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It was cold outside, just as cold as the inside of his heart…..after what he saw.

He caught her scent before he saw her, in the car…with HIM, the man who had asked her hand in marriage. She was laughing at something he said….she looked happy.

Happier than she had been in a long time.

---

Lifting the already half-empty bottle of scotch, he took a swig, the fire from the bitter liquid doused almost instantly by his healing factor. Just once….just one freakin’ time he wanted to get dead drunk…or both. At least that would save him from the repeated series of losses and pains that his life was.

He used to think his almost thirty years of life was painful. Hell, it wasn’t anything compared to what he knew now.

Jubilee and Laura were out for night. Both of them and some of their friends were out gonna paint the town red. Jubilee’s words not Laura’s. Afterwards, they’d go to the mansion for the weekend.

“Lived a hundred years, still no one to love,” he spoke to the bare walls. “No one.”

---

Rose, Silver, Jean, Mariko…all women he loved and all of them he lost.

Rose never loved him like he wanted her, or maybe she did. Who knows? They could have had a life, ‘cept that his animal grew inside him and she fell in love with Smitty. Good man, woulda kept her happy. “If ya hadn’t killed her.” His self accusation was spoken aloud.

Silver Fox….Silver plus Logan, with a nice heart drawn outside it. They were so happy the day that they carved that on the front door of the cabin. They had such plans. Already had the cabin, he had a good enough job, some land. Just a coupla kids and everything would have been great. “Then ya lost her,” another swig from the bottle. He had thought that Creed had killed her and maybe she had been died. Fuck, he had died a few times himself. They brought him back, musta brought back her too. They found each other….only to have him lose her all over again, an’ this time it was for real. He buried her himself and visited her ever since….each spring.

Jean. Jean…Jeannie….Red. He had so many names for her, but to the world she has just two, Phoenix and Jean Grey-SUMMERS. With her, it was Rose all over again. She loved him that much he could tell, but not like she loved Slim Summers, the man she married, the man she chose over him, her soul mate….her husband….her traitorous husband. Slim had the best thing in the world, a woman who loved him with all her heart, a woman who fought death for him, and what did he do….he went and dumped it all for a couple of mind fucks with Emma ‘Hellfire Bitch’ Frost.

Then there was Mariko, different from the rest. He still remembered the day he first saw her…the first time she saw him. Almost like any other person he had ever met, she too had been more than slightly unnerved by his appearance, especially with his blue and yellow wolverine garb one. However, unlike most of those people, she gave him a second, a better look and found the good inside and drew it out. He still had in his possession the honor sword that reminded him of her and the promise they had made to each other….the promise that he had waited for her to regain the lost honor of her family name, and recover she did. They had within reach what was once denied to them….a life together, a life as husband and wife. Everything had been ready. Within twenty-four hours she would become Mrs. Logan, a name she had already inscribed on her soul. It had been so close, just a hair’s breath away….so close and yet…..and yet, it was that short distance that was denied to them, forever and ever. His hand, the one he had plunged into her to end her suffering, still shook at the memory of his razor sharp claws tearing through the soft, smooth skin of the first woman he loved like a man, not as an angry teenager or as a near animal.

There had been one other whom he had loved like that ever since. Only one for whom he had reeled in his animalistic nature and tried to act like a man, to wait it out, to give her time, to get to know her as a person……only one. Too bad all his patience and his waiting all seemed to be for vain. He had become so lost in doing the right thing, the thing that his mind told him to do, that he lost out on his heart’s voice…..until the time it was too late.

------

“Ororo,” her mere name was enough to drive him wild, bringing him both joy and lately pain at the way it rolled off his tongue. He almost wished that he hadn’t done what he did, that he hadn’t gone to Africa, not kissed her, made love to her….professed his love for her. He almost wished that. Atleast then he wouldn’t have to face waking up alone, sitting like an idiot waiting for her to return. He had sat at the same place, their camp side for a week in the hope that she had just left for some work or to clear her mind and think about what he had said. He hoped that he would get some answer, an affirmative answer.

He knew she wanted him, he could smell that much on her. Even before their lips touched for the first time, he had smelled the want on her. If he hadn’t done that, he would have stopped himself, stopped from doing all the things he did….everything except for continuing to silently love her.

After that week of waiting, he had left not only that place, that country, but also that whole fucking continent. He had gone back to Canada, to his cold, his wilderness, to the place where he could forget himself, leave the man behind and let loose the animal. The man had failed and there was no need for failures in the eyes of the animal inside him.

Finally, more than five months later he returned to the mansion to pick up the pieces of his century old shambled life. It wasn’t the first time he had been beaten down, and knowing him, it wouldn’t be the last. With him, it was sort of a regular occurrence, one that he had come to expect. He was above all a survivor. He had survived before and he would do it again.

-----

Then he saw HIM…..the Panther, the man who had been in her past and who wanted to be her future.

It was more than he could bear then. It was Jean all over again and then some. Atleast with Jean it had been a case of the forbidden fruit, but Ororo, she he had not only tasted, but touched, felt, memorized….imprinted on his soul. Seeing her ready to become someone else’s was the last blow on his already shaky psyche.

He ran, just like he had done so many times in the past…..he ran, and had been running ever since.

Although he entered the mansion only once since that day, he went there everyday, hiding in the forest area, just to see her, catch her scent, to know she was there. It gave him an odd sort of rest and calmed him with the knowledge that maybe; just maybe, she would come around to him…..a hope now lost as seeing her with him.

------

A rapping on the door jarred him out of his misery, his olfactory senses flaring at the fresh rain and flowers scent that reached through the closed door.

‘Couldn’t be her,’ he shook his head to clear his mind, refusing to accept his own instincts. ‘She’s with him.’

KNOCK, KNOCK

He heard it again, the second knock louder than the previous faint one.

Pushing himself off his worn out chair, he didn’t even care to lift the bottle he had just kicked away. Everything started to fall away as he started the endless journey of ten feet to the door.

By the time he reached his destination, he was almost afraid to open it. Even after he laid his hand on the lock, he let it remain there, warring with himself whether to take the next step or step back.

Finally reaching a decision, he lifted his hand and stepped away from the door…..

….away from the locked door.





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