Logan carefully folded the newspaper on his lap and set it down on the tabletop. He shook his head, drumming his blunt fingertips against the glass. The woman was out of her damn mind, he concluded, reflecting on the article he had just read.
The proud nation of Wakanda was on the brink of civil war, and already numerous attempts on the lives of the Queen and Queen Mother had been made, and Ororo was throwing a party. A fuckin’ party. She may as well slap a bull’s-eye dead center of her forehead and call it good.
A low growl escaped the confines of Logan’s too tight throat. “Damn her.” He knew what she was doing, knew her too well not to see it. She was drawing the would be assassins to her. Luring them by making herself a wide open, hard to resist target. Hell, he thought picking up the paper again, she was even wearing a red dress in the photo.
Unconsciously his thumb moved across the paper, following the line of her proud jaw. Stubborn woman. She wouldn’t rest until T’Challa was avenged. He knew this. Knew it the second he heard the rumors of the Black Panther’s ‘ghost’ being spotted in the night.
After several slave trade rings and a drug runners had been mysteriously brought to an abrupt halt by an unexplainable snowstorm in the desert, Logan had known Ororo was responsible. He had called her several times to no avail. Each time he was asked to leave a message he simply hung up.
Eight months had passed since T’Challa’s death and from what he could tell, Ororo was out for out for blood and didn’t care if she spilled her own in the process.
“Fuck.” He stood abruptly. “Damn it.” He clenched his fist. It wasn’t his business. She was a grown woman. She could take care of herself. It wasn’t his business.
“Whoa. Where you off to in such a hurry?” Kitty asked, phasing to avoid a broken nose as the kitchen door slammed open and Logan barreled through.
“Wakanda,” he snarled.
Kitty watched his back until he rounded the corner. “About time,” she smirked.
Wakanda
Ororo’s breath hissed from between clenched teeth as her handmaiden laid a pack of ice against her ribs. Vibranium or not there was little help for the bruising she got from the multiple rounds of bullets fired at her.
“There you are.” The inlaid doors parted and the servants bowed.
Ororo grimaced. “Hello, N’Yami. Come to lecture me yet again?”
“Would it do any good?” The older woman asked, waving away the other occupants of the steam room.
One snowy brow rose.
“I didn’t think so.” N’Yami settled herself beside Ororo, adjusting her long golden sash as she did. “Why do you do keep doing this to yourself?” she asked mildly but with an underlying concern.
Ororo gave the older woman a surprised look. “You above everyone should understand why I fight.”
N’Yami sighed. “Revenge.”
“Yes.”
“Ororo, you must stop this.” N’Yami lifted a lock of Ororo’s damp hair. “When I gave you the Heart of Wakanda I did so for selfish reasons. I wanted his legacy to live on, but more than that I wanted to see my son avenged. I wanted blood for blood.” Her voice shook slightly. “I wanted it so much that the desire for it blinded me to what is truly important in life.”
Ororo tilted her face away from N’Yami’s penetrating gaze. “N’Yami, please, let’s not do this yet again.”
N‘Yami was undaunted, reaching out to turn Ororo‘s face back to her. “Life is meant to be lived, Ororo, and you are not living.”
“I live.” Ororo denied.
“No,” N’Yami argued. “You exist. You do not live. To live is to love, my child, and you do neither.”
“I lost all the love I had.”
N’Yami’s gentle fingers caressed her cheek. “You lost your husband, my darling, not your ability to love. T’Challa was a great man,” N’Yami said with pride. “A man that loved you, so much so that I know he would not want this for you. He would want you happy.”
“What would you have me do? Forget he was killed? Let his murder go on unpunished? Plaster a fake smile on my face and pretend that my heart isn’t a pile of dust in my chest?” Ororo demanded, her voice catching. “He has been gone months now and yet I still ache for him as acutely as the day he died.” Ororo rose swiftly to her feet. “I will not rest until T’Challa’s killers are brought to justice. Vengeance will be mine, N’Yami.”
N’Yami watched with sad eyes as Ororo stormed from the steam room, her shoulders stiff and her stride purposeful. She would be going out again soon, N’Yami knew. She shook her head. “What have I done?”
Ororo rolled across the dusty ground moving with practiced skill, narrowly avoiding the bullets whizzing past her head. She flipped to her feet, her natural aerobatic ability enhanced by the root of the Black Panther. Each motion was fluid and graceful, and entirely lethal. Ororo bent and twisted, rehearsing moves she had watched T’Challa do over and over, her fists and feet connecting with solid thuds in her enemies faces.
The one man left standing grabbed a wrench, swinging it and connected with her arm. She grit her teeth, anger rising and on the spur of the moment she crouched, the claws of her suit extending with a sharp snap and she swung out, pure aggression and emotion. An attack the only other man she had ever loved had taught her years ago.
The larger man fell back, his chest bloodied by long claw marks. “Please,” he whimpered. “Mercy.”
“I have none.” Her voice was like ice. Clouds rolled over her head, writhing in a furious frenzy. She lifted her hand to the heavens, fully intending on striking the man at her feet down when a deep, graveled voice cut through the night and pierced through her armor more effective than any bullet.
“Yer getting sloppy.”
Ororo started, whirling towards the darker shadows. “Wolverine?”
The shadows rippled and there he was. Same old Logan, with his dark flannel, worn jeans, beaten hat and faded satchel. “Howdy, ‘Roro.”
Ororo blinked twice before she fully believed her eyes. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Came to see if ya were being properly medicated.” He shrugged.
“Medicated?” she echoed.
“Seeing as how you’ve gone completely ‘round the bend.” He tossed the man attempting to crawl away from them a cursory glance.
Ororo snapped her fingers and thunder boomed effectively freezing the would be escapee in his tracks.
“What the hell are ya tryin’ to accomplish?” Logan asked. “Aside from getting killed.”
She barely heard his words, drinking in the sight of him. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how much she had missed him. “I am more than adept at taking care of myself. You know this.”
“I used to think so.” He agreed. “But I’m beginning to wonder.”
She glanced at the groaning men on the ground. “This is not the time.”
Logan shrugged. “As good a time as any.”
“I am in the middle of something,” she stated, gesturing to the fallen slavers.
“I can wait.”
“Wolverine.”
“Storm. Or is it Panther?”
She inhaled sharply. “I am neither.”
“Hnh. I guess I assumed as much. My Storm wouldn’t be out killing in the wee hours of the morning.” His gray eyes glittered in the shadows, reminding her of a wolf.
“I was never your Storm, now was I?” Where the hell did that come from?
He flinched imperceptibly, that barb cutting far deeper than she would ever know. “If yer done playing vigilante, is there somewhere we could go talk?”
Ororo placed her hands on her hips. “Playing vigilante?” she repeated in a slow monotone. “Of all the people to say--I mean--For you to make such a…a “ she tossed her hands up. “Unbelievable.”
“It’s a little pot and kettle,” he admitted.
“A little?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, rocking back on his heels. “Yer bad guys are making a break for it,” he pointed out.
Ororo didn’t even look. A whirlwind of sand surged to life, surrounding the four men and dropping them abruptly, leaving them unconscious…or worse. She seemed completely unconcerned with either option.
Seeing Ororo so callous disturbed Logan. It wasn’t her. The black suit, the uncaring attitude, the complete lack of Ororoness in her. It ate at his very being. He stepped towards her. “Is there somewhere we can go?” he asked again.
Seeing the glint of determination in his eyes Ororo relented. “Yes.” She pressed the small button on her wrist band, sending a signal to her soldiers. “Make certain these men are taken care of,” she ordered when they arrived. She turned to Logan. “Follow me.”
Twenty minutes later Logan followed Ororo into what appeared to be a conference room of the palace.
“Can I have anything brought for you?” she asked him.
“Beer.”
She nodded. “Same old Logan.”
He chuffed. “Old dog’s like me rarely change.”
Ororo felt a flutter in her stomach. “I would hope not, my friend.”
“’Ro. You wanna do me a favor?”
“Hm?”
“Take off the damn mask.”
Ororo paused in her pacing. She hadn’t realized it was still on. She wasn’t certain she wanted to remove it. It was the only barrier keeping Logan from seeing her face. For some reason that unnerved her. She turned from him, contemplating that thought.
He was beside her before she turned around, his adept hands pulling the flexible material from her face.
“There you are,” he whispered, almost to himself, his fingers brushing her jaw as he had in the photograph.
“Logan,” she whispered back, her own gloved hands reaching up to touch his face. It had been so long it seemed, since she had seen him. His face was scruffier than she remembered and his eyes more shadowed. She wanted to kiss the brackets of worry from his mouth.
Wait, what? Her heart skittered. No! She stepped away from him, her eyes heavy with guilt. Had that been her heart thundering in her ears? Had that been her wanting to kiss Logan?
Logan cleared his throat, also stepping back so there was distance between them, much as he was loathe to.
“So, what do I owe this unexpected visit? Aside from concern over my mental health?”
“I just wanted to see you.”
“It’s been months since we’ve spoken, Logan, and you hadn’t shown a desire to visit before.” She leaned back against the wall.
“You weren’t making yerself a walkin’ target before either.” he grumbled.
“Ah.” She shrugged. “I appreciate the concern, Wolverine, but I do know what I am doing.”
He grunted. “Really? Because I don’t think ya do.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think yer letting’ yer grief cloud your good judgment. You’re bein’ irrational.”
“You are calling me irrational?”
“Yup.”
Ororo shook her head, causing her braid to sway back and forth. “Unbelievable.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed. “So ya keep saying.”
“Well, forgive me for saying, but of the two of us I am not the irrational one.”
“Normally, nope.”
“Logan--”
“You lost yer husband, ‘Ro. The man you loved,” he ground out the last word. “No one expects ya to be rational. I just don’t wanna see ya get yerself killed.”
She straightened away from the wall and held out one arm. “Vibranium,” she said rotating her limb back and forth. “Bulletproof, energy absorbing, stronger than adamantium. Even you can’t cut me.” She pulled a dagger from her belt. “This blade has an acid that breaks down metal on an atomic scale. Just imagine what damage I could inflict on you with it,” she said idly. “You would be eaten alive from the inside out. No more adamantium. No more Wolverine.” She tilted the glowing blade towards him. “Projectile too. I could hit you from here.” She placed the knife back in her belt. “My senses are almost as good as yours,” she stated. “I’m twice as fast as I once was and four times as strong. I am capable of handling myself--and anyone who gets in my way.”
Logan lifted one brow. “Ya done?”
She cocked her head. “Excuse me?”
“Yer little resume. Ya done?”
Ororo opened her mouth to retort but before she could she was slammed into the wall, two claws on either side of her neck, the third partly extended. “It don’t matter, ‘Roro. Ya can have all the fancy gadgets in the world, all the enhancements and it won’t mean shit. You are not a killer. Ya don’t have the heart of a killer or the instincts.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “I am not the woman you once knew.”
“No,” he agreed. “But you could be. T’Challa died, Ororo. You didn’t. You don’t need to. It wasn’t yer fault.”
“Shut up.”
Logan stared into her swirling eyes, realization dawning. “My God, ‘Ro, you blame yerself.”
She stared straight ahead, not replying.
“It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have saved him…or your parents.”
Her lip trembled. “Shut up.”
“Ororo, it wasn’t yer fault.” He retracted. “You did nothing wrong.”
“I did nothing!” she shouted back. “I did nothing. I could have done something!”
“No, ya couldn’t have. You were six when your parents died. You didn’t even have your powers.” Logan reminded her. “And no one saw the bombing coming at the summit.”
Ororo shook her head. “It was a mutant rights summit. Violence should have been expected! He wouldn’t have even been there if not for me! He was there because of me! Because of what I am.” Tears shimmered in her eyes.
“No.” Logan cradled her face. “T’Challa was there because he was the King of Wakanda and it was his duty to be there.”
“He did it for me,” she cried. “He wanted to fix it for me…for our child.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Our child…”
Logan felt his heart clench. “Oh, God, ‘Ro. I didn’t know. You were pregnant?”
She nodded mutely. “I-I told him…right before…before--”
Logan pulled her into his arms. “Jesus.”
Feeling the warmth of Logan’s arms around her melted the last vestige of icy reserve packed around the wounds of her heart and Ororo let out a choked sob. “Oh, Goddess, Logan, I wanted that baby so much.” Her knees gave way and she sank to the floor with Logan holding her. Her fingers bunched in his shirt. “I want them to pay! Don’t you see? I want them to hurt!”
“I know,” he soothed. “I know.”
“I need them to hurt,” she cried brokenly, pressing herself into his chest.
Logan rested his cheek on the crown of her head. They will. He vowed silently. They will.
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