We were the two
Our lives rearranged
Ororo’s sense of control would be maddening, if Logan didn’t think it was admirable. The kind of pressure she could overcome was enough to break millions in its wake, but she brought it to a halt, stared it down, made it bend to her will. Her control was Herculean, the stuff of legends. And her perfected control was something she refused to compromise, even for the death of her friend. Admirable, yes, but very flawed beneath the surface.
She showed little emotion over Jean’s death. Her best fucking friend had died to save her ass”to save all their asses”and she couldn’t even grieve properly. He knew it was there, all the pain, all the rage. It emitted from her body like venom, poisoning the air with a mixture pain and sandalwood.
At first, he thought it was her pride. She had to take some kind of pleasure in being in control of her emotions. It didn’t matter what happened she was always the personification of calmness. There were moments when her mask would slip and she would let an emotion slip over her face, but blink once and she would be the face of tranquility, again.
Later, from careful observation, he learned she believed this was something she had to do. She had to keep herself under control. She had to be the sensible one. She had to be able to handle the pressure. She had to be the fortress because the others expected it from her. They needed her calm to see them through.
Ororo was like a surrogate mother to those in the mansion. She didn’t hold one over the other, caring deeply for everyone. She often helped many of them with almost anything they needed. They could go to her with their problems, and she would offer them her wisdom without passing judgment. She was warm to each and every one of them, and it was obvious that her love for them was boundless.
But she couldn’t always play the savior and protector. They were living in a conundrum of sadness these days; the emotions were too convoluted, even for her to make sense of, but she refused to see that, thinking she could make everything right.
He remembered something Jean had told him one time about the need she felt to control her emotions because of the effect she could have on the weather. He could understand the principle behind that. If her emotions spun out of control, the weather might reflect the shifts in her mood. But he didn’t believe she’d let that happen, even if she did let herself express some form of emotion. He believed she was just afraid.
He sought her out, finding her in the parlor, alone. She let her limbs splay freely on the couch”one leg crooked over the arm of the couch while the other rested on the couch. She was pretending to read, but she didn’t turn the page nor did her eyes move. She just stared at the book blankly.
He studied her for a moment, thinking about how beautiful she was. White hair fell around her face like an angel’s halo, framing dark eyes that could burn right through you. She wasn’t very tall, neither was she very athletic in build. She gave the illusion of delicacy with her dove-like bones and gentle expression. But, damn if she wasn’t one of the toughest broads he’d ever met.
She liked to believe that she was just background noise, nearly invisible, letting Jean take the spotlight when she was alive. But he wasn’t a blind man. She was seduction enshrouded in a case of ice. The kind of woman men dreamed about possessing for themselves, but not truly brave enough to possess. She wasn’t nearly as invisible as she wanted to be.
She was a demure tease; a woman who did things she didn’t think was sexy, but it really was, like the way she rubbed ice across her collarbone when the days were warm or the way she would eat a mango, licking the juice from her fingers one by one. And his libido wasn’t the only one she’d sent racing with her “innocent” acts.
There’d always been something about the way his named lulled on her tongue, the way she held the first syllable too long as if she were calling him, that made him shudder slightly, that made him believe that she could be his for the asking. He wasn’t that stupid, though.
He walked into the parlor, walking heavily, to attract her attention. She snapped out of her thoughts, sitting up quickly in the couch. She moved too quickly and her low-cut shirt gaped for a second, giving him a private peek of black lace. Black lace, not what he was expecting. A spark of lust ignited, and he quickly quelled it. Steady boy, he said to himself, thinking of cold waterfalls.
He sat on the couch next to her, but with enough distance for her to be comfortable. Sometimes, he got a caged feeling from her when he was around, as if his presence sometimes made her uneasy. She just stared at him with an expectancy, placing her book in her lap, as if she knew he’d come to talk to her. There was no sense in making small talk, then. Was there?
“What’s on your mind?” he asked her, trying to elicit some sort of reaction from her. But he asked out of genuine concern for her.
He could see her pulling into herself, a self-preservation mechanism. “What do you mean?” she asked evenly, crossing her arms. Her expression betrayed nothing but her caution.
“I mean with all that’s goin’ on.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, her lips setting in a grim line. “Everything is fine,” she said evasively. That seemed to be her mantra these days. Everything was fine. She was fine. They would all be fine.
“What is your problem?” he challenged.
“There is no problem.”
“Life is just fuckin’ grand, ain’t it?” He said before he meant to.
“That’s not what I said,” she answered defensively. She furrowed her eyebrows at him.
“That’s what you’re actin’ like.” He didn’t mean to say that. He didn’t really believe she pretended that everything was okay. He knew she was painfully aware of everything. But he forged ahead, anyway. “Why are you so scared to show any emotion?”
“Because it’s just so difficult…” she started. He noted a pain her eyes, and for a moment, she let the mask fall. Her vulnerability shone through, and he moved closer to her. They were making progress. The first inkling of a tear formed in her eyes, and he thought that the dam would break at any moment. She dropped her head, suddenly. Was she ashamed of her emotions, that she was showing him that she cared?
“Or maybe, I am just weak,” she continued, her voice shaking a bit, as she looked down at her hands. He cupped her jaw, guiding her face back up. A single strand of hair fell into her eyes. He moved it gingerly and tucked it behind her ear, his fingers lingering on her face longer than they should.
That spark of heat flared again, followed by guilt, and he was sure that she’d felt it in his touch.
“You’re not weak just because ya show what you feel,” he said. When you stripped away the powers, they were still only human, vulnerable to their own emotions. Just because they were mutants didn’t take that away from them.
“My pain is my own, Logan. It’s not meant to be shared. It’s not meant to be understood.”
“But it doesn’t have to be,” he said.
But doe brown eyes searched into his eyes for him to understand. A Mona Lisa smiled asked him to accept what he could not change. But what he really wanted to do was kiss her, to claim her mouth as his own. Some caring son-of-a-bitch he was turning out to be.
X-Men. A mental call from Charles. The moment was broken. They had a mission.
Next Chapter: III Failure
