TITLE: Moods - Loneliness Is a Sickness of the Heart
AUTHORS: Mick'n'Star
RATING: G - but some language
DISCLAIMER: Characters are Marvel's, story is ours. We make no money, in fact we lose money writing this.
NOTE: Moods is a serial work of ours depicting feelings and moments in the life of the X-Men, though most are centred on Logan and Remy. Most are slash but some are not. For those of you interested the whole series including this, this is the URL http://www.slashfiction.net/viewstory.php?sid=166

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LONELINESS IS A SICKNESS OF THE HEART

To W6C


She is walking along the path to me, the playful wind raising and ruffling her moonlight hair, the smiling moon bathing her in loveliness. She glides lightly swaying like a silver boat on an ebony sea. She is my goddess, my love and my home. She is the solace and the hearth, my one love. She is Ororo of the brooksinging name, she is my Storm of passion.

I wait for her at the gate, was never known for formal politeness and I don’t want to miss the sight of her coming to me. I want to se her coming to me over and over again every day every moment. Her every step toward me validates my being, her every step toward me is a song of hope and future joy. I love her so much!

She's not the first, of course she's not the first, I'm old and though I've lived alone almost all of my life there were others. None like her though. None like my Venus, not even in the trinity of female power I've met and loved here in this Mansion. She's unique and wholly herself, she fills me with bright light and dispels my darkness with a smile.

I stare at her coming to me entranced and think.

I never trusted anybody that I can remember, maybe in the bottomless pit of my lost memories there was trust and respect and affection, but I can only doubt it. All the world against the Wolverine, Wolverine against all the world. I liked it like that, it was so fucking easy.

Punch or be punched, claw or be clawed, be a killer or be dead. Easy simple choices which required no thought at all. Hierarchy too was too sodding easy: the biggest bastard gets command. I got command… up to a point. At the time I couldn't yet see the corollary that the biggest bastard gets middle command. The final orders are given by desiccated self satisfied sociopaths: generals and politicians.

I didn’t care then, though, so I went my happy gutting way…

But I was far from happy, in fact I was dying of loneliness. Nobody to really talk to. No, I mean it! Call hearing Chat crowing about the goriness of his kills 'talk'? Call hashing and rehashing each mission's every detail looking for the needle-in-haystack mistake 'talk'?

I read books and what good did they do to me if I couldn't talk about them with friends? Besides I wasn't expected to talk beyond the occasional growl or grunt and who was I to disappoint my masters?

Fuck but I was scum in those days!

Ah, but I got saved. I really got. Found people. I know how it sounds to you cosy creatures with families and friends, but I had none and to find people was the opening… no the smashing open of a door to me.

I was difficult and raging and selfish and growling and rude and generally impossible, yet they liked me. Not all of course, but the world is full of the likes of Warren the Wanking Wonder and you always expect at least one in any group on Earth so he never really counted. Yeh, I growled at him a couple of time for appearances' sake, but I didn't give a shit for him.

Red, now… Red was another creature altogether. Yeh, right, Jean, always call her Red to distance me from her and it became a lovename. Couldn't really distance her, see? I was needy and she understood the need. She was as lonely as I was in her own way. Being Phoenix made her lonely as nobody ever was… except me an another maybe.

She passed through becoming more than a god to death and rebirth and widowhood. Nobody alive spoke her language anymore, all her words were tinged with those indescribable experiences and nobody could understand her anymore.

Except me. Ripped from my memories and killed and remade in a vat of pain and terror, a widower of my past more than of a maybe falsely remembered wife.

We touched and she spoke my language of utter loneliness and I thought myself in love because for the first time in fuck knows how many years I was *understood*. That went beyond being accepted and even beyond being liked. That went beyond everything I had ever experienced before.


Okay, I know, 'that I remember', of course. Keep this caveat in mind and let's go on.

But you know what? She understood even that. She can't read me mind, you know? The Wolverine interferes so she gets predator violet streaks all through the polychrome human thoughts and can't decipher them. But I found out she didn't need to read my thoughts to understand. She's been there, she's got the sickness, she knows.

What sickness? Loneliness of course. It's a sickness, an illness that devours you and yes, it's terminal. People die of loneliness, die inside if not in body and what's left is a husk. I hate that and fear it, but I went so near that, that it makes no difference.

She had been sick as well, Jean had. She was sick still when I loved her… No wrong words, when I thought I loved her as a lover and instead was loving her as a sister and didn't realise it.

Ah but she did. She got me down easy and kind, as she is, her heart locked and shut in Slim's since day one. I went soap opera at her and I'm really ashamed of it, but she didn't laugh and didn't ignore me. She talked.

We spent nights talking and talking. Everything and nothing, silly or deep. For the first time I could confess to opinions that weren't grunts or 'badass cliché', the first time I could talk about my doubts, the first time I could talk books.

Of course I thought I loved her! And she saw it and helped me as well as she could. There were bad moments and ugly mistakes on both part, but how to avoid them? I was in awe of her and she resented that, she had compassion of me and I resented *that*… Oh, you know the drill… to get to know people you risk your life each second.

We kissed, that's was how far we went, but each kiss was lifegiving to both of us. She needed a Scott who understood and after much pain and rage she got him. And I needed a woman who would love me because I am me, bad past, attitude and all, and after much pain and rage and another glaring mistake, I miraculously got her.

But Jean was the first to fill a part of the void, to give shape to dreams and hope to the heart. Nobody touches Red and lives if I'm around. She was the Juno to my Venus and the mother I never had or could remember.

Oh please, don’t blather about Oedipus complex! A lot of men fall for the lass who most resembles their mother or their mother-dream. It's only natural. We're males and our mothers were the goddesses of life. Only thing that matters to me, only thing I know deep down in my adamantium bones is that, notwithstanding all the angst and apparent waste of time, Jean was good for me.

If not for her I wouldn't be waiting now at the gate and watching my true love come to me and that's reason enough for me, now as ever.

The third one? That was Rogue, of course. The shunned, the leper, the plague carrier. The bad lass turned good guy, the loneliest being on this planet. She's a bitch? So am I a cur. She's a ballbreaker? So am I a thumper. She's cruel and scary? No more than me, folks. She's alone as no other human or mutant was alone? Yeh, me too… until now.

But whereas I had a chance, no matter how slim, she never had even one.

Fuck but she could rant! She ranted and raged and blabbed at me in her drunken-sounding Southern drawl - yeh am Canadian, am not that good at dialects, always have to ask Gumbo to translate - the poor lass went on for hours.

But I understood her, you know. Been there, spit on the tee-shirt, was given the bumper sticker for free. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club's Band. Yeh, am really old. She freaks 99% of the time, who wouldn't? And just as she was getting resigned to it, Gumbo comes on and starts pestering her with his undying love.

Ha! Undying love! What the fuck does he know about it? He *plays* and she hurts. So she comes weeping to me.

Why?

Because I fucking understand that's why! Same as with me and Red. Rogue's got her head screwed on straight, though, so it's like one day she swears she loves me and the other she just gives me a sickly grin and a watery chuckle. But it's alright, I really understand what she's going through.

Been there… But I already said that, didn't I?

Lil sadbitch snarlysoft Rogue. My Hecate of Death and Rebirth… er… I tell a lie, Gumbo's Hecate of death and rebirth actually. But I like my metaphors straight so I cheated a bit.

But Ro…

My moonmaiden, moongoddess, liferain, passionstorm…

I never thought of her because she was so out of reach. I never *saw* her because she seemed so fulfilled and at ease with herself. Not one of us lonely monsters. Surely a goddess but a human one and one universally beloved. Not for me. Not me. Not the humanimal mutant with the adamantium claws and the adamantium cast brain.

She's so bright, so light, so educated and fair. Night and the Moon. Refuge and fire. Ororo Munroe, the Windrider, the Stormbringer, the Weatherwitch.

What kind of perverted dream would that have been? The Frog Prince? Me?? Beauty and Beast? Better, it afforded some hope, but only a fairy tale after all and why waste away and die like Endymion after the Moon?

So Red took matters in hand… ok ok in mind. She meddled. My dear sister and friend, being happy, couldn't stand my loneliness anymore. So she talked to Ro.

I know because my Ro told me. I blushed!!!! Me, the Wolverine, *the* badass killer of the world, blushed red when Ro told me. BUT…

It made my Storm laugh so it was the best blush of my life.

So this incredible goddess comes to me and says "Want a beer?"

And I blanch!!!! Actually blanch! And a second afterwards I wanna die of shame. Still blanch and shame and all I manage to croak "Don't mind if I do." branding me for NOT-American forever I guess.

But she smiles and my heart fills with light. Since that first smile it has never changed, you know? Every single time she smiles my heart fills with light which is why I spend so much time trying to make her smile.

"I don't." The Moon incarnate grins at me and she transfigures into a young beautiful woman who's suddenly in my reach.

That was just the start, of course. Took us ages to admit we had meshed in that moment. Ages to be sure, ages to let go of some shields. Ages more to let go of all shields. For both of us.

Took ages and rages and storming out - pun intended - and storming back in - not this one folks *wink* - and lashing out and each ripping her or his self to pieces in remorse and fear and incredulous hope.

But we got here and it's too glorious for words.

We got here. We are a two, we are a one, we are really really really deep down together. We managed to get here at the end of the fairy tale and at the beginning of life.

She's a step away from me now and her smile is more luminous than the moon herself. She tilts her dark-bright head on her swan neck and says: "Wakey wakey love! Spooling dreams?"

"Hey, you!" I say "This is not goddess talk!"

She looks at me like I've just escaped from an Insane Asylum and I fight an urge to giggle and win. Giggle? Wolverine? Giggle???

Er… Yeh, also melt with love and make a stinking puddle at her feet but I'll be damned if I let her see it!

Ha! As if…

She looks at me like I've just escaped from an Insane Asylum… and suddenly giggles like running brookwater down a craggy terrain, like her moonsilver love on my dour old heart.

I devour her with my eyes and am filled to the brim and spilling over with love.

THE END





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