Enough Time
An interloper on his mountain. A familiar scent. All familiar scents are bad, everything he recognizes an enemy. All friends are dead, or worse, only enemies are left. He heads for the scent. He kills anything that intrudes upon his mountain, especially anything that is a reminder. Of before. The intruder will die.
There is frustration because of the scent, however. It tries to bring back memories. He has no memories, needs no reminders, will not allow this affront. Yet he slows, tastes the wind, decides on tactics. Tactics require thought, it is better to work on instinct, but instinct is against him right now. It says protect, not attack. There is no one left to protect.
Rage surges through him as the pain he has run so hard from resurfaces. There is no one left to protect. He growls at the enemy and is cowed by its response. It cries, huddles in a ball. A tiny ball, for it is tiny. A child. NO, it is simply an intruder. It isn't anything more. It can't be anything more. He can't survive that.
He is breaking apart, can not survive like this. He is full of rage, pain, but can't take it out on the child. His instincts won't let him, the animal is betraying him. If he doesn't do something he will hurt himself. So the man re-emerges, just a little, to put the animal back in its place. There is no danger of the man doing more than is required; the man wants to be dead. Only the animal still has a will to live.
The man doesn't know what to do either. He is haunted by the scent of the little girl in front of him. He knows honour, can't kill a little girl. Yet he also knows she is dangerous - he can feel himself unravelling as well.
The only command he can think of is run. It comes too late. The girl moves and he catches a glimpse, out of the corner of his eye, of what she looks like. Images flash through his brain and he is lost. A lady with red hair; a short, Asian kid with a 1000 watt smile; a young woman with a dragon on her shoulder; a little girl with matted hair in her face and a secret smile no one else could see. He cries out at these memories, tries to push them back down, he can't live through them again. More are coming and they will kill him. He is so close to breaking. So close. The little girl. Trying to get her to take a bath. Teach her that clothing was necessary. Laughing with Jean about it. Jean! He is sobbing now, begging them to stop, but they won't and he remembers. Jean, Mariko, Silver Fox. He loved them. He loved them! And his girls…
For a second he is going to kill her - she is a cruel trick of his broken mind – but there might actually be someone there, someone innocent that his need has transformed, so he can't. The guilt and loss are overwhelming. He needs to know that it isn't her so he can fade away again. It is probably too late, he doesn't think he can return to before, but he has to try. So he tries to sense the truth. She smells the same. She looks the same. She moves the same. She has the same fear of his growl. He attacked her once, in a berserker rage, when she was trying to help him. He's never gotten over the guilt. Another way he failed her.
He let her die. She is dead. He knows that, it is his greatest failure, but she sits in front of him now - blind, dirty, and afraid – and it is so obviously Erin that the knowledge of her death seems more and more like a dream. He didn't actually see her death, never found her body. It had haunted him that he couldn't bury her like the others. A row of graves beside the remains of the mansion. But she had to have been in the mansion. He had left her in the mansion, promised to return. And then he hadn't kept the promise until she was dead.
The girl in front of him has tilted her head to the side and is looking at him. She can sense his sorrow and is worried. Thinks he doesn't want her here, doesn't WANT her. The greatest desire of his heart is to pull her into his arms, rock her back and forth, and comfort her fear. But this isn't Erin.
He rage and sorrow have lessened to a dull ache and he looks at the girl with dead eyes. Tears are flowing down her cheeks and if it truly was Erin she would probably be speaking to him right now, forgetting to open her mouth because she couldn't hear the words anyways. She did that a lot. Staring up into your face, waiting for an answer to a question she hadn't asked. Staring even though she couldn't see. Knowing you hadn't answered even though she couldn't hear. She was amazing. She had saved his life, kept him from giving up after Jubilee had left, gone back to California and stopped contacting him. Erin had been his reason to live.
He should leave but his hand reaches out, hesitantly, and strokes the side of her face. How can it not be Erin? She makes the same tiny sound, leans slightly into his hand, like a cat being petted.
Suddenly, the facts don't matter. The fact that he will kill himself when he realizes it isn't her. The fact that she is dead. The fact that it's his fault, he should have been there.
Without realizing it he has pulled her onto his lap. He is rocking her, whispering softly to her. She can't hear his words but can feel the vibrations of his chest comforting her. She begins to cry the loneliness away, safe in the arms of the one person who has never let her down. Everything is okay now. She found him. She knew she would. Logan is here and he isn't mad anymore. He's stopped growling. He's holding her. Everything is okay. She gave him enough time.