Note: This is a short piece I wrote loosely based on a fan fiction I have for X-men that I hope to start writing as soon as I am done several others. The character he addresses is one I made up named Rachel. I own her as a character and nothing else.

It's worse at night.

The days aren't much better but the nights ... the nights are worse.

During the day the movement and commotion can distract me for seconds at a time, the shouting and running through the halls breaking its way through my thoughts long enough for me to yell at them to shut up or run my finger down the glass of the beer bottle with enough pressure to break it.

But the nights are worse.

At night it's quiet and dark, the shadows enough to break over my eyesight and plague me with nightmares that during the day don't seem so terrifying.

Seem so much easier to bear.

I've taken to wandering at night, walking through the halls and over the grounds in the dead silence and trying to block out the memories that rip their way through my throat like acidic glass that is always more than enough to bring me to my knees in tears and sick.

Enough to break me over and over.

I run a lot. Crash through the hedges and the woods, my teeth bared over my lip and my increased heart rate pounding so fast that the voices fade into a dull whisper in the back of my mind. But those seconds always end, my body always gives up and I have to stop.

And then they're back.

They are never there in full, always in fragments and in bits and pieces. I'm not sure which would be more bearable, which would hurt less.

Which would brace and break me to my knees in breathless sobs.

I always remember her voice first.

The way she said my name like it was a joke that only she understood. The nickname she dubbed me imprinted over her lips and on her tongue.

Stranger.

And I would reply with a smirk, calling out "Hey, Kid" and she would make a face, telling me not to call her kid but smirking herself as if she deep down she didn't mind but she needed to keep up her appearances.

Her laugh always came next.

The way it shaped over her face, claimed her eyes and her smile in their own hold. The way it sounded on the air and how it always made me smile in return, the feel so unnatural and so foreign and yet with her like a second nature I had forgotten I did.

Like breathing.

Her eyes usually followed afterwards. The hardened shade of brown that always seemed to illuminate the most brilliant shade of gold.

Like the dying sparks of fireworks.

The memories came fuller after that, breaking and shredding through my thoughts like shards of chipped glass shoved down my throat.

Leaving me bloody and broken.

I remember the first moment I met her. Starved and alone in a bar in the backwoods of Canada, her fingers fisted into her decaying jacket and her voice betrayed by how hungry she was, nearly lost behind her hardened determination. Even then she nearly refused the burger I bought her, haughtily pointing out that she didn't take food from strangers.

It took three tries before she finally took it.

I remember the next moment I met her, months later with her cheeks no longer hollowed and the crisp dancing light of gold alive in her eyes. She smirked when she saw me, introducing herself as if we had some sort of sordid past that caused the professor to raise his eyebrows before she assured him she didn't take advantage of me.

It was the first time I had remembered smiling in a long time.

I remember when the mansion was attacked and we escaped to Bobby Drake's house, constantly making eye contact to her in the back seat to make sure that she was alright. To make sure that she wasn't afraid.

To assure her that I would protect her.

She waltzed out of one of the spare bedrooms, dressed in some of Bobby's mom's old clothing and perched herself on the counter, turning my simple comment that she was dressed in a direction I hadn't intended. She took the beer I didn't offer and winked as she left, sipping deeply from the bottle as she did.

I simply shook my head and drank from the spare I had brought out in preparation that she would ask.

I remember the day Jean died and Johnny left. The way her eyes began to dark, the sparks started to die and she began to clutch at her head as if she was hearing voices that none of the rest of us could hear.

The day I started to lose her.

She started to withdraw from everyone, biting out answers to questions with a darkened edge, her eyes clouding over and darkening into something that was twisted and broken. Something that wasn't her.

That couldn't be her.

Things started to tremble around her when she moved, mirrors cracking and walls twisting and breaking whenever she passed. One day I pulled her aside, my fingers digging into her arm and she ripped herself free from my grasp, a statue beside us exploding in a burst of marble and dust.

She said that it was always headless and stalked away, the stone steps beneath her cracking and beginning to shatter.

I remember the day I lost her.

It was the day she killed Scott. The day that I found her collapsed on the shores of Alkali Lake, so fragile and breakable amongst the stones and dirt. The day the professor told me that she had been affected by a mental mutation that enhanced her abilities and yet in turn twisted and broke down her sanity.

I hated him for that. As if it was his fault. As if I hadn't known and that could have saved her from it.

I stood by her side for hours, dreams fluttered beneath her eyelids and wires pressed themselves along her forehead and chest. It was nearly impossible to believe him then, when she was so fragile and so innocently asleep, the world untouchable to her.

If only I had left her like that.

I grazed my finger down her cheek and her eyes snapped open in gold brilliance. I jumped back and she turned to look over at me with a small smirk on her lips.

"Hey, Stranger."

I smiled back at her, forgetting everything the professor said. Everything he accused her of and everything that she had been forced to become.

"Hey, Kid."

She looked around in confusion, pulling off the wires and cautiously sitting up with her eyes darting across the room in some desperation to understand.

"What happened?"

Something inside of me that I had long ago dedicated to her broke and I lied to her, biting back the truth with bitter taste.

"You were in an accident. In the danger room."

She believed me. At first at least. But then it came back. The past few months, the darkness in her eyes and the crackle of the air whenever she grew angry or scared came rushing back and she began to cry, grasping at my arms in terror and unable to breath past her words.

"Don't let it take me again, Logan. Please, I don't want it to take me again."

I pressed my lips to her forehead and held her face between my hands, her hair tangled over my fingers and her tears stained over her cheeks.

"I promise. It'll be alright, the professor can fix it and it'll be alright. You'll be alright."

Her eyes sharpened and she shoved me from her in terrifying strength, a growl twisted in her throat and I crashed into the wall. My eyesight faded in brilliant agony as she walked past in twisted confidence.

"I don't want to fix it."

I should have let her go after that. I should have given up. But I couldn't. And I didn't.

I went to get her with the Professor and Storm, waiting outside her house with my blood bubbled in anticipation and the adamantium in my knuckles burned coldly in my desperation to tear through the Juggernaut and anyone else standing in my way in order to get to her.

I didn't get to her in time.

She killed the Professor and Magneto took her away from me. I locked myself in my room for two days, my fingers fisted in my hair and the bitter taste of sick and tears clawing up my throat. It was there that I heard her voice, cutting through my head like a hundred razor blades.

"Logan! Help me! Logan!"

Within two minutes I was on the Scott's old bike and on the road, her voice still echoed through my ears and determination hardened through my veins.

"Logan! Help me! Logan!"

I followed her from the crowd of brotherhood, her head lowered and an emptiness frozen into her shoulders like she had been carved clean and only her striped bones remained. I called out her name and she slowly turned to face me, tears crystallized in her eyes and the next thing I knew I was being thrown back by Magneto, trees crashing against my back and breaking my bones as I fell.

"Logan!"

I braced myself before we broke into battle, my fingers digging into my palms and my breath misted in the air as I could see her standing on the hill across from us. She stood out amongst the Brotherhood, in the darkness and the cold, so fragile and yet so strong, frozen on the backdrop.

On opposite ends of the battlefield.

I remember the words I said to her, desperately broken from my lips as the metal she manipulated ran itself down my back and tearing at the flesh.

"For you. Only for you."

The response to her question, hardened in her voice like a raw edge of a blade.

"You would die for them?"

I remember the crush of my blades sinking into her stomach, the collapse of flesh and the spurts of blood staining her shirt and leaking its way down my arm.

I remember the way it shattered my heart as I did so.

I remember the gasp break free of her lips and her eyes raised to mine as they softened and the sparks of gold in them burned brilliantly before fading in rapid succession. I remember the way she looked around with the blood on her lips and the realization of all that she had done, all that she had been forced to do sank in. I remember her turning to me and a single tear rolling down her cheek, her voice thick with blood:

"Logan ... I'm so sorry."

I remember the thud as my knees hit the earth and she collapsed in my arms, her head fallen back and her eyes lifelessly staring at the sky with the reflection of the stars crystallized in them like orbs.

I remember that I held her for hours, just because I couldn't bear to let her go.

I remember that she was buried in the school cemetery between Scott and the Professor, the students wary of it because of what she did. What they thought she had control over.

I remember that I stood outside her gravestone for hours afterwards, beer in my hand and her words still ringing in my ears:

"Can I have one?" "Aren't you underage?" "Yeah, so?"

I remember that time ceased to exist after that, that each moment might as well be an hour and each hour might as well be a day. That the days became and still are determined by the seconds that I find it bearable and the seconds that it's not.

The nights are worse.

I lied.

It is never bearable.