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20. Staying Put (Part 2)

Summary: Part 2

“Cute kid.”
“Yup.”

“How old is she?”
“Just turned eight two months back. Sharp as a stick too. Already’s in grade four.”

“Hmm. Sure doesn’t take after you.”
“You think? Me. I couldn’t learn school to save my life. Its all her…all Mariko’s doing. Otherwise…”

“You done good kid.” Sitting in the balcony, his back against the wall, Logan leaned lifted a hand to rest against the dark maroon silk covered shoulder of his companion. “Real good.”
“Nah, not good. Just got lucky.” Raising her own hand to cover his, Yukio shook her head, the soft smile on her lips showing something that Logan had never seen on her before. Contentment.

In front of them, just on the other side of the glass partition, her head tilted, a look of deep concentration on her innocent face, sat the young daughter of Yukio and Mariko, Amiko Yashida. Her second mother, seated to her right, was busy knitting a muffler for the young child while helping her with her homework.

Though still a little surprised at finally seeing the man that Yukio had told her so much about, especially in his current state, she had settled down soon enough, allowing Yukio the time and space she needed with her old friend.

---

//Flashback//

“…my wife.”

Logan’s eyes weary as they were, widened at the bomb shell that Yukio had just dropped on him that she, the poster child for the wild and free had not only found someone to settle down with, but settle down so much that she ended up marrying the person. That the person in question just happened to be a woman was the only thing that didn’t strike him as odd. After all, knowing as he knew her, he knew that Yukio didn’t stick to one particular type…or sex and was an equal opportunity lover.

Dumbstruck, he stared, not even realizing that he automatically returned the welcome bow, only breaking out of his reverie when Yukio stepped up and snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“Logan-sama. Hey! Wolverine.”

“Uh…hn.” In a flash the stupefied look vanished, the impassiveness from before slipped back into place.

“Surprised, huh?” Yukio grinned that teasing smile of hers, the one she got when she had just managed to confuse and trounce her opponent. “Maybe if you’d come more often, you’d…”

“I’ll leave.” Logan’s curt snap ended whatever quip she was going make, also causing her to reach forward and grab hid flannel covered arm he started to turn back.

“Where do you think you are going?” It was clear that she was both surprised and angry at the sudden change in him. There was also a small flickering of apprehension of how would Logan feel about this development in her life, of her marrying…marrying a woman.
They had been lovers once, but that was long ago, a time somewhere after Logan’s meeting the X-Men and before he fell in love himself. But it wasn’t like he did not know about her proclivity…or lack there of towards a certain sex. She did not take him to be the type of person who had a bug up his ass when it came to homosexuality. Was she wrong? Had she not known him at all.

“Yukio, I…” Logan paused, stopping completely at seeing the look, not only in his friend’s eyes but also in the eyes of the woman that she had chosen to spend her life with. Even wallowing in the pile of shit that his life had become, he had enough sense…or rather had enough ‘senses’ to detect the abrupt change in both the women. While one second they had been pleasantly surprised, maybe even happy in Yukio’s case, now there were only surprise, sadness and maybe even anger…once again only from Yukio.

“What?” It was Yukio’s turn to snap.

“I-I…don’t want to cause any trouble,” Logan blurted out, correcting himself the next instant. “I mean, disturb ya.”
“Since when did you start caring about not causing trouble? And who the fuck said anything about disturbing?” Now that was the real Yukio, or the first image of hers that had imprinted itself in Logan’s memory.

“I-I…” once he hesitated, the fatigue from not having slept and continuous driving not helping things one bit. “Yer married.” The way he said it, it might as well be him who had just told Yukio about her marital status.
“Yeah.” Nodded Yukio. “Even got the certificate to prove it. What’s that got to do with anything? And why should it change anything?”

As if that had been explanation enough, Logan once again leaned to move. “I shouldn’t have come. I just…”

“Needed a place to crash.” Yukio completed his words, knowing by experience the way he operated. Even when they were…with each other, she had never got duped into thinking that whatever they had, it extended to anything more than some friendly relief, both for him and her.

At his silence she knew that she had hit the nail on the head, her mind and heart clearing up as she also realized the reason for the sudden change in him. It wasn’t that he was prejudiced. She might as well have married a wookie. What mattered to him that she was married and not single anymore…meaning, not free (or able) to give him a place to take off his boots and put up his feet for the night.

“Really Logan-sama,” Yukio chuckled, looking once over her shoulder to check on Mariko. “What happened to the wild man I knew who’d go anywhere and at anytime, and make the place like it was his own. You got tame or what? Remind me to congratulate Ororo the next time…I….meet…”

The word ‘her’ was left unsaid, as just with the mention of Ororo’s name Logan flinched, his fists balling, almost as if feeling the effects of the slap from earlier.

Once again turning to Mariko, Yukio silently gestured to her to prepare the extra room for their unexpected guest. It all made sense to her. The way he looked, how gaunt and tired his voice sounded, how broken….something she had never heard from him. All of it.

“Come.” Reaching forward to grab his hand, she was only able to grasp empty air as Logan moved it away, shaking his head at her.

“Logan…” She frowned, this time stepping forward and yanking the elusive hand away to her. Had it not been for his healing factor he would surely have fallen down, unconscious, by now. And who knew how long had it been since he had eaten anything.

“Come.” Her hard decisive tone ended his wavering. Giving one nod, he jerked his bag up and followed her across the room to the door on the far side, his free automatically slipping up to the photograph in his front pocket.

A memory of happier times.

//End Flashback//

---

“When’d you meet her?” Logan gave a slow nod towards Mariko.
“A little more than two years ago,” Yukio answered with a smirk. “She had just got a job at a shop in the mall where I work,” she started recounting, her smirk turning into a soft smile. “It was her first day and she was late. She’d missed her bus and had to take another one and then make a change. Had to run the last kilometer or so. All for a measly eight dollars an hour job at a some luggage store.”

“Hn.” Logan grunted. A noncommittal expression from anyone else, it was a near full blown communicate for him.

“I was on my morning cleaning route,” Yukio carried on, not needing to explain about her (female) janitorial position. Logan already knew about that. “When all of a sudden, BAMM and down we both went. I was lucky that I fell sideways and moreover was in my overalls. But Mariko, not only she did go down face first, her entire front side also got wet.” Once again she stopped, grinning at the now comedic but then quite serious situation. “By the time we got up, she was nearly in tears. The first day on a job and not only was she going to be late now, she didn’t even have the money to get new clothes, not that there was shop open even if she wanted to. Luckily, I knew the hag over her work place. Good woman, if a slightly cracked in the head.”

‘Meaning, she likes her.’ Logan knew how difficult it was for Yukio to give someone an acceptable rating, let alone a good.

“Well, I ended up giving her my clothes. It wasn’t like I was going to use them anyway. And with my car it would be easy enough to come home without having to change.”

“Hn.” Logan scrunched his face, trying to get his around as to how the barely five foot six Mariko had got on and looked in the five ten Yukio’s clothing.

“Well, we started crossing each other in the mall,” the story resumed. “She’s also from back home and soon we became friends…sort of. Well, at least as good as a friend as I can be for some one,” Yukio amended in her usual deprecating manner, a side of hers that she showed only to her friends.

“Then about a year and half ago…” She trailed off, skipping the filler details and getting to the present. “Got hitched about eight months back and here we are. We live together. Got a smart kid between us. I still work at the mall, and she works at the Best Buy just down from the road from the mall. Drive to work together, have lunch with each other and when I finish, whichever of us gets free first, she calls the other and comes to her. Simple. Happy. Life.”

“And the kid.” Logan turned back towards the little girl, trying his best not to visualize his little Kendall seated the same way…Ororo sitting beside her, while baby James kept himself busy by closely examining each and everything in the room.

He tried and he failed, not only because it was difficult to not get the picture, but because it was impossible to wipe it away the memory of when it used to happen…for real.

“’miko.” Yukio leaned forward to get a better look at both Amiko and Mariko. “She’s hers. From her first marriage.”

“First marriage?” Logan’s head shot back towards his friend. He did not think that Yukio would be one to break up a married couple. Her heart didn’t work that way. That, unknowingly, she had just hit close to home (for him), only made matters worse.

“Yeah. Her husband…he died.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t feel sorry for him.” A frown marred Yukio’s clean features. “Her family got her married off forcibly to him. Her mother’d caught her sitting too close with another girl. Fuck, they weren’t even kissing. They was just holding hands,” the frown deepened. “Anyways, he brought her over to Canada. Wanted to make dollars, lot of ‘em. Got lost in gambling, started to drink…beating her.”

Silence grew between the two as Logan waited for Yukio to reign in the anger that had bubbled up within her.

“He died one night,” starting this time Yukio carried none of the softness that one would usually have when talking about the dead. “Had a little too much of a little too cheap booze. Fell right over the overpass…” She grew silent again, continuing a few seconds later. “Left nothing for her and ‘miko. Not even money for food…not even for one time.”

---

“So you tell me,” Yukio spoke again, almost five minutes later, her voice and facial expressions clear once again. “What have you been doing all this time? How are the kids and Ororo?” She grew worried as seeing how Logan nearly clamped up.

“The kids are good…very good,” his voice was barely audible.

Almost not wanting to ask, she forced herself to vocalize it. “And Ororo.”

“She’s good too.” Yukio did not think that he could look more beat up than he already was, but he had just proven her wrong. The only way she could term it, it was as if death had set on his weather worn features.

‘Did something happened to…’ She had just started to think the worst, or what she thought to be what would be worst, when he spoke, his words coming like a (hockey) puck to the face.

“Got engaged. Gonna get married.”

Note: Part 2 of Logan’s journey away from home. Will be posting the next and last part soon.

As for the Yashida in Mariko. Its to signify that she re-adopted her maiden last name after her husband died. Also, Amiko is her biological daughter here and not just adopted.

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