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Chapter Twelve:

A Feral Repose (Part One)



Gambit skipped breakfast this morning, not feeling very hungry after a sleepless night. Just before sunrise he'd gotten tired of tossing and turning in his bed so he decided to get up and get dressed. Lying there wasn’t doing him any good anyhow. He couldn’t stop thinking about Logan and what'd happened inside med-lab yesterday.He couldn’t stop worrying about his friend and the condition he'd been in.

He stood alone on the dew drenched grass in front of the mansion watching the sun rise which had completed its ascent, clearing the horizon a couple of hours ago. Now he stood there deep in thought looking at the forest’s edge a short distance away. It'd been quite some time since he and Logan had had the opportunity to spend any real down time together. Now he found himself feeling quite pessimistic about ever having that chance again.

Remy hated brooding, life was just too short. That’s what he always told Logan anyway, whenever he found him trying to drink himself into a stupor. He used to find that kind of humorous, considering Logan’s healing factor prevented him from feeling the effects of alcohol for very long. But that’s not to say he didn’t give it the old college try at times.

He was beginning to understand even more clearly now just how much his friend suffered. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the sounds and seen the destruction caused by Logan’s hidden rage “ the fear and unbridled anger that Logan successfully kept under control, most of the time. ‘How can he keep such intense feelings under control? To keep them buried, and deny they exist?’ LeBeau couldn’t even begin to understand such strength… such torment. As an empath, Remy lived to "feel" others' emotions and to lend them his own in return. To share that kind of intimacy with another human being.

He craved being touched, both physically and emotionally. And he couldn't help but grieve deeply for those souls who would experience such horrors in their lifetime as to make them turn completely away from those very things that sustain his own life. He stared at the tree line and let out a sigh.

“You okay, Cajun?”

Remy turned to look over his shoulder. Scott was standing at the top of the steps of the mansion’s entrance. “Yeh, I’m okay,” he replied turning back around.

Scott descended the stairs slowly. "We missed you at breakfast,” he stated quietly.

“Not hungry,” Gambit replied with a shrug.

“Mmm,” Scott responded with a nod of understanding. He came up alongside his teammate and stopped. He stood silent, looking in the same direction that Gambit was. Scott put his hands in his pockets and waited. He knew Remy was troubled by the events that took place yesterday and Scott was hoping he'd want to talk about it. They stood there in silence for almost five minutes and Scott began to think that he'd been wrong. Maybe Remy didn't need to talk about it. Scott was just about to excuse himself when LeBeau finally spoke.

“Boss?”

“Yeah.”

“I want t' go out d'ere,” Gambit confided without looking at him.

“Yeah,” Scott replied softly, “I know you do.”

“Non, mec… I really want t' go out d'ere,” Remy re-iterated as if Scott didn’t understand.

“I know, Rem,” Scott assured him. There was a short moment of silence as the two men pondered that. “Be patient, Remy,” Scott offered quietly.

“Fuh how long?” LeBeau asked, and Scott had to smile at that. He quickly adopted a more serious and understanding _expression before answering the man's question.

“For as long as it takes,” Scott told him.

“How long does it usually take?”

Scott sighed. He wished he had a definite answer to give him. “It’s hard to say,” he finally admitted, then added, “You know, sometimes it’s easy for us to forget…” Scott’s words trailed off and Gambit waited a moment before turning to look at him.

“Fuhget what?” he asked. Scott looked down at his feet pursing his lips together, thinking of
what he wanted to say. Then he looked back up at the trees as he spoke.

“We forget… that the line Logan walks between his humanity and his… wildness… is a very thin one. And, we forget that… for him, every day is a tremendous test of balance.” Scott explained the best he could. As he spoke he turned to look at the tall, red haired Southerner. “When someone lives their life teetering on a tightrope… you have to expect them to lose
their balance once in a while.”

“Is dat what happen, Boss? He lose his balance?” Remy asked. Scott lowered his head again in thought. Then he frowned and looked up at Remy as the answer came to him.

“Not this time, Gambit,” Scott answered sullenly. “This time… he was pushed.”

“So what we do now?”

“We wait,” Scott instructed.

“Fuh what?”

“For him,” Scott said simply. LeBeau crinkled his nose in confusion and looked at his leader with a scowl hoping for an explanation. “Sooner or later,” Scott continued, “he’s going to start climbing back up, onto that tightrope… and we need to be there, to guide him, and offer support. We’ll be his safety net as he begins to test the limits of his balance again.”

“What good dat gonna do? He already hit da bottom,” Remy replied.

“No, not yet,” Scott assured him. “He just tumbled over the edge. But, he’s got a life line…”

“Stormy?" LeBeau guessed.

"She'd kill you if she heard you call her that, you know." Scott chuckled, making the other man quirk the corner of his mouth, then he became somber again. “Yeah. That’s why she’s out there. She’s sort of... his guiding light, to help him find his way back.” Scott sighed heavily, shaking his head. Then he shrugged and added, “She can explain it better than I can.”

“Non, Remy got it, Boss,” the tall Cajun replied. “She out d'ere, to make sure da Wolverine... don’t decide t' stay out d'ere.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Scott answered quietly, putting his hand on Remy’s shoulder. LeBeau nodded, and a moment later he turned to Scott.

“I still want t' go out d'ere.”

Scott almost snickered at that. He gave the younger X-Man a pat on the back then rested his hand briefly on his shoulder, giving it a supportive squeeze. The two men offered each other half-hearted smiles, both of them feeling a little better now that they had this chance to talk. Their brief moment of silence was broken however as a voice came from behind.

“We all feel the same as you do, Gambit. Believe me.”

The two men turned around to face Charles. Jean was with him at the top of the stairs and she offered them a smile. “Bobby and Kurt already came to us with the same request,” she informed them.

“Indeed. And I must remind everyone to be patient until we hear from Ororo. We have been through this before,” Charles reminded them. His three students stood silently looking at him. They understood what he was saying, but that didn’t mean they had to like it. They all felt an
overwhelming desire to see for themselves that Wolverine had actually benefited from his release into the wilderness. Charles didn’t need telepathy to know what they were thinking as he scanned their faces. “I’ll tell you what…” he offered, “I’ll contact Ororo and get a report.
Perhaps that will put our minds at ease. Will that be sufficient for now?”

The three X-Men smiled at him and nodded.





Ororo picked the fish up out of the dirt and headed down to the river to wash up. Logan followed her, curious to see where she was taking the fish. She placed the catch on the rocky shore and leaned over to wash her hands. She began to get a sense of déjà vu when she noticed debris from the bedding in her hair and on her clothes. She scooped up water in her hands and tried to splash them away. The moisture only seemed to aid in adhering the debris to her clothes and skin.

Ororo sighed and looked at Logan who was crouching nearby watching her intently. He, too was showing signs of needing a bath… and a haircut. She'd noticed yesterday that, since his abrupt awakening in the infirmary his hair had grown about six inches. That was due to the acceleration of his body’s systems. Cell rejuvenation included hair cells. And now he wore a long, dark mane that hung about his shoulders and fanned out at the sides. He was covered with a layer of dust which mixed with his perspiration as the humidity in the air began to rise, giving him a muddy appearance.

‘Today’s going to be a scorcher,’ Ororo realized. Logan sat there looking at her, waiting. Ororo'd also noticed that he was breathing through his mouth, trying to release some of the heat that his body couldn’t sweat out. She knew he was more habituated to the colder climate of the Canadian mountains, and she could only shake her head at the image of him running half naked through waist high snow drifts, and loving every minute of it.

She watched him as he crouched there looking back at her. Then he’d glance at the fish lying nearby. Then to her again, waiting.

“I know. You want breakfast,” she said with a smile. She picked up the fish one at a time and swished them around in the water, to rinse them of the dirt that'd gotten stuck to them when Logan laid them on the ground beside her bed. Once they were rinsed, she laid them on a nearby rock so they wouldn’t get dirty again. Ororo looked at the now shiny fish and her eyebrow arched as she realized they were now cleaner than she was. With a sigh, she looked at Logan.

“We are going to have breakfast, my friend. I promise… but, first things first,” she told him quietly aloud. She knew he still didn’t understand her, but she made it a point to keep communicating with him verbally. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, big guy, but I really do feel grundgy. I’m going to take a little dip and wash off some of this dirt, okay?”

Logan just looked at her blankly, blinking in the sunlight and she smiled. Ororo stood up, slipped off her sandals, and walked back to the water’s edge. She looked back at Logan, who was moving toward the fish now lying unattended on the rock. “Help yourself, my friend,” she whispered mostly to herself.

She turned back toward the water and gracefully pulled her dress up over her head, and dropped it onto a patch of dry grass. Ororo waded into the water, and Logan caught sight of her. Suddenly attentive, he straightened his back wondering what she was doing. Then he made his way slowly to the shoreline.

When Ororo got to the middle of the stream she ducked down to submerge her shoulders. It was only about eight o’clock in the morning, but the humidity already hung heavy in the air and the cool water felt so refreshing. She turned back around to see Logan looking at her from the shore.

“You want to come in?” she asked him. He tilted his head in response to her questioning tone. Ororo smiled at him and moved her arms across the surface of the water. “Come in if you like. The water is wonderful,” she invited. Logan scanned the depths of the water with a serious look on his face, then he looked at her again. “I know you can swim,” she told him. His _expression didn’t change. “You’re not afraid of the water, are you?” she teased in a friendly manner.

Logan stared at her a moment, then he moved to pick her dress up off the ground. He sniffed at it, identified it as hers, then held it out to her. “In a minute,” she assured him as she swept her hair back with both hands. Then she submerged, disappearing beneath the water’s surface.

Logan saw her go under and moved quickly toward the water. A second later she surfaced, smoothing her hair back. Logan relaxed for half a second before she quickly disappeared again. He jumped into the shallow water up to his ankles, then he stopped when he saw her come back up again. He held his breath, staring at her with huge eyes.

“Ahhh,” Ororo vocalized her pleasure as the water cascaded from her face. She squeezed the excess water from her hair and opened her eyes. She stopped short when she saw Logan standing in the water wearing a grave look on his face. His feet were set wide apart, he was leaning slightly forward and his chest heaved with each breath. “What’s wrong?” she asked, more out of habit than expecting him to answer. She recognized this posture, often referring to it as ‘standing heavy’. Ororo watched as his eyes scanned the water, then he looked at her again. “What?” she asked curiously. Logan grunted at her, then he held up her dress indicating for her to come out of the water. “What’s the matter, Logan?” she asked again, becoming concerned.

Logan stepped backward onto dry land expressing himself with a low, guttural sound. Ororo got the message. He wanted her out of the water, and he wanted her out now. She stood in the middle of the stream trying to figure out what the problem was, then she realized she must have spooked him when she disappeared under the water.

“Did you think I was drowning?” she asked him seriously. Logan started behaving in an agitated manner and Ororo knew that she had seriously frightened him. She began to make her way out of the water toward him. “You did, didn’t you?” she said. It was more of a statement than a question. The closer she got to the shore the more he relaxed his posture. Her innocent attempt to bathe in the stream had caused him to become highly agitated, and that perplexed her. Logan was a powerful swimmer, and yet he had hesitated to come in after her.

‘Maybe he doesn’t remember that he knows how to swim,’ Ororo thought, knowing that was a possibility. She walked over to him so he would calm down. She easily recognized his distress by the way he swayed his body from side to side.

“That old adrenaline rush jackin’ you up, sweetie?” she asked him with a touch of regret in her voice. She stood in front of him now and she could hear him grinding his teeth, and his nostrils flared as he sucked air in through his nose. “It’s okay, Logan. I’m fine,” she tried to reassure him with a soft tone.Then she noticed that he was clutching her dress in his fists, holding it tight against his belly. Ororo reached out and pressed her palm gently against his cheek. Logan became still and she looked deep into his eyes.

“I know you are in there,” she whispered. Her sultry voice was soothing to him, and he'd always responded to it. “Be at ease, my friend.” Her touch gave him a new sense of calm, and she could literally feel him shed his anxiety under her gentle touch. The muscles of his jaw, which were being severely exercised as he ground his clenched teeth together, finally relaxed. He gazed at her with a look of uncertainty, as she slowly freed her clothes from his grasp and slipped her dress back on.

As she got herself straightened out, she realized that Logan hadn’t had a real meal in days, and was still waiting for his breakfast. The single trout they shared last night would not be nearly enough to sustain him for long. He was trying to be polite by waiting for her to eat too, but Ororo realized now that Logan needed to eat. He needed the protein in order for his system to function properly, and the lack of it was probably contributing to his odd behavior.

She led him over to the fish and persuaded him to extend one claw to cut their bellies open. Once they were gutted, she rinsed them once more and carried them up the hill, as Logan tossed their entrails across the rocky ground. No sooner did he turn to come back to her when the crows descended in droves to clean up the discarded organs.

When Logan came back up the hill, Ororo already had a small fire going. She suspended two of the fish from a stick and held them over the flame. Logan crouched down next to her looking curiously at the dangling trout. But the fire was a little too warm for his liking and he soon moved a short distance away, taking the other two fish with him. Ororo rested her chin in her hand and watched him as he went to work devouring his breakfast, Japanese style.

‘Right, of course… sushi,’ Ororo mused. First, he stripped off all the fins with his teeth. Then he gripped the fish with both hands and, starting at the head proceeded to eat every single bit of it. Nose, eyeballs, brain… nothing was left to waste. Even the bones were pulverized into harmless bits by his powerful jaws. By the time Logan finished, the only evidence he left behind of his meal were the tail, dorsal and pectoral fins lying in the dirt. Then he was off.

Ororo picked slowly at her own breakfast as she watched him explore the area nearby. Then she heard a voice inside her head, and welcomed it.

// “Ororo, can you hear me?” //

// “Yes, Charles. It is good to hear your voice.” // she answered silently.

// “How are you?” // he asked.

// “I am fine. Thank you.” // Storm replied.

// “And how is Logan?”//

// “Better.” // Ororo answered with a smile. She watched Logan as he followed a small creature - perhaps a mole or a mouse - in and out of the brush.

// “Is he talking yet?” // Charles asked.

// “No, not yet. That could take some time.” // She informed him.

// “Is he interacting with you?” //

// “Yes, very much so.” //

// “That’s good.” // Charles replied, sounding pleased.// “Is there anything you need?” //

// “A toothbrush, a hot shower, a soft bed… other than that?” // she answered, and she could hear Charles laugh softly inside her head. // “Honestly, Charles, everything I’ve needed, so far Logan has done well to provide.” //

// “Indeed?” // he responded, sounding like the ever-attentive teacher.

// “Oh yes, bed and breakfast.” //

// “Excellent.” // Charles replied, again sounding very pleased.

Ororo continued to watch Logan scampering around the area. She knew that Wolverine would deny, with a resounding boom that he ever scampered, but she couldn’t think of another word for it at the moment. He was having fun entertaining himself as he chased the small creature, playing with it as he tested his reflexes and hunting skills.

At one point, it scurried through his legs and he spun around, hopped a few feet to his right and cut off its escape. Logan shot his hand out with lightning speed and scooped it up in his hand. He studied it up close for a moment then he let it go, and Ororo shook her head in amusement as he disappeared, chasing it into the brush again.

// “Ororo?” // Charles’ voice brought her back from her musings.

// “Yes?” //

// “Do you think he would come in with you?” //he ventured hesitantly. His question made her pause, and she turned her attention away from Logan.

// “You mean… today?” // she asked a little puzzled.

// “Yes.” //

// “I don’t know.” // She slowly answered. // “He would probably follow me in… why, Charles? What’s wrong?” //

// “Oh, nothing is wrong.” // He assured her, // “Just some concerned friends.” //

// “I see. Well… you can assure everyone that he is doing just fine. He is at peace, and his behavior is improving. In the meantime, I will see how close I can get him to the mansion… but, I will not force him. Alright?” //

// “Fair enough. I’ll pass on your message. We’ll be waiting.” // He replied. Then it was silent again, and Ororo let out a sigh.


* * *

After her conversation with Charles ended, and she finished her breakfast, Ororo slowly went about extinguishing the fire as she gave his request serious thought. Watching Logan meander around, disappearing into the thicket again and again only to reappear a short time later made her wonder if the best idea this time was to let him go along at his own pace.

Ororo was well aware that it hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours yet, but she began to believe that if she didn’t start pushing him along now he may become too comfortable out here. If he wasn’t already. During previous times such as this Logan had always maintained an aggressive temperament, even keeping her at a distance sometimes for a week or more. This time it was different. He was different. He was more passive this time and, for some reason that was beginning to bother her.

Ororo sat on the ground next to the smoking embers quietly watching him, and it occurred to her that right now he seemed to be completely void of pain. ‘He is at peace,’ she thought to herself. ‘He is happy and comfortable right where he is… in the wild.’

She figured Logan was showing no aggression because he saw no reason at all to be aggressive. Had he been pushed so far over the edge that he held no memories of ever having been in danger? He seemed to be totally unaware of the fact that his usual behavior and thought patterns had always been defensive or aggressive in nature. He was behaving as an innocent, completely unaware that an entirely different world exists outside his forest paradise. The fact that he'd so easily welcomed her into his little world was evidence, as far as she was concerned that he had no intention at this point of returning to civilized society.

Perhaps, in his present mindset he wasn't even aware that a civilized society even exists. Ororo suddenly straightened with the realization that she wasn't here now as his lifeline back to humanity, as was her intention. But she had unwittingly become the first member of his pack. He'd invited her to share his way of life in the wild and she had unknowingly accepted. He'd proven himself worthy of her by providing shelter and food, and she'd found his offerings to be more than satisfactory.

But by staying here, she was only lending credence to his wild desire to remain wild. His behavior was more docile than she'd ever known him to be and she knew that that kind of docile behavior in a wild animal existed only as evidence that the animal in question had never been exposed to the cruelty that human beings are capable of. Logan appeared innocent and docile because he obviously could not remember ever having been brutalized by the outside world. This was a good thing, wasn't it? No memory of pain, no memory of loneliness, no memory of excruciating torture and best of all... no memory of those faceless people or that damned facility that'd taken everything away from him.

No. This wasn't good! Ororo felt a sudden spike of fear rise up inside her, for this lack of memory would make him more susceptible to further abuse. Because if he doesn't remember it, then he won't be expecting it. And if he won't be expecting it, he can't protect himself.

Ororo knew she needed to activate his memory quickly. She'd told Charles she wouldn't rush him, and as much as she'd like to force-feed him his humanity right now she couldn't do that to him. But she wasn't going to just sit around enjoying the show either. If she went slowly and took her time... but she'd need the X-Men's help too.

'Later though... not right now', she thought to herself. 'I've got him with ME now... alone... just the two of us. We will take care of each other. A couple of days... then I'll contact Charles... I just want a couple of days... for myself.'



TBC in "A Feral Repose, Part Two"





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