Chapter Eleven: Mated
Why must I feel this way
Just make this go away
Just one more peaceful day
~Staind
He was sneaking into the kitchen long after everyone had been shuffled off to bed, exhausted with the day’s events. For once, it was a happy, sated sort of exhaustion.
Logan had joined the action just as Ororo had decided to up the game’s ante by joining the girls’ side. The game had lasted another hour, with the boys winning by the narrowest margin in history. He’d just melted into the crowd. No one questioned him, which was a welcome relief.
The post-game party hadn’t wound down until the sun had long vanished behind the tree line. Everyone had been wrapped in warm sweaters by the end, when they all talked quietly under the blue-black sky. There had been no talk of war or anti-mutant protests. Little things like movies, books, and tales of childhood antics had ruled the evening.
Logan could not remember a better time. He’d never even known that people could truly just enjoy one another well enough to spend an entire day laughing. His sides had actually hurt by the time all of the adults had finished off the last of the beer and wine, after the children were inside, of course. He’d never known that Hank had once spent an evening drinking in medical school and actually took his mid-term while three-sheets to the wind.
Scott and Jean regaled them all with tales of the “original” crop of X-Men. A few he had never met and others he would never look at the same. They had traded embarrassing stories over their drinks under the twinkling stars above, enjoying the warm, familial evening.
Little things like that were what kept him at the mansion, why he fought the “good fight”. Not for the Dream or equal right or whatever the hell it was. He fought for the sliver of peace this place granted him.
Logan slipped down the stairs, ears alert for sounds of others waking for a midnight snack. His stomach rumbled angrily at him, making him look at his own body in annoyance. Hurrying to the kitchen, he could almost hear the leftover potato salad calling him.
After ransacking the refrigerator, he settled at the kitchen table. Jean had left the windows cracked, allowing a cool, fresh breeze through the cooking area. Sitting back against his chair, he ate slowly, enjoying the cold salad and a glass of water. It was so quiet, so peaceful. He could hear the soft sounds of the house sleeping around him, secure and safe. It was a rare gift, loving something. A home. A person. An idea.
It was something Logan was slowly coming to terms with. The house and children Logan had known would hook him on some level the moment he’d met Xavier. The sound of children laughing was like balm on his broken soul.
Ororo was another matter. He had been dragged, kicking and screaming, into loving that woman. In retrospect, he should have fought harder. Not that he was going to be filing a complaint anytime soon.
The sound of a soft footfall halted his fork before it reached his mouth. He waited, holding his breath and gently testing the air. Unfortunately, with the windows open, all scents were carried into the opposite direction.
“Hello?”
A soft, female voice cut through the silence. Logan relaxed, clearing his throat. “Yeah, it’s me.”
She poked her head around the doorway, smiling softly when she spotted him at the table. “Hello.”
Logan fought the urge to close his eyes, inhale the scent of her. Ororo came fully into the kitchen, dressed in one of her nightgowns. It was white, sleeveless, like something out of an old movie. The soft cotton whispered against her legs as she tiptoed to the fridge. She hummed as she rummaged through the contents of the icebox, bent at the waist. He did not resist the urge to peer over the island to catch a glimpse of her lean form through the thin material of her gown.
“Bother,” she said, coming up. Her pout was audible. “Someone polished off the potato salad.”
He allowed himself a grin, holding his fork up. “This potato salad?”
She gave him a scowl, coming over slowly. “Sneaky thief.”
Gesturing to the cabinets, he pushed out the chair across from him. The tinkling of plates and silverware preceded her arrival at the table. She sat across from him, handing him the plate. He carefully divided the salad and split it between them.
For a while, neither of them spoke, eating quietly in the moonlit kitchen. He felt her toes bump his, not surprised that she had forgone shoes before coming down. Pressing his foot against hers was a small gesture, but he wanted her to know it was all right to speak.
She smiled around her fork.
“Could you not sleep?”
Shaking his head, he took a moment to swallow before answering.
“No.”
“Nightmares?”
“Not exactly.”
When she did not press, he turned his thoughts inward. He had been dreaming, but not of needles and war and pain. The dreams were so similar to those that had come before his admission that he loved Storm. The dying light, the heartache at seeing it fade, her death lived over and over again by his broken mind.
Looking across the table to her, he could only hope that in some small way, she would understand that he loved her. She ate delicately, her beautiful lips wrapping around her fork carefully.
Her eyes, however, were emotionless. He knew that look. She was trying, very hard, to hide whatever she was feeling. They had not been alone since awaking together that first day back at the mansion.
He had been right about one thing in Canon City. He was tired of being alone. His fractured soul needed help to mend, help that only this beautiful goddess could give him.
If he closed his eyes, he could see her held aloft, the fury of her storm more fascinating than anything he had ever seen. Ororo’s power was unmatched. When he’d asked for help, she had told him that she would save him this time.
Did she not realise she already had?
Before he could think enough to stop himself, he spoke. “’Ro?”
She looked up at him, as though surprised that he had spoken.
“Yes?”
“I need you,” he said quietly. “I can’t do this alone.”
The sound of her nightgown rustling gave away the fact that she was moving. Before he could think, she was beside him, kneeling at his chair. Her hands reached for his face, palms on either cheek.
“You are never alone, my love,” Ororo said fiercely. “You have not been alone since the day we met.”
She paused and he knew she was about to hit him, hard. Swallowing, he braced himself for the blow.
“But I cannot help you if you cannot help yourself,” her voice was a pained whisper, the urge to flee written clearly in her blue eyes. “Why can you not tell me what happened in Colorado?”
To his horror, tears instantly bit at the back of his eyes. How could she ever understand? He had told no one of Rankin’s sadistic plan. He had not found the words to tell his family that he had killed a nearly innocent child, a puppet of another man’s insanity.
“I…”
But she was already gone.
~*~
Logan wandered the grounds until well after dawn. Tunza trotted beside him, giving the mutant reproachful looks once in a while. He knew the pooch was hoping Logan would rush back to the mansion, into the arms of his lover.
God, he wanted to. He would have, had her words not struck a cord inside him. She knew more than she was letting on, as always. It was not surprising. Ororo was perceptive, almost to a fault.
As the sunlight warmed his face, he kept his walking aimlessly. There was something soothing about being alone with nature, his thoughts drifting until he found something worth thinking about.
Unfortunately, his idle thoughts were consumed with the events in Colorado, with the child’s life on his clawed hands. He didn’t want to think about him. There was nothing he wanted more than to forget it had ever happened, to bury it so deep in his mind that it became more dream than actuality.
But there was no escaping it. He could see every moment behind his closed eyelids. The feel of the boy’s chest as it shredded under his hands, the fear in his eyes. What he had done was beyond unforgivable. His temper, his ire had gotten the best of him.
How could he face Ororo with that knowledge? What made him worthy of her?
She wanted him, all of him, but he was too piss-in-his-pants afraid to let her all the way in. What if she peeled back the protective layers of his heart only to find he was the monster he feared? What if that awful night last year came back and his claws were not buried in the material of her bed, but in the soft flesh of her chest?
Yes, he needed to be alone, to think this out. Unfortunately, that proved to not be an option.
“Logan!”
Turning at the familiar voice, he stopped walking to give Rogue a chance to catch up to him. She looked adorable, her little ponytail flying about her face. The young mutant gave Tunza a rough pat on the head before she came to stand beside Logan.
“You’re an ass.”
Both of his bushy brows shot up at her greeting.
“Nice to see you too, Marie. How’s your day been?”
The little woman gave him a glare, poking him hard in the ribcage.
“I want you to talk to me.”
“Aren’t we already talking?”
That earned him a smart slap on the back of his head.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Colorado.”
Startling at her blunt topic choice, Logan began to walk again.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Ah don’t care,” Rogue countered. “We’re talking about it before it destroys you and Roro in the process.”
Logan scowled, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Marie had that uncanny knack for seeing right to the heart of things and then using whatever information she had to manipulate him. It was irritating. He wondered, not for the first time, if the powers and memory she’d absorbed from him so long ago had granted her with a peculiar gift for seeing things as he saw them.
She fell into step beside him, nudging him with her elbow.
“I killed a kid, Marie,” he began at last. “And it’s hard to deal with that.”
“Ah can understand that,” Marie nodded. “But this was the guy that hurt your girl.”
Logan smiled, briefly, at her word choice. “Yeah. But that don’t make it right.”
She shrugged easily. “Ah would’ve done exactly the same thing.”
They lapsed into silence for a long moment before the girl spoke again.
“She was scared, when she woke up in the hospital, knowin’ you were gone. Ah’ve never seen someone more scared than that.”
Logan grunted.
“Except for when yah left like yah did at Magneto’s.”
He gave her a sharp look.
“Don’t get that way with me,” she said haughtily. “Yah left like you didn’t want tah be with us anymore. Yah hurt everyone.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” he immediately defended. “Everyone had to believe I was gone for good.”
“Why?”
“You think you or ‘Ro woulda stayed behind if you thought different?”
She paused. “All right, yah have me there.”
After another long, thoughtful pause, his young companion spoke again.
“Yah don’t think it’s over, do yah?”
He grabbed her arm, boring his eyes into hers when she turned to face him. The surprise faded from her face, her features screwing into a look of determination mingled with fear.
“What are you talking about?”
Marie inhaled deeply, blowing the breath out slowly as Tunza bounded ahead of them, in search of something that had caught his eye.
“Even if it’s not the Friends, there are others that will want to hurt us,” Marie said with wisdom beyond her tender years. “You and ‘Ro, all of us, we’re fightin’ a war that ain’t endin’ anytime soon. What are yah gonna do if somethin’ happens to you or her? Gonna leave it like this?”
Logan released his young friend’s arm gently, lapsing back into his own thoughts. She had a point, even if he didn’t want to admit it. All those months locked in the Friends’ hideout, something could have happened to him. Ororo would have never known how much he loved her.
If they went on a mission, if one of them fell in battle, what would she believe? That he had only loved her to an extent? That she was not the balm on his soul? Could he live with himself if she died never knowing?
All this thinking was making his brain hurt. The girl beside him was staring at him, obviously expecting an answer he didn’t have.
“All right,” she said with a long-suffering sigh. “Just think bout it, will yah?”
Logan nodded. Marie turned, sprinting back toward the mansion with Tunza hot on her heels.
He watched them go, looking up at the darkening sky. It would rain soon. For some reason, he knew it was not Ororo’s weather tampering, but true rain.
Maybe walking in it a while would do him some good. As the first heavy, fat drops hit him, Logan turned into the woods, vanishing from sight.
~*~
When Logan finally returned to the mansion, evening had already fallen. He was no closer to a solution than he had been before. Ororo deserved to know what she meant to him, just in case their reckless lives caught up with them.
Yet, he was certain that she deserved better. She needed someone steady, not this utterly fatalistic monster he could become at the drop of a hat. Her need for someone attuned with nature was just a byproduct of their relationship. She could get on well enough without it.
Yes, it was better if he just admitted that she was more beloved than life itself and then stepped back. Let her mourn and move on.
Still, the memory of that storm she had conjured to save them both flitted in and out of his mind. She had done that for him. To save him.
Mind a jumble of inconsistent thoughts, Logan trudged up the stairs toward his room. His mind was so occupied by this mismatched train of thought, that he never realized he had walked right by his bedroom.
He had already twisted the knob and stepped inside by the time he realized where he was. The scent of earth and rain met his nostrils a moment before he saw her.
Ororo stood at the terrace doors, as she had that night he’d taken her in the rain. A gentle breeze lifted the translucent curtains, making them billow around her. Ororo’s face was lifted slightly, letting the charm of nature wash over her.
God, it’s not right for her to be so damned beautiful, the thought held the hopelessness in his heart.
He would never stop wanting her. There would never be peace and silence in his soul so long as he was near her. Even if he gave into the impulse to run, screaming, into the wild, he knew it would be in vain. She would haunt his dreams and waking thoughts. There was no stopping it any longer, maybe there hadn’t been all along.
Logan loved her and she was his mate, in every sense of the word.
She turned, slowly, as though expecting to see him. Her lips were turned into a small smile, fire flashing in those beautiful eyes.
“I created an impossible tornado, for you,” she said proudly. “I would do it again and again if it meant keeping you here with me.”
“Tell me what to do, ‘Ro,” he choked in response. “I can’t stop loving you and fuck, I don’t want to try.”
Her sculpted chin lifted in response. “Trust me. Stop fighting me at every damned turn.”
“I don’t know how.”
“TRY!”
Her shout made him wince. There were barely concealed tears in her voice. Logan ached to rush across the room, to soothe her fears with words he wasn’t sure he really meant. But that had gotten him into this situation. He had loved and accepted her love without truly knowing what it would entail.
For both their sakes, he could not blindly fumble into it again.
“I don’t know if I can.”
Tears slipped down her perfect cheeks. What had he told her so long ago when she admitted her tribe had worshipped her as a goddess? Oh yes, he could see why. With the stormy backdrop framing her through the window, she had never seemed so untouchable, so immortal.
He knew better, but at that moment she was his deity. He wanted to fall to his knees and worship her as was only fair. He was a mere mortal; she was everything divine.
“I chose you, Logan,” she continued. “Perhaps not at first, but I when I realized I was falling for you, I let it happen. I wanted it to happen. And I do. I love you. Why are you afraid of me?”
Logan swallowed thickly. The space between them so resembled those awful months when they had grown apart that it was a physical pain to feel it again. If he did not act now, with feeling, they would never cross this chasm. There would be nothing left save pain and anger between them.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Logan said at last. “I’m afraid of what you make me feel. I’m terrified of hurting you, physically and every other way. I’m petrified that I’m not worthy of you. I’ve got blood on my hands, ‘Ro, and I don’t deserve to even look at you.”
“Stop,” she pled, her face wet with sorrow. “Logan, I want you. I want to wake up to your face every morning, to kiss you goodnight before I sleep. I want to argue with you, make love with you, and laugh with you until this world comes down around our ears. But you are so intent on pushing me away that it hurts me to even look at you.”
She drew in a shaking breath. “I told myself I could wait forever and I could. But I don’t want to. Please, let me help you.”
Logan felt his hands shake as he raised them to tug at his wolfish peaks of his hair.
“I killed that kid,” he admitted at last. “And I enjoyed it. I tore his innards apart and loved every moment of it.”
If she was shocked, she never showed it. Hope sprang in her eyes and that, more than his need for soul-rending confession, pushed more from his unwilling lips.
“He tried you kill you, and I couldn’t stand it. He joked about how you screamed when he shot you. I murdered him, in cold blood, for daring to touch you. I would do it again.”
Her icy resolve seemed to crack, her hand seemingly reaching for him of it’s own accord. He took one, fateful step toward her.
“Rankin was behind it all, Ororo,” Logan continued. “That kid was poisoned against mutants, against you. He didn’t deserve his death, you can’t fault someone for stupidity. I killed Rankin with my bare hands. I would have kept punching him until he was nothing but blood and broken bone, had those bullets not torn me up.”
“I killed five people that day,” Ororo said flatly. “The others didn’t want me to know. But I knew. I killed them intentionally. Lightning and hail tore their bodies asunder. And Logan, I enjoyed it. I thought they had killed you.”
Shocked by her admission, Logan could only blink at her for several seconds.
“We are more alike than you want to believe, my love,” Ororo finished. “You are the only soul on this earth that can truly understand the guilt and joy that comes with taking a life in revenge for the pain a person can inflict on a beloved.”
“You killed them?” was all he could say for several minutes.
The very thought that Ororo had killed in his name was repugnant, though it stirred that primitive mating call that howled within his chest. Did she feel it, too? The call that echoed primal longing, the success at finding that perfect mate?
One look into those fiery blue eyes spoke volumes of her needs. She wanted him. After everything, she still wanted him.
Something deep inside Logan snapped.
“I can’t promise I won’t piss you off.”
“I can make no such promise either.”
“Good,” Logan growled. “Come over here. Now.”
Ororo was in his arms before he even noticed she had left her place at the terrace doors. Her lips were on his, hot and ferocious. Logan’s arms encircled her easily, dropping them both onto the bed so hard that they bounced.
His clothing ripped under her eager hands. He tore her gown down the middle, latching his mouth onto any bit of exposed flesh he could find. One hand found the three, thin scars on her ribcage left by his nightmares months ago.
The touch sent Ororo into a low, sultry moan that resonated through the room, through his soul. He answered her call with a lusty growl. How they managed to remove all of their clothing would ever be a mystery.
Neither of them commented as naked flesh met flesh. He touched every inch of her skin that he could find. She answered him in kind, those burning hands scorching his body as she ran them over his flesh.
Logan thrust inside her without pause. She threw her head back, a scream lost in suddenly howling winds. He reveled in it. He wanted her to let loose, to destroy everything around them in her ecstasy.
Ororo rocked her hips against his, growling to mirror him as they both found the position sorely lacking. He pulled away from her, watching her lithe, beautiful body as she scrambled to her knees.
His hands molded to her hips, his cock finding it’s way back inside her with one rough thrust. She propped herself up on her hands, her hips moving like pistons against his.
It was frantic, carnal on a level he had never experienced. All thought, all words were lost in a frenzy of heated flesh and moaning demands. Logan and Ororo mated as animals, their primal nature finally overcoming every prohibition imprinted by society.
When at last it was over, in a flurry of sleet, hail, snow, and screaming growls, they collapsed into one another’s arms. Warm, sated, home, Logan turned to his mate.
“I’m never letting you go.”
“I will never allow it.”
With that, they fell on one another again, shaking the very walls of the mansion around them in a fury of passion unmatched by anything else to ever grace the earth. He took her and took her and took her until there was nothing left, save the sanctity of this embrace.
It was done. They were apart no longer, now a mated pair for life. They might regret it in the years to come, but for the moment, they fell into the thick, dreamless sleep provided by boundless love.
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