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“So, you finally did it huh….got what, who you always wanted.”

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

“I asked you something,” Ororo grated out, keeping her distance, both emotionally as well as physically. The cigar smoke hung like a wintertime fog in the room, its stench indicating that he had been here for quite sometime….and yet, even with the renewed swirls of smoke rising into the air….his lips were bereft of the stogie.

Pushing away a voice that pointed out her use of a tone and words that she usually brought into use as a teacher, and also another one that instinctively fell back on remembering the events from the last time he was in this room….and yet another which went even further back. Her arms crossed at her chest, her body tensed in a mixture of defensive and offensive posture, Ororo waited for the guttural voice to sound out in response to her.

Again, all she got was silence, with only the sloshing of liquid telling her what was going on. She knew she could just extend her arm and flip on the lights….she could, and probably should, yet she did not. For some reason, fear rose within her….fear of having someone chance on upon them, fear of actually seeing him…of seeing the pain, the accusation, the hurt in his eyes….the same that his words were trying so hard to disguise.

One long deep gulp and, “Answer my question.”

‘Question?’ Ororo almost asked, stopping her at the very last moment. Even though it had been over five minutes since he had said those words to her…it seemed like any time had passed at all.

“Please do not smoke in here,” she tried side stepping it. “There are children here. They don’t like it.”
“I am sure they ain’t the only ones yer thinkin’ about,” with his ‘vocal’ slam, he brought her back to his first comment. Just the rising slur in his voice was enough to tell Ororo how hard and how long he must have been drinking for him to reach such a state….enough to tell her...enough to worry her.

“B’sides, I ain’t smokin’,” he carried on, the sound of the bottle hitting the wooden floor accompanying his hand reaching out in the dark to bring forth the ashtray. “Its just…..them.” Ororo saw and got confused by the four red balls appear in the dark….smoldering ends of four cigars, all at once.

‘What is he doing?’ Even as the thought reared its head, Logan, more than half drunk and suddenly feeling quite wordy, provided the explanation for his rather twisted actions.

“Wanted to…drown you….drown yrr…yer…” even though she could not see it, Ororo almost sensed him shake his head to clear away the alcohol induced haze. “Wanted to numb my senses off ya.”

Even as hurt and confusion warred within her, Ororo’s ears caught the slowly mumbled follow up…

“Can’t trust ‘em around ya anymore.”

…and that pushed the mental argument into ‘hurt’s’ end. His trying to drink himself into an incoherent stupor, his using the cigar almost as incense sticks, Logan was trying to saturate his senses or muddle them enough so that he would not be able to focus in on her.

“I…” she still would not say his name….saying his name made it personal, made it hers….made him hers, and that he was no longer, just as she wasn’t his. At least that’s the way it was supposed to be.

“Can’t trust ‘em,” Logan garbled again, taking yet another gulp from the numbing amber liquid. “Can’t…lie….they lie…can’t trust ‘em.”

Standing there, just a few feet from him, Ororo remembered the only time she had ever seen him like this before. It was after he found about a major chunk of his past, well, major compared to the trinkets he was wont to finding. He found about his real name, a possible wife, maybe even a family…all gone, all dead and gone, without even a stray of an opening to follow to find out about them.

Returning to the mansion, night after night, he had drunk himself silly…only that time he wasn’t indoors but always at the lake. Ororo knew that because only the third day since his return, she found him lolled off under the shade of a tree, his leather jacket acting as a pillow-bed sheet mix, dozens of beer bottles and around half a dozen of the hard-stuff ones scattered around him. The next morning, taking to the skies, she saw him again, this time further along the shore, positioned pretty much the same way as he had been the previous morning. With the same happening the third, the fourth, the fifth day, she finally decided to step in, not to try to stop him, because she knew she couldn’t, but just to extend a helping hand…just letting him know that she would be there if and when he needed to talk.

A simpler time, it happened before they got together, before they fell in love….before it all ended.

---

“They lie,” the rather loud declaration brought her back into the present. With words, clear and mumbled, just rolling of his tongue, it seemed that a dam had been broken or at least breached in the usually reserved Logan.

“Trus’ instincss…nev’rr wrong,” Ororo had to really strain to catch the growls and garbles. “But you…lie…they lie. Tell me you lie….that you still….”

‘Still? Still what?’ Once again the question all but tore forth from her, its answer somewhat….pretty much, known to Ororo. The only reason she stopped was that she wasn’t sure that she needed the answer, the remainder of his sentence…that she wanted to hear it. Hearing it, speaking it…that would give it existence, would force her to face its implications….face the almost certain truth. That even after all this time….no, she would not even think it, because it wasn’t true. Whatever the two of them had was long gone and over with, they…she was with Sc…someone else, and he….he just couldn’t let go. ‘Yes, that is it.’

---

“Answer me.” He growled as his healing factor rescued enough of his sanity to bring him back to the actual conversation. Taking a gulp to re-muddle his senses, he cursed at finding the bottle all run out….and that was his last one.
“Its none of your concern,” Ororo replied with equal fervor, although on her part, the defiant attitude was more of a cover up than anything. She knew she would have had to face him sooner or later….she had known it even before the events of the evening…much before, right when she and Sc…got together.

“None of yer concern,” Logan repeated the answer to himself. “Yeah….none of it.”

Once again, silence filled the distance between them, broken once again by Logan’s words….his question.

“You love him?”

Denying attention at the cracking of his voice, the undercurrent of fear, longing and love in it, Ororo was quick with her answer….her standard answer it seemed.

“It doesn’t concern you…not anymore,” and that was the truth. It truly did not concern him, after all, he wasn’t even a mansion resident anymore…nor was he on the team. For all concerns and purposes, they were strangers now, with him just another of the field-operatives that the Professor used for his reconnaissance and sometimes even retrieval. She did not answer to him. She did not need to answer to him….nor did she want to.

“You love him?” He asked again, his anger returning as the affects of the alcohol receded from his brain, not completely, but enough for the sense of betrayal to return. Even after the public way their legal relation ended, Logan hoped that given the time, they could…would salvage their love and recapture what had been lost to them. ‘Just needs time,’ that had been his mantra for almost one year. ‘She just needs time.’ Seeing her earlier that evening, with….with….seeing her that evening. He should have known, should have sensed it…especially after what happened on James’ birthday. His senses let him down. On his trips to pick up and leave the kids, even though he could not see her, he always felt her eyes on him, always caught her smell….his senses telling him that she was there, just around the corner, getting ready to finally let him in…to let him return. ‘Should’ve known.’

Even as the man languished in despair and the animal snarled in anger, Logan, pushing down his first instinct to just let loose and do away with the challenger to his pack…his female, fell back on to option number two, drinking himself numb. If the rapidly clearing of his brain was any indication, he even failed in doing that.

“It…” once again about to repeat her answer, Ororo instead took a breather. “Yes.”

“….” His silence demanded an explanation.

“He is good to the children. They like him. It is a sa…stable arrangement.” She almost used ‘safe’ in place of ‘stable’, knowing that it really wasn’t either way. In truth, she did not know why and which way it was…it just was. She had kids and was single, he had kids and was single, it just felt…well, it just was.

“Stable, hn.” The way he said it, just cheapened the word and its meaning for Ororo. It made it seem as if their, her and Logan’s time together had not been stable and that he was a drunkard lout and that Ororo and the children were lucky to have had escaped from his clutches unharmed.

----

“Good….” Hanging there for a second, the solitary word gained companions and meaning as Logan trudged on. “Good that you finally did it….”

Knowing that there was more, Ororo stayed silent, almost wishing herself deaf as she almost sensed that whatever was coming next would be anything but good.

“…finally killed me.”

“Logan…” that did it for her, her stubborn resolve to not say his name knocked down with just three words. She did not even want to think of him as dead, not even now, not even with all that had gone wrong with him. Just the thought of him dying was enough to make her blood run cold.

“Finally said it huh,” even Logan had noticed how she had avoided addressing him as ‘him’, instead treating him like a stranger. “Well, its not like it ain’t the truth.”

‘Its not…’ too choked to answer, Ororo did all she could from breaking down and going to him. Had it not been for his voice, she wouldn’t have even known that he was in the room anymore.

“Summers….” He spoke the name without any feeling, no anger, no hate, no despair, no sense of defeat….nothing. “He…Jean is dead an’ that makes it right for him.” The consolation was anything but that. “Guess Rae needs a mother. Fuck knows I don’t remember mine an’ with me being dead, guess our…my kids…..”

‘Why are you doing this?’ Ororo pleaded silently. ‘Why? Please don’t….’

“…my kids need a father….a full time father,” he stressed on the full time. “One who’s there. One that won’t leave them and run off like a fool tryin’ to make the world safe for them….only to come back to see that the only thing that matters to him, the only people, they don’ want him anymore…..can’t stand him anymore.”

Whatever little input Ororo had provided in their conversation was all washed away in the silent tears flowing down her cheeks.

---

“Stable.” He came back to it. “What’s stable? Someone who loves you an’ would do anything for you, for your kids….anything, until the day he dies…an’ if possible even after that. Is that stable? Or someone who works to feed you, clothe you. What’s stable?”

“I did everything you said, everything thing you wanted….even that fuckin’ shit piece of paper that you wanted...even that. All because I thought it’d make you happy. Thought that it was just time and that you’d come around. Don’ think that I did it ‘cause of any lawyer or judge. I coulda just taken the kids if I wanted to….I could still take ‘em….” His words rang true. “No one could stop me if I wanted it…That ain’t what I want…that ain’t what I wanted….ever.”

Sensing his voice draw nearer, Ororo instinctively took a step back…into the closed door.

“I wanted…I wanted us.” The voice stilled and instantly drew back, heading towards the balcony.

“I’d do anythin’ fer you ‘Ro….even die,” he whispered in the end.

In the almost pitch-black night, all Ororo saw was a dark silhouette step into the balcony.

“An’ now you’ve killed me.”

What happened next not only charged Ororo into action but also released her throat muscles.

With one last look at her, the figure just tipped over the railings…falling away into empty space.

“LOGAN.”

THUDD!!





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