Notes: Yeah...I got rid of parts 1, 3 and 4 again. I just don't like them at all and so poof! They is gone, bo! If you don't know what I'm talking about:
This is part 2 of a 4 part short story I wrote. Each part is based on one verse of the song "Cry to Me" sung by Solomon Burke in sweet, sultry tones...yum. I like Part 2 alone because its tight with a clear theme and consistent tone - at least I think so. Believe me, the rest of it is one long ramble session. I tend to do that a lot.
Disclaimer: I do not own The X-men or any of the characters. Thats right. Its just me and my keyboard here...and an inspirational picture of Hugh Jackman - whom I might also add, I do not own or have any association with past the vast expanse of my own imagination. Are all bases covered? Oh well.
Cry To Me
When you're all alone
In a lonely room
And there's nothing
But the smell of her perfume…
Don't you feel like crying?
Don't you feel like a cry?
Come on, Come on,
Cry to me
It was nearly one o'clock in the morning and he was only just leaving Storm's office after another late meeting. Habits like that weren't safe to develop in a place full of kids with eyes and ears around every corner and imaginations that were far too elaborate for their own good. He could still hear a few of them in their rooms talking one floor above.
Girls. It was always the girls.
Storm had suggested once that he make rounds and check that the kids were keeping to curfew since he was up into the hours of the morning anyway. But playing house mother to chatty little tweens with pink ribbons in their hair was not his preferred way of spending his favorite hours of the day. Besides the occasional late night whisper sessions or bathroom runs from one of the younger kids, this was the only time the Mansion was ever calm.
Silence, solitude, stillness; they were habits of a life not yet behind him and so instead he headed toward Xavier's office when Storm turned to the grand staircase.
She paused on the first step realizing Logan was no longer next to her. "Aren't you turning in? It's going to be a busy day tomorrow."
"If I can handle a mission on three hours of sleep I can handle a little graduation." He grunted without turning around. "Watch out for room nine. They're starting to wander." A finger pointed towards the ceiling down the hall they had just come from and he heard Storm's light feet on the stairs again.
Like the rest of the rooms on the ground floor, the office was dark and empty. Logan's boots were intrusively loud as they tapped against the wood flooring but as there was no one else to hear it he didn't care to be softer. He also disregarded switching on the lights as he entered. Instead he leaned against one of Xavier's leather armchairs lighting the cigar he kept in his pocket. A large orange flame cast his shadow across the wall behind him and reflected in the window on the other side of the room before he shook the match out.
Smothering the flame brought to focus Logan's surroundings, a room he had grown familiar with, too familiar perhaps. With the cigar between his lips he fell into the chair facing the window not far. Logan exhaled slowly. His gaze he kept upon the glass when, as though entertaining a sixth sense, the tip of his cigar very naturally found the ashtray which lay on the end table to Logan's left. Gently, he tapped the first burnt ends away.
He had tried not to make this routine -smoking in this office- and to some measure he had succeeded. Tonight was the first night in almost two weeks that he found himself in that leather chair again. There was a time he spent every night in there standing at the window and then later finding the will to recede to the chair. Two weeks. He was doing better.
Logan drew upon the cigar slowly and a mirror of himself appeared in the glass for a moment then disappeared when the light faded to a soft burn.
It was his way of being close without actually being there. The three indistinct shadows far on the other side of the glass were easier to bear in the middle of the night when no one was around to see him staring out at the view. Sometimes on clear nights the moon casts its glow upon the grounds brilliantly and he could see the markings of words engraved. They were markings and nothing more to him. The three graves were too far away for even Logan to distinguish names and dates. Not that he needed help in the distinction. He knew them well. He often passed them when the sun was out and little eyes lurked around the grounds. But those were the moments he felt farthest away. Not like tonight, sitting in the brown stretched leather chair with a panel of glass, a line of rose bushes and at least forty yards between him and the monuments. This was where he felt them strongest, surrounded by a room they had walked in, had lived in.
His lips tugged at the cylinder between his fingers deeply but absently as he stared at the grave farthest him. He couldn't say exactly why the need had come tonight, only that it had. It surprised him like that. She drew his thoughts at the most unexpected and insignificant times and he would find himself here like a lovelorn dog waiting for his mistress.
Why did he have to go through this again? Sometimes he wished an accident would happen and he would awake in some frozen field with no memory of the school or the people who were a part of it. To grieve once was enough for him. Twice was clearly too much. Maybe if the circumstances had been different it would be easier to forget her like before. But now that thing was there. A tall granite stone laughing at his misery and somewhere deep beneath it she lay silent to its merriment, its scorn of him. Any hope he carried for her miraculous return now was nothing short of pathetic. Jean wasn't ever coming back. He had seen to that himself.
At this thought his hands cupped around his forehead to shield his vision of the school's small cemetery. He sighed into the bleak room. It ended up sounding more like a groan than he had intended and he followed it by rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands, careful to keep the cigar at safe distance.
His breath drew in deep, steady and careful.
It was still there, though minute and growing slighter with every passing day. Her scent caressed him in small wisps. In a long pull he extracted the little bits of Jean lingering upon these inanimate, cold objects of the den. The leather of the chair, the expensive oriental rug beneath his feet, even the fibers in the wood paneling still held a bit of Jean. Musty, a little sweet on the ends and rich. But she was fading and soon she would be nothing but a few photographs, muddled memories and a grey tombstone.
"Jean." Came the name so quiet he couldn't have been certain if he vocalized the thought at all. The space between his knuckles twitched while his thoughts sprang in all different directions eventually focusing on only one: the warm spill of Jean's blood on the back of his hands. How her scent had overwhelmed him then. He thought it impossible she would ever leave his body or that he would sense anything other than her as he held the dead weight of her corpse in his arms.
When he finally looked up again a blaze of anger flickered in his eyes.
"Damn you." He whispered and crushed the hot cigar into his wrist, twisting it into a seething wound without so much as blinking. The sour smell of burning flesh filled the air and yet he could still smell her. The scent was calling forth feelings he didn't want to go over again but couldn't help feel within him.
She never loved him.
This he knew sure enough, though he often tried to convince himself otherwise. She'd kissed him, after all. She'd desired him. But she didn't love him. That part of her heart remained untainted by the Wolverine. It was Summer's and his alone. Even after Scott was gone. Even when she was hardly Jean but Phoenix.
She did make a choice and it was you.
His face contorted, mulling the truth over and over, mulling her scent inside him and hating himself for reaching again, only to find the same answers as before. Wasn't it enough that he loved her? Why did he feel a need to search for anything more than that? What's done is done. Ruminating over the why's and wherefores of what had passed between them wasn't going to change anything now. This was real. An empty room. A grave glistening in the half light. She wasn't coming back. If only he could let her go.
With slow deep breaths he relaxed into the chair and closed his eyes willing his heart to stop beating so quickly, trying to focus the myriad of emotions that had suddenly overwhelmed him. And it worked. Something sweet, mellow and a little warm filled him while thought was pushed from his head. A restful wind seemed to spread his body until she was almost gone.
"Logan?"
He shot his gaze to the door where Marie stood with one hand on the frame. Was he so caught up in self pity that he hadn't even heard her?
"Kid, what are you doing up?" he spat sharply, a little resentful at being found out.
She hesitated, her gaze falling. "I – I was getting some milk and smelled your cigar." She motioned her thumb over her shoulder as she said it. "But, I guess you want to be alone so I'll just…"
Awkwardly, Marie turned to leave. There were few people in the world that could make him feel like a real jack-ass, even when he thought he had every right to be. Marie was one of them. The slope of her small shoulders as she walked away tugged guiltily until he leaned forward.
"Long past curfew kid." He was careful to say in gentler tones to which she turned her head. "Can't you sleep?"
She shrugged a little, still uncertain of his mood. "Big changes are happening tomorrow. I don't think any of the seniors are really tired tonight."
"I thought you weren't nervous."
"I'm not. Well, not for the ceremony. Its everything after that…"
"Life, you mean?"
"Yeah, life." Marie stepped into the office, a little closer to where he sat still holding the smothered cigar in his hands. The kid was in a dark tank top with her hair pulled away from her face, except for a white strand that hung over her cheek. He caught her eyes sweep the room in one fluid movement until she was looking back at him. "You're up late again."
Logan pushed the cigar into the ashtray forcefully. "I'm always up late." He grunted.
"I know."
He turned a curious eye in her direction. Marie's initial fear seemed to have melted. He watched as her steps began hesitantly at first, her long sweats sliding over her feet, until she was stalking slowly but surely toward the leather chair he was seated in. He didn't like the heavy look she was giving him, it made him feel exposed as though guilty of some unnamed pretense. "You been spying on me, kid?"
The edge in his voice paused her steps and Marie's mouth turned down. "A lot has changed." A quick glance to her naked hands and she continued. "I don't sleep much lately either. Sometimes I smell it. Like tonight." She pointed to the ashtray where his half smoked cigar lay. "I come here too…to think about the Professor. It's a peaceful room. Not many others come by anymore and I like the view."
He couldn't look up at her. He should be mad, a little bitter, or even defensive because her words were loaded with implication as to his actions and presence there tonight. But he wasn't. He only heard understanding and for some reason it didn't call forth any of those red emotions, it weighted his chest instead.
"I like it too." He whispered.
Her bare feet inched closer. He could hear them sliding across the wood floors, so different from his own entrance, so careful, and so slow. They stopped just next to him. Her hand touched the back of the chair behind the head rest and she was looking at the same view that had captured his attention. In the quiet he felt it again. A slow breeze, delicate with the scent of something like honey or was it vanilla? He caught himself drawing it in, wanting to keep it close a little longer. Marie spoke.
"Sometimes…" her voice was hesitant, "I come in here and expect to see him sitting behind that desk…and I'm surprised when he's not there. I have to tell myself again. Tell myself he's…"
"He's gone."
"Yeah," she whispered, shuddering out the word.
It was vanilla and it was smooth, tempered and mingling with the essence of Marie.
Logan had fixed his gaze beyond the glass ahead so he felt and heard the shuffle next to him as Marie sat on the arm of the chair. They remained quiet because there was nothing more either of them could say in words. They shared it in their actions and in their silence and when he heard the short intake of breath from the warm body next to him Logan didn't even attempt to bite back the hot streak spilling his eye. He reached up into the dark at his side and folded his arm atop the crook of Marie's leg where she had propped it onto the chair. Her cool, bare hand covered his, the gentle touch trembling through him because it was something complete, something wholly for him. It reminded him of another's touch he had wanted to feel this way and the absent memory wet the bottoms of his eyes while the sweet scent of Marie clouded the room.