Disclaimer: Sara is mine. Trader is mine. The Hunt is mine. Xmen and all their toys are property of others.

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I lied to them. I sat there in the dark and drew cards and lied. I could have told them the truth. I was afraid to see the pity in their eyes.

I'd rather see their scorn.

Sara stood in the garden, under a noon sun. There wasn't a cloud for miles in either direction. She did not move. The thoughts chased themselves around her head. It could have been midnight for all she noticed.

Logan watched her. He knew she was lying; what he knew that she did not was that she had started talking in her sleep, and the things he heard were at odds with what she had heard. Yeah, maybe she had gotten half-killed willingly, but there was more to the story.

"Cat." He saw her flinch. That was new.

I lied to him. He knows I lied to him. No. How could he know? He would have called me on it before now.

"Wolf."

"You ready to tell me what's going on yet?"

He knows. God in heaven, he knows I lied. What am I going to do? And yet, was it really a lie? Could I tell myself it was only part of the truth, and make it not a lie?

"Would it make a difference?"

"You tell me. A letter came for you. You've never had mail here before. Usually your messages come more... directly."

He held out an envelope. She turned, opened her eyes. Thousand-yard stare. The blood had fled her cheeks. For a split instant, he thought she'd faint. Sara took the letter and broke the seal. The message was brief. One sentence, and the signature.

Which outlasts the other, the mountains or the sea?

Trader

Sara didn't know she was crying until tears fell on the paper. Logan wrapped her in his arms. She shook. She wept. She huddled there like he was the only thing that was real in the universe. Broken, again, by a single piece of paper. She heard the voices in the dark, as she crawled into a corner of her dark prision. Sara was back in the House of Pain. A hundred years of torment flooded back. Memory was crueler than any other master she had known. She was laying in the streets, broken. She was crawling through the dark, bleeding. She was kneeling on the dirt in the grounds of what she had foolishly thought was a safe haven, and Sara was more afraid of opening her eyes than she was of what waited in the depths of her memory.