May 20, 2023

Danielle pulled away from the memories just as Jay was about to run out of power and collapse from their joint efforts. She opened her eyes and blinked several times to adjust to the lights, hearing the urgent knocks on their bedroom. Before Logan came to seconds later, she glanced at the clock quickly. It was already eleven-thirty and they had missed breakfast and were about to miss lunch and the children's usual daily complaints later on. She then saw the black and red energy mist edging under the door, beckoning to them. It was then that she knew Celeste was on the other end.

"What the hell now?" Logan moaned, cracking his neck and allowing the stiffness to slip away.

"Celeste," Danielle replied, getting up from the bed on shaky legs and going to the door with a spinning head. "What now, Celeste?"

"Lunch!" the teenager yelled back, the mist sucked back under the door. "Cafeteria is pretty crowded now, since there's no separate faculty lunch. Better get down there before you get too bored with Daddy. Speaking of which, can I come in?"

"We'll be down in a few," Danielle reassured her, opening the door to show her daughter that she, as well as Logan, were well and still in their night clothes. "Why do you need to come in though? Too curious to see us naked?"

"What happened to you, Mom?" Celeste asked, entering the room and ignoring the barb about her inquisitiveness. "You look like a truck hit you. You sleep last night or were you too busy with other things?"

"Nothing is wrong," Danielle reassured her as Celeste checked on Logan from her position. "We got some sleep last night, although it was a late night with your uncle. We're ok."

"And Daddy?"

"He's fine too. We just…had a morning."

"Say no more!" Celeste made the most disgusted face Danielle remembered this time, as if mentioning it too many times was too much information. "I don't really need to know your life with Daddy and said a million times any more than you need to know mine."

"See you at lunch then." Danielle motioned that Celeste leave. When the teenager did, Danielle closed the door and walked back to Logan, willing her head to stop pounding as she sat down.

"Holy shit," Logan only said, rubbing his temples.

"Which part?" Danielle asked, wiping some sweat from the back of her head.

"Well, everything, the last part especially. From what I remembered…Fiona died in that car accident on Christmas Eve and your brother was given a hardship discharge."

"It almost seems like everything is the opposite from where you came from."

"Yeah…yeah, I guess you can say that."

"What else happened, where you came from?"

Logan had to think about how to answer the question before he spoke. "You told me some things and I had piece together the rest, so it's a little fragmented. I suppose we didn't have much time to speak of the matter because it hurt you too much and we had the future to worry about."

"It still does hurt here," Danielle admitted.

"I knew that Jay enlisted, to see if he could bridge a gap between humans and mutants," Logan continued as if Danielle did not speak. "Here, it seems he did it to escape and to be himself. He couldn't be a mutant in the Army though."

"Jay did try to make the humans understand mutants. I knew that he didn't speak on the assimilation and chose instead of help in little ways."

"He made waves, from what I've heard originally. He went on to fight in Desert Storm and was shattered to come home without his wife and a son who could not be cared for. He went down the bottle, his son was taken away ultimately to never be seen again and worked with Teller in order to take Ellis down. There might have been rallies you, Jean and Storm were caught at that Ellis decided to talk at. Nightcrawler, we did not meet until much later. Matthew had been put through the state system and was not seen until you both were adults."

"Teller was a double agent though, Logan. He and Chameleon had been tools when they thought their work was done."

"Yes, so I can see." Logan paused, noticing the focus on Teller alone. "I guess they always were. However, to me, everything doesn't make sense still. The only difference I see is that I was with you in childhood and little things are clues to where we are now. It seems so cliché that we fell in love."

"It does," Danielle conceded, "but it wasn't what everyone thought it was. Yes, I had a major crush on you when I was a kid. I got over that soon enough, when other circumstances and people pushed me away from you and everything else that truly mattered to me. What morphed later on was something we both grew into. I think a lot of the problem was that I was very impulsive and drunk back then and willing to have anyone come at me and give me love. I didn't understand what the definition of it was because I wasn't given it. I don't even Jay understood it either, only that it was something he could attain with the one person he truly cared about.

"Us? It's something that came from a mix of wanting to feel loved on my end and the caring on your end, to be honest, and that it all started at the times I showed you. It turned in something that we did not see much, much later and that would almost crash down on us. That isn't something I want to discuss right now though. They are things that happened much later than where we are right now."

Logan nodded. This was already too much all at once.

"Why don't we had to the cafeteria for some lunch?" Danielle then suggested, seeing the battle within Logan's eyes. "I'm sure we'll get there in time."

Again, Logan nodded. They got up from the bed and dressed in regular clothes. Danielle thought of pulling Logan's night clothes off and putting on the clean ones just to be playful, but pushed the idea away as she proceed to her own business. Although he had consented the other night, it does not give her to right to be forward again. The glance that just crossed Logan's face told her that he was still struggling in this new world of his and he did not want to toe his way to the line. He didn't know where their relationship began and ended and everything in between, although he knew that the boundaries included a marriage, children and a life together.

Sighing, Danielle took Logan's arm innocently enough and they left the bedroom, although she still felt like hell and knew that Jay did too. Logan allowed her to take the lead in the meantime, perhaps not noticing that she was taking everything she had to keep afloat. Even though Danielle had the ability to keep sickness and injury away now that she chose to live as long as Logan, this seemed to be different. It felt more than a power drain from deep within, which was scaring her. It seemed like an illness of their powers, like using them in such extremes was pulling her down into an abyss she never saw existed. It seemed too difficult to understand at the moment and too much to digest, especially with Logan understanding so little now.

However, Danielle also knew that Logan would be lost without her. She had to do everything she could to guide him. He could not afford to be lost, especially now.

Within minutes, the two arrived at the cafeteria downstairs on the lower level, standing at the end of a line that ran around the door. They waited patiently, taking some food and finding a seat as Daken and Celeste at first followed them and then chose to be with their friends. Danielle opted to sit at the table with Jay, just to make sure that he was ok. Logan did not argue about it, seating himself across from Jay and to Danielle's right. Danielle's older brother was rubbing his eyes, as if he had a headache there, and did not bother touching his food. Indeed, Jay did not seem like himself.

"Get some sleep, older brother?" Danielle taunted, in order to hide her own sickness.

"I was wondering the same with you, drinking like the fish you are," Jay replied, a comment that made even Logan turn his head.

"Hey, why didn't anyone invite me to the party?" Logan asked, trying to dispel the serious mood.

The siblings turned to stare at Logan simultaneously. "Because I didn't like sharing to begin with," Danielle said. "Explains why you couldn't detect a thing, huh?"

"Oh, don't tease him now, Danielle, especially when we both look like fuckin' hell," Jay complained. "I'm pretty sure you didn't bother telling Logan what's been going on."

Logan then stared Danielle straight into her hazel eyes. "What is he talking about?" he inquired, his tone turning into a threatening one.

"I needed additional power," Danielle explained honestly. "Jay had to know."

"It brings the circle to how many?"

"Including us two, six people."

"Too many."

"Yeah, that's what I said to everyone else."

"Hey, hey, hey, can we keep it down over there?" Jay started rubbing his forehead this time, trying to quell an argument that was surely coming. "It feels like I have a hangover without the booze."

"You drank enough last night too." Danielle tried the food and somehow could not taste it, especially with Logan feeling so angry towards her. "You might as well have a hangover."

While the two siblings bantered this way and that, Logan rolled everything over in his mind. Already, too many people knew what had happened. He figured that Jean would have picked up on things. Xavier was a secret keeper and could have slipped something if he was cornered. Jay was another part in the equation and perhaps Ororo too, since she was so close to Jean. Four people, three of them telepaths in their own right, and all of them liable to tell everyone else. In a school where he knew that rumor was king and gossip its queen, Logan was already seeing that he was dead meat if he could not come up with why he couldn't teach his classes and seemed like a fish out of water.

Not bothering to touch his food either, Logan stood up suddenly. Danielle and Jay stopped their chatter and stared at him, seeing that even Logan was unsure of what he was doing. Danielle tried putting a reassuring hand on his arm, but Logan pushed it away. He muttered something about needing some time alone and walked away, leaving his tray of food behind. It caused a little silence at the tables around the Mitchell siblings, which was going to keep people talking. That soon turned back to regular conversations, leaving the two alone with their own thoughts. They would later pay for the scene.

"It's my fault, Jay," Danielle lamented in a low tone. "I should have said something earlier."

"It's overwhelming for Logan," Jay pointed out uselessly, echoing the same sentiments Danielle had before.

"Well, don't you think he deserves the truth?"

"You are giving him the truth."

"I mean, right now. Everything that happened, he should have known."

"That detail he shouldn't have been so upset over. I'm sure Jean and Storm would have kept the information hushed. I promised to keep my mouth shut. What does Logan expect? That you and the Professor would have sewn our mouths shut and acted like it didn't matter?"

"It does to me and him, I would hope." Danielle sipped on her glass of water slowly, feeling the liquid coat her stomach in a hurtful manner. "I don't know how to go about it anymore. I can't stop right where I left off either."

"What would that be?" Jay picked at his salad, choosing not to eat the fresh vegetables and sticking his tongue out for dramatic purposes alone. He still stirred the green matter with his fork though.

"Fiona," Danielle replied quietly. "He was at the morgue with you."

Jay dropped the fork without noticing. "No, you can't really stop there. That's just the beginning."

"Yeah, the beginning of the ending."

"Well, the end of all of our innocence really, if you want to put it that way, yours in particular."

"Not you though."

Jay grinned weakly. "No, it wasn't. I think I was still in the reserves at the time."

"Weekend warriors, you called it."

"It was too boring. I enjoyed being in the Army when I was younger and didn't like the pace the Army reserves had. I had to come home though. I couldn't leave you all behind, you and Jax most of all. It would have ended much differently too. Now that we understand the extent of our powers and what Jax could do, it was the best choice."

"A ripple in the water," Danielle conceded, deciding that she too wasn't so hungry after all. "Logan has taught me now that everything can be changed – past, present and future. All in this one moment in time, everything changed and nothing will ever be the same again. The choices we make in life leave an effect, one that can either build or destroy another."

"The Butterfly Effect almost," Jay added. "Now that you concluded on that theory we all came to a long time ago, Sherlock, what are you doing to do with Logan?"

"I don't know," Danielle admitted. "Go and see him?"

"Wrong answer," Jay declared, as if he was a parent and they weren't adults acting like children. "I suggest taking some time away from Logan and leaving him alone. He's pissed off and hurt, from what I've seen. Besides, you need the time alone too. You've been on his ass for how long?"

"All weekend."

"Yeah. Get into a corner and think about what you did that was bad and come back to me with an answer. You gonna eat?"

Danielle looked down at her food once last time. "No, I guess not. Can I be excused?"

"Go." Jay waved his hand, laughing. "I'll hand out the leftovers to someone less fortunate."

"Thanks." Danielle got up and left, departing from the cafeteria and heading to the main floor. She reached the foyer, thinking of where she needed to go. She walked down the hallway a few minutes before turning around, an idea in mind.

There seemed to be one person who could help her. Danielle was sure of it.