I'm going to cry.


Ella Henderson - Ghost

Set It Off - Midnight Thoughts

George Ezra - Did You Hear The Rain?

OneRepublic - Rescue Me

Yazoo- Only You

Jonas Brothers - Sucker

Taylor Swift - I Know Places

The Chainsmokers - Something Just Like This


Chapter 4, Ghost:

(This is a step back in time.)

The shit hit the fan on a Friday morning around the four-month mark in Holly's pregnancy. Logan woke up to the excited sounds of other people talking in the hallways, rushing past the door. Holly, still asleep next to him, made no move to get up. He tucked dark hair behind her ear, murmured to her that he would be right back and got up.

Half awake she murmured back a soft okay, and turned over snuggling into his side of the bed. Logan, for just a moment, thought about forgoing whatever it was outside that had everyone excited. He could get back into bed and-

"You really think it's her?" Someone in the hallway asked.

"I mean, she's supposed to be dead." He recognized that voice. It was Rogue. "I saw Logan after it happened. It nearly destroyed him. I have no idea how he's gonna take it if it is her."

A pit of gnawing he didn't have a name for began to form in his gut. At equal points he wanted it to be who he thought it was. Only because her death grated on him. At the same time, he did not want it to be her. He remembered the feeling of his claws in her body and black veins around her eyes, saying he loved her as she died in his arms.

Logan, never one to procrastinate, sat on the bed next to his wife to be and did just that. He came up with every single plausible excuse he could come up with for a good five minutes. In a life as long as his, it wasn't much time, but it sure as hell made him feel like an eternity passed. One more time, before he stood up, he turned his attention to the woman in bed.

He thought he loved Jean. He honestly believed he did.

Then he met Holly. Holly who was terrified of hurting him. He almost laughed. She was scared of hurting him.

Logan, after another minute of watching his future wife sleep, stood up. He went to the door, opened it, went through and closed it behind him. Holly needed to sleep. He needed to wipe his conscience clean.

The walk down the hallway felt like it took forever. It took less than a full minute. A familiar head of red hair in a sea of other people. Kids, teachers, lots of talking all at once.

He was happy Jean was alive. The guilt over believing he'd killed her…it had gnawed on his soul for years.

It was a tense moment before she was drawn away by other people to talk and be checked over by the Professor or Doctor Mcoy. In a daze he returned to the bedroom he shared with his soon to be wife. Holly had turned in her sleep to face the door. Like she was waiting for him.

Dark hair had fallen across her face again. He brushed it away gently.

Holly's body tensed and shook briefly. Her dark green eyes popped open and she pushed up, her brow creasing. "Jean is alive?"

"I saw her downstairs," he told Holly, taking a seat next to her in bed. "I didn't mean to wake you like that darlin'." He leaned in to press a kiss to her mouth and caught her cheek instead. His brow furrowed.

"I'm sure you didn't." He knew the tone in her voice.

Pregnancy hormones were a bitch to deal with, and he'd been on the receiving end of her getting snippy before. Logan, put one hand out to hold hers, to bring her down from the spiral. He'd done it a dozen times since she realized she was pregnant. Seeing he didn't mean to upset her helped her rationalize. Other people didn't know it, but that's why they didn't tend to fight. Misunderstandings or miscommunications were easier to sort out when his soon to be wife could literally read his intentions when she touched him.

When she pulled away from him before he could touch her, he knew he was in deep shit. "Holly," he began.

"Go see her. You want to." Her voice was hard and sharp.

"I want to make sure she's okay." He again reached for her and she blocked his hand with that move she learned at some point. "Holly."

"I said," she pointed at the door, "go."

If he left this would turn into a real fight. A bad one. "No."

"I don't want to look at you right now. Go or I'm going to go." He didn't move. She began shoving back the sheets. "I swear to god Logan, sometimes you piss me off so much!"

If Logan had been the one with Holly's abilities, and she his, the fight might have gone differently. He would have seen she wasn't angry so much as she was scared. Logan's love, or at least in her opinion (based on things he couldn't remember but she'd seen of the 80's) misplaced grateful/thankful feelings toward Jean was a threat. A threat to their children, to their life. She put her hands on her baby bump a second after she slammed the door to their bathroom and locked it.

Holly stood there shaking, unsure of what to do. Call her father? No, Tony had only warmed up to Logan because he had to. The age difference, physical not actual, still skeeved her father out some. She sat down on the edge of the tub and stared at the tiny window on the opposite wall facing the courtyard outside. Tears burned her eyes and her throat felt raw.

He knocked and got no answer. "Holly, let me in." Frustrated when she again did not answer. "Holly, damn it." Still no answer.

He could just break the lock. The Professor told him if he ever did it again without it being an actual emergency, the repair bill was coming out of his pay. Logan stood there contemplating losing that money towards their honeymoon on Presque Isle and dipping into their savings to cover it. She'd kill him. They had been saving every penny to save up for a house. Holly pointed out their room - despite having been moved to a bigger one once they were engaged and expecting - was going to get a lot smaller with two bassinets and eventually two cribs.

Frustrated he dragged one hand through his hair and stood outside the bathroom door. "Holly, I will break the lock, screw the Professor. Open the goddamn door."

The lock flipped and he pushed it open. His fiancé stood by the sink crying.

"If," she sobbed, "you leave us…" her hands were on her stomach.

Shit. Shit. Shit. He would have touched her again, but she couldn't block like this. He had to tell her first, give her a moment to prepare. "Holly, I'm going to touch you now."

She withdrew before he could. "No."

"Honey, you've got an idea in your head that ain't gonna happen. I won't leave. I'm in this to the end you know that." He held out a hand to her. "Come on, one touch, you can see how much I mean it. You and me, the two kids growing inside you. That's what I want."

She sniffed, "Don't touch me."

He curled and uncurled his fingers. "Come on Holly, trust that I love you."

Gingerly she reached out and put her hand in his. A second later she was stepping into his chest and throwing her arms around him. "I trust you. I don't trust her. Scott's with Patience now, technically Jean's a free woman."

He wrapped his arms around her. "Even if I was interested," she gave him a warning look, "I'm not. I'm not a free man. I put a ring on your finger, and I mean to go through with it. We've got two weeks left darlin, and you're not getting away from me that easy." He kissed her forehead, tip of her nose and then her lips. "You're going to be mine and these two," he cupped her small baby bump, "are going to have two parents who want them and love them."

"You need to promise me something."

"Anything." Everything.

"You can never, ever think about Jean Gray in anything other than a professional teacher to teacher or X-Man to X-Woman capacity again. She is a teammate and a fellow teacher and that is it."

He could do that. He kissed her again, slower this time. "Come on, back to bed or you're going to be cranky later."

"You're just afraid I'm going to get mad again."

"Hell, yes I'm afraid. We're shelling out two thousand for this thing. I don't want you making bad decisions when we're talking to vendors and all that other crap we have to do today."

"Uh huh, sure, you're worried about the vendors and not-" he was kissing her again.


After Jean returned to the school, alive and mostly healthy without valid or rational reason - Holly remembered the feeling of Logan's claws slicing through flesh and important organs - there had to be some adjustments. For one, Scott dropped Patience like a hot potato. The Professor, Storm, Peter, Beast, were all ecstatic to have her back.

Patience moved out. Back to Albany supposedly.

Holly successfully avoided having to see Jean for all of a week. She stood across the hall from Logan's last history class of the day waiting for him to let the kids go. They had dinner plans with her father in the city and if they didn't leave in the next hour the traffic would be insanity. She checked the time on her phone.

"You're Holly," Jean Grey's voice came from Holly's left, "right?"

Do not be hostile to the undead woman. "That's me." She pulled a glove on her dominant hand and held it out. "And you're Jean."

Jean noticed the glove, but shook anyway. "Psychometry is an incredibly rare gift."

So is coming back from the dead. Holly didn't say it aloud. Nor did she worry about Jean taking a peek inside her head. The Professor more than likely cautioned Jean about Holly's built in defense against psychics. "Tell me about it." She withdrew her hand and peeled off the glove again.

"I assume you have to be more cautious because of the pregnancy." Jean sounded so...congenial. Almost pleasant.

"Hank's keeping more of my blood type around just in case, but it's important I'm smart about who and what I touch." Holly held her stomach. "It helps their father is the same blood type."

Jean's head was bobbing. Then she asked a question that Holly would have assumed she knew the answer to by now. "And the father? Is he one of the newer teachers?"

Holly blinked at her, dumbfounded. "You don't know?" She didn't know if Jean did and wanted to hear it for herself or if she genuinely hadn't been told yet. Honestly, Holly and Logan weren't huge on PDAs but they tended to eat together, sit together during staff meetings and slept in the same room. When Holly thought about it, really thought about it for a minute - well shit. Jean probably hadn't realized because she'd been with Scott, Hank and Professor X most of the last week.

The door to the classroom opened. Kids streamed out.

A few "Hi Ms. Harper. Hi Ms. Grey." from the kids. Holly and Jean backed up a bit to let the kids out.

Jean stayed, waiting for an answer.

Oh this was going to be awkward. Holly caught sight of her soon to be husband packing up his class materials. He didn't realize she was there yet. He looked so thoughtful standing there, putting away notes.

The best thing to do with a band-aid she supposed. Holly nodded at Logan and waited for the other woman to do the mental math.

The look on Jean's face. The succession of confusion, shock, disbelief and a touch of jealousy. Holly wanted a photograph. The petty part of her held up her hand, the one with the white gold band and small diamond with emerald chips. "I gave the dangerous guy a shot and he turned out to be pretty amazing." She told Jean. "Guess you were wrong." It was a sucker punch, but Holly had been waiting a long, long time to put that bullshit in a deep grave and cover it with truth. She didn't spare Jean another look as she went into the classroom.

He paused, setting everything down. "Hey," he reached out for her, wrapping an arm around her waist. "I didn't forget about dinner. Jessie asked about the battle at Shiloh and I got-"

"Sidetracked by the soldier in your head." She finished for him with a small smile. "Well if we don't get down to Manhattan by eight, you're going to have another battle on your hands. One between an annoyed Tony Stark and your hungry, pregnant fiancee."

One of his hands immediately went over her baby bump. At four months she wasn't showing as much as the OBGYN and Hank would have liked for someone carrying twins. The vegetarian nearly vegan thing was throwing a wrench in the works. If it was a voluntary choice, it would have been an easy fix. With her mutation, not eating meat and certain animal based products wasn't a choice.

She couldn't risk it. Period.

"I'm going to put this stuff in our room and-" there was a flutter under his hands. Something small moving inside her. Words left him as his world came down to realizing that was one of his kids moving. "They're moving around already?" He asked after a moment of awed silence.

Holly smiled up at him. She'd been hoping he'd feel them kicking her. "They're yours, of course they are."

"Not gonna lie," his hand shifted over her stomach as the flutters did, "I'd do it over again."

"Oh yeah?" She laughed. "Car sex and all?"

He crouched, lifting her shirt a little so he could press one ear to her stomach. "All of it."


And now you all know what others don't. The reason Holly and Logan don't fight. But...that's the old Logan.

This story took on a life of its own. It is now about eight chapters, almost 80+ pages with extras that I need to edit and work into current settings.

Reviews make it easier for me to know what you like. Or didn't like. Or if you hate me. Or love me. Or really want to hurt me over this.