With Memory

Nobody, not even Sera, came into Logan's room without knocking. He was too much of a walking hair-trigger, always on guard and ready to fight. People usually tried to make as much noise as possible when passing the door, in order to avoid even the appearance of trying to sneak up on him.

Not the Jannhansons. When the door pushed inward soundlessly and Logan snapped to his feet, claws at the ready, an unrepentant Miss Celest stood in the doorway. She was looking at his claws like they were some sort of children's toy, the type of thing little boys used to make themselves feel bigger. Logan glared back at her, and kept the claws. Like he cared what she thought.

So, this is where my daughter lives.

This is my room. Sera's across the hall. Or in her place in town.

she sniffed and sat down in one of the two chairs.

Frustrated, Logan pulled the claws in and tried to calm himself down. If he killed her, he'd never get Sera back and she was worth everything. You here for a reason, Celest?

Miss Celest. And I'm here to... long pause as she looked him up and down in marked disdain. help you.

Yeah, right. To what, a brain tumor? Look, Miss Celest, you don't like me and I ain't real keen on you, so why don't we forget this crap and you just go on down and get back to making Sera better?

Miss Celest would never do anything so unrestrained as lean anywhere, but she managed to give the impression of a body more at ease. She continued to stare at Logan, expressionless. Finally, she said, What do you know about brain damage?

That it ain't good. What, I look like a doctor now? Hank's the doc, go pick his brain to pieces.

The reason we don't intervene in cases like this is the damage is too severe. The brain is, as you may know, very important. If she were anyone but who she was, Logan might have thought that Miss Celest was being sarcastic. It's the home of thought, of learning, of memory, of feeling. Putting it to right when things go wrong is a daunting task, one that is beyond most people. Possibly even us. You would have to know someone intimately, to be able to fix what's broken. You would have to know them as well as they know themselves. A quiet fell then, as Miss Celest seemed to take her words inside herself, and turn them around, looking for meaning. Slowly, she seemed to come back to herself and continued speaking. And, although it shames me to admit it, I've never known my youngest daughter that well.

Logan sat with a heavy thump onto the other chair. You askin' for my help?

A nod of her head. You're my first choice, yes. You seem to know Sera quite well.

So, what, yer just gonna ask some questions and then, bam, yer gonna know all about Sera? That seems a little to easy.

It would be a little more complicated than that, yes. You see, to really see my daughter, to really come any closer to understanding her, I would need to see her from your point of view. There was a pause, while she stared at him in grudging admiration tinged with annoyance. You seem like you understand Sera.

Logan snorted a laugh. You think that's true, yer right, you really don't know Sera. Another thought occurred to him. What do you mean, see her from my point of view?

I would have to look at her from your eyes. From inside you.

You wanna explain that in maybe a bit more detail?

Miss Celest seemed to be looking for the right words. Have you ever had Sera heal you?

I do my own healing.

Then this will be harder to explain. I need to... go inside of you. I need to see things from inside your own feelings.

You mean, get inside my head? At her nod of confirmation, he shook his head violently, just once. Uh-huh. No way. I don't let nobody inside my head, playing games. Nough people have already been in there, I don't need you there too.

You let Sera in.

You guys never get. Ya don't let Sera do anything. She just does it. And yeah, I guess she gets mixed up there sometimes, but that's Sera, and she can't help it, and she don't stay long. It ain't you, coming in on purpose, messing about with the stuff that you find.

You want her to get better? You were more than happy to ask us to turn our back on our principles. If you aren't willing to do the same for her, I'm going to join Raphie in suggesting that this is the wrong place for Sera to be in.

Sera had, so far as Logan knew, never once listened to either her mother or her sister when it came to making choices for her life. On the otherhand, she had never once wound up near dead either, so maybe she would be making some different choices, once she got better. If she got better.

If.
Damn it!

Fine, ya get to crawl around in my brain, if that's gonna help you any, which I can't see as it's gonna, but you don't get near any part I warn you away from. We clear, Miss Celest? There ain't going be no tampering. You leave everything the way that you found it.

The slightest trace of relief showed in her eyes before she could hide it. Miss Celest was not one for showing the world that she was human. Coolly, she said, Thank you. I knew that you would be willing to help us.

So, what, you gonna do it now? he braced himself, waiting for the invasion.

But Miss Celest shook her head. No, I'm too tired from the trip. This is going to be hard enough on the both of us, without me being clumsy about it. We'll try tomorrow. Early.

He grunted, not thrilled with the idea but willing to try for Sera. You sure this is gonna work? he muttered.

Honestly? No. She is... she's very badly hurt. I don't know if anything can save her at this point.

The sound of her voice, so like Sera's, caught his attention and he looked up, to see her staring away, staring out his window. He could swear her eyes were glassy with tears. Shit, another messed up woman. He wasn't up to this, couldn't deal with it at all. Let them go to old One Eye is they wanted to feel better. Think that's the first human emotion I seen you show yet, Miss C.

He expected anger, had hoped for it. He couldn't handle tears, never could. Sera never cried around him, she just got pissed off; it was one of the reasons he was so crazy. But Celest obviously wasn't as easy to goad, cause the look on her face didn't change.

I love my daughter, even if I don't understand her. If you think it's easy to look at someone you brought into the world, someone you loved, and see them dying, well then, maybe you don't care as much about my daughter as I thought you did.

My daughter. My sister. Our Serendipity. We are Other. He could feel the Jannhansons pushing him away bit by bit, staking their claim to her. Pulling her away from him with every word, every comment. This wasn't even better yet, and they were taking her away. They though that would work, they were kidding themselves. Not gonna happen, no way.

When she gets better, you ain't takin' her nowhere. She belongs here. This is where she wants to be.

Celest finally turned to look at him and now she was mad, madder even than Raphie had been that afternoon. Didn't change her voice one bit , though; she still sounded like she was made out of ice. I blame you for this. You were the one she couldn't leave behind. Terry she could take anywhere, it was you she couldn't leave. Funny that, because as I understand, you do enough leaving for the both of you.

You want my help, Miss Celest, why don't you get the fuck out of here before I get really mad? Fuck them for throwing that back at him. Sera understood. She didn't care that sometimes he just needed to hit he road. She didn't care. Maybe that first time, but he admitted he screwed up then, hurting her like that, dropping her like that.

Miss Celest stood, moved to the door. Stopped, stared at Logan, and shook her head. I don't know what she sees in you. But I do know that you're our best chance of saving her. So here's what you can do, besides talking big. Why don't you sit down and really think about what it is you do understand about my daughter, what it is you do know. Cause that's what all be needing from you tomorrow, not those big claws you're so proud or those fists you can use. I need your head. See if you can find it before the morning. She was careful to slam the door on her way out, just another little way to mention how much she couldn't stand him.

Fine. Fuck her. He knew plenty about Sera. They talked, they did stuff. He knew plenty. He knew enough to save her.

You forget, I can be anything I need to be.

And then she had been strong enough to take him on, strong enough to take anyone. But all the strength in the world wasn't enough to protect from a hit to the head, wasn't enough to keep her from going down.

I don't remember you needing to teach me anything,

I shoulda taught you not to go running at people like that. I shoulda taught you not to take on every guy that comes at you. Shoulda told, strength don't matter against some things. Strength don't matter at all, cause everyone's got their weak point. You were so good at finding other people's weak points, how is it you let someone right at yours? What the hell were you thinking, running at that last guy like that?

Go get em, darlin'. I'll be right behind you . Enjoying the view.

Wasn't close enough. Not near close enough. Swear to God, you get better, I'll never let you get that far away again. never let you get hurt again. Shit, darlin', I swear I won't fuck up again. Won't screw this up. Won't let you get worse. Hell, what if your family is right, what if this is my fault?

Almost without thought, Logan reached out, grabbed the back of the nearest chair, and slowly crushed it.

I'm not gonna screw up again. Not again. Not with you.


He hadn't been able to go into Sera's room since she got hurt. Smelled too much like her, had too many damn memories in there. He went in now though, trying to learn more about her, trying to be ready for tomorrow, when her mama went crawling through his brain.

Shit. It was Sera's stuff. They didn't have one of those relationship things, where he felt all comfortable going through her stuff. Felt like a damn peeping Tom, is what he felt like.

There, okay, that was pretty benign; picture sitting out on her computer table. Logan picked it up, stared. Oh, yeah, yeah, he knew this. Dark silver frame, snapshot of Sera, Terry and Logan, looking like a family. It was her favorite picture, he knew that. He remembered how happy she had been that day. School been having a picnic and the three of them had been relaxing all day. It wasn't real posed, they were just hanging around, talking. Kinda family like, maybe. In the picture, he had his arm around her, and Terry, taller than the both of them, was laughing down at them. Sera had this great smile on her face, like she had everything in the world that she wanted. Didn't take a lot to make the woman happy.

Logan put down the picture carefully, gently. He wanted things to look good in her when she came back. Wanted things to look perfect. Wanted her to be happy.

There was a leather coat tossed over one of the chairs. Long and black, he remembered her bitching about how it had to be fixed special so that it didn't drag in the floor. She hated how little she was, how sometimes people just looked past her. He loved her size, thought that she fit perfectly with him. He couldn't remember a time when he had ever looked past her to someone else. Once he met her, that was it. If she was in the room, he was hard pressed to notice other people there.

She'd been wearing that coat the day she came back to him. He could still remember the smell, the feel of the wet leather when she told him that he was what she wanted. Logan had always thought-- hell, still thought-- that she deserved a lot better, but she had never agreed. She wanted only what he could give, never any more. It was all she could give, too. Relationships, Logan had heard her tell Jean once, were what other people had. She was good just the way that she was. Face contorted in pain, he picked the leather jacket up in a fist and breathed deep. Yeah, that was the smell he knew. Cinnamon and leather and something that was just Sera. Just his.

That just plain sucked. Celest didn't know what she was asking, saying he ought to try to remember everything he knew about her kid. This was like walking through hell. Hurt like nothing he coulda imagined, and not the kind of hurt the could fix, either. Dropping like the leather like it burned, he spun around, trying to find something less emotionally loaded than the old coat.

Aw, hell. There on the wall, framed, Terry's adoption certificate. Plain looking thing. She had glowed like the sun the day she and the kid had come home from the courthouse. He asked once, what the big deal was, why she needed to make it legal. She had gotten this look, hard to explain, almost confused, like she was trying to explain something that made perfect sense to her and zero sense to anyone else on the planet. Terry, she had told him, was hers. Terry was always supposed to be hers. It was a mistake that Terry had wound up with those people who beat her and almost killed her, but now that Sera had found the kid, her kid, she wasn't lettingTerry go at all. It wasn't quite a mother/daughter relationship. Sera only had fourteen years on the kid, and hadn't even met the girl until she was eleven. It was some weird mix of mother, and sister and friend. Seemed to work for them.

Sera was great at being a mom. Woman like that, she ought to have kids of her own. She was unofficial mama to half the kids at school. Anyone all broken up over teen love, or stressed cause they blew a big quiz, or missed the parents that sure didn't seem to miss them, they went to Sera's place in town. She had given up preventing it, or keeping the apartment as a private sanctuary for her and Terry. No, now she had put up this sign-up sheet in the T.V. room; Sundays at Sera's it said and if the kids were interested, they put there names down and showed up that Sunday afternoon. It was the whole homey thing, cooking dinner, Sera nagging them about homework. Mom stuff.

Thoughts he had never had strayed through Logan's head. Had she ever wanted kids of her own? Ones that were really her blood? Nah, that was stupid. Sera wanted a kid, she could just go ahead and have one. Jannhansons didn't need men for that; they just need to really put their mind to it and wham, nine months later, there's another perfect little Jannhanson girl, ready for the world. What more could she want?

Okay, he needed something that didn't make him think so much. He turned helplessly through the room, looking for something he knew about her, something he felt okay about touching, about pawing through like an animal. Right, there we go. The card from the last guy to tattoo Sera. She had gone searching though all those old books about Ancient Egypt, worked out how to write joy' in hieroglyphics. She had gotten it done in black ink as an arm band around her left bicep. Looked pretty cool. He had never really gone way in for tattoos on women before, but Sera's suited her. He couldn't even picture her without the wings on her back, or the weird triangle pattern that she had on the small of her back. She loved to wear low-slung jeans, and he could always see it, peeking out whenever she turned her back to him...

Okay, no more, that had to be enough. Everything brought it back to him, how much he wanted her, and not just to talk to, either. He had to get out of here, had to get away from all of this. He'd do what he could, this just wasn't his thing.

Fuck this. He needed a drink. He needed to take something down, he needed to loose these feelings that were almost eating him alive.