud to the voices in her head at times, and the idea of an audience for her insanity was not attractive. The increased senses she had absorbed from Logan made the chaotic student environment of the mansion an overwhelmingly noisy, smelly tumult. To add to the disastrous recipe, Bobby -- formerly the most cooperative member of her mental gallery -- was slipping free more often in the familiar environment of the mansion.
To her surprise, however, her time in the garden with Ororo had helped her state of mind considerably. She had not realized the degree of restlessness the new inhabitants of her head had been experiencing until she got outside. Logan had been somewhat quieter since she agreed to come back to the mansion, but Wolverine’s anger had only increased with the proximity to Scott and the subsequent self-imposed confinement to her room.
Now, with the wind in her ears and the sun on her face, all the voices were finally quiet. She dug her fingers deep into the crumbly dirt, enjoying the sensation of coolness on her knuckles where the skin still stung from illusory claws. There was something about Ororo’s presence that was very calming. Rogue had been determined to maintain her shell of anger, keeping the mansion residents at a distance. Something about Ororo’s calm, gentle demeanor, however, made that impossible. She seemed to enjoy silence, but also seemed to intuitively sense when Rogue needed conversation to distract from the chaos in her head.
Rogue opened her eyes and started digging again. She used to love to play around in the garden as a kid, but she was finding out that there was a whole lot that she didn’t know about plants that grew in the less temperate Northern climates. Until she got better at telling the carefully-tended sprouts from the weeds, Ororo had been giving her the grunt work to do -- digging, tilling, mulching. She enjoyed the mindless work, the stretch of long-unused muscles. She thought about Xavier’s offer to let her use their fancy fight simulator, even train with Scott if she was willing. She felt the Wolverine in her head purr in anticipation of a fight, and shook her head to clear it.
Ororo’s gentle voice interrupted her thoughts. “I’m thinking of putting peonies there. What do you think, Rogue?”
Rogue carefully considered the patch of soil. “It looks sunny enough.”
Ororo smiled. “They bloom for such a short time, but they are so beautiful I can’t resist.”
Rogue found herself smiling in return. A memory slipped into her mind, Ororo sitting next to Bobby in the library, her kind voice painstakingly explaining boundary layer meteorology for the third time.
A well of shame rushed over her, tears prickling in her eyes as she ducked her head and started digging again.
“Rogue?”
Rogue stabbed the earth in frustration. “How can you be so nice to me?,” she finally said, miserably. “Didn’t they tell you what I did?”
Through the blur of tears, she saw Ororo’s hand, protected by gardening gloves, grasp hers. Ororo gently took the spade away and put it on the ground. “They told me what was done to you. You cannot blame yourself for it, Rogue.”
Rogue used the back of her hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks, knowing she was leaving muddy streaks behind. “But you knew Bobby. And I killed him.”
Ororo seemed to consider her words carefully. “Only you can come to peace with what happened to you. What Magneto did to you both was...monstrous. To take your gifts -- and that is what they are, gifts -- and turn them against each other. Forcing you to hurt each other. It was an atrocity.” She took a deep breath. “But Bobby’s choice was his to make, and you must know that he would not have wanted you to suffer because if it. Just as you know that if he had chosen differently, you would both have died. They never would have let him live. Never.”
Marie looked down at the tilled dirt. “Lo --.” She stopped and started again, unwilling to say his name. “Someone told me once that it’s harder to be the one who lives.”
Ororo handed the spade back and picked up a plant in a plastic pot. “Did you know that my parents died when I was six?”
Rogue looked up, shocked. “Ororo...I’m so sorry.”
Ororo lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “It’s all right. It was a long time ago. We were in Egypt, and there was an aircraft attack. The building we were in crumbled. My parents protected me from the rubble with their own bodies. I was buried for days before I was found.” She raised her face to the sun, breathing deeply. “I think that’s why I feel the need to be outdoors so often...I cannot stand to be enclosed for long.” She pushed the plant out of the pot, breaking up the roots to spread them.
“They sacrificed themselves to save me. At the time, the guilt was intolerable. I was angry, and ashamed that I couldn’t have done more -- saved us all somehow. But over time, I have come to recognize what an act of love it was for them. I have come to terms with the bad memories, and I can look back now and remember the good memories.”
She placed the plant in the ground, and tenderly patted the soil firm around it. “Harder to be the one who lives,” she mused. “I think maybe...someone...was right about that,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. She looked up at Rogue, her eyes warm and kind. “But sometimes we make it harder on ourselves than it has to be.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry if it seems like not much happens in this chapter. This one and the next one are a little slow, and then we're off and rolling towards the grand finale. :-D I don't know why, but the beginning of this chapter gave me more trouble than the rest of the fic put together! So glad it's done, hope it was worth it.
Chapter End Notes:
Please review! :-D