Title: The Longest Night
Date: 12-22-06
Author: Wolf CrescentWalker
Email: wolf755 at hotmail dot com
Rating: PG-13 (language, f-bombs, general darkness)
Summary: A widowed Rogue reflects on a year in darkness
Category: Angst in extremis - be warned. Character death!
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, their universe, or the whole
mutant idea. I just make my stories for fun, not for profit.
Archive: wrbeta, others please ask (I'm usually nice, unless it's
dark of the moon).
Genre: mostly Movieverse: post-X3
Author's Notes: Being a picky perfectionist, I don't beta, so any
mistakes found are genuine.
NOTE: Written on the first day of winter. I do not know what came
over me, but I seriously need to seek psychiatric counseling after
writing this. I'm really NOT this dark.
The Longest Night
God, Logan, I miss you.
There is nothing bright left for me until she comes into the world
tonight. My belly is so tight and round and distended that I feel
like I'm going to burst with every breath. I can hear carolers
downstairs singing for the joy of the holiday season, but I want to
scream at them to shut the fuck up. The only thing left for me to
pray for is that your daughter will put some light back in my life.
How could we have known that the cure would wear off, but I would
finally know how to turn my skin off because of it? You told me once
there was a dark side to everything, and you dwelt in that darkness.
Then a minute later you said there was a bright side to every
darkness, and that was me. You might not have been the most romantic
guy in the world, but that goddamned deep philosophical side of yours
was just as endearing.
We could never have predicted that once the cure wore off, it would
leave all the women who took it sterile. The labs didn't take the
time to study it long enough, test it, allow clinical trials. Or did
they plan it that way, to leave the women with mutant genes unable to
reproduce, even after having our mutations neutered out of us? Now,
looking back over the last seven years, I can't believe I was ever
such a fool as to risk the cure, but I did. I really thought you'd
be disappointed that we'd never have kids of our own, but not once
did you ever say or do anything to make me feel less than a total
woman, less than a perfect wife to you. You'd just tickle and tease
and tempt me with promises of wild sex any time we wanted, with no
worrying about rubbers or foam or pills that would make my scent go
strange to your heightened senses. And lord almighty, did you ever
deliver on those promises.
I had you for five years of marriage; perfect, blissful, marriage
born of fantasy. I had almost stopped worrying that you'd take too
many risks in the field, on missions, any time you were on the job.
Almost. I knew the worrying would never completely go away, but I'd
gotten more confident that you really were ten feet tall and bullet-
proof, until last March, when they brought you home in a body bag.
I sat beside you, waiting most of two days for you to heal up, wake
up, sit up, until Hank made me see the decomposition, the graying
skin, the rigor that came and then left again. Your mutation had
finally found it's breaking point. Your body was dead. The fierce
Wolverine was dead! But your voice was and still is alive and well
inside my head. You talk to me every day, more at night, but I miss
your strong arms and your hard warmth in our bed, in me, in our
lives. It still isn't my life, baby, it's our life. I cannot, I will not, ever let you go.
Our bed feels soft beneath me. I lit a thick white candle on the
window sill tonight. It's the longest night of the year, and I know
how the eternal cycle of the solstices and equinoxes were important
to you, like a part of your blood. You told me it was the way Mother
Nature kept a calendar, marking the march of the seasons. I don't
know where your soul is now, or if you ever believed in heaven or
hell or oblivion or reincarnation or anything in particular. But
just in case you're out there in the snowy woods tonight, stalking
the shadows, that candle on the sill is shining to guide you home
through the darkness. Our daughter is trying to be born, and I'm
hoping she makes it before midnight. The water broke early this
afternoon, but I haven't told anyone yet. I'm keeping you and her
all for myself for as long as possible.
The telltale morning sickness didn't show up until after you
were gone. My mind wrangles constantly with curiosity: did you know
I was pregnant, finally, before you went out on that last mission?
You'd had a gleam in your eyes all day, in that wicked smile, when
you talked me into staying behind. Did you know before I did? Could
you smell it on me, that I was pregnant, when I didn't even know it
yet?
Another contraction rolls through my pelvis, making my back arch and
my breath lock up in my chest. How much like an orgasm it is, only
it's the darker side of that spastic muscle contraction. As I finally
accept the fact that I'm in genuine labor, I suddenly want my mother
with me. I want Storm with me. I want Jubes. You'd be proud of
Jubilee, Logan - she's been studying midwifery to help me out, even
though Hank's perfectly capable. I want them all to get me through
this, and at the same time I swear I would cut every one of their
throats if it would put you back here in the flesh to help me, to see
our daughter born, to have her come out of my belly into your waiting
hands. I want to see a gleaming claw cut her cord loose from my
body. I'll birth her, but you should be here to cut her free, make
her an individual entity, separate from me.
God, Logan, I loved you.
Sometimes I think I'll break under the weight of the contradicting
emotions that have ripped me apart since the spring equinox. How
ironic and totally like you to go and get yourself killed on the day
that heralds the rebirth of the earth's fertility. How ironic and
totally like me to get pregnant just days, possibly hours, before I
got widowed. I try to think back on how many times we fucked each
other those last few days and nights, wondering which time it was
that did the trick. Was I on top? Were you on top? Was it that
night on the roof, under the full moon? My money's on that night as
the winner.
When did I become an even bigger pessimist than I already was? I
wrestle hourly with the fear that my skin will turn on and kill her
in the process of being born; with the fear that she'll have a
mutation even worse than mine; that I'll suck as a mother; that the
world will go to hell for mutants before she can even get a chance to
grow up, already half-orphaned.
Another contraction brings my back arching up off the bed, and try as
I might, I have to yell from the power of it. It's only five minutes
from the last. She is gonna try to beat that midnight deadline,
baby - she wants to arrive on solstice night. I'm gasping for breath
again. I thought I was tough enough to bring her into the world
alone, but I'm not. I need help, Logan - forgive me. I wanted this
experience kept pristine for me and you-in-my-head, but it's too
much. I don't want to risk her well-being. I'm gonna call down to
Hank and Jubes and tell them to keep their mouths shut and get up
here fast.
Two hours of pain and blood, and me screaming, and me cussing a blue
streak that would surprise even you, you horny, profane bastard who
knocked me up. But all I really remember of it is looking down
between my thighs to see that little dark head come popping out, and
she's got such a mop of unruly black hair! She's bloody and slimy
and gorgeous and she's screaming her lungs out with her very first
breath. She's definitely your feral daughter.
Thank god the mansion is quiet now. I guess my godawful yelling
managed to shut the carolers down completely. Everything's hushed
and quiet now. She's asleep on my chest and I'm full of enough
painkillers to be woozy and warm and happy. Hank says I'm fine, just
sore and tired, and needing sleep and quiet to recover. It's not
quite midnight, and he's gone back to his rooms to clean up and get
some sleep. Jubes is crashing on the sofa in the next room.
That candle on the window sill can burn through the whole night for you.
It's big enough - it'll last until sunrise when this little warm, wet
bundle laying on me will demand I start a new life for myself, for
her. I know I can't have you back, but I'll ask this one favor: come
in my dreams tonight and whisper to me in the darkness, tell me what
to name your daughter. I can't decide, so you're gonna have to help
me somehow.
She's a beauty, and I know you're proud of both of us.
God, Logan, I miss you.