Reminisce
Chapter Two
THE NOT SO DISTANT FUTURE
She sat on the bed to zip up her boots. The mattress hardly dipped beneath her weight, yet he opened his eyes. The back of her cardigan and the twin arcs of her shoulder blades were close enough for him to touch, but he didn’t, and when she finished with the left shoe, she stood and moved towards the dresser. “You’re late for class,” Jean said. “You should get an alarm clock.”
“You’re my alarm clock.” It was more or less true, leaning towards more. He’d acclimated to sleeping in a mansion full of people, but the nearness of her, all her morning noises, was still recent enough to jar.
Yet he rarely woke before her half of the bed had cooled. She was usually dressed, ready to leave. Right now she putting jewelry on now, choosing between a pair of tasteful black earrings and a pair of tasteful red. She selected the red and pinned them on, delicately, and then flicked through a tower of folders on the table, searching for today’s lesson plans. The curtains sifted the light like flour; what got through dusted a pink tinge over the room. That window had been a big selling point for this room, smaller than the others and irritatingly close to the children’s wing. But it was nice to smell the lawn, Ororo’s garden, the potential approach of enemies.
Last night, she’d closed it, citing the waste of good air conditioning.
Logan made his way to the bathroom, scratching his stomach and behind his ear at the same time. He took a piss, dropping the toilet seat back down afterward, loud enough for her to hear. The curling iron lay in the sink, turned off but still hot—a discovery he made with a searing pain across his palm, an angry line which calmed and disappeared in moments.
“Sorry,” she called, though the door was closed, and he hadn’t made a noise.
Most of the time, he avoided the mirror—as far as he could tell, he hadn’t changed in decades. But after splashing water across his cheeks, his forehead, his throat, he stared at his face in the glass. Thin lips, crow’s feet beside his eyes, unkempt hair. Same as ever. Nothing wrong with that face except that it was far younger than he felt. Logan gazed a bit longer. The figure in the glass did the same, seeming tired and confused and sad all at once. He told himself that it was probably what most men saw; he had no reason to believe otherwise.
Jean was waiting when he came out, but she didn’t look at him until he was dressed. She often didn’t. “You were talking in your sleep again,” she told him, scribbling a few last grades on some essays—A, A+, B-, D—please try harder.
“Again.”
“Fourth night in a row. Did you have a bad dream?”
He looked at her with some surprise. “I don’t have dreams.” It had been years since there had been anything between him closing his eyes and opening them.
“Hmm,” she said, but didn’t contradict him. She patted the papers in her lap until all the edges lined up, then stood—crossed to his side and kissed him. Mouth closed, brief. “Well. Have a good day.”
“You too.”
Logan thought about what she’d said, for a little while. And then, like so many other things, he put it behind him.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
BACK THEN
At night, she snuck down to the lab. There was nothing else for her to do—she wasn’t going to lay in bed waiting for the nightmares to get her; she wasn’t going to sit in the den watching cartoons with Blinky. What Rogue really wanted was to drive over to the nearest bar and have a good fuck, but she’d been advised against it and, anyway, they’d locked the garage. The Professor kept reassuring her that the Wolverine’s moods should subside, once her subconscious identified it as foreign and locked it away with the others. As if she minded.
They couldn’t have cared about it too much—otherwise, she wouldn’t be doing it. They would have stopped her. He would have stopped her. There wasn’t much leeway for misbehavior in Xavier’s School for Gifted Children. But around midnight she took the elevator down four levels of the house and walked through the always-lit corridors to the med bay. It smelled like bleach, rubbing alcohol, and the tuna sandwich someone had eaten down here last Wednesday.
The table they’d laid him on—she refused to call it his, though he’d laid on it for the better half of a month. Tubes sprouted out of him like some hypoallergenic plant; he had a blanket covering his lower parts and strips of gauze across most of his upper. She dragged a chair across the room, straddling it backwards beside the medical bed. His forehead was close enough for her to stroke, but she didn’t—Logan wouldn’t like to be touched while he was unconscious. She studied the veins in the backs of his hands. She could hear the blood coursing through them, like water in a ditch after the heavy rains. Someone had trimmed his fingernails. Someone had brushed his hair. Someone had put a catheter inside him. For a few minutes, she entertained herself by imagining his reaction. And then she looked at his eyes—shut, purpled, nothing moving behind them.
“At least you’re not dreaming,” she murmured. Same way she had spoken to her dolls as a child, past the age when other kids would have teased her for it. She knew Logan couldn’t hear her. At the same time, the deep-hope part of her knew he did. “That’s gotta be nice.”
The heater kicked on, roaring like a great beast. Machines beeped digital conversations that didn’t include her. Above her snored a hundred sleeping mutants. If his senses stayed with her much longer, she’d learn how to tell them apart. “I know why you like Canada so much. It’s quieter. And the beer’s better. I don’t know why I know that. I don’t drink.”
He breathed, slowly and evenly, helped by the tube that ran across his nose. “You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t hidden inside the trailer.” She crossed her arms carefully on the edge of the bed and laid her head down on them. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t hidden inside your trailer.”
“We’re glad you are,” said Scott, from the doorway. She sat up sharply.
“I didn’t hear you.”
He shrugged, pointed at the slippers poking out from the hem of his pajama bottoms. “Jean calls them old man slippers. She underestimates what they do for my ninja stealth capabilities.”
“But I can hear everything now.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of being distracted.”
He crossed the room to the two of them, stopping well before entering anything close to her personal space. Scott had a way of doing that—not just with her, but all of the mansion’s runaways, boys and girls alike—keeping a respectful but not uninviting distance, resting his arms behind his back. I am not a threat. She liked that about him.
“Are you going to tell me I shouldn’t be down here?”
“Oh, you’re old enough to know where you’re supposed to be. Ms. Grey, however, has asked me to remind you of the test tomorrow.”
“Math?”
“History.”
“I haven’t been studying. Although I think I could answer a lot of questions about the Statue of Liberty now.” That surprised a laugh out of him, and in turn, drew a smile out of her. She watched as he pushed a hand through his hair—some of it was caught under his visor. She wondered if he had to sleep it in; wondered if it rubbed his scalp raw. When he glanced up, she flushed and turned back to Logan, hoping Scott didn’t think she was gawping. “Do you think he’ll wake up soon?”
“I’m positive.”
“Why?"
“Because I’ve never been that lucky.”
She shot him a hard look, but Scott was grinning. “You can’t tell, but I just winked.” Though the Wolverine in her head had a different reply for him, for once she ignored it in favor of the natural voice in her head, and made her shoulders relax. “Anyway, I was just sent down here to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
“Need anything?”
“No.”
“Okay. You know where to find us.” He gave a little salute, the kind of harmless gesture that summoned an image of what he must have been like, at her age, well-intentioned but awkward.
Scott was almost gone before she remembered, twisting around in the chair and raising her voice. “Thank you!”
“Welcome. Goodnight,” came his voice, from the hall.
She turned back to Logan, feeling better, and it was several minutes before she resumed whispering.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE NOT SO DISTANT FUTURE
The members of the junior team were improving. Most of them. Especially Jubilee and Bobby, the first of whom he liked in spite of himself and the second he didn’t, for no reason he could put his finger on. Every other morning, he made them run laps around the mansion until they collapsed. And every other-other afternoon he made them fight against one another until they collapsed. Twice a week, a lucky student was selected to fight him. Although there were plenty of visits to the med bay, few of the younger mutants complained about Logan’s training methods—or not very loudly. He was gruff with the group in general, but patient with them individually, and once or twice had shaken someone’s hand when they managed to get in a solid hit. He was uncompromising, but his respect, once earned, felt far better than the grade cards he forgot to fill out.
He taught Geometry on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Driver’s Ed Tuesday and Thursday. The latter was more interesting; both because he didn’t have a license of his own and an only grudging regard for speed limits. He was learning to give instructions calmly in the car, especially with the mutants whose gifts were volatile. They were sensitive to stress: Kitty had melted into the backseat when he raised his voice, leaving nobody to hold the wheel. Another girl exploded black ink all over the interior of the car, herself, and Logan. And one boy, an obsessive-compulsive budding illusionist, had helplessly projected images of wrecks into Logan’s head until they were both too nervous to leave the garage.
The Professor had promised him weekends off, but that was subject to the needs of the team, and he was more often away on missions than in his choice of Westchester bars. There were pick-ups to be made, kids who didn’t know they were about to be enrolled in Xavier’s School for Gifted Children. There were also threats to sniff out, and inevasible threats to be snuffed out.
All considering, Logan had a lot on his plate. Sometimes he resented Scott for leaving so much behind for him to deal with. But then he usually reminded himself not to think ill of the dead.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I've been binge-watching the Xmen movies (although not X3--but do any of us *really* count that one?) and getting beautiful carpel tunnel with this story. I just wanted to say thank you for everyone who read/reviewed the last chapter. You were very kind. Any way I could try to express how you made me feel would be inadequate.
Chapter End Notes:
Hey there! I hope you enjoyed chapter two. Please be forgiving of the Jean/Logan action--though God knows how I feel about that character, their relationship is integral to the plot and I'm trying to approach her, if not forgivingly, at least with more sympathy than in previous stories I wrote. Anyway, love it or hate it, I am eager to see what you think. Please be kind enough to drop a line or two into the review box--you would 100% make my day better.