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04. The Wizard of…X?

Summary: Things aren’t going so well for Logan. And what did Xavier do…not only to him but also to Ororo?

“Fuck flamin’ fuck.”

Curses, both controlled and expletive, were practically gushing forth from the lips of a very angry Logan. “Who the hell she thinks I am?” He growled to no one in particular, raising his hand to slick back his dripping wet hair, his face scrunched with his eyes narrowed due to the torrential downpour lashing against him.

Having parked the truck at the side of the road, he had been stomping through the usually dry desert like countryside, his senses at highest alert trying to catch any trace, any scent…that is from the ones that the rains hadn’t already washed away.

‘Told her I’d take her.’ He cursed at yet another change in the weather, this one bringing hail with it. “But no. I to have to do it alone.” He scoffed at the reason that Ororo had given to him. It was less of a reason and more of a chant for her, one that she had been using for near about everything.

‘If she has to do it alone, what the fuck am I doing playing tagalong?’

“Oh, yeah,” he growled an answer to his own question, wincing seconds later as one of the quarter sized icy round balls struck him, right in the eye. “I know why. ‘cause of Xavier that’s why. Frickin’ Cue-Ball.” He cursed at the man responsible for his current state.

Professor Charles Francis Xavier.

---

//Flashback//

“Yeeya’ello. You have reached the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters or better known as Hormone Central. Chief Ward…

‘Lee!’ The overtly cheerful voice of Jubilation Lee greeting him was the last thing Logan needed right now. ‘What is she doing at this number?’ “Where’s the Professor?”

“…den.” Jubilee stopped short at the familiar snarl from the other end of the line. “Wolvy?” She inquired hesitantly only to go full force forward at Logan’s affirmatory grunt. “WOLVIEE!! Where are you? How’s Ororo? How are you guys….”

“Where the fu…where’s Xavier?” Not easy on the ears at the best of time, Jubilee’s high pitched rattle only served to fan Logan’s anger, his claws extending, not passing skin but just enough to sting through it. “And what are you doin’ at his private number?”

“Oh this,” Jubilee didn’t even seen to skip a beat. “The Professor has to go to Washington to attend some conference or something and with Ororo and Scott not there, he asked us guys to….”
‘Scott?!’ Logan stopped short, snapping at Jubilee to do the same. “Wait up. What do you mean Scott’s away? Where’d he go?”

“Oh he…he…” Jubilee grappled for a plausible explanation, anything to avoid telling Logan the truth. The truth that not twenty four hours after he and Ororo boarded their plane for Cairo, Scott Summers had also departed from the mansion, using the silence of the night to slip away to god knows where. “He left.” Jubilee hoped that this explanation would be enough for Logan. After all, even she knew well enough how much Scott and Logan cared for each other….not.

“What do you mean he left? Where’d he….”
“Oh lookie,” Jubilee practically leapt at the respite. “The Professor’s here.”


The sound of a hand being placed on the receiver and a muffled explanation of who it was and what she had just inadvertently revealed told Logan that Jubilee dumped the mess into Xavier’s capable hands and hightailed it out of the his office. As for Xavier, even he was having second thoughts of this rotation of assistants that he had set up, with Kitty, Jubilee, Rogue, Bobby and Piotr, each getting one day. As the senior most students and junior X-Men, it would be a learning experience for them. Or at least that was what it was intended to be. But with their varied personalities and quirks, it was turning out to be an experience or test rather…one of his patience.

A clearing of a throat and the polished cultured voice of Charles Xavier sounded through the phone lines, his greeting being cut short as Logan pounced on him.

“What happened to Scooter? Where’d he go?”
“Scott…” Logan could almost see that one particular nerve on Xavier’s head doing that gentle throb, the one that told all about his ‘ruminatinations’ to come up with a plausible reason. “He is in Alberta right now.”

“Alberta? What’s he doing there?” Logan’s counter question was just as instant.
“Alberta. Oh, sorry about that,” Xavier’s (for him) hurried correction came back a second later. “I wanted to say Alaska. He’s in Alaska right now, visiting family.”

‘Family? Scooter’s got family…away from the institute.’ Logan was rather surprised by the news, all for a moment, right until he realized that if he did not have any family it wasn’t like that the others didn’t. After all, didn’t he go that Bobby kid’s house. Where is fuckin’ punk of a brother sold them out. Grrr.

“Please forgive my slip,” Xavier repeated his apology. “Things have been rather hectic today.”
“What happened?” Logan inquired, hoping that whatever it was, it would require him and Ororo to return to the mansion. Anything…ANYTHING to get away from Ms. Cold Cut and her ‘my shit don’t stink’ attitude.

“Nothing you need to worry yourself over. No emergency.” The Professor’s words elicited yet another growl from the frustrated Wolverine, as he swore that Xavier was reading his mind…and deliberately making me stay here…all to get his ‘telepathic’ kicks.
“What then?” ‘Come on Chuck, give me something to work with here.’

“We are preparing for the new teachers that will be joining us.” ‘Ugh. Anything but this.’ New punter or punters coming in, now that would mean even more free time for Ororo to do whatever she was here for. Meaning more even more of her scintillating company for him.

‘Yay for me. Fuck.’

“How are you and Ororo doing?” Xavier started with his questioning. “I hope that the flight to Cairo was uninventful.”
“Yeah, ‘was okay.” Logan grunted noncommittally. “Uh Chuck.”
“Yes Logan.”
“When you asked me to come here with Ororo…”
“Yes.” Xavier knew that this moment would come and yet had hoped against hope that it wouldn’t. That Ororo wouldn’t do what he expected her to do.
“You talked it over with her, didn’t ya?” Logan growled, schooling himself from going off against the old man. Had it been anyone else, they would have had the entire riot read to them, and then be beaten senseless with the book. But not Chuckie…not for such a small thing anyway.

“Yes.” Xavier returned, along with a question of his own. “Why? Did something happen?”
“Yeah. She says she don’t want me here.” Logan growled, the frown etched on his face deepening as he recalled the ‘conversation’ he had had with Ororo.
“Oh.”

The way Xavier sighed, Logan knew that such a reaction had been anticipated.

“Don’t worry,” he spoke, his ‘common sense’ cursing him as each word came out. “I ain’t leavin’.”
“You aren’t?”
‘What the Fuck? Did he expect me to leave her here?’ That he was thought of so less by even Cue-Ball, stung Logan’s self-respect and the Wolverine’s pride. “What else do you think I am going to do?” He snarled. “Leave here in a dump like this? Shit Charles, I told you I’d stay with her. Didn’t I?”

“Yes Logan.” Xavier apologized. “Forgive me for thinking so less of you.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you or anyone else thinks about me.” Okay there was a small lie in that. Even as much he would deny, there were a few people whose opinion counted for Logan, and Xavier was one of them. “But it was you who came to me for help and once I said I’d do it, it means I’ll do it….no matter what. Understood.”

“Yes.” The response was slightly subdued.

“Yeah. Fine.” -Click- Logan let the handset slide back into the cradle.

Now, how did this happen? Hadn’t he called Xavier to tell him to get Ororo to come back….so that ‘he’ would get a way out.

So how the fuck had he managed to dig himself even deeper into this?

Shit.

//End Flashback//

---

“Fuck.” Logan cursed again, this time because of the rain pelting overhead. Finally having caught a scent of the elusive weather witch, he had started up the steep slope of a hill near the town they had last stopped at.

That was another thing that he did not understand. Why did they have to stop in all so many godamned places. If she wanted to get to wherever it was that she wanted to go, why not just directly go to it, instead of setting up tent in each and every piece of shit place.

“I need to do this alone.” He had stopped counting the number of times these words or a twist on them he had had to hear in the last three days. If he had been someone else or if he hadn’t said so to Xavier ‘twice over’, he would have just as soon let her go, catching the next flight back to New York and heading for the hills himself…or in his case, the Canadian Rockies.

It wasn’t enough that he had to house sit with a bunch of kids, now he had to baby sit their teacher too. She was supposed to be gone for two hours, and now it was almost five. What was he supposed to with her to keep a track of her? Take her rope and tie himself to her? Yeah, that would surely go well with her.

“Crazy broad.”


Tracking her from the thin sliver of a scent that he had finally get a hold on, Logan continued his climb up the hill, a slight shiver running up and down his metal laced skeleton at the way the temperature continued to plunge with every few feet.

‘What’s she going to do now? Make it snow?’

By the time he pulled him up a steep edge, his eyes finally catching sight of his elusive charge, not only was cold unbearable (for a normal person), Logan had had the tips of his wild hair frozen off, the freeze slowly moving down to his scalp.

‘Yup. Just peachy. Got a buttload of metal in me and if this witch doesn’t shock it down, she’s going to freeze it off.’


Freezing cold on the outside and burning rage on the inside, both of them petered away as, lifting his eyes to the heavens, having to clear his sight by brushing off the frozen droplets on his lashes, Logan stopped, his hand still in the air….as he stared at the sight about a hundred feet up.

Not quite believing it, he shook his head once, twice…thrice, only to look up and see the same thing.

‘What’s she doing?’ was the first question that flashed across his mind. ‘She even know what she’s doing?’ was second, followed by the all important third. ‘What the fuck she’s doing out there with no clothes on?’

Although, on his trek up, he had made his mind to give her the verbal thrashing that she would remember, if not for a lifetime at least for the next few weeks, seeing her like this he opted for something that he hadn’t even thought about. He decided to let her do whatever that she was doing…well, for a few more minutes. Why was he was doing this, he did not know? Maybe it reminded him of he used to lose himself in the wilderness…allowing himself and his powers to run free, letting the beast out? Or maybe, he wasn’t quite sure that even if he tried, he wouldn’t be get through to her…not in her current state.

It almost looked like as if she was up there, talking to someone, not with words but with her powers, her body…her entire being.

‘The view’s not bad either. She’s sure got a set on her.” He growled in appreciation, thankful for the effect it was having on him. In this cold, he could sure use the heat it generated. ‘Never woulda guessed with the clothes she wears. What does she do? Tape ‘em up?”

---

For Ororo, time had stopped still, her communion with the Goddess bringing her peace…even it was only going to be a momentary one. She knew why the Professor had broached the topic of her taking a break, of visiting her home. It was something that she had expressed a wish for only a couple or so times over the years, but hadn’t given much thought to. She had grown up to think of the institute as her home too, having spent the better part of a decade there, only a few years less than she had here in Africa.

“You could use the break. It has been a long since she took one. It will help you…” Xavier had paused, allowing the idea to find her hold with her. “….refresh.”

Even though she knew that the Professor was consciously abstaining from reading the thoughts of any of the mansion’s residents, Ororo could have sworn that he had read hers...not at that very moment, but a couple of days ago. She had been in her greenhouse, when all of a sudden, a wave of extreme longing had washed over her. A longing for a time when her world was a small one, her life simple…a time of her life before there were any X-Men or Charles or Scott….or Jean.

“Professor…” her hesitation had been enough for the older experienced man. “I cannot.”

“Why?” Opening her mouth to respond by pointing out her responsibilities and the current shortage of teachers in the school, Ororo got beat, Xavier anticipating and beforehand responding to her counter. “We already have two teachers joining us, not to mention the upcoming Christmas and New Year vacations.”

“But…”

“Also, I was thinking of extending the holidays this year, to four instead of the usual two weeks.” Xavier did not allow her to through, knowing that he was possibly the only person in the mansion anymore who could convince her to do what even she knew she needed but what she would not do, sweeping it away under the carpet of duty and responsibility. The only other people who could have done the same…to an extent were Scott and Jean. But seeing that that was no longer possible, it was up to him to…to lie to her. “It will not only help the students to relax after the recent events, it will also help them recover…I have invited Moira for the same purpose.”

‘Four weeks? Why?’ Ororo’s question got lost at the name of Dr. Moira Mctaggert. One of the Professor’s closest friends, she was not only an accomplished geneticist, she had also, over the years gained a reputation (among her friends) as a sort of a counselor for ‘special’ cases, many of whom were mutants.


“Ororo…” Having expressed his wishes, and also giving an ideal opening for her to take a break, Charles urged his former student to speak.

“When do you want me to leave?” The way Ororo voiced it, it looked as if she was being made to go under duress, and that was the last thing that Xavier wanted. He wanted it to be her decision…her choice.

That’s why he worded his response very carefully.

“If you do decide to take a temporary break, you can do so when it suits you.. Just let us know in advance so that arrangements can be made for your journey…and return.” He deliberated.

“…yes Professor.”

---

In the here and now, well, almost an hour later,

“What are you doing here?”

Having dried herself and her clothes, and having donned them, Ororo barely contained her gasp at seeing Logan walking up towards her.

“You said two hours.” Logan grunted, somewhat surprised at how fast she had managed to dry herself when he was left as wet as a shaggy dog.

“I did.” The way that snowy eyebrow arched at him, Logan was sure that she was trying to make her words sound more as a question than as a statement.

“Yeah. Almost six are passed now.”

“And?”

‘Aw hell, not again. What is with her?’ frowned Logan. ‘Up there she seemed so peaceful. Do I got ‘fuck me over’ plastered on my mug?’

“Don’t let it happen again.” He bit back.

That eyebrow, already high, practically climbed to the sky now, its partner joining it, as the calm from only a few minutes ago being replaced by a rising anger…the sadness that weighed heavy on her returning along with it.

‘Did he just order me?’

“You are not my master. Do not dare to act as one.” Ororo snapped back in a rather uncharacteristic manner…for her, the biting venom on her voice surprising Logan and causing him to pause himself…all for a couple of seconds, seconds which were enough for her to step past him, and head down the hill.

Turning around, Logan not only caught sight of her back as she descended on her winds, he also realized something else.

She had taken the easy route, leaving him alone to have to foot it down.

“Fuck.”

Note: Sneaky Xavier eh? Also ‘apologies’ for no literary flowers from the great literary minds of Jubilee (and her friends). Don’t worry, I ain’t done yet and neither are they.

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