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Author's Note: Okay, so I'm taking complete license with Ororo's past here but I wanted to write something new and try out some history for her. I hope it both sounds realistic and entertains. Enjoy.

Secret Burdens

Chapter Eleven: The Easiest Thing


"There was something about hate that didn't fit Ororo. Not in Logan's eyes."



Logan had awoken the next morning to find a dry-wall repair bill slipped under the door of his room. He sat on his bed, his arms resting atop his knees, chuckling. Logan pushed himself up off the mattress and leant before the door to pick up the paper. The bill wasn't much, about $125, but it was still money he'd rather not give up. Reaching back and rubbing the back of his neck, Logan glanced back to the drawer beside his bed, trying to recall how much cash he had left on him. It had been a while since he took an actual job. Sighing, Logan moved toward the drawer, dropping his hand from his neck and releasing the paper to land on his sheets. He rummaged through the drawer to find just a few more twenties rolled up. He picked them up and counted, groaning as he ended on eighty.

He supposed it wouldn't be in his best interest to tell Ororo that all his money had been spent on the beer he hides from her. No, that wouldn't go over too well. Just the fact that she slipped the bill under his door while he slept told him that she was absolutely serious about him paying this back. And when it came to money from the school, he'd rather stay out of Ororo's peripheral. He'd already "leeched" enough, as she would say.

Logan groaned once more as he decided to just talk to her about it. He found himself downstairs and heading toward the kitchen. He smelled the coffee before he turned the corner. Ororo was sitting silently at the smaller dining table for faculty, just past the kitchen island. She picked her head up at his entrance, smiling softly.

"Good morning, Logan."

Grunting a "mornin'", Logan stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets.

Ororo brushed a white strand of hair behind her ear as she motioned toward the kitchen. "Would you care for some breakfast?"

"Coffee's fine," he answered, walking over to the pot and pulling a mug from the cupboard above. He poured himself a cup and set the pot back, clicking off the little red light. Ororo watched him walk over to the small round table to join her. He sat there for a moment sipping on his coffee, looking resolutely away from her. Ororo raised a brow but soon returned to the fruit she had in front of her.

Logan glanced at her breakfast, a large half of pink grapefruit that was missing some sections. He watched as she took a tiny spoon and dug into one of the thin sections, scooping the juicy piece from the skin. She brought the piece to her mouth and chewed quietly, returning her spoon to the fruit for another section. It was surprisingly clean and efficient. Then he narrowed his eyes at the spoon, smirking.

"Is that a fuckin' baby spoon?"

Ororo stopped her spoonful of fruit midway to her mouth, glancing up at him. She raised an expectant brow at him, but remained silent.

Logan stared at her waiting for an answer, until it hit him. He blew air from his lips, rolling his eyes. "I mean, is that a baby spoon?"

Ororo smiled appreciatively before confirming, "Yes." She popped the hovering spoonful into her mouth.

Logan huffed. "You and your 'language'."

Ororo remained happily chewing her grapefruit.

"Why a baby spoon?"

Swallowing, Ororo pulled the spoon up to their vision. "It is small enough to dip into the sections and pull out a whole one, without cutting into the surrounding membrane. There are special grapefruit knives to aid in this but I find it pointless to purchase one when I already have such a spoon in my possession. It would be wasteful money."

Logan set his mug down and crossed his arms over the tabletop, leaning in as he inspected the small item she held. "Yeah, but how've you got a baby spoon? I ain't seen any babies around the mansion."

Ororo lowered the spoon silently, returning her attention to the fruit on her plate. She moved her lip to answer but caught it quickly.

Logan's eyes widened slightly, and he dropped his voice lower. "Did you...I mean, have you had...?"

Pursing her lips in a tight smile, Ororo returned her gaze to Logan. "No, I...never had a child of my own. Though perhaps a mansion full of students would qualify," she chuckled softly.

Logan sighed lightly enough for Ororo not to hear it. Having a kid was probably the last thing he expected from her, and in a way, he was relieved to know that there were still some things about her that he could guess. Still, she seemed to grow distant at the mention of the spoon. He decided not to push it. Instead, he nodded mutely, bringing his mug up to his lips to sip.

There were several moments of silence before Logan heard Ororo shift in her chair. He glanced at her, and saw that she was fingering the small spoon, her grapefruit left forgotten. "I...used to live in Morocco for some time, before I got caught up in Cairo."

Logan caught the slight break in her voice at the mention of Morocco. She drew in a deep breath, setting the spoon down on the table next to her fruit. "I spent much of my time in the company of a girl named Shaori. We were both roughly fourteen, maybe younger. She was one of the few who did not ostracize me."

Ororo looked up to find Logan staring quietly at her. He made no motion for her to continue, simply watched and waited. She turned her attention back to the tabletop as she went on. "I was an orphan by that point and we would sometimes steal hindia from the market stands."

Logan furrowed his brows slightly, and Ororo turned to see his expression. She smiled softly as she clarified, "Sorry...we stole these...I suppose they are similar to pears, but from a cactus. Fruit."

"Ah," Logan mused, watching her still.

"Shaori had a little sister, Atzana. She was eleven I believe. Often, Shaori would take Atzana's small spoons for us to enjoy the hindia. They were great for scraping the skin. I had kept one with me when I left for Cairo, and I never saw Shaori again. Next thing I knew, I was traveling stateside with Charles." There was a hint of pain in Ororo's last words, a crease crossing her forehead as she gazed at the spoon resting on the table.

Logan found himself wanting to ask more, but afraid that the gates would close if he spoke. It was a glimpse of Ororo's past he figured few knew about, or at least, were still alive to tell it. Still, the way her gaze lingered on the spoon, her trembling brow, Logan knew there was more that she hadn't said. He knows that this is what he started out looking for. Pieces of a woman he could finally break through to see. And she was willingly opening up to him, releasing some kind of painful regret he could understand.

That look. He knew it well. He saw it every morning in the mirror.

Gulping heavily, he pushed more. "Ya never heard of her again?"

Ororo brought her gaze to meet Logan's and found a look that said he knew where this was going. Maybe not the path, but the destination was always the same. Regret. Helplessness. Some things you just can't change.

And when she looked at him then, she knew that he wasn't trying to sooth his own wounds. This was about her. He was focused solely on her. This was how bridges were built. With one side reaching out toward the other.

She watched as Logan reached.

Logan's eyes, though dark and focused on hers, were softened at her fallen expression. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes fanned out as he tried to smile softly at her. "Ororo...it's fine if ya don' want to..." He reached out hesitantly and tucked a strand of soft, white hair behind her ear.

Her eyes were frozen on his, and though she ached with the memories of lost times, she couldn't help the catch in her breath at his motion. The light touch of his rough fingertips along her earlobe stilled her. Suddenly she felt herself back in his room those few days before, his breathing fanning her face. She was sure he heard her heart railing against her ribcage.

Logan dropped his hand back to the table, keeping his gaze on hers. Licking her lips, Ororo flicked her eyes back to the spoon and she drew in a deep breath. Her lids fluttered closed, and immediately the smells of Morocco flooded her nostrils.

"I never heard of Shaori again, no. But her sister, Atzana, I later found."

Logan cocked his head in question and Ororo opened her eyes to look at him once more as she continued. "When I was finally older and more trusting of Charles, I asked a favor of him. I had hoped to locate and contact the two of them, whether they remained in Fez or travelled elsewhere in Morocco, or even came to the states as I did later. I might have preferred never knowing."

Logan narrowed his eyes in confusion. "What'd ya find out 'bout them?"

"They...had been caught in a sex trafficker's trade, stolen from their home only a couple years after I had left them. Apparently, the man running the operation, Rilo Anders, was an American business man, and had been arrested a few years after their abduction, before I had started looking for Shaori and Atzana."

She could barely hear the low growl Logan elicited. She watched as the hairs on his arms rose, his grip tightening on the handle of his coffee mug. Ororo turned to look out the dining room window. It had started snowing slightly.

"But...how'd ya find them? I mean..." Logan started, his voice deep and harsh as he thought about the young girls. He shook his head, continuing, "Storm, there had ta be so many other girls, how could ya possibly have...?"

She sighed softly, reaching up to the collar of her blouse. "Atzana had been found with other undocumented girls in a freight container during a raid of Anders' shipping company out of the Port of Miami. She and many others did not survive the trip. Since I had previously learned that both girls had been abducted from their home in Fez, I surmised that the same man had trafficked them. I never truly learned what happened to Shaori after she was taken from her home. Though I pray every day to the Mother that death came swiftly and mercifully to her." Ororo closed her eyes to the moisture that threatened to break through her lashes. She wiped a hand swiftly across her lids.

"What happened to the Anders guy?" Logan asked after a moment.

Ororo opened her eyes at his question, and Logan recognized a deadly hate brimming behind them. "He was sentenced to lethal injection, for the deaths of the girls, and worse crimes he had committed. The second known mutant to ever receive the death penalty."

Logan's eyes widened. "He was a mutant?"

Ororo chuckled darkly. "Yes. And none of the girls found in the freight container were. You can imagine what a field day the press had with that one. I...I had requested Charles' permission to attend the execution."

There was a dark recognition in Logan's eyes as he stared at Ororo. That understanding of wanting to watch them suffer. The need to be a witness to death. It was all too familiar to Logan.

"Do you know how easy it is, Logan? How easy it is to die?" Ororo's voice was deadly soft, steady, unfeeling. "I sat there on the other side of the glass and watched the needles fill his veins. And I remember thinking how easy it seems. First, the subject it rendered unconscious, with a compound called sodium thiopental. Then , they inject pancuronium bromide to paralyze the muscles. And finally, " Ororo gripped at the collar of her shirt, her fist shaking, "potassium chloride stops the heart." She pulled in a shaky breath. "It is like falling asleep. So easy."

There was a part of Logan that wanted to tell Ororo to stop. Some part of him that maybe didn't want to know this about her, in some insane wish to keep her untouched and untainted from this world. It took him a moment to realize how utterly ridiculous that was. None of them were safe, especially at Xavier's. But for some reason, Logan had always placed Ororo above that ugliness, in some universe far away from blood and dirt and lies. Even as she battled alongside him at Alcatraz, in his mind, she was far from this earthly plane he was shackled to. There was something very uncomfortable about seeing her eyes filled with loathing. Something Logan never wanted to see.

"I had hated him. Intensely." Ororo's voice was tight as it left her throat. "I hated him for what he did to Shaori and Atzana. And I hated that the world would see this man as a representative of all mutants. I hated what he did to them, but I also hated what he did to us. And that was when I realized something."

Logan cocked his head in silent question.

Ororo let out a tight laugh, wiping away the wetness at the corners of her eyes. "It was so easy to kill him. He looked just like any other man. He was like any other man. You should have seen...you should have seen the fear in his eyes. You would recognize it. It is in all of us." Ororo glanced back down to Atzana's spoon lying on the table, and she picked it up to look at it resting in her palm. "Our greatest mistake as mutants is in separating ourselves from the scope of humanity. I am the same as Anders. I am the same as Atzana. When any one of us is lost to malice, humanity as a whole suffers. An injury to one is an injury to all¹."

Logan could have snorted at her comment. "Anders got off easy. He deserved worse."

"Maybe," Ororo conceded, slowly. "But I never want to know how it feels to hate like that again. That kind of loathing sits and festers and nurses itself into something worse, into apathy. And I cannot afford to be apathetic. Can you understand that, Logan?"

He figures that she already knew his answer. It was something he didn't think they'd ever truly agree on. Logan had no problem with hate or rage. It was an ample fuel source, and he had learned to hone such energy effectively into action the last several years. He had learned to find the usefulness of hate. Ororo refused to believe it existed. That was why Logan had always seen her above the fray. Maybe she was too good for humanity. Too good for any of them down here. Too good for him, he knew. But she would not understand that, so instead he responded, "Yeah. I can see that."

It was an empty answer, one that Ororo had expected anyway, and yet she was still disappointed that he had said it. Shouldn't she want him to see hate the way she saw it? But she didn't. She didn't want anything false between them. She'd rather a vehement argument than a hollow agreement. They'd passed the point of pretenses long ago. In some small way, though, perhaps she was happy that he decided to let this one go to her.

Logan cleared his throat loudly, leaning back in his chair as he brought the remainder of his cooling coffee to his lips. He was nodding slowly. "Yeah, I can see that," he repeated.

Ororo quirked her lip at him, leaning toward him. "Thank you, Logan. For listening,"

He opened his mouth to respond, ask her what the hell she was thanking him for, but instead he shut it hesitantly, mumbling a low "Sure" before bringing the mug back up to his mouth. He downed the rest of his coffee and got up to drop the mug in the sink. He turned to look back at Ororo, crossing his arms as he leaned against the counter. She had returned to her grapefruit, smiling gently down at the fruit as she dipped her spoon in once more.

There were long moments of silence throughout the kitchen, and Logan took the moment to listen for the sounds of waking children floors above him. There was something oddly securing about hearing them wake every morning without fail. Glancing back down toward Ororo's position at the dining table he wondered how to bring up his idea about paying off the bill she had slipped him earlier. He stood there musing until Ororo finished the last couple of sections in her grapefruit and moved into the kitchen where he was lounged against the counter. She quietly dropped her plate into the garbage and then moved next to him to join him in leaning against the counter. Logan blinked at her.

She crossed her arms across her chest and looked at him. "I know you are trying to say something. I thought I would help you along."

Well, shit.

Logan groaned and brought a hand to the back of his neck. He glanced around the room and his gaze landed on the window. Outside, it had begun to snow. The sun had not come fully over the rooftops and was hampered by grey clouds rolling in from the north. The mix of rain and snow cast a grey hue to the lightening red of the sky.

"So..." Ororo began.

Logan huffed. Okay, start off with something astute about the weather.

"Man, the sky looks like Satan's vomit."

Yeah. Because that one qualifies as astute. Logan shut his eyes in frustration, groaning once more.

Ororo simply blinked at him before turning her gaze to the window as well. She smirked at the image of the sky and nudged his shoulder lightly. "I assure you I had nothing to do with it."

"No, okay, look...that's not it," he fumbled. Logan wiped a hand down his face. "Sorry, I didn't mean to blurt that out."

Ororo chuckled. "It is alright, Logan. Quite the apt description actually."

"Look, I actually wanted to talk to you about paying that bill you gave me."

"Oh?" Ororo raised a brow. "You have money enough after the beer you purchased last Tuesday?"

Logan gaped at her. "How did you...? I don't even-"

"I know all," she said simply.

Logan just eyed her suspiciously. "Well, yeah, I guess not as much left as I thought. Anyway, I found a way that I could pay off the bill. A job of sorts."

Ororo quirked her lip in amusement. "Of what sorts?"

Logan took a deep breath. "I know what I want to teach now."

Ororo's mouth fell agape. "Come again?"



¹ accredited to David C. Coates as a suggested and common socialist labor slogan, historically used by IWW





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