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Secret Burdens

Chapter Three: The Seedlings of Truth

“It was always easy to cover up. They never thought honesty could be so hard.”



There were days when Ororo wondered if they were even worth waking for. The day after she was pulled from the wreckage of her home in Africa. Days when she wandered the streets of Cairo picking pockets. Days when she left her title “Goddess” behind with her village. But never here, never at the school. Never with the X-men.

Ororo digs the toes of her feet into the dirt and feels the roots of her plants thriving beneath.

There was not a single day she could remember regretting in this place. And that feeling of helplessness, that vulnerability, had not found her again until these last few days. The days after her encounter with Logan.

Ororo leaned down and placed her sandals on the ground beside her, then stood back up, raising her eyes to the trees above her. She watched the wind as it rustled the leaves and thread its way through the branches that enveloped her view of the sky beyond. It was still early by anyone else’s standard, where the beginnings of dawn had just begun to filter through the mansion’s windows.

She had already woken by then and made her way down to the yard out back. She had slipped on some old jean shorts and a t-shirt she had bought once it California on a trip with Jean, reading “I Ran with Mexicans” across the breast. She treaded in worn sandals down to the yard to welcome her favorite part of the day. She stepped through beams of delicate orange light and she felt the warm tint of pink hit her face before she touched the dirt. Ororo stopped once she reached the grass and leaned down to untie her sandals, then walked out into the trees.

She can’t remember the first time she did this, but feels as though she always has. As the world slowly comes back to consciousness around her she stands and waits for the wind to greet her, feel the sprinkle of dew against her bare toes. She closes her eyes and lets out a breath she didn’t even realize she was holding.

Logan.

That man had an uncanny habit of wriggling his way into her thoughts when she least wanted him, especially now. Here she could detach herself from the school, from her duties, from responsibilities. In this moment of waking, when the bright lip of the sun found its way over the hills to stream its light over her, she could only feel the wind and the sun and the dirt. Her only connection being that with her Mother Nature. She opened her eyes again at the thought of Logan once more. She sighed and dropped her shoulders.

She’d have to speak with him eventually. It was hardly reasonable of her to keep avoiding him. But she knew that once she did, the subject would be broached. Her unknowing confession in the med-lab.

Ororo sucked in another breath and expelled it into the air before her. She supposed she could hold it off for a few more days.

“Did you love him?”

Well never mind.

Ororo turned so fast she almost tripped over her own ankle, settling in the dirt to face Logan a few feet behind her.

He cocked one eyebrow at her choice of apparel, having not seen her in such casualness in months.

Ororo widened her eyes a moment before coming back to herself, settling her feet to stand before him. “Excuse me?”

Logan had figured, after speaking with Hank the day before, that directness was the best way to go about talking to Ororo. Before speaking with Hank he was too afraid to even say the words to himself, to think them even, as though that made it true without her affirmation.

“You heard me, Storm.” Logan sighed and dropped his arms from where they were crossed over his chest. “I ain’t tryin’ to corner you or nothing. It’s just…” he cracked a small smile in her direction, and she unconsciously loosened the tension in her back. “Well, we’ve been pussyfootin’ around this long enough.”

Storm scowled at him. “Logan, your language always leaves something to be desired.”

“Like now.” He motioned toward her. “You’re pussyfootin’ right now.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I cannot help the way I speak Logan. You of all people should be able to understand that concept,” she retorted with a raised brow.

“Hey, hey, no need to be defensive, Storm. I just want to talk.”

Ororo just looked at him, staring at his face, trying, Logan assumed, to find some truth in his words.

“Look, Storm. I just need to know something. And you never have to talk about it again, but just this once…” Logan looked at the ground. “Just this once, can we actually hold a conversation?”

“I have always been able to hold a conversation with you, Logan. You on the other hand, seem to have the trouble in keeping it,” she quipped.

Logan held up his hands as he looked back up at her. “Okay, so you’re bitter. Understandable.”

She took a step toward him. “Understandable? You had me slammed against a wall, Logan. Would you like to see the bruises left from your man-handling?” She was glaring at him already.
“Alright, calm down, Storm. No need to get testy.” Logan almost wanted to take a step back.

“Testy? Well, I apologize if I don’t take well to violence.”

Logan could see the electricity sparkling through her tresses. “I’m sorry, okay? Storm, I never meant to do that, I just…I didn’t know and…” He dropped his hands.

“So ignorance is your excuse? Logan, there’s a lot you still don’t know. But that is never a good enough reason when asking for forgiveness.”

Logan grit his teeth. “It’s not an excuse. I’m just saying I didn’t know. And that’s why I’m asking, if you’d calm down enough to let me ask it.”

Storm narrowed her eyes. “And you are the perfect example of composure, is that it?”

Logan ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus! It’s just so hard to talk to you when you’re standing there spouting off that shit.”

Storm scoffed. “Well, excuse me for standing here, waiting for the explanation you wanted to give me. I see now that was a mistake.”

“You see what I mean?” Logan asked, stretching his hand out toward her. “God, you just make me so frustrated sometimes,” he ground out.

“Wait a minute “ frustrated? You’re the one frustrated? You have got to be ““

“Do you ever shut up? This is why we can’t communicate.”

“Wait, you’re saying this is my fault?” she almost shrieked, placing a hand on her chest. “And how exactly did you come to that conclusion? Because somewhere along the way you got your wires seriously crossed.”

“Okay, can we just “ stop “ just stop.” Logan swiped his hands through the air. “I’m just trying to talk to you here, Storm. That’s all I want.”

“Well, we can’t talk, Logan.” Ororo’s chest was heaving and she reigned in her breath. “We never just ‘talk’. It’s not what we do.”

“And why not?” This time, his voice was softer, urgent almost, as he took a step closer.

“Because Logan…” it sounded as though she was trying to explain something she had been trying to explain for years. She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. “We’re just…too much the same. Too much the same in all the wrong ways, and too different in all the right ones.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t talk, Storm. That doesn’t mean that…that I can’t still respect you.” He was slowly creeping closer toward her, watching as she breathed slowly to steady herself, her hand still over her face.

“I don’t know if I want that, Logan.” It was so soft he almost thought he imagined it.

“Maybe you need to.”

Ororo looked up, and Logan stilled his breath at the white of her eyes. “It’s been so long. I don’t…” She turned her gaze back down.

Logan stopped in his progression toward her, and swallowed. Swallowed that thick slice of pride past his throat to mingle with the shame. “You were right. Ororo. You were right.”

She took in a deep breath as she raised her gaze once more to meet Logan’s, the swirling white of her eyes slowly dulling, but never leaving.

“I wasn’t…” Logan swallowed again, took one more step, trying to force out the words that had been lodged in his throat for days, festering there without speech. “I’m not the only one.”

Ororo cocked her head in question.

“I’m not the only one with burdens, and I had forgotten that. Or, maybe I never really got it in the first place but…I know you hurt too.”

Ororo gripped her arms to her, and she almost shrank in on herself.

It made Logan reach out a hand subconsciously, lift his fingers to her shoulder in a motion he didn’t even realize he was doing. And somewhere, he felt it comforted him to. But she pulled her shoulder softly from his grip and Logan almost yanked it back, forgetting. How could he think she’d let him touch her again so quickly? It made him want to crawl away in shame.

Logan looked at her holding herself, cradled in the wind he wondered if she knew she was creating. And he realized it was the first time that Ororo Munroe did not look him in the eye, that she did not stand to her full height, that she did not challenge him silently with every stance and look. It was something he thought she’d always carry, that defiance. And he’d gotten so used to it that now, watching her here, in the growing orange light of the sun, the heavy wind that rocked the branches above them, he thought he might have actually hurt her beyond repair. Said words that could never be taken back. Cut wounds that could not be closed. And it was the first time he could remember feeling regret.

Even loving Jean, even hurting Jean, even killing Jean. He never regretted it, because it was what he felt he had to do, what he felt he couldn’t help. But with Ororo, there was so much he wanted to take back.

He wanted to take back his initial disregard of her when they first met. He wanted to take back his underestimation of her abilities. He wanted to take back how he ignored her in the face of Jean. He wanted to take back his belittling of her emotions. The vacant greetings. The empty conversations. The wordless breakfasts. Passing her in the halls without a hello. Never offering help with paperwork. Never taking her up on a Danger Room invitation. But most of all, he wants to take back the apathy of his words in the med-lab, the coldness he slung at her, the stupidity that she was anything less than he.

But he couldn’t. Time had already begun it’s wheel, and he realizes once again that she is right. The world has continued spinning without him. He wakes up every morning another day behind everyone else. And the nights are never filling enough to make it up.

Logan looks back down at her. “Storm…”

She shakes her head. “No, Logan.” She sucks sweet air into her lungs and pulls her shoulders back, lowering her arms to her sides. When she looks at him next, he can see the blue of her irises.

“When you can be honest with me…” she began. “When you can tell me the parts of you that you’re most ashamed of, then maybe, maybe I will do the same.”

Logan continued to stare at her, before nodding silently. “Alright.”

Ororo blinked, straightened her back. “Then I will be waiting for you, Logan. And I promise, I will tell you everything you want to know.”

There was a moment, a second of agreed silence, an imaginary hand outstretched between them that started what might have been the first seedlings of truth between the two, before Logan was turned and walking away, his throat itching with unspokens he didn’t know how to lay out.





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