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He is sitting…alone, at his usual spot, the one overlooking the sheer cliff drop into the ocean.

He has been sitting here for quite sometime now….and no one has come to get him, talk to him….or even near him.

They won’t if…because they value their lives.

The only two people who can get near him…one, despite her chronological youth knows when to leave him alone, and the other, well, she isn’t going to come either.

-----

He had woken up in the infirmary not knowing how got there. The last thing he remembered was sinking his claws into the Cyclops’s chest and opening him up from throat to crotch, his berserker rage reveling in the gore and carnage.

That had just been after he decapitated the White Witch, but not before gouging her eyes out by skewering her with his two side claws.

Ok, it hadn’t been the real Scott and Emma, but hard light constructs in the danger room, and even after doing it a thousand plus times, he still feel any better. In fact, he wanted to repeat it another thousand times and to perfect his technique for when he would do the real ones.

‘How did I get…?’ The familiar vanilla and sandalwood scent assaulting his waking up senses stalled that particular thought.

Sitting right by his beside, an errant sliver of her shimmering white hair falling over her naturally bronzed face, was….Ororo.

-----

‘She got me to there,’ he is thankful for her timely entry into the danger room. It seemed that at sometime after his fifteen hour in the x-men’s practice room; his healing factor finally gave up, causing him to fall flat on his face…unconscious.

He had lain there for quite sometime, more than two hours and although the sensors stopped the opponents from attacking, placing them under ready position, the Cyclops and White Queen combo still had quite sometime to pummel his seemingly lifeless body.

Only Ororo’s chance arrival had led to his discovery. She had instantly stopped the program and contacted the first and maybe only one of two people in the mansion who could lift, let alone bear his Admantium weighed, three hundred pound plus heavy body.

“Henry,” she pressed the comm. button. “Come to the Danger Room. NOW. Its an emergency.”

-----

“How did I get here?” Had been his first question to the tired looking Ororo. She had kept a constant vigil over him…just like the first time.
“You…” she wanted to say fainted, but didn’t. “You were lying unconscious in the danger room.”

His brow furrowed in concentration, Logan wracked his mind to play catch up with the rest of his body, and as soon as that happened….

-SNIKT-

“Logan,” her tone had been one that clearly said, *put those claws away*.
“Sorry ‘Ro,” a mumbled apology and an opposing -snakt- marked the sheathing of the Admantium blades.

Nodding silently, she stood up and started towards the door.

“Logan,” she stopped but didn’t turn around. “Can we…we have to talk.”
The words might have given him some hope, but her cool, detached tone wiped it out. “Sure. Now?”

“Not now,” still she did not turn to face him, only tilting her head to look over her shoulder. “Tonight, eight PM, the library.”

-----

His mind is a complete blank. Its as if the telepathic two-timing witch has done it again, only this time…this time she has taken everything from him. She might as well have.

The others, those who don’t know what went down in the Professor’s office are confused. Chief among them are the students, who for the life in them, cannot understand why two of their teachers have suddenly disappeared from their school lives and two others, Jean and Ororo, have closed off…becoming almost strangers.

The older ones, many of whom are junior or intermediate team-members, namely, Jubilee, Kitty, Piotr and Bobby, have an inkling, knowing that it all started after…during their last face off with the loser-hood. Jubilee and Kitty, both know that Rogue was instrumental in bringing whatever it is that has had such a massive fallout, to light. However, for a change, even Jubilee has retained her silence over the subject. Piotr and Kurt are happy to have their old friend, Wolverine, back, although his more than usual loner deal, tells them that this latest development has its roots in the past.

However, inspite of all their suspicions and speculations, they have avoided gossiping between themselves or with others, not partly due to the Professor’s explicit orders.

------

Pushing the polished-wood doors open, Ororo stepped into the pin-drop silence of the Xavier Institute’s private library’s reading room.

She was five minutes early, but still was later than Logan who was sitting at an open window, a smoldering cigar dangling from between his first two fingers. He seemed so lost in his thoughts that he gave no intimation of whether he detected that he was no longer alone in the room.

Clearing her throat, she drew his attention to her.

“Sorry for being late,” the apology was hers’…even though there wasn’t need of any.

There was no answer from his side, and no reaction, except for a silent nod, followed by a hiss as he stubbed out the cigar on his palm, the burnt skin healing within seconds.

They stood facing each other, the silence between them uncomfortable. It had never been like this for them….not with each other. Even during his earliest days, when the only people he ever deemed *talking* to were Rogue, Jean and the Professor, the communication between the gruff bar brawler and the regal weather witch, had been one of mutual respect and given their close relations with nature, on some primitive, primal level….one of understanding.

“How are you feeling now?” Ororo took the first step in the conversation.
“Hn,” he grunted and nodded his head. “I’ll live.”

Clearly, the small talk wasn’t getting anywhere….so she dropped it.

“Do you remember anything about what….” She let her words trail off, knowing he would catch on.
“Nah,” his eyes momentarily blazed with the fire that had attracted her to him….that still attracted her to him. But, now wasn’t the time for it.

“You are leaving?” Ororo meant it as a question, but even to her own ears, it sounded like a statement, an order.
“You want me to?” He had asked the same question once before, and the hope in his voice….it was there that time too.

“What I want is not of any consequence?” She forced herself to continue. “Just as what I do is not any concern of yours.”

The silence that answered her, gave her the opportunity to continue. When she had told him that she wanted them to talk….she had really meant that she wanted them to speak…in turns and not converse with each other.

“I know you followed me that night…” that surprised him. The fact that he had gone after Ororo and the blonde haired fucker was something that even Rogue did not know about. “….Just as I know that you knew I was standing outside the door the other day, when you were talking to Rogue. The time Remy was in the room.”

It was true. He had caught her scent outside the door….that was one of the reasons he ended that particular talk and high tailed out of there.

“So it was a payback for what I did?” Ororo didn’t fail to catch the hidden meaning of the question. Even though he had worded it for their eavesdropping on each other, what Logan indirectly hinted towards was her *relation* with Davis Cameron.
“Take it anyway you want,” emotion seeped through the crack in her ice queen armor. “As for my personal life, you lost any right that you might have had to comment about it, the day you went to my best friend and later when you turned tail and ran away.”

The turned tail comment got a reaction from him. “You told me to leave.”
“No, I did not,” Ororo shot back. “You did that all on you own.”

“You said *goodbye*,” Logan shot from the windowsill. “What was I supposed to do? Stay? You wanted to see my face after what I did?”
‘No,’ that was the first thing out of her mouth…but she stopped herself. Her silence was enough for him.

“Guessed so.”

Standing before her like this, the fight seemed to leave Logan’s body. He was ready to give up. All of his past, his mixed up real and implanted memories, all of the tortures and the experiments….throughout all that, he had had one thing he could rely on…and the white witch and the one-eyed asshole took that away from him….left him completely bare.

“It worked out for the best,” his self-sarcasm got her eyes to shot up.
“What worked out for the best?” Ororo asked with rising trepidation. She could almost sense the loathing and angst rolling off the man standing before her….that and the resurgence of his rage.

“Me leavin’.” The fluctuation in Logan’s emotional mindset was getting erratic. One second he was full of anger, the next completely lost…defeated. “Remember when I said, that what I did with Jean was worth it.”
“Y-Yes,” Ororo answered through clenched teeth. The words *Jean* and *worth it*, returned her to that afternoon in the greenhouse. It was as if they weren’t in the library, more than a year later, but were where they broke…left off, and instead of her turning around and flying off and him leaving the mansion, they were facing the demons.

“I did to keep my hands off you,” the mixture of surprise, disbelief and disgust on the Ororo’s face told Logan that what he had already realized….he had made a major blunder in expressing his thoughts. “No, its not like that. What-What I…what I want to say is….I don’t know why I did it. I really don’t.”

Knowing there was something else, Ororo relaxed the defensive pose she had instinctively adopted.

--

“I am not sure of anything Ororo,” Logan flopped down to the chair. “I thought I liked you…wanted you. I believed it as the truth….until a week back. I knew it because along with my heart and mind, my senses…the one thing that never lied to me, told me that I wanted you. Just as they did, when they first told me that you wanted me….” What he left out was that ‘on some level, you still you….maybe.’
“And now?” Ororo inquired patiently, knowing that the way he had trailed off, there would be *a now*.

“Now, I don’t know what to believe. Everything in me, still tells me I want you…but I won’t, no…can’t believe that. You were the best thing that happened to me…at least in the time I remember. My senses told…tell me that. But I can’t even believe them now. No after…”
“Not after what Emma did to us,” Ororo completed his sentence. She deliberately left out Scott’s name, because thinking about what one of her closest friends might have done to her to warrant a mind wipe….she didn’t even want to go there, not yet, if ever.

“I remember what we were like before Jean came back,” Logan looked up at her through bloodshot eyes. “I had started liking you then….and yet, when Jean came to me, whenever she came to me….I didn’t stop her. I used to think that it was a fantasy, which I was working out of my system. You said that we should stay as friends and if your feelings ever changed, you’d let me know. Until then, whatever we did….” He didn’t complete that half-thought either. “What I did, what I betrayed, I don’t know if that is even real. I don’t know what we have…had is real.”

“Logan, do you expect me to forget…forgive what happened between you and Jean…” Ororo forced herself to form the question. “….just as a result of what Emma did. Because if you expect that, I am sorry, but I cannot.”
“I know,” Logan hung his head. “I want yer forgiveness, but not with that reason. I want you…if you can, forgive me on yer own. I did say, I can wait, as long as it takes.”

Once again, silence reigned in the room.

--

“Anything else you would like to tell me?” Ororo hoped that he would tell her about the ring Rogue had mentioned. At the same time, a part of her did not want to know about it. She was having the same thoughts he had expressed. What if what they had and what they might have had, all of it was based on a lie….a hidden suggestion planted by Emma Frost when she mind-raped them. What it Logan had never got over Jean in the first place? After all, even if Jean was the one to make the first move, Logan could have stopped her. What if he still had those feelings towards the redhead doctor? What if….? Many such *what ifs* had risen in the last few days.

“Yes,” Logan replied. Opening his mouth to continue, he tried to form the words…words that his instincts were urging him to speak out aloud, words that he had been reading himself to speak out for over thirteen months...words that were lost under the loss in his confidence…his trust for his instincts. They were just three words, and he unable to vocalize them. “No….nothin’.”

“Very well,” Ororo sighed and turned away from him. “Goodnight Logan.”

Leaving him in the library, the former goddess retreated to her room. She had thinking to do….and decisions to make.

-----

It’s almost evening, and he is still sitting by the cliff.

He does not want to go back to the mansion, not now….not when the most important reason for his being no longer resides within those walls.

Not after Ororo Monroe leaving the mansion…

….with the new man in her life.

Note: Sorry if the middle part kinda loses you…it had that effect on me too. That’s why I didn’t change it. But what else do you expect from one who has had his memory-circuits crossed….and even shorted.

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