Chapter Six: Pretending
I can't hide the way I feel about you anymore
I can't hold the hurt inside, keep the pain out of my eyes anymore
My tears no longer waiting, my resistance ain't that strong
My mind keeps recreating a life with you alone
And I'm tired of pretending that I don't love you anymore
~Travis Tritt
She backed away from him, leaving his arms cold and empty, until she hit the open terrace doors. Those healing hands covered her face as the heavens screamed betrayal for her when words refused to come.
The assembled mutants all seemed too stunned to so much as breathe. Ororo’s eyes were locked onto Logan’s, stealing every lie he’d carried with him these last eighteen months. He couldn’t look away, though he wanted desperately to hide from that penetrating stare.
Her destroyed face reflected what the winds and pelting rain were screaming at him.
“How could you?”
Logan swallowed hard, fighting his tears. “I…”
But his wife turned on the violet-haired telepath, her eyes swirling with white as she fought for control of her mutation. Betsy’s tears coursed down her pale cheeks even as Angel almost absently soothed her. His wings fluttered out from his back, encircling the trembling mutant as Ororo’s pain flooded the room.
“I’m sorry, Storm.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could have trusted me!” Ororo screamed with the howling winds. “Both of you!”
He looked down at his hands, blinking when he thought he caught the red haze of her blood still spilled onto his flesh. His eyes slammed closed, fighting with the images of that terrible day.
“Remove it.”
At his wife’s demand, Logan shook his head. “No. God, don’t.”
“Now, Elizabeth,” Ororo shouted, scrambling gracefully to her feet. “Take the block off. I want those memories back.”
“Please…” Betsy pled. “I can’t. Not right now, I’m not prepared for it.”
“Then prepare yourself,” Ororo demanded, drawing up to her full height. It would never cease to amaze Logan how intimidating she could seem, even when emotionally wrecked. “By the Goddess, Elizabeth, not even Charles would tamper with my mind.”
“I’m sorry,” the British woman tried again.
“Do it,” Angel whispered into the woman’s ear. “I’ll be here.”
“You don’t understand,” Psylocke turned to him. “If I go into this with no protection, I’ll relive the entire thing through her eyes.”
“That is the price you must pay,” Ororo insisted.
The two women locked gazes across the dimly lit room. Psylocke looked ready to bolt, but Logan knew her better than that. Her quivering chin tilted upward and she gestured to the bed.
“We’d better lie down. This won’t be pleasant.”
~**~
Eighteen Months Ago…
“Everyone still got their knickers on?” Betsy asked as she finished the post-flight checks.
“Not me,” Ororo whispered as she passed her husband, heading back toward the hatch.
He growled playfully, catching her before she could reach the hatch to open it. Heedless to Betsy miming violent vomiting in the cockpit, he pulled his wife closer, hands firmly grasping her leather-covered backside.
Ororo smiled, giving in to his entreating mouth when he leaned down for a kiss. He brought her flush against him, their bodies almost instinctively fitting together as though they were more comfortable that way than apart.
“Ya tryin’ to make us late, darlin’?” He whispered huskily against her lips.
“Of course not,” Ororo replied, all innocence.
“Vixen,” he murmured, wrapping her in another searing, pulse-pounding kiss.
Five years into marriage and the man still made her blood boil. Just a heated look across a classroom could make her hot and bothered. When he backed her into the bulkhead of the jet, she grinned against his lips.
He leaned on the bulkhead, taking his time about kissing her until she felt thoroughly snogged, as Betsy would term it. There were times she still felt like a newlywed in his arms, as though that giddy, heady thrill would never quite leave her. Her husband grinned against her lips, their conversation the previous night coming back to her.
So, what if I wanted kids?
You would need a new wife.
Liar.
Uh-huh.
Can I convince ya?
You may try.
“My God,” Betsy said as she opened the hatch and came to join them. “You two are like a couple of teenagers. Shaggin’ and snoggin’ every time I turn round.”
“Can you blame me?” Ororo said against Logan’s lips, causing him to chuckle quietly.
“No.” Psylocke laughed. “But we’ve work to do. Come on, kids.”
Wolverine and Storm broke apart reluctantly, Logan’s squeeze of her backside telling her she was in for an athletic evening when their work was completed. The trio of X-Men filed out of the jet, looking around them cautiously for any signs of danger.
It was supposed to be an easy trip to Tokyo. A young mutant was displaying awesome powers, which they felt could be harnessed and controlled with proper teaching. Logan’s contacts had already told them that the girl was orphaned and in need of a decent home.
“Wait.” Logan, whom had taken point, thrust his arms out to halt both women. “Somethin’ ain’t right.”
“Scanning…” Psylocke closed her eyes and Ororo felt the faint, gentle caress of her mind reaching out around them.
Wolverine was crouched low to the ground, sniffing toward the dense forest they had landed in. The mutant lived in a remote village, or so they were told. It was somewhat out of the way from anything resembling civilization, though she knew Tokyo was only a few dozen miles to the south.
“I’m picking up people.” Betsy’s voice was detached. “But not a single mutant. It’s weird, though, the village is dead head, but most of what I’m picking up are American blokes.”
Snikt! Logan released his claws even as Psylocke conjured herself a psi-blade and Storm cloaked them with thick, smoky fog.
“We must investigate,” Storm said in a tone filled with command.
“I knew she was gonna say that,” Wolverine murmured. “You?”
“Predictable, as always.” Psylocke replied.
“Do shut up, both of you,” Storm cut in playfully.
“Ok, I’m goin’ low an’ right,” Psylocke offered.
“Wolverine take the left, I will be aloft.”
As Ororo gathered the wind, careful to leave her fog undisturbed, she heard Logan comment to Psylocke.
“You know anyone else that uses the word ‘aloft’ like she does?”
Psylocke laughed before the two of them broke up into separate directions. Storm rolled her eyes, good-naturedly taking the ribbing. It was, after all, a form of playing and Logan happened to be a very playful creature.
For several moments, Ororo flew over the nearby forest, her eyes trained on the ground. She caught sight of several wild creatures, passing them with a respectful nod. Trees filled with bright green leaves thickly populated the ancient forest. It beckoned her, this primitive nature all around her. She wanted to get lost in it for a while.
Ororo knew Logan was feeling something similar. She tapped her comm. badge quickly.
“Report.”
“Um,” Psylocke replied a moment later. “Lots of trees, a few serpents, and a whole lot of dirt. Wolvie?”
Silence crackled on the comm.
“Wolverine?” Storm asked again, pulling herself up short in mid-air.
“Storm?” Psylocke answered. “I lost my feed on him!”
“Damn it! Rendezvous back at the jet. Something is terribly wrong.”
~**~
“Still nothing,” Psylocke reported hours later. Her eyes were tightly closed, her lovely face coated with sweat from the efforts of her psychic powers. “Its like he just…”
“He is not dead,” Ororo cut in from the cockpit of the jet. She was scanning for his GPS locator on every channel she could think of, hoping he would activate it.
“We can’t just sit here on our arses doin’ nothing.” Betsy cut in. “We should go look for him.”
Storm chewed on her bottom lip, not turning toward her friend. She wanted to go tearing through that forest, ripping up trees one by one until her husband returned to her, but that was not the X-Men way. One never embraced danger without gathering as much information as possible.
At the moment, they knew nothing save that Wolverine had been missing for three hours.
“All right,” Storm gave in to the primal pull that ordered her to go locate her husband. “We stay together. Continue scanning and we will head in the direction he was.”
“You know how to track, luv?”
Storm smiled wanly. “I married Wolverine, of course I know how to track.”
They left the jet together, moving as one seamless unit. Their hours of training together in the Danger Room made them a perfect team. Storm’s eyes darted through the underbrush, one hand reaching out to caress a thick, white and yellow serpent as it dangled gracefully from a tree limb.
The serpent brought its broad head up, staring at her as though curious. Ororo tilted her head, amazed when the serpent mimicked her movement. It blinked at her, its scales rasping together as it shifted positions on the wide tree branch.
“That is completely disgusting,” Psylocke whispered. “Are you communing with a bloody serpent?”
“He is beautiful, isn’t he?” Ororo said, somewhat distracted.
“Ew,” the warrior said comically.
Ororo stroked his lovely head once more, pleasantly surprised when it nuzzled her hand. It truly was an odd serpent.
The world behind the serpent came suddenly into sharp focus. Ororo’s carefully trained eyes noted several human figures moving through the underbrush. Many of them were covered in military camouflage.
“Betsy…” Ororo kept her hand on the serpent, not betraying that she had seen anything.
“I see them,” the other woman confirmed.
“Go!”
One mutant darted into the air while the other threw her body into the nearest tree she could find. Gunfire tore through the peaceful forest as both women took shelter. Psylocke leaped from tree to tree, making her way toward the military men.
“Weapon X,” Storm called over the gunfire into her comm.
“The wankers after Wolvie?” Psylocke called back on a grunt.
“The very same,” Ororo replied.
“Go find Wolvie, let me play hide and seek with these right bastards.”
“Betsy…”
“I’ll be careful.”
Storm propelled her body in the direction the men had come from, draping thick fog over Betsy without prompting. The woman would need all the protection she could get. The white-cropped mutant searched the area for anything that could resemble a base of operations for the Weapon X project.
Hating that they had been led directly into a trap, Ororo dropped out of the sky like a bomb when she found several human guards loitering aimlessly in the remains of an old village. Catching them off guard, Ororo was able to take one out before the others knew she was even in the area.
Her hand-to-hand skills deadly due to extensive training with her husband, Ororo ducked several blows, using a nearby two-by-four to knock one into a heap on the ground. Two more went the way of the first via a low voltage lightning strike.
The final, however, was shoved into the ground and straddled. Ororo, eyes glowing white, grabbed him by the uniform, bringing his face up to within an inch of hers.
“Where is my husband?”
He stammered. Ororo banged his head into the dirt. “Where is my HUSBAND?”
“T-There…” he pointed behind her, fear naked in his eyes. “D-Down.”
“Thank you,” Ororo said sweetly. She pulled one leather-covered fist back before effectively breaking the man’s nose. He slumped into the damp earth, unconscious much to her satisfaction.
It took only seconds for Ororo to discover the steel trapdoor hastily covered in the floor of one abandoned hut. She wrenched it open, not bothering to alert Psylocke. The mental link they kept open told her the telepath was amused, which meant she was playing with her foes and in no danger.
“Logan?”
Ororo called for her husband, rushing down the thick, steel corridors. The construction of the small, underground holding facility looked slapdash, as though it had been hastily slapped together at the last moment. She had no doubt that the secretive faction known as Weapon X had detained the mutant the X-Men had come for and emptied the village.
Bastards.
Her heavy boots echoed with every hurried step. Two rooms were empty, filled with filing cabinets and foodstuffs. Ororo moved past quickly, searching for her husband. She called his name several more times, succeeding in drawing three more guards to her.
Quick punches and well-placed kicks put all three groaning on the floor. She didn’t have time for this. She had to find Logan before they did something to him. His mind was too fragile when confronted with these demons. Precious time had already been lost.
“There.” A relieved sigh left her lips when she spotted the bolted door at the end of the corridor. It was the only reinforced door in the entire makeshift compound.
Her hand flattened against the metal, one glance telling her that it was adamantium. Damn them. Ororo peeked through the window, unable to see very far into the room.
The keycard slot might have proved troublesome, had she not had the foresight to bring her electronic lock picks with her. It took only seconds for the door’s hydraulics to whistle as they opened. Ororo glanced down the hall to ensure no one was following before she ducked inside.
Carnage met her horrified eyes. Blood was splattered all over the silvery metal, soaking through the holes in the floor. Ororo stepped over two bodies, hoping against hope that her husband would recognize her scent.
“Psylocke?” She called into the comm. “I found him.”
A pause. “I’ve got your location. There in a flash, luv.”
“Logan?” Ororo called for her, turning a corner.
He was standing over the bodies of what looked to be several scientists. Crimson covered his shredded X-Men uniform, though they had left his wedding ring upon his finger. Ororo twisted hers nervously as she came closer.
“My love?”
Her feral husband turned to her, but there was no trace of the man she loved in that ferocious gaze. He said nothing, growling low in his throat. For one, terrifying moment, Ororo nearly fled. Instead, she swallowed fear and stepped closer.
Logan would never hurt her.
A beat later, he flew at her. Ororo flinched, falling back. She tripped, the heel of her boot caught on one of the floor rungs. She threw her hands out, but the winds did not heed her call.
“Logan?”
Her voice, filled with fear and disbelief, did not jar him from his primal rage. His adamantium-laced fist slammed into her mouth. Ororo instinctively recoiled from the mind-numbing blow, blood spilling from her mouth. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was thankful his claws were retracted.
That thought was shoved aside as he fell on her again. Her limp body, already disoriented from the first hit, was lifted only to be tossed onto the metallic floor. She felt her body break slightly under the pressure. She lost track of coherent thought, refusing to believe that this was happening.
Snikt! As his claws appeared, Ororo closed her eyes.
She didn’t want to see anymore.
~**~
Now
The house was dark and quiet all round him. He could see in the absent light, outlines of the furniture she had picked out years ago. She’d been so thrilled when he presented her with the house, so overjoyed to decorate it. To make it their home.
It had taken him a year of secrecy to build it for them. He bought a small plot with the money left to him by Xavier, money he had not touched. The rest of it went to building the custom home, filled with windows and light.
When it was finished, he’d brought her here for the first time. There, in the center of the living room where he currently sat, he’d asked her to be his wife. They’d made love on the hardwood, celebrating their commitment.
Now, the entire house brought him a fierce longing. He never wanted her to know. That look of fear in her eyes, the knowledge that he’d beaten and broken her body with his own hands ate at him every day.
She’d woken from that Psylocke-induced coma after the terrible revelation and fled. He didn’t know where she’d gone, but before her feet left the balcony of her room, he was out of the mansion. He couldn’t stay there, not with the accusation in every eye, the barely restrained fury he could feel building all around him.
It was better to hole up here, to gather his wits again.
When headlights bounced up the driveway, he wasn’t even particularly surprised. It would be one of three people. Psylocke seeking comfort. Piotr looking for a fight. Or ‘Ro demanding more answers.
The engine cut off in front of the house, behind his Jeep. The glass in his hand was emptied quickly, Logan hoping it would give him more courage to face this. It was refilled with the bottle resting on the table beside him. He wished, as he had since the day it happened, that Chuck was around. This whole thing would have been easier to take with Chuck around to guide them.
Damn Phoenix for taking him away.
The front door opened quietly, shutting just as softly a moment later. Light footsteps came to his preternatural ears followed swiftly by the unmistakable scent of his wife.
He raised his tortured eyes as she entered the living room from the foyer. Her hand rested on the wall, her eyes unguarded. Ororo was dressed in black slacks and a soft white tee bearing the X symbol.
To his utter astonishment, she was wearing the wedding band he’d left on her dresser.
Quietly, she moved into the room, lowering her slender form onto the sofa across from him. He could see the ravages of tears on her face, which was devoid of makeup. Her hair was pulled from her face in a short ponytail, leaving her open to him.
Logan remained where he was, watching her miserably. He’d not dressed completely, leaving his feet and chest bare with faded blue jeans. Another long draw from his glass filled the empty space between them.
She wasn’t going to talk first, apparently. Logan took that as his cue and said the one thing he’d wanted to for a year.
“I’m tired,” he rasped. “I’m tired of pretending I don’t love you. I do. I never fuckin’ stopped. I just had to get you away from me. I didn’t want you to know.”
Hurt flashed in her blue eyes, but she said nothing.
“I thought if I pushed you away, it would be easier. You deserve somethin’ better than an animal.”
“Logan.” She swallowed audibly. “Stop.”
He immediately halted, dropping his gaze to his glass.
“We have always been stronger together than apart.” Her voice was soft, but hard as diamonds. “We could have survived anything, even this. All you had to do was trust me and trust yourself. Instead…you betrayed me. More than anything, that betrayal hurts the most.”
Logan felt tears sting at his eyes, but he fought them back. He would not cry in front of her, no matter how often she had seen his tears.
“You just…” she shrugged as though hopeless. “You didn’t have the balls to stand up for us. You discarded me the moment something you felt we couldn’t handle appeared.”
“The balls?” He stood, throwing the nearly empty glass against the wall. It shattered into a thousand pieces, oddly reminding him of his heart.
“Yes, the balls, Logan.” She seemed entirely unmoved by his display of temper. “You just walked away.”
“I didn’t just anything, darlin’,” he growled, turning away from her. “It killed me, a little more every day, to wake up without you.”
“You did this to us, Logan. Not the attack, but everything after.” He heard her stand. “Playing with my mind, breaking my heart, how did you think this would end?”
Logan’s head dropped forward, some of the fight leaving him. His deadly hands clenched before releasing several times. He could feel the dangerous tips of his claws beneath the skin, claws that had nearly taken his wife’s life.
“I was trying to protect you.”
“You foolish man,” she spat with venom. “Did you not think I would fight for you back?”
“I hoped you’d be too pissed off.” There was slight amusement in his tone.
“You may have given up on me, but I had fight in me yet.” Ororo sighed. He heard the unmistakable sound of her sneakers on the floor as she moved to her favorite western window.
“I’m not proud of this,” he admitted, letting his armor crack slightly.
She did not speak for a long, tense moment. Out of the corner of his eye, if he turned his head just slightly, he could see her form bathed in moonlight. Ororo turned her face up to the moon, her arms crossed over her chest and a broken look on that beautiful face. Logan’s heart twisted violently in his chest. She didn’t have the right to be so beautiful, so easy to love and hard to protect.
“We’d been talking about children,” she admitted after several minutes. “We were going to strengthen ourselves again.”
Twist the knife again, darlin’, he thought miserably.
“How could you walk away? Why don’t you trust me?” Her voice caught, the desperate sound making his knees want to give out.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But when you woke up in the hospital…you screamed at the sight of me, you pulled away. The docs said it was the fever…”
“But it was your second worst fear realized,” she finished for him. “I feared you.”
He nodded with a grunt.
Her fingers danced over the slender scar on her forehead. “This? I don’t remember.”
Logan cradled his right hand with the left. “You ducked. Caught the edge.”
“Oh.”
The air between them was cold, charged with fear and doubt and hurt. Logan continued staring at his hands, feeling the weapons tucked away beneath his flesh. She didn’t say anything for several minutes. He could almost see her drawing everything inside of herself.
“I meant what I said,” she spoke softly, turning to him finally.
Logan followed her cue and met her eyes, his body facing hers. “When?”
“We mated for life,” she repeated her whispered words from the romp on her desk. “We are still mated. I am not ready to let go of that.”
Hope springs eternal and it sprung up in Logan’s chest at her words. She knew his deep, dark secret, had exposed his deception. She still wanted him?
“Unlike you, I do not give up easily.”
At that verbal slap, Logan cast his gaze back to his hands. Ororo crossed the room quickly. Her hands grasped his cheeks, the cool metal of her wedding band almost searing his cheek.
“I don’t care what the papers say, husband, we’re still married. I need some time, but I am not giving up.”
With that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the house. Logan slumped back onto his chair as the engine of her car started and headlights faded from his view.
She was crazy. Completely nuts. Too bad it was something he adored about her.
~**~
He came up behind her, landing on the wide branch and letting his wings instinctively encircle her. The woman was quiet, watching the mansion from her warrior’s crouch. He’d followed during her mad run from the mansion, as though she could outdistance the demons waiting there. He knew, without a knowing why, that she would need him before the night was through.
Her beautiful eyes were filled with pain, with tears she would not shed. Uniquely violet hair danced on the breeze, her revealing lilac uniform showing off a physique many supermodels would kill for.
She reached out with the hand not keeping her precarious balance on the branch, touching the downy feathers of his wings. Angel blushed slightly, letting the muscles twitch so his wings fluttered. That brought a small, beautiful smile to her lovely face.
“You’re so beautiful,” Psylocke whispered in the darkness. “How can someone so pure exist in this world?”
“Well,” he began, inwardly giddy as a schoolboy at her praise. “I like to think I’m here to remind people that there is beauty in this world.”
“I don’t usually see it,” she admitted, her eyes still trained on the twinkling lights from the far off mansion. “I’m a warrior. I see power, weakness. Blood, victory. But you…you show me this other side of things.”
“Good,” Angel said, drawing his wings closer around her until her vision of the mansion was blocked. “I’m doing something right then.”
Still in her graceful, almost catlike crouch, she turned to face him. His heart stuttered helplessly in his chest, as it usually did whenever she turned those enormous violet eyes on him.
“How can you be so bloody nice to me? I tampered with Storm’s mind, nearly drove her barmy. And here you are, covering me.”
Angel shrugged one shoulder, his wings moving slightly with the gesture. Time to bit that bullet. “I think I’ll be spending a lot of time covering you.”
Astonished by his bold words, Psylocke looked down at her hands. Her hair trailed over her cheek in the light summer wind, so Angel reached forward to brush it back behind her ear. With a small smile, he watched as she looked back up at him.
“Don’t act like you don’t know, Elizabeth,” he whispered. “You’ve known for some time that I’m falling for you. My poker face is…”
“Absolute shite,” she answered for him. “Angel, is this really the time?”
“We only have the time given us,” he said, brushing a thumb over her cheek as his wings tightened, bringing her closer. “We’ll deal with everything else tomorrow. I just want this moment for us.”
Psylocke smiled, touching his feathers with soft, exploring fingers as she gave in. The warrior and the angel, the irony didn’t escape him. He thought, however, that every warrior needed something to hold on to.
He wanted to be that something for her.
When their lips met for that first, tender kiss, his heart soared. He took her slender body into his arms and propelled them off of the branch. They lunged into the starry sky, arms locked around one another as if their lives depended on it.
In some way, perhaps, they did.
