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Secret Burdens

Chapter Twenty One: Learning How to Have

"He cannot be sure of what he feels for her. Only that it is fervent and powerful and it overtakes him."

* * *

"Aren't you going to go see her?" Rogue's question was firm and expectant, almost accusatory.

Logan stopped in his trek up the porch stairs and sighed. He had been out on the estate grounds again, wondering as he did sometimes, as he used to do before this whole tangled mess happened. When it was easier to grieve Jean and play the loner and keep that level of disconnect. Outside and in the woods was always a place he could feel wholly part of something larger and yet completely isolated all at once. The scents and textures of nature gave him a sense of grounding, and yet reminded him of how little control he really carried in this life. Things seemed insignificant and yet important all at once. He felt insignificant and yet important all at once. For months now he had not needed that. Ororo gave him that sensation with every look and every word she slung his way. It was enthralling, this effect she had on him. And it wasn't until she was lying silent and still on a hospital bed that he recognized it.

Ororo had made it to the emergency room of the hospital shortly after blacking out in the helicopter ride. Logan watched helplessly behind the glass windows of the surgery room as doctors worked frantically to repair torn tissue. It was a mercy that the bullet had not gleaned her spine but having gone through and through almost had her bleeding out on the operating table. She had several transfusions in the first hours, and even then she was touch and go for the first trek of the surgery. Logan remembers watching her sleep-like face under the oxygen mask, her hair bright and gleaming even against the white of the table beneath her. He counted her breathes through the glass, watched every flutter of eyelash as though it meant her waking, his heart clenching unnaturally each time it passed and she remained unconscious.

After several hours of surgery she was moved into the ICU, still close to the brink. She would need more blood and another surgery before she could be moved to recovery. But nothing was definite. It was all up to her. If she could last the night then they could proceed to the second surgery in the morning. She still had not woken.

It was the longest night of Logan's life.

When the morning had come, and he and all the other sleepless X-Men had waited for the surgeon's arrival through those dreaded double doors, Logan didn't think anything could wrench his heart like that again. She had made it through the second surgery and after a day or two in the recovery ward, the doctors agreed that she could be transferred to the X-Men's care for the rest of her recovery, assuming they had the proper facilities to provide for it. Hank had made the preparations immediately, between meetings with the defense committees and the ACIC conducting the investigation into Shrap's activities in the last months.

Ororo had been in the med-lab of the mansion for a day and a half before she finally awoke. But Logan could not face her.

Now, Rogue stood at the top of the porch stairs as she stared down at him, her hands on her hips and an expectant look to her face. The blaring sun outside was warm even in the cooler winter air, a chill breeze brushing through them and across the dewy grass of the field behind them. He could smell her even before he heard her. In a way, he should have expected this. He stopped on the wooden steps and looked up at her, his hands in his jacket pockets.

Rogue raised a brow at him. "She's been up for three hours now. And you haven't been to see her." She thrummed her fingers along her hip as she waited.

Logan pursed his lips and nodded, turning around to walk back out onto the grounds.

"Oh no you don't", Rogue started, moving down the stairs and grabbing one of his elbows to halt him.

Logan stopped at her insistent tugging and rocked his head back to stare at the clear, cloudless sky, sighing in resignation. "Kid…"

Rogue huffed and tried to turn him to look at her. "Okay, just – just hold on. Can we just sit or something? Just sit?"

Logan looked at her out of the corner of his eye, then wiped his hand down his face and rolled his eyes, moving to stoop to the wooden step at his feet. Rogue followed him and took a seat on the step just below him, watching as he hung his arms over his knees and looked out at the estate.

She swallowed and tried to think of what to say now that she'd at least gotten him to stay put for once. "Do you want to talk about it?" She tried to sound concerned but it was colored in trepidation and her shoulders shrugged in an awkward attempt at comforting.

Logan only raised a brow. "No. Not really, kid. That was kinda the point of me walkin' away."

Rogue nodded silently and began to gnaw on her bottom lip, her hands coming up to fumble before locking in her lap. She kept looking at him. "Kurt decided to stay another couple of days now that she's awake." She waited for his response. He only grunted in acknowledgement. "And Hank has taken leave from his position for a few weeks until she's up and about again. I guess the school will be needing him with Ms. Munroe out and all." She chuckled for a moment before adding, "Bobby's been in there showing her card tricks for the last half-hour."

The words were empty updates, a chance to fill the silence between them. And Logan let her, knowing it probably settled her more than she even knew. He knew enough about Rogue to guess she needed to fill the air with words to make things seem more real, more present. Sometimes just speaking, with no meaning at all, was enough to settle her heart. Sometimes.

"I know what happened." It was soft when it left her lips, and she was looking at her hands in her lap this time, not at Logan.

He eyed her quietly and heard her barely-there sniff.

"Bobby told me," she explained, her voice faint and already smelling of tears to Logan. He didn't say anything when she lifted her face to his and he caught sight of the wetness dotting her eyes. She worried her lip some more. "He said we almost lost her."

Logan swallowed uncomfortably.

She shook her head slightly, "I don't know what we would have done, if we lost one more. One more part of this family." Her voice was already tinged with tears and Logan couldn't do anything but look at her. "Why must it be so hard? Why can't we ever hold on to the ones we love?" She looked down then, and something about the way she pulled her bare hands up to rub down her arms made Logan reach a hand to her elbow.

"Come here," he said simply, urging her up a step with his hand on her elbow, letting her scoot close once she sat next to him, her head landing gently on his shoulder. One arm came up and over her form to hold her to him and he let her cry quietly against his chest until he couldn't hear the faint sobs or smell the salt of her tears anymore. She sniffed loudly and wiped a hand across her nose, still turned into his chest. They didn't say anything for long moments. Sure that tears no longer tinged her voice, Rogue began again. "Why haven't you gone to see her?" Her voice is no longer expectant, no longer an accusation. It's an outreach, a sharing of pain.

Lowering his eyes to the wood steps below them, he spoke into her hair. "I guess I'm so used to my toys being taken away, I don' know what to do when one stays, ya know?" he chuckled humorlessly.

Rogue nodded into his chest, knowing without needing to hear the exact words. Logan knew how to deal with loss. He had lived it for years, for decades she's pretty sure. It's the having, and the keeping, that he struggles to understand. He doesn't know how to face her when he had been so prepared to lose her. He doesn't know what comes next. He doesn't know how to move forward from this. And he doesn't know what this even means, what her almost bleeding out because of a bullet she took for him, even means. There's the slightest possibility that this is just the beginning. The idea of "together" and "reciprocated" and "not the only one" are blaringly apparent now. And he doesn't know how "together" works in this mess of a world. He doesn't know how to be with someone unless it's desperately and painfully and with the world falling to pieces around them.

Sometimes he dreams of just waking up next to her.

"She almost died." Rogue's subtle disbelief brings him back to the present.

"I know," was all he answered.

"She almost died for you."

Logan stiffened, glad she was still tucked into his chest because then he wouldn't have to look at her. "Yeah," his voice scraped along his throat as he said it.

"I mean…that's…" she pulled herself from under his arm and lifted her head to lock eyes with him. "What does that mean?"

Logan opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. It was exactly the question that kept him from Ororo's door. Exactly the question he had wanted to ask Ororo himself. Even as she fell into his arms the instant the bullet ripped through her, he had been too flooded with shock and confusion to well and truly feel the full force of his instinctual rage right then.

"Do you love her?"

Logan blinked at Rogue's question. She stared at him, but not in a way that said she expected any kind of answer, or that she felt he even knew the answer to that one. She stared at him in a way that said she asked because she doubted he had even asked himself yet.

He swallowed, and furrowed his brows, licking his lips momentarily as he tried to string together thoughts and words that made any kind of sense in this sudden and unexpected onslaught of emotion. "I…it's that – no, I don't think…I don't think it's love exactly." He had to purse his lips and stop, mulling the possibility over once more until he was sure, if he could ever be sure of anything when it came to Ororo. "I don't love Ororo but…it's…dammit kid, how are we even talking about this?"

Rogue moved further from under his arm so she could turn and look at him better and he returned his arm to his side, looking back over the estate before them. "But it's something that could be love? In time?" she tried finishing for him, her eyes searching his.

Logan pulled in a deep breath, wondering if Ororo could even feel such an emotion for an animal like him. "I can't give whatever this is a name yet. All I know is it's intense and instinctual and it makes me want to be more than I am."

Rogue felt a smile tugging at her lips.

Heaving another resigned sigh, Logan cocked his head toward Rogue. "I don't know Storm well enough to say I love her. But I want to. I wanna know every little infuriating detail that makes that woman's fuckin' exasperating head turn. I want to be the only one that knows her dirty secrets," he smiled devilishly as he tacked on, "and the only one to add to them."

But Rogue is too captivated by his words to give that one too much perverse thought and simply watched him as he continued.

"I wanna be able to send her into fits of anger and see her light up like a firecracker," he said laughing. His eyes became distant suddenly, his smile wilting, somewhere off in memories Rogue thinks she will never be privy to. "And I want her to know me. I want her to know me in ways I'm afraid to know myself." Logan closed his eyes, recalling her touch in the conference room before the mission. Her slap. Her lips. "I want her to kiss me like she means it. Like she means it with every part of herself. I want every fuckin' part of her to mean it. The way I do."

Rogue smirked as she turned to rest her elbows on her knees, cradling her chin in her palms. "Well, you might not call it love but I'd say you're well on your way to something more."

Logan blinked his eyes and looked at his hands. Those hands that have killed and cradled. Those hands that have seen blood and tender skin. "I'm not one for words and titles and expression the way most people are but Marie," at this she turned her gaze to him. "Whatever this is – let's just say – it's made me realize that what I felt for Jean, that's not love. Couldn't be in the face of this."

"So what are you waiting for?" she breathed excitedly.

Looking at her one last time, Logan brought his hands to his knees and shook his head. "It ain't so simple, hun."

Rogue huffed in annoyance, dropping her hands from cradling her face and put a hand to his arm. "Logan, God knows I love you, but you're a dumbass."

He opened his mouth to retort when she continued.

"The fact that she's lying there in the med-lab? I think that says everything you need to know. She means it too. With every part of her." She smirked, pushing off the stairs to stand before him. "Don't waste that. Some of us never get it."

Before Logan could grumble a response she had turned and walked inside, and he was left to wonder how they got from her crying into his jacket to calling him a dumbass in the span of a conversation.

* * *

It was almost as terrifying as watching her bloodied body fall to the floor. Walking through the sliding med-lab doors. But he did it anyway. Ororo was sitting up in bed, her back propped up by pillows, her wrists linked to an IV drip and the glimpse of heavy white bandages discernable under the hem of her loose cotton tank top. Of course she'd argue to get out of a hospital gown. Logan almost smirked at the thought. At the sound of his entrance, Hank turned in his chair at the computer and caught sight of Logan standing hesitantly at the doors. He nodded reassuringly at the man and quirked a small relieved smile at him.

Logan stepped forward and met Ororo's eyes as she looked up from the book in her lap. The smile that graced her face was warm and shaky, bringing a sudden intake of breath to her lips. "Logan," she breathed, almost sighing in relief and she couldn't help the tears that sprang to her eyes in the moment of his entrance.

He was at her bedside in seconds, his brows furrowed in question as she wiped at her eyes and turned her gaze from his. He took a seat in the chair beside her bed, unsure whether his touch would be comforting, so he gripped his hands in his lap, leaning over his knees to peer at her. Hank announced his departure and politely left the room, the med-lab doors sliding closed behind him with a quiet finality. They were alone in the room.

Ororo's eyes dried quickly but she continued to look at her hands, fiddling with the pages of her book. "I did not think you would come."

Logan opened his mouth to rebuke her, but then closed it at the look she gave him, disbelieving his unspoken objection. After all, she'd been awake for hours and seen all of her X-Men already, as well as Rogue and even other students. And still he had not come. "I half expected you to be speeding your way to Canada already."

Logan hung his head. "I…needed time. To process."

She looked at him knowingly. "As have I. And what have you come up with?" Her tone was not sharp or accusing but Logan still felt the sting of shame. He knew that was not her intention. But he felt it anyway.

"I still don't know why." He picked his head up to lock eyes with her glistening blue ones and it was her turn to look away.

"Why I moved before the gun?" she asked softly, taking a deep breath in herself.

Logan nodded, hoping she would take it from there and he wouldn't have to unleash all these worries and questions and thoughts that had plagued him since her sacrifice.

"Then let me make something clear." She placed a bookmark between the pages of her book and set it on the table beside her. When she turned back to Logan there was nothing of indecision in her face, only sure and thoughtful admission, her eyes steady on his. "You know, immediately after I woke, once the pain and questions were settled, I began to think of what I had done. And what repercussions will come to bear because of it. I began to worry that this could mean disaster for me as the leader of the X-Men."

Logan narrowed his eyes in confusion, the question on his lips but Ororo's hand on his silenced him. She hushed him softly and raised her brows, urging him to let her continue. He closed his mouth.

"One cannot remain in a position of leadership if they cannot be objective. I lost that objectivity when I saw you in the path of danger. And it did not matter that it was not a gun with the controlling substance or negating substance. It did not matter that your life was in no real danger. It mattered that when my instinct told me to move, I did. Everything inside me screamed to move in that moment. Because of the target. Because it was you. Because I have…let my feelings - I have let them influence my judgment. And how can I trust that my teammates will be safe under my guidance when I am so swayed by emotion?"

By this point Logan wanted to scream at her, and she could tell by his exasperated expression that he desperately wanted to put his two cents in, and it probably had to do with him calling her an idiot and to stop, for the love of God, stop putting everything between them.

So she cut him off. "But then I realized," at this she rubbed her thumb along his knuckles, felt the rough skin of his hands underneath her own and knew that what she was about to say was worth it, "I have always told myself to trust my instincts. I have always trained my students to listen to theirs. Yet I have turned from my own for too long. My instincts told me to move. I did. And I regret nothing. Because it has made me realize," her head dipped slightly here, her eyes watching his hesitantly, and if Logan had not known the cool, commanding Storm he would have called her look almost scared. She licked her lips and breathed in that sweet precious air between them.

"There is nothing more important."

She bore it openly and shamelessly to him.

At her words, Logan's hand has found itself wrapped around her own, his other coming to brace the back of her neck, and he has leaned in without realizing, his eyes dark and unquestionable on hers, his lips hot and certain on her own. She sighed into his mouth, a hand coming up to rest against his cheek, her lids fluttering closed with the coming wetness and he drank deeply of her.

In this shameless moment, the taste of her is world enough.





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