The gig is up! I don't own this.
Learning to Love Again.
"Come with me." He pleaded, not just with his mouth, but also with his startling blue eyes, particularly, with his soul. He held her cheek in his large, calloused hand as she nuzzled it longingly. He knew her answer because it was held in her deep green eyes, and he knew why.
Scott. Scott had foolishly gotten between Jean and Emma during a fight. Emma thought it perfectly all right to be naked with Jean's husband in Jean's bed. Jean, however, felt otherwise and Scott now lay in that bed alone, and with some pretty nasty injuries thanks to Emma's psy-bolts and the Phoenix force. Jean blamed herself, but in reality, and woman with a cosmic amount of energy would have done the same thing.
Tears run down her face from those crystalline green eyes, wetting Logan's hand as she kisses it. "I can't, Logan. Not yet, I have to fix things with Scott first. I can't leave things this way." She wraps her arms around him so tightly; their flesh might as well have been one. "I love you." She whispers as she tries not to let the chest wracking sobs come forth and consume her. And, Logan knows she means it, with every bit of her that can, but she still tells him to get on his motorcycle. She tells him to let her know were he ends up and that she'll be there when she can.
He rides away, watching her cry in his mirror until she's obscured by dust and space. He reaches into his pocket, mainly to check, once again, that his cigars are still there, but there's something other than his cigars in there, something that makes him stop. It's a picture; Jean gave him a picture of herself, looking at the camera lovingly and a kiss in pink lipstick in the corner. Her declaration of affection scrawled across the back. He almost turns back to try and collect her, but he doesn't. Diplomatically, Jean had chose Scott.
About Two Long Years Later.
He has settled into Alberta, he has good work and even hears from her once in a while. How she finds him, he can only guess, but she does. She divorced Scott ten months ago and has spent one incredible weekend here with him, but she never stayed, her work with the X-Men never permitted it. She has given him several pictures, but he cherishes the first, keeping it in his wallet. Orroro has even come to see him, when her royal duties permit. He looks forward to Jean's musk scented letters. The logging work doesn't permit him any permanent address, but they find him.
The letter that finds him today has no such pleasantries. Jean has gone missing, you see, Scott did not take the divorce as well as everyone though, even though he remarried soon after to Emma. Emma was found brutally mutilated in her and Scott's home. Her eyes had been removed, as well as her implants, save to mention someone tried home trepanation on her. Beast and Cecilia had guessed it was somebody trying to rob her of her telepathic abilities. At first, no one suspected Scott; he was supposed to be in London at the time. Then, little things started to lead to him. Then bigger things, and then, in a letter to me, Jean described something of Scott's dreams filtering through the rapport they once shared. Ones where Scott actually laughed as he drilled through Emma's skull, and Scott found out Jean knew.
Jean was coming to live with me because she was so scared of him. Frightened of what Apocalypse had done to Scott's mind, she had arranged secretly to come, and she should have been here yesterday. I told her I'd come to get her; I let that stubborn woman talk me out of it. If I had just done something, anything but wait for her, she'd be here with me.
Scott went missing about the same time Jean did and I'm terrified of anything that could mean. There is a manhunt out for him, Hank feared over Scott's mental state, and a chemical used to inhibit the powers of an unstable mutant was taken from Beast's lab. Scott could have done anything to her.
I remember that a madman that erased our memories of her, The Gamemaster, took Jean awhile back and I almost think I know where Scott has her. Her guard was down while she was shopping for groceries, and old lady, mind wiped by the man, injected Jean with a chemical that knocked her out completely. None of us knew a thing, none of us remembered too. Cerebro had picked up on her as a new, powerful signature after Joseph had been so sure she was a missing person we had forgotten. He lobbied for us to look, even though Scott and I personally wanted to put him in a strait jacket.
Turned out that he was right, his own mutant ability prevented his mind from being tampered with, and there she was. I know where that house was, just a stone throw from the mansion on some ill tended grounds just off the property, but would Scott be stupid enough, or brilliant enough to use it? It's not a place people knew to look, not even the county registry listed it as being there. "It's perfect." Logan thinks as he tries to access the last memories she shared with him, it was the middle of the night, would have been about eleven for her, but he woke up with a start. He couldn't completely remember what woke him; he just knew it was her. He thought it was just a bad dream, it's happened before and nothing was ever wrong so he thought nothing of it and uneasily went back to sleep.
He never heard from her completely afterwards. He thought she just had cold feet and she was known to disappear every now and then, but always came through with flying colors with her promises. She had promised to be here. When she didn't show up by midnight, he started packing his motorcycle and went to work, giving her some more time. He had some vacation coming up, he'd use it to find her.
Then I got the letter. It informed me to stay put, that the Blackbird was going to come and get me sometime today. The letter was penned a week ago, Storm must have known about how long it would take to reach me, she must have known to put the tracking device on it to find me. She must have known that Jeannie was coming to me. She must have known that I wouldn't take this lightly.
I can't understand as to why she didn't come for me before now, but she explained that Cerebro had been busted and when I don't want to be found, no telepath on earth could easily do it. I'd sworn I'd never set foot on Xavier's property again, not while Scott and Emma ran it, but maybe I shouldn't have been so stubborn. Maybe I should have stayed for her, or turned back that day, even if I had to suffer. But, and I hate to say it, it was too painful. I couldn't watch her throw what was left of her life away for Scott, even if it was doomed.
Scott had been corrupted by his time merged with Apocalypse. Remy had seen it and Remy had died because of it too. I don't remember doing it, and it might not have been just me, but I blanked out and attacked, Rogue tried to stop me, but absorbed my abilities, knocking me out. Beast found her later, Rogue had gutted Remy, presumably, but someone had to organize it, and it was odd that only Remy was attacked. He was targeted for death and in a way to get me out of the picture, but I was cleared. The marks were too small for me to have done.
"Logan?" Storm calls my name, perhaps the fourth time, drawing me out of my own mind. "We are here." She wants me to take her to the old house that I remembered, and I do, but there is not much left. I was wrong. I thought I was wrong, but I wasn't. Just about the house, the other one was a football field's length away, obscured by the dense growth and ivy vines. It's crumbling brick providing only a hint of what it had been nearly a century ago, the last time it was used as servants quarters for the main house. The door was intact, made of a hard wood turned gray in it's years of abandonment, and the floors creaked and smelled of dust, but there were footprints, dozens of them, all the same size, and one faded line of drag marks, slowly being covered with fuzz.
The dirt and mold had filled my nose, but I knew she was here, Scott wasn't, fresh tracks told the tale of his leaving to whatever a man on the run does. With a pile of ashes in the fireplace, and not enough time to cure wood for use, he must be out foraging for firewood to keep the rats away. We turned the corner, well aware that our own tracks would tattle our having been here when he returns. Getting her was now or never.
Then, there she was, chained to the wall and drooping. Her arms both had to be almost dislocated for her to be hanging like that. I knew first hand how agile she is, but that looked like that hurt, badly. Her clothes were torn, bloody and tattered. But she breathed and looked at me with those green eyes before looking past me and trying to scream, perhaps to warn Storm and me. She couldn't help us as Scott stood there, covered in a weeks worth of salty sweat and coppery blood, iron scented dirt and several other body fluids that get sticky over time. He just doesn't look like Scott.
"You can't have her." He tells us as he swings at us, Storm shocking him with a small bolt to disable him, and it works as he hits the dirty floor with a thump. He groans as I know that he must have snapped a rib. I don't know what they've been eating while they've been here, but there's a bucket of rain water with a cup in it, at least they've had water. I can't get the cuffs off her, her wounds have scabbed around it, but I can pop the bolts out of the worn brick wall. Scott starts to come too, and before Storm and I can really stop him, he's taken his knife from his waste band and lodges it deep in Jean's chest and pulls. Storm gets Scott under control again, the full array of the distorted features he now wears fully visible as his optic blasts punch through the wall and the dim sunlight filters in through the tree canopy above.
She lays across my lap, my face wears the expression of shock that never left since we found her, her blood runs over my lap and the first spray drips from my face as some yellowish fluid trickles from her mouth as I look down at her, my breath catching in my chest. I know she's suffocating on her own blood, but I can't do anything. We should have brought Hank with us, we should have, but a complication with Emma arose and that was the most important thing to work on right then rather than a hunch of mine, but Jean was what was most important to me. I couldn't spare the time to save her, but maybe, if I had waited, she wouldn't be looking up at me trying to form words but with very little sound making it's way out.
Storm has pressed her communicator and somebody, anybody should be here to get Scott's unconscious body out of here, but it wouldn't be soon enough to save this woman on my lap as she stops trying to breathe and goes limp on my. I hug her body and scream to the heavens as she dies. I almost don't notice the flicker of light that flits away from her, almost, but there it was and if I'd blinked, I'd never see it, and there it went. Storm saw it too, but as to what it meant, I don't know.
Three Days Later.
We put her in the ground today. I'm getting tired of putting her there; it's a waste of time. She never stays. I wanted to put her under glass, as though she was just sleeping, but my kiss wouldn't have brought her back. Hank found out what had sent Scott over the edge, first, Scott has brain cancer, he can't be healed and that led for the most part, to his personality changes. Second, Jean was pregnant, about four months along, about how long since she spent that long weekend with me and Scott could not stand the thought of Jean pregnant with another mans child. I'm not only burying the love of my life, but my unborn child too. The pain is just so much to bear. I don't want Scott to have the year he's got left, I want to kill him now, as does Emma, I imagine. The pink scars around her eyes forever mar her once pretty face. With the way prosthetics are now, she could have normal looking features, but she'll never see, and she'll never be as physically beautiful as she was. The hair hasn't grown back over the head scar from where the drill tore through her skull ither.
Out of nowhere, after the other mourners have parted through the wet tombstones and sodden grass and the damp graveyard soil has fragranced the air, a man taps me on the shoulder and tells me "I can give you her and the child back. Just give me the bodies."