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Toughie, Nem, Pookie, Saki and Rhapsody81...your feedback was cherished!


Disclaimer; I did not own any of the X-Men then and still do not now.


Chapter.16.


It had to be around here somewhere. It had stood for fifty years before he was born and would no doubt stand for countless more. He concentrated on the familiar line of the trees, looking carefully for that secluded turn-off. At any rate it kept his mind from Ororo’s tense posture in the seat next to him”her desperately apologetic air without wanting to say anything. Perhaps she feared he’d vent at her again, which he would not, but had not the heart to say anything yet to allay that worry. Or maybe, just maybe the humility was genuine. Genuine...that was a trait he was still coming to terms with, still learning to accept after all of theses years....The silence was best kept for now”the time for talk would be soon at hand. It was inevitable, one way or the other.


A sudden rip in the thick gigantic ruddy coloured age-old bodies like a torn leaf and there they were, cutting through the trees, heading to a destiny, of sorts. It would do for now. He couldn’t go any further”the old hunter’s shack he remembered from hunting trips in this area would do for tonight. Ororo looked out of the window with a careful eye as the car rolled up to the log shack with its rusted corrugated iron roof that curled like dog-eared paper at the edges. She didn’t ask anything about it, she simply got out of the car as soon as it halted, seconds before the engine chugged out; a hot dying breath in the cold air, in the silence of the inert. It was a stagnation that surrounded them completely. Not a single noise stirred in forest at first as if it contained no life whatsoever. But the full-blooded echo of a wood pigeon soon shattered through that; its earthy call appropriate to its name. It called once or twice, the waves of that cooing voice lasting beyond its expiry, stirring other inhabitants to life in the thickening dimness; an owl here, an indistinct mammal cry there, rustling along the damp and sodden earth. Ororo walked resolutely, her feet wading through the old foliage on the ground as she stared down at her dirty white trainers intermittently through the mass, absently kicking at fallen twigs and leaves. Through all of this fallen death something struck her; this all had to stop. It simply had to...The slam of the other car door echoed through the trees; her feet stilled.


Logan walked up to and past her, eyeing over the old shack, not looking at her once; expectant that Ororo would follow with out complaint or inquiry. He hadn’t seen this place in more years than he cared to remember. He’d almost forgotten that it existed until they happened upon the turning”distant memory coming into shocking Technicolor. It was a long time ago, another era. It was another lifetime...something and someone un-relatable to who he now was. Coming up here, as a kid, getting up to all sorts, living a carefree life he now imagined was nothing more than a fantasy...He wouldn’t have thought it possible but a wistful smile almost graced his lips...but not quite. Nothing from his past here could ever erase the grim times, the ruinous memories. He took stock and moved on. He didn’t wait for her to follow as he advanced on the small building, but he could sense her stillness, her statuesque form.


Ororo hesitated for a moment, intrigued if nothing else. This was the type of place that had significance to a person, just like the lake back home had for her. She studied its moss laden roof, the slapdash guttering hanging on by a thread, its damp infested log sidings. It was a place that had survived through love, the attention paid by untold amounts passing through it as home and shelter, comfort and refuge. She hoped for a second the significance would be more favourable than Bistcho, the association sweeter. But she knew that would be a futile endeavour. She had little energy left now, for anything. And so she followed after him, resigned to it.


*


“It’s funny isn’t it,” Ororo said as she stared absently ahead of her, “...in a way.”


“What is?” Logan poked at the flame in the old-fashioned boiler a couple of times to keep it going, not looking back at her as he spoke flatly.


“Life, I guess.” Her face creased a little with hidden concern as she spoke, “You never know what will happen...you just take your chances and see what comes.”


Logan threw the metal rod he was using as a make-shift poker onto the ground, not caring where it skittered to, lost amongst the natural and man made debris on the two-roomed huts floor. There was a bare mattress on the floor in the corner, covered with dead leaves, the iron boiler in the opposite corner and the chair that Ororo was now perched on and that was it. Time and neglect had ravaged the once pleasant place, like everything else...They were probably the first people to grace it in untold years; a crop of badly rusted and almost indistinguishable beer cans the only evidence of its last occupants. What little light was afforded through the trees this close to nightfall came through the small window behind where she sitting. As Logan turned around to face her, all he saw was a guarded silhouette with a glowing edge of white about the head.


“I guess...” he answered her finally and then turned back to the small fire he was crouched in front of. It would be unbelievably cold in here tonight; he knew what it could get like, even at this time of year. This far north, it could feel at times that it was perpetual winter. It simply never let up, never gave a respite. As if in answer, as he turned to Ororo once more she shivered. She was clearly trying to stifle the gesture as not to draw his enquiry, but failed hopelessly.


“You alright darlin’?” he asked softly.


Ororo nodded, a little too vigorously, “Yeah.” She sniffed loudly as she pulled her coat tighter, indicating the absolute contrary of her words.


Logan pushed himself up from the dirty floor, making up the short distance over to her, absently kicking away the cluster of crumpled acid orange tins and the leaves and bits of splintered joists fallen from the roof that surrounded them. “You’re cold,” he stated; no room for argument and none offered. He made to take one of his own jackets off in an unusually singular act of conventional chivalry, but she brought the action to a swift halt.


“I’m okay,” she told him, gazing up at him in front of her, feeling strangely awkward at the sudden eye contact. It prompted her to look away quickly; not even bothering to introduce subtly to the action. There was no need...She didn’t quite catch the frown that marred his features for a moment, but somehow she felt its presence. As he moved off from her, intending to do what, who knows, she looked up sharply, “...How?”


He stood still, ridged as an ice sculpture...just as arctic. Such a simple word. One word. Imbued with so many complexities it was too difficult to count. He felt his throat tighten, his natural reaction of anger, nothing more than a defensive wall. “I...” the silence passed with aching slowness... “I’ll get that blanket from the car for you. I don’t want you gettin’ ill,” he said quickly as he vacated the hut before Ororo could say anything. She sighed. It verged on a mournful sob.


*


It was heavy on her shoulders and she couldn’t be sure if the mattress beneath her was damp or just cold. But then again, she really didn’t care, one way or the other. Their eyes had barely met for the past hour. The thick swirls of cigar smoke cut across the navy dulcetness of the tiny space, lit only by the small fire that still crackled, lending a small raw sienna patch of light and throwing out deep, deep shadows of pure black. But it was enough...they didn’t need more...


He sat on the floor, at the end of the old mattress, his head leant back against the log rounded wall “just the way nature had left them apart from being striped of their rough reddish bark. His weary eyes were lightly closed to what little light there was, as if he were waiting. Waiting and waiting, until... “I had to face it,” he said quietly; the sound of his sonorous rough-edged voice seeming odd in the solid silence that existed between them. “Do you understand?” He opened his eyes and let his head roll to the side, still against the wall so as to look straight at her with an unreadable edge to his sudden concentration.


Ororo regarded him for a moment, her dark eyes soft like mist in the fires glow; she didn’t think her lips would move even if she wanted to answer him, halted by that strange paralysis that exists in the mind rather than in reality. Eventually she nodded, just a little, but then as her voice returned to her she contradicted that, “No...no, I don’t. What is there for me to understand?”


Logan shifted with a scrapping sound and a crease of leather as he turned his body to her slightly, “I...I dunno,” he leant back again, his head thumping heavily against the tanned stripped logs, as if defeated, staring off into the middle distance at nothing, the metaphorical void. After another seamless stream of silence where he battled internally with the flow of everything, trying and failing to pull things into some semblance of cognitive order, he eventually spoke once more, “I can’t explain it...” he unexpectedly laughed, but the sound was utterly without humour or warmth; it had an undeniably bitter edge in fact, “...how can I expect you to understand it...when I don’t myself.”


Ororo tucked herself deeper into the rug-like blanket, curling into a tight ball. She didn’t want to hear any more of his riddles, the tattered pieces he was prepared to throw her. This...this all had to end...one way or another. That phrase roamed around within her like a mantra; it all had to end. They’d been fooling themselves for too long now...


“What happened to her?” As she said the words she wondered for a minute whether or not they had been spoken aloud at all. But a furtive glance over to him told her she had. There was no real reaction, no true change in his demeanour, but she could just tell... “How did she...” She trailed off, feeling a keen intrusiveness. None-the-less he promptly responded.


“I don’t really...I can’t remember much,” Logan said quietly, slowly, as though he was pondering over the words as he was saying them, “Only coming back, from leave”and she...” He trailed off, shifting his position stiffly.


Ororo was torn between the two things, the two avenues open. She knew which one she wanted to venture but was compelled towards the other out of mercy. She’d never seen him so...on the brink as he appeared now, the turmoil of time beneath the surface, fighting, pushing its way back through like an unstoppable tide. She could do nothing but watch as the shifts in that cruel tide made themselves apparent on his face; a sudden crease of melancholy, a held back sigh, a flinch of nervous anger. A minute passed in abject silence, then another, and another in which the light from the fire appeared to dim, ever-so-slightly, until it seemed an age since he’d last spoken. But then, suddenly, it felt like no time at all...


“I can’t even remember where it was I came back from anymore”a mission, somewhere...I know I hadn’t seen her for two months, somethin’ like that. It was late”real late”I remember that. It was winter an’ the sky around here turns black like you wouldn’t believe” real thick”real inky. But the moon was shinnin’ that night, enough to light the house. That’s why I didn’t even bother to turn any of the lights on when I got in. We”she”was livin’ in my Mom’s house...well, her and Thom’s house. She stayed there whenever I was away, in Vancouver or wherever”said she didn’t like bein’ left alone at ours. Said it was too far out, too isolated.” He laughed again with that short bitterness, “I would have thought bein’ out there woulda suited her more...cause bein in that house”with her in-laws”even that didn’t stop her...,” the words pushed forwards, he couldn’t stop them even if he wished to... “...it didn’t stop her bein’”bein...when I wasn’t around. She...she didn’t know...they had no idea that I knew, an’ even if they did, I don’t think they’d have given a damn shit”.” He stopped short, his jaw twitching with obvious mirth as he got to his feet. Words he had not said for years, things he had not spoken of to anyone renewing everything he’d tried so hard to run from, to forget...or not as the case may be for there were certain things he’d have given anything to remember but could not and knew he never would. The very things that would perhaps give his soul peace or, plunge him over the edge into the abyss forever; it was all a game of Devil’s Advocate when it came down to it, the fear of what card would be drawn from the pack next. Were there things that he would be better living his whole life never knowing, he thought to himself often, very often. He was becoming rapidly convinced of that fact now that grey, bleak little town was far behind them...in body if not in spirit. In spirit that mournful little place was always there. Maybe there were some things one was better off being ignorant of? But it had all gone too far now, with Ororo, with himself. There was no escaping this, not anymore...Like distorted pools, disturbed by the flow of ripples, things came in waves, in pieces...Being by the room”their room at his parents house”that is what he remembered. But it was not real to him, it only ever felt like it belonged in the dream state, the physical detachment of it. He thought this but did not say it, slipping into a disconcerting state of reticence, only to pick up where his mental line had left off, inexplicable to Ororo as she attempted to follow what he was saying, disjointed as it was.


“These--,” Logan reached over the softly greyed crew neck of his white t-shirt and the open collar of the plaid over-shirt, taking the two somewhat dulled tags into his hands, holding them before him, letting them fall like trickling sand down from one hand to another, one way and then the other, up and down, pouring them as he subtly tilted his palms in idle examination of something so well known as to become alien, “I always hear them...I can hear them when I breath, like a small bell, tinklin’...just a little bit.” He grasped them close to their tops, at the very bottom of the chain and shook them almost experimentally shaking them, letting them clash together with that high brittle reverberation. “...but I ferget”I always ferget what it is until the last minute,” he shook them again, briefly before closing his fingers tight over them, squeezing them into his palm so tensely that his reddened knuckles turned a mottled, sallow tinged white with the pressure, caught quickly in the light before descending into shadow as he released them. The sound sharp like needles... “I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore...I just know that I can’t lose you ‘Ro”not now.” There was the manic desperation of love there but something more than that, the sudden turn into rhetoric, something beyond his control.


“Why would you?” Ororo asked once he’d proffered his unintelligible soliloquy; a tremor to her words that she could not disguise, try as she might. As he’d spoken, an incoherent story was dripping out, bit by stubborn bit, piece by pained piece she had listened intently, understanding, not understanding, not wanting to but needing to. She’d moved a little closer to him as he was speaking, but came to a rest again half-way down the old mattress, not quite close enough to touch. “Logan, tell me...please?” she almost pleaded, feeling her eyes becoming hot again, the sudden need to swallow down the ache in her throat was painful. She feared where his answer might take them in her heart of hearts. She did not want to hear, but still, could not resist; the human compulsion to the unknown, to what we anticipate will terrify us but stumble toward none the less, like a willing and complicit sacrifice...


Logan did not appear to hear her, lost to ghosts in recollection, in self-reproach...A prison in mind if not in body. But there were many times he believed himself worthy of both.


“What happened to her?...What happened to Fox?”...


“There was so much blood, Ororo...God there was so much blood”an it”I just remember...” his bare hands were splayed before him, searching for the invisible, the impenetrable blackness, like treacle, “...it was everywhere”all over me, the floor...drippin’ down, just”so much of it...”


“Logan...?” ...Ororo Munroe could barely breathe...she could not, she could not. A terror froze her tongue; a terror for him, not of him. She had been a fool. There was so much she had to tell him...so much and for the first time the understanding came like clear crystal. She knew what it was to run, to run from a former life, to run from others, to run from a place that held the aromas and memories of home, of the heart. To run from oneself...she had nothing to reproach him for that she could not do the same to herself. But she had to make sure, she had to know... “What are you trying to tell me Logan. It’s alright you know...you know that you can tell me anything...absolutely anything.” She was right next to him now, the heavy blanket half-fallen off her, her hair hanging down and brushing lightly against his face, filling him with its soft scent. Closing her hand firmly but not insistently over his shoulders, her full lips resting close to his ear, letting small hot breaths caress it, she fairly whispered... “Did...did you...?”


“No...no.” Faintly and then with conviction as he dragged himself from the spell, turning his head so that her mouth touched sweetly and briefly at his face, “It was him...HIM...” his fists tightened, his temples reddened, “...it was him...”


-To Be Concluded-





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