Oh yeah right, Logan, Jean, Storm, Jubilee, Creed and company are Marvel's
as far as I know.
Also Faye is mine, all mine, and I plan on keeping her that way. My plan
is to develop her slowly but surely into a very distinctive character.
And now for the continuity segment: well that's pretty easy, try to imagine a time when the story makes sense. I know there must be plenty, you can also think of the Fox cartoon show (not to be confused with the Evolution horror). Come on, I know you can do it :)
Knick knacks are so easily collected. Not that he had thought a lot about it, but once in awhile he would stumble upon it again when he needed to go through his drawer. At those times, he would remember the day he had found it.
He had needed a getaway from the mansion. The spring had finally arrived. (Not that it had been a rough winter by his standards, but the much awaited spring had taken its time in coming.) It had taken a high casualty toll this year too, the Canadian X-man thought. All his fellow X-men seemed to be in love. While pining away for what he could not have was not his style, neither could he stay there. Walking in on one of the numerous couples either made him want to gag, or depressed him. It was even worse when he interrupted Jean and Scott.
Jean, he thought, now she was a real lady, intelligent, strong, but generous. Pain intermingled with desire. He'd whimper inwardly with a kind of longing but he had forsaken the possibility that Jean might be his long ago. So he stalked instead, in the streets of a nearby town. He'd almost been looking for a fight to expel his foul mood.
Until he smelled something weird, not unpleasant, he thought as he wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air. Intriguing, it smelled like … something… what could it be? Something familiar and very homely. Something from his past. How could that be? he did not remember having any home. It smelled… of sunny days in a forest. Yes, that was it. Still, he thought, that was not a smell one would find in a little town of this countryside. Having nothing better to do, and finding his curiosity mightily aroused, he decided he might as well locate where the smell had come from.
Following his powerful nose and the wafting smell, he walked a few paces and found himself in a small park with a path of green grass around a small fountain. Funny that he had never really looked at it before. The sun reflecting on a coin at the bottom of the fountain caught his attention. A wish coin no doubt, but because idleness did not become him, he got closer and noticed it was no coin. He wondered what it was and bent over to take it. As he noticed it was no coin, but a ring, a niggling doubt came over him. What if someone had thrown it there for a purpose? A particular wish perhaps or maybe some strange ritual.
A more romantic soul could have thought up an imaginary lady weeping over the loss of her beloved and throwing the ring as a gesture of some sort. But the man known as Wolverine was nothing if not practical and such thoughts did not enter his mind.
He did take it then, because the ring looked strange. It looked to be made of a strange design, a very ancient one that was neither from here not there. It did not look western or asian. He did not know much about such baubles, but it did look odd. Logan did not fancy himself a jewellery aficionado but it looked expensive. Not with diamonds and gold, but with a pale white metallic material and a deep blue stone that felt warm to the touch, even though it had spent some time in the chilly water. He looked at the inside of the slim band, checking for an inscription. A name would be useful, but there were none. As he turned it in between his fingers, the sun seemed to reveal a faint, almost unreadable inscription: "Wishes come true".
Phaw! he spat in disgust, romantic drivel. He almost threw it back. Because romantic hogwash was not his style. But he held back, and rationalised his impulse to keep it by thinking the ring was obviously valuable and that he might as well have it rather than leaving it to gather rust. He did not dwell on the primal urge he felt to own the ring and suppressed a thought about how pretty it would look on Jean's finger. He shook all those thoughts and walked back home.
He had toyed with it occasionally. The ring had an odd habit of worming through his thoughts sometimes. At such times, he would keep reminding himself that wishes did not come true. He knew that very, very well. and the ring was nothing more than an object. An object with intricate patterns of filigree and expert craftsmanship he had learned from a jeweller. The little bald man had been unable to identify a style or the material or even the stone used. His conclusion was that the metal must be an uncommon alloy and the stone synthetic. Only the work had value even if it was a nice piece, probably the work of a talented and imaginative artist. He had been offered a respectable sum, but Logan decided against parting with the ring. It felt irreplaceable to him, no less so because the jeweller had not given him a logical reason to feel this way.
So he had put it back in his drawer, not knowing why, to be found once and again, like a forgotten surprise that was in turn strange and familiar. The other X-men, he knew, would have been surprised to hear about that stupid ring. He was surprised himself he had kept it so long and that, in fact, he was still holding on to it. Oh he had been tempted to show it to Hank. The beastly X-men was so knowledgeable about anything, he might give precious insight. What stopped him was that Hank might not understand, or even worse, that he would understand only too well. Besides he thought, once Beast got his paw on this, he'd never stop until he had cracked all its mysteries. Logan was not too sure he wanted the secrets exposed and explained. To think they all thought he was the rash one!
Once in awhile he thought he kept it just in case Jean ever got tired of Scott. Then he would do… he would do… well he did not know what, if anything, he would do, but he thought maybe he would give her the ring sometime. He thought it was pretty, but he'd probably have to ask Jubilee what she thought about it first. No matter how he felt about the ring, he was not going to give Jean a lame present
.
On one such occasion, he had been in his room staring at the deep blue stone and thinking about Jean. And he surprised himself thinking about her, allowing himself to long for her, and wishing she could be his, when he realised what he had been doing to himself. Hoping for things that could not be and would never happen he thought with bitterness. He felt a chill along his spine and he thought the room looked brighter as if something had covered the light before and was just now removed.
And at that moment, the wafting odour he had smelled the day he had found the ring hit his delicate nose. It was still as impenetrable as it had been and yet, it was the most homelike smell he could remember. There was a knock on his door. Still a bit suspicious he asked: "what is it?" while the pervasively odd forest scent filled his room. When no answer came, he went to the door and opened it.
Before him stood a small young woman a bit taller but more slender than
Jubilee. He was not very tall, but he did stood half a head taller than
her. Fortunately for him she did not look at all like a waif. He hated
waifs but always seemed to end up taking them on board. But before he could
stare at her some more, she introduced herself.
"Hello, I'm Faye." she said smiling at him.
Logan was not about to let her see she had discountenanced him. So he drawled:
"What are you doing here?"
She giggled, not as a child would, but rather with a crystalline murmur.
"Well, you could say I am the owner of the ring you found, but it's not
really in my possession now."She laughed again with a wide smile and sparky
eyes. She seemed genuinely amused
.
"How did you get here?" Wolverine felt obliged to ask, not wanting to let
her laugh endlessly. The rugged man felt like getting a straight answer
now.
"Tell you what, you let me in, and I will tell you everything you want."
She smiled pleasantly.
Logan was a bit reluctant to let her in. He did not know her after all
and she was mightily strange, this wisp of a woman. She had long hair that
seemed spun of silver. Unlike Ororo's hers could have passed for a normal
hair colour. Her nose was thin and straight, not something you would see
on a pert covergirl. Somehow, everything about her seemed thin and elfin,
save for her eyes which were of the exact same colour as the stone on the
ring. This startled him and he stopped studying her strange features. Just
for the colour of her eyes he was ready to believe she was telling the
truth when she said the ring was hers.
Furthermore, he knew very well what people smelled like when they were
nervous, like when they tried to lie to him, or they were up to some trick
and there was none of that about her. She rather looked as though
she had more to fear from him than the other way around. So after a short
moment of hesitation, he let her in.
"So" he asked, his wit coming
back to him "how could you possibly know the ring was here?"
She looked at him, letting him look at her blue eyes.
"Well, the jewel and I, there is a link between us. Wherever it goes, I know where it is."
The subdued tone in which she said that, he thought, only a mutant would
explain things like that. He knew how understatement became an habit to
those imperilled by a particular biochemistry others shunned. Still, he
thought, a beta-class mutant, otherwise we would already know about her,
and the Professor would have her. Tracing back a ring was at best a simple
parlour trick and no great accomplishment.
"Did you get a good look at the ring, Logan?" she asked, and he jumped
at the use of his name.
"Ah, come now, I have to know you… from the ring…" she pointed to the small object he still held between his fingers. She smiled knowingly but perhaps with a strange shyness.
"Beside, how else would have they let me in, if I'd had no business here? I told them I was a friend of yours." He had meant to question her about that… But something made him wonder how that could be. Before he could articulate a question in his mind, she talked again and he was fascinated.
"Yes, I think you did see what was on the band." She smiled slightly as anyone might to a dying man. Before she could muddle his brain with her prattling, he quickly told her, hoping to discourage her of whatever she had planned.
"I don't believe in wishes, kid."
She did not stop smiling, but her face was definitely taking a sad expression.
"Be that as it may, I am bound to grant your fondest wish."
Something in him snapped, and his temper rose even though she had done nothing to provoke him but dare pull a prank on him. He replied with a sneer as was his habit.
"What! you think you're some kinda fairy?"
She simply laughed, with the sound a babbling brook would make if the water carried silver bells, the sadness in her face gone for now. When she moved her head, he thought he saw her hair uncover her ear. A definitely pointed ear. His sight was playing tricks on him, or she was playing it to the hilt. He shook his head as much to mentally reject what he had been thinking of as to clear his thoughts. Maybe she had stronger mental powers than he'd thought at first, but she simply could not be an imaginary creature. He did not even know why he had even entertained the notion.
She gave him a dazzling smile as if he had just told her he had come up with the cure for cancer.
"I am glad you think so. Most people are intimidated with my size and let my appearance lead their imagination on a merry chase." Her smile increased after saying this. "Well" said Faye, "I'd love to stay and meet your friends, but they might misunderstand." She winked at him, then sobered, "your wish will come true" and she headed to the door.
He grabbed her by the arm and she bolted. "I made no wish, and I'm not gonna"
Faye turned her deep eyes up at him, meeting his own dark gaze. "It's already done." She made as of leave, only she was not held back by his grab on her arm. He did not see what she did, but she was already to the door and his hand was still curled around the air where her arm had been. When he looked back at the door, a millisecond later, no one was there. He grumbled something under his breath and went downstairs to sweat this whole nonsensical hallucination out of his body.
Heading down, he encountered Bishop and asked him if he had let someone of Faye's description in.
"Oh yes, that girl. She said she knew you, and you were expecting her." And the burly X-men made no more of it, leaving Wolverine in bewildered shock. That he had proof she had truly been in the mansion was a shock, but such an uncharacteristic behaviour coming from Bishop… That was beyond strange, there were unknown forces at work in this. He wondered what her purpose might have been in coming and how she had managed to convince Bishop without a gold plated invitation. To think of it, how she had managed it all, without offsetting the Professor's sophisticated machines.
It had to be telepathic powers, but he had thought she was rather on the weak side. He could have assumed wrong. He should tell the others about it, yet he stopped himself. This was far too personal. Even if he did what would they do? Same as they would any other mutant, greetings first and ward later. She had come after him and he would deal with her on his own.
Unbeknownst to Wolverine, Faye was still around the mansion but she was hiding. In as few words as can be expressed, she was thinking how to plan what she must do. There were many ways to go about it, but she was also sworn to interfere as little as possible. And so, such a question could bear a little reflection. She needed time to make everything happen. Always time was of the essence for mortals. After all the one named Logan had to know she was behind it. She could not let him forget about her. Else he would be lost in a world of his own devising. Everything must be perfect for tomorrow morning.
Logan woke up suddenly. He was no longer in his bed at the mansion. He
understood what woke him up with a start. It was Jean's voice.
"Logan, honey, wake up. Your breakfast is ready!"
That was odd, about as odd as waking up in a room he did not even remember entering, ever. The sheets of the bed even had flowers on them. He felt positive those sheets were not of his choosing.
A delicious aroma wafted to his nostrils. This he definitely knew what had produced it. He followed his nose to a small yet cosy kitchen. There Jean stood and served him a plate with the full breakfast trimmings. She looked at him with her concerned look.
"Did you sleep well? You look rumpled" She reached at his head and tucked a cowlick.
He thought about the house he did not recognise and the fact that apparently Jean and him were the only occupants. Having lost a big chunk of his past before, thinking about the situation alarmed him. He was too dumbfounded to think thoroughly, much less demand explanations he might not be ready to hear. Nor did he want to ruin this moment with Jeannie. He looked out the window and saw melting snow banks. It was spring, so at least that was consistent with his last memories, but snow this high was not a Winchester, New York landscape. Unless he missed his guess, they were in Canada.
"Honey" Jean said with a smile, "You'd better eat, it's going to get cold." She pointed at his plate.
He sat down then, "Thanks Jean".
"Aw, I love cooking for you every morning." She told him with love apparent in her eyes. Then she smiled ruefully. "I never thought I'd enjoy it so much. It was not the same back at the mansion." Then her smile faded as she seemed to realise she had said something she had not meant to. "Don't worry Logan, everything is fine now." She pasted another cheery smile on her face and went on as if nothing was the matter.
Oddly though, he noticed she did everything painstakingly and by hand too, whereas the Jean he knew loved to exercise her telekinetic muscle. Maybe she did not feel like she needed it so much anymore, but that would be strange in itself.
He also wondered what he was to do that day. From Jean's words, they were living together and had been for at least a while. Else she would not have mentioned cooking for him every morning. That in turn ruled out a possibility that they were on short leave from the X-men. But he could not just ask her about it. She would find it odd. He knew that with her telepathic powers it was only a short while before she picked up on his confusion. He would only hope things would right themselves on their own. Still, he needed to know what he had to do today. So he asked Jean:
"Did you have any plans today?"
Jean seemed startled by the question, but answered with a famished look in her eyes. "Well, it's Saturday, so I thought you would stay in with me today."
He did wonder why she spoke as if she expected to be denied. Did she not know that he would lie down his life for her like Raleigh's coat to spare the Queen's feet the indignity of brushing dirt. He shoved the thought aside though, he was happy that she wanted him, and not someone else. This was everything he had ever wanted. If things were awkward at first, he would still make up for it, for he did not dare burst this bubble. He had waited too long. So he took his plate to the dishwasher and did not ask Jean about the X-men.
They were cuddling in the living room. Her warmth, her touch, her scent. She was is. He held her and he felt truly happy, even more so as this Jean seemed to lean on him, to need his protection. There was nothing to really warrant this. He knew her for the strong woman she was, but it felt good to be needed and that she would finally let him care for her.
Logan never was a man of many words, but sometimes the ones he let out caused him grief. He let his guard down, let his shields down, and he mused wonderingly: "I never saw this side of you when you were with Scott."
She stiffened in his arms and silently pulled back.
"Jean," he said, "I'm sorry…"
"It's alright, Logan" she shrugged it away in a weak voice.
But he knew she was shaken up. He did not need telepathic abilities for that. He could even smell it about her. The moment was definitely spoiled.
Jean went to a room upstairs and he did not dare follow. She was upset and he sensed his presence made it worse. And he certainly did not know how to heal her psyche. It killed him not to be able to help it. He paced the living room and he thought about the trail of events. He had awakened this morning with less than impeccable memories, Jean was romantically involved with him, they were shackled up in Canada, something had happened with Scott, and possibly they had left the X-men for good. That was a helluva lot he had managed to forget this time.
Briefly and faintly, a memory flashed across his mind of a small woman with platinum hair, but he chased it out of his mind. He had bigger fish to fry.
He climbed up the stairs quickly, and got dressed to go outside, then pushed the door to the room in which Jean had hidden. She was sobbing softly. He was surprised to realise how acutely her pain could hurt him and swore he would heal it. He looked at her hoping she could feel the promise in his eyes. He told her,
"I'm going to fix this, I'll find out what's wrong and fix it for you, and you'll never cry again. I promise."
She simply gasped in between two sobs and said "Oh Logan, I tried, but there's nothing more to be done. The X-men are gone for good." And she weeped even harder. The man known as Wolverine came closer and tried to comfort her but she pushed him away, grief stricken and unwilling to share her pain further.
Logan was acquainted to the kind of bone-deep grief he could see in Jean. And he knew he could not do more for now, but respect her wish for solitude. He left as quickly as he had come, got out of the house and started his jeep. He did not know where he was but he could just bet at the end of the road there would be a town and in the town there would be a way. A way to find out what went wrong and what ailed Jean. A library perhaps, not that such places where familiar to him but he would be able to find out.
Before he found a library, he saw a phone booth and he thought sometimes the less sophisticated the trick, the better. So he stopped and got out of the jeep. He walked to the phone booth. Inside, he did not have to even hesitate a second, the mansion's number was as fresh in his memory as if he had lived there yesterday. He dialed... The phone rang.... once,... twice,... thrice,... Someone must be there to answer, he thought.
Then there was answer, "Hello" was said in Ororo Monroe's elegant voice. This reassured Logan, the X-men still existed, the phone was answered, and Ororo was there. He only had to ask her what was wrong with Jean.
"Hi ro'" he drawled.
"Logan?" gasped the otherwise serene woman in surprise. "Is this you?"
"Yah, what's up with the X-men Ororo?" he asked.
"But Logan, you know as well as the rest of us, the X-men are no longer." there was a touch of hurt in her voice. "When you and Jean left, the rest of us disbanded, I was not able to be enough of a leader to prevent it. And after Scott... I'm sorry Logan, but I don't want to talk about it. After all that went on last year, I hope you two can be happy together at least." She said that with a bitter voice and hung up.
He had never seen Ororo speak so abruptly, much less hang up on someone. She used to be good friends with him. To try to be there for him even though he never wanted anyone to do that for him. He could not imagine what could have changed that. The new turn of events only made him more determined to find out what was wrong with everyone and himself.
Rightly so, in the center of, er, yes... Lachlinstown there was a library that had an impressive set of newspaper archives on microfilm for a medium town. After a while, Logan got the impression he would need some help from one of the ladies and so he made an effort to be pleasant. He always knew how to do that when the game was worth the candle. Sometimes, he did wonder how the Cajun managed to be this way all the time. The lady appeared flustered, but showed him how to manage the microfilm reader and how to sort through the index.
At that point, he had to wonder where to start looking, as it was, he had no clue what had happened, but he also did not know when. He got to regret his claws could handle situations such as these, but he was certain they would not be of any help. Logan tried to recall when his last memories where, and the question as to how long it has been since, came to his mind. He grabbed the day's newspaper from the nearby table. A year and a half...
He winced, a whole year and a half to be missing memories. He hated that! He controlled his temper just in time to avoid crumbling the newspaper into a ball and forced himself to leave it unscathed on the table where he had found it. He went back to the microfilm machine and the index. He was not too sure what he had to look for, so he ended up checking pretty much every article mentionning the word mutant. And there were many.
After a while, healing factor or not, his head hurt and his sight was almost too blurred to read anything in print. He had not turned up anything worth while. His finger slipped on the backward button and he stopped himself as a reflex. There was a seemingly unrelated article on that page, and he would not have read it if he was not pitching himself in a last hope effort. What he read, about civil unrest, seemed to have only a relative importance, to him or the average reader. At about 20 lines though, what he read chilled his blood.
An unknown
teenager with the observed mutant
power to emit pyrotechnics met an untimely
death at the hands of the Friends of Humanity.
Jubilee! Jubilee was dead? Library or not, he let out a feral growl, and punched the machine's screen with his unsheathed claws. The other readers and library staff started yelling and fleeing the building. When he finally succeeded in controlling his anger he knew it was time to scram. The police or something had to be on its way, and he had questions to ask.
He drove back in a haze, and hastened to the small house. He opened the door fully expecting he would have to get Jean out of her room, but he could already see her in the lounge, sitting on the sofa.
"Jean, you have to tell me about Jubilee." he told her, as gently as he could in the state he was, which was not too gentle.
Apparently Jean did not expect such a brutal question, because she blanched even more, and looked away guiltily. He however, was not in a mood for too many niceties. He grabbed her shoulders, and forced her to look at him.
"Tell me! I have to know! What the hell happened to JUBILEE?"
Tears were flowing down her cheeks freely. "You know Logan, you KNOW what happened. Why do you want me to say it again?" She was shaking under his grip. He was past caring, all these years of living with impaired memories coupled with his anger over the news of his protegée's death left no mercy in him, not even for the woman he had loved alll his life.
"JEAN, I'M NOT KIDDING, TELL ME!" he roared the last words more than he spoke them.
Her eyes rounded as if she had never seen him angry at her like that, she swallowed a sob or two and started in a drone voice:
"It was on an impromptu mission, the FOH had been active of late and we had been trying to pick up after them. Stopping riots from forming and saving poor mutants from their schemes, at the time, they had been trying to get their hands on an alpha class mutant. No one knew why, but we knew we had to stop it. It was our job to look out for others" She gulped, and sighed.
"That day, we went out on a call, you, me, Jubilee and Iceman. I dont remember why, but you were mightily peeved at Jubilee that day, so when we did split, you went with Bobby and I went with Jubilee, we had communicated telepathically and you had told me to go with her." Jean's hand was trembling. "It turned out, they were waiting for us."
"Logan, you said you'd forgiven me" Jean was looking at him beseechingly, imploring him not to force her to continue.
But he did not react, could not let go of the need to know, until he thought of Jean's apparent change of personality and of his promise to her. He opened his mouth but... Jean went on with the story.
"They had hidden numbers, so many, I could not think of all of them, I could not hold them back, and my shields were too weak. Jubilee was the one holding them back and protecting me, just as you would have. But even with the full extent of her power she could not hold long. They overwhelmed her and they must have thought she would make a better prize. That gave me just the opportunity to fight a path out of the crowd and pull myself to relative safety. I was so scared, and Jubilee was scared too, I felt her jumbled thoughts in here" She tapped her forehead slightly. I knew even if I could, going back would not help me, or her, in any way, but I thought, if I called you and Bobby, we could take her back."
He interrupted her. "If they wanted her alive, how did she die?"
She looked at him with suprise and shame in her eyes. She slumped back in the sofa and he knew, she was going to tell him something he had never heard before, screwed memories or not. "Logan, I could have called you, and Bobby, but there was a chance we would have never made it, I could live with the sacrifice of my own life, I could even live with the sacrifice of Bobby's life, most of all I could live with the sacrifice of Jubilee's life though at times I felt like she was a beloved little sister. The one thing I could not live with, the thing I feared more was the sacrifice of your life. I could not take the chance!"
He looked at her as if something he had classified as harmless fluff suddenly turned into a crested viper. As if he had never known her. He shook her. "You mean you let them kill the kid because you would not let me take my own chances?" He was hurt and bewildered and more than a little angry.
She caved in against the sofa. Then her body slumped in defeat and she spoke with a tiny voice. "That's not what I did, I linked with her telepathically, scared as I was, and I saw what they were going to do, I saw it through her eyes and..." She was sobbing again. "Logan, there was nothing else to do... Jubilee herself... if she could have... I used my powers to give her the best death possible. And Logan, when she died, I was with her. You understand why I could not stay with the X-men. Cyclops knew what happened, and that is why he commited suicide, that and knowing I loved you. That is what broke us all up. All the X-men"
He wanted to comfort her, but he also wanted to hit her. She had made a bad mistake, one she would never forgive herself. A mistake so huge that it had been the end of a great man's dream, the end of his solace and so many others'. The end of her life as she had known it. Yet she had made that mistake partly on a selfish sentiment. However, even her selfishness was rooted in concern for him, because of her love for him.
Her love for him... It had seemed like the most unattainable dream he had ever made. But it had come true. How had it come true? A distant flash of memory lit his thought process for a milisecond. A sad knowing smile on a girl the age of Jubilee.
He saw Jean from the corner of his eye, she was removing something from her finger. She grabbed his hand and pressed something hard in it. She said in a strangled voice.
"Logan, I will understand..., if you dont forgive me...If you don't want to stay married with me. I... I don't forgive myself"
Logan closed his eyes, and knew she had put her wedding ring in his hand. Could he forgive her, could he not forgive her? He used to know what was right and what was wrong, but he did not know about a situation like this. He was no choirboy himself. He had made mistakes, but he had not killed a part of her family. Could he bear to see her everyday and remember? He gulped and opened his eyes and his hand.
The ring was there with a familiar blue jewel, like.... like the young girl's eyes. An inscription seemed to flash for a second. Wishes come true. Did they ever! It had been his fondest wish that Jean leave Scott for him. It had turned so wrong, as if his love had perverted everything good about her. In a way he was responsible. He remembered voicing his wish while holding the ring.
"Nooooooooooooooooo!" he howled, the young girl had told him she would grant his fondest wish. He remembered Faye. He would make her pay, whatever her power. He raised his fist and screamed:
"Faye, come back you little twerp, undo the damage you've done" but nothing happened. He kept on howling and pounding on the walls and screaming till he was almost spent. Jean had scurried back to her room it seemed.
Finally he fell to his knees in despair. How could he have traded his surrogate daughter for the woman he loved. He looked at the ring, peering deep within its blue stone. How he wished things were back to normal.
He pondered this for a while, then a waft of a once strange smell travelled to his nose. He knew who it was now, and he raised his head and he saw Faye, standing in front of him, come without much ado which made her appearance even more mysterious. She looked down at him, and this time she was serious, there was no trace of even the hint of a smile. He could not help himself, he jumped on her and unsheathed his claws and held them across her throat. She did not look troubled in the least.
"What did you do to me? to us?" he snarled angrily, even more furious because he seemed not to be able to scare her.
"I have given you a gift Logan, a precious gift, I made your fondest dream come true."
"A dream? You took the purest feelings I had in me and twisted them into a nightmare!" He swiped at her throat perfectly willing to end her existence here and there, not thinking further than his anger and grief. He did not notice her throat did not seem to be injured as a result of his attack.
"I did no such thing, I have allowed you to see what might become if things were different, what consequences might come of your actions. But this world, it is of your doing. It is the world in which a Jean Grey would love you and a world in which the man who is you would love her. That you do not like the type of persons it would take for such a condition to come true, is no fault of mine."
She went on, "The Jean who would not love Scott Summers is a different person than the one you know, the Jean who would reject Scott Summers and love you is yet another different person. This is what she would be like. Believe me, she is not more happy than you are, though she has tried very hard to make amends towards all parties concerned."
Faye showed Logan in smoky illusions on the wall pieces of his past in this world with Jean. He smiled at times, and cringed at others.
"There have been good times, Logan, I assure you." If you choose to remain here, you can become that man who loves Jean and that Jean loves back. The man who forgave her because of their love and who does his level best to help her live through her memories. You will remember everything, though not as acutely as you would had you lived these moments yourself. This is your wish, and if you wish it, I will serve you."
"How can I do that, she is miserable... more miserable than I've ever known her to be. If Scott was to die on a mission, she would not take it so hard, it is herself she killed when the kid died. Never to see Jubilee again, to have paid her life as the price for my happiness. That is impossible. I... I love the kid."
Faye gave him a half-smile, "That is fair. I will bring you back, nothing will have changed since last you went to bed." She started waving her hand, but he interrupted her.
"Wait! I want to know who you are, and what your powers are."
She smiled now, "But Logan, I have told you what I was, I told you I was fay." She was grinning most impishly. "Don't worry, I'm not nearly as mischievious as my cousin Puck. Since he impressed that Shakespeare fellow everyone thinks we're all alike."
"What, be serious, you mean this is all magic?" He was so surprised with her he lifted his body from her slight form and let her get up, which she seemed to do without the use of earthly movement.
"Only the best kind. You better be ready because here we go" As she completed her gesture, they found themselves back in his room.
"Well there we are. Logan I would ask a favour out of you."
"Why should I do you any favour, you ruined my dearest hope." he snarled the words back at her.
"You big lummox, why do you think I even granted your wish? It was not because I was out of things to do and I saw you and knew I had to work on you! No, you picked up the ring." At those words she seemed a bit sad. "But you can imagine what would happen if the ring fell in wrong hands. Imagine what this blue buffoon Apocalypse could wish for? "
"Your own wish, as bad as the consequences might have seemed to you, was very harmless in the end. So you see it would be in everyone's best interest if you kept the ring at least until such a time as when you find the right person to pass it along" She had sobered up quickly. "Please say you will keep the ring."
Logan wanted to keep a grudge and to tell her no, just to spite her. He wanted to hate her and to get back at her for what she had shown him, and to be sure, he was and would remain angry with the diminutive fay. Nonetheless, what she said, what she asked, made only too much sense for him to refuse. There was no way, as he had noticed earlier, that he could act on her physical presence, so that ruled out imprisoning her. He could not prevent her from the use of her powers, so it seemed the only reasonable alternative was to do what she asked. If his was a harmless wish, he did not dare think of what this... this.. fairy could do.
"Alright, I will keep it" he mumbled in a low tone, "but you will regret it"
She simply sighed, "Logan, I already do." and vanished as plainly as had
been the rest of her magical works.
-=+=+=>>The
End of Chapter 1=+=+=-