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Chapter Thirty-Seven: Rainfall
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By the time the rain began to fall, Logan was already soaked with perspiration and had peeled his shirt off of his back, bearing his sweaty skin to mosquitoes and other insects that dared to bite him. He tossed his head back with a rampant string of curses, his shaggy black mane fluttering, and took a long, dragging sniff of the air; the longer this summer rainfall continued, the less time he'd have to pinpoint the final traces of Nat's scent. He didn't have much time remaining before his difficult search became an impossible one.
The woods were relatively thin and not particularly tricky to navigate, compared to other situations he'd been in, but the nearly-faded odor of burning matter and the tang of watery ozone was making it difficult to isolate the fragrance that he sought. He'd been able to trace her this far with significantly more work than such a search would normally have required, and he was feeling frustrated and out of sorts.
It shouldn't be so hard, and the knowledge of this made him rather uncomfortable. There was something important about knowing that you can always find those that are running from you or after you, and now Logan was left without this certainty. Without Xavier to man the helm at the Cerebro system and with Logan's own nose playing the proverbial fool's game, it felt as if his hands had been tied behind his back. Natalie was out there somewhere. He just didn't know how to find her.
There wasn't much more that he could do but keep sifting meticulously through the wooded area, sniffing and searching. The region could barely be qualified as a forest, as small as it was, but Nat's strangely translucent trail made him repeatedly reach dead-ends, or come back upon areas that he'd already searched time and time again. As the frustration mounted and the scent continued to fade, Wolverine was becoming appreciably troubled, pondering the ominous idea that he wasn't going to make any headway before the rain washed out the last few traces of Nat's path.
But Logan wasn't a man who gave up that easily.
With his back hunched slightly so he was nearer to the ground, his muscles tight and fervently prepared for whatever might come about, Logan inhaled once more, a bottomless intake of the faint, valued scent. He breathed in the scent of the rain, the plants with their water-glossed leaves, the soggy earth and the woodsy smell of tree bark and rotten logs. Behind all of this, he breathed in the faintest traces of smoke, the feeblest hint of a formerly powerful aroma.
Somehow, in the tiniest, most distant fold of consciousness, he recognized something. His body clenched throughout, acknowledgment sparking his features. He snorted rather ferally, tasting the air as he looked to reclaim that potent, recognizable scent, if only for long enough to follow it a bit.
She'd been here. Sometime within the past few days, Nat Fairbanks had come tearing through the trees and through this very pathway. Logan grunted, his eyes glinting wildly. There was little doubt in his mind that this was no blind alley.
He shook his head, droplets of rain water scattering as if they'd been shaken from the pelt of a very large, wet dog. Spurred on by the quick, promising whiff of air, Logan wrapped a hand around a low-hanging tree branch and pushed it out of his path, making his way into a small clearing. The fragrance on the air once again seemed vaguely familiar, and his vertebrae were rigid with anticipation.
Logan glanced around, sniffing frantically. There was a rock and a toppled tree trunk in the clearing, furry with moss and cobwebs. Tiny red insects scurried into the decaying wood to protect themselves from the rain, and ferns bounced as raindrops pattered against their verdant fronds. There were no footprints in the muddy, needle-strewn soil, but the scent was clear enough now that there was little room for error: Nat had been here, and this was where her trail ended.
Something strange caught his attention, a foreign scent that belonged there even less than that of fire or a fleeing teenaged girl. There was another odor intruding upon that of smoke and young female sweat, one that made his blood begin to roil. It was a muskier scent, masculine and slightly cool, and altered with cologne. In some way, it was familiar, but that familiarity was alarming rather than encouraging.
Quicksilver.
Fury welled up within his chest, a growl vibrating past his lips. So that had been her warped little game. Play the X-Men for clowns and gain their trust, only to turn on them by ripping them from their leader, physically and emotionally. Logan had lost a lot of people in his life, most of them remaining only as dim, impersonal memories that he received once and a while in his dreams. He knew what it was like to lose the most important person in your life, and the thought that the kids he looked after were going through this was…unnerving.
Had she planned it that way all along, with Magneto and his cronies backing her up all the way? Memories of the "private" kiss that the two teenagers had shared rose in his mind. He remembered the shocked look on Nat's face when his presence had been made known, and an angry heat rolled up his spine.
Logan felt the urge to cause some serious destruction, and his claws broke painfully through the skin on the backs of his hands. He screwed his face up tightly, willing himself under a sense of better control, and the metallic blades shrank back inside their fleshy prison.
The faint odor of gasoline and exhaust caught his attention. Incensed, he continued searching the modest clearing, following what was now, somehow, a very unambiguous path between the trees, ending in a second clearing. This one was significantly smaller than the first and mostly hidden by thickets of blackberry bushes and broad tree trunks, a worthy attempt at keeping it hidden. There, obscured by vegetation and the muddy ground, he took note of a pair of deep, rutted tire tracks. They were those of a truck, presumably Maximoff's.
He followed those tracks back out to the main road, where they were lost to his sight. The mingled scents of the two teenaged mutants were gone as well, and Logan cracked his knuckles against his fist, grunting and letting out a foul string of curses.
Part of him was numb. Another part was raging with fury, barely kept checked, promising some sort of damage to be done. He unconsciously bared his strong, white canine teeth, clenching his jaw and flexing the muscles at the base of his skull. He stood stock still for a few moments, thinking and breathing hard.
Unsure of what he was going to say when he returned there, Wolverine began thrashing his way through the protesting plant life toward the mansion. God only knew how he was going to manage to bring this to light.
How the hell am I gonna tell the Elf? Logan thought to himself, frowning. Sure ain't no way not to tell 'im.
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It was early yet, and the curtains were still drawn tightly against the bright sun, now just an obscure white ball amidst the rain clouds, that had been assailing upon the area for the past week or so. The window, though, was open a crack, in the unconscious hope that Nat might come back in the middle of the night, and try to reach Kurt. Such an action was unlikely, on the part of the fleeing girl, but Kurt refused to pass up the possibility.
The young mutant in question lay on his back in bed, bare from the waist up and shivering. He was still somewhat groggy from having just awoken from another night of fitful rest, and he listened inattentively to the sound of the rain falling rhythmically on the roof. It was a somehow comforting sound, common and continuous, like so little else in the world. There was a reassurance in the uninterrupted patter or raindrops, sometimes faltering a bit or growing stronger, but never stopping completely.
He yawned broadly, stretching his long legs and letting out a pent-up groan of exhaustion, his toes curling slightly. He hadn't been sleeping well lately, and fatigue was starting to take its toll on his body, not to mention his mind. By four or five in the morning, only a few hours ago, he'd crawled into his bed and simply collapsed, unable to spend more than ten minutes lost in thought before sleep finally overcame him.
Hastily, Kurt kicked the covers aside and let his feet slide out of the bed and onto the floor, suppressing a tremor. He yawned again, flexing the muscles in his shoulders and rolling his head back and forth to release the tension that had built up at the nape of his neck. He paused at the window, considering closing it as rainwater entered as rampant droplets, but decided against it. He made his way blearily to the bathroom, shedding his pajama pants on the way, and turned the shower on as hot as it would go without singeing his flesh.
Kurt stepped inside the stall as the bathroom began to fill with steam, fogging the glass of the shower door and the mirror above the sink. He spared no time, and soaped and rinsed as quickly as he could, unable to spend too much time in one spot before his mind began to wander. Careless thinking was the last thing that he needed at the moment. He left the bathroom and began to promptly dress himself.
As he pulled on his sweater, he couldn't help but wonder whether or not Nat had been able to find something to wear, or if she was outside in the rain, still naked. The thought pained him, but it gave him a sick little thrill at the same time: not only was it rather titillating, but it was pretty damn funny, too. Despite the distress he felt at losing her so suddenly, the anger that had been released when she revealed her indiscretion hadn't completely faded. The idea that she was suffering a little was both agonizing and comforting.
Even Kurt wasn't entirely sure why the knowledge of her kiss was such a surprise, or why it had hurt so much to hear about it. He caught sight of himself in the full-length mirror beside the door, looking scraggly and soggy with his fine indigo fur tufted in places. The fuzz was dark with water, and almond-shaped orbs of gold peered out of his shadowy face. His lip curled up, showing the sharp, animal-like teeth. He glanced down at his large hands and feet, oddly-shaped and lacking the proper number of digits, and felt his tail coil around his ankle within the leg of his pants where it was stowed when he left the house.
Briefly, mentally, he compared himself side-by-side to the white-haired young man who had become his arch-nemesis so abruptly. Pietro and Kurt had similar physical shapes, both being built on the trim side, and both had the same lean, wiry strength in their agile musculatures. From there on, they differed almost completely. Pietro, in fact, was practically the photographic negative of Kurt, with white hair, fair skin and dark eyes. Their personalities differed, too, with Kurt playing the role of the kind-hearted jokester, and Pietro as the speed-driven egomaniac.
So, Nat Fairbanks had realized that Pietro was the preferred focus of her romantic interest, and had turned her attention outward in response. No big surprise there, Kurt thought rather bitterly.
No. That wasn't fair. Even Kurt, as upset as anyone would be in his situation, knew that it wasn't as simple as all that. It hurt to no end to know that she had let Quicksilver touch her, and had actually responded, but Kurt had seen the expression in her spacious green eyes when she told him about the kiss.
She'd been terrified.
The question that was left, then, was whether she had been afraid because she was troubled over getting caught, or if she had really been experiencing guilt. He thought, and prayed, that it was the latter. It was a thought that had been plundering his every waking moment, and some that weren't waking as well.
His thoughts trailed away from that kiss, which in his imagination was becoming less and less realistic and progressively more passionately heated, and came to rest on the situation with the professor. On the outside, he was expected to blame her immediately, as the almost overwhelming sense of circumstantial evidence had caused the others to do. Deeper down, though, he had doubts.
In all, he really didn't think that Nat had started the fire. How to explain her presence in the midst of the flames, though…he didn't know for sure.
In less than ten minutes, he was dressed and ready to go downstairs for breakfast. The others were probably waiting for him, wondering if he was going to make it down or miss breakfast for the third day in a row. He paused for a moment to retrieve his holowatch, and slipped it around his narrow wrist, leaving the holographic imitation-Kurt turned off for the time being.
As his hand hovered over the drawer that had held the watch, his eye caught something on the desktop, and his limbs felt suddenly heavy. He stared at it for a moment, pondering whether or not he should pick it up or continue as if he hadn't seen it. His hand quivered, wanting to lift it and stand with it in his fingertips, but his mind negated the desire.
There was an almost painful implication in seeing the faded red baseball cap lying discarded on the desktop among the scattered papers and CD cases, and an even stronger one in leaving it there, untouched and alone.
He turned and left the room, trying to look reasonably cheerful as he made his way down the wide staircase to meet the others for breakfast. The walls seemed higher than usual.
When he pushed the heavy oak door inward and entered the dining room, there was a momentary silence, and he felt a slight blush creeping up on his cheeks. Luckily, it's hard to tell when a blue guy is blushing, and the room was relatively empty, anyway.
Rogue was sitting at the table beside Jean and Evan, all three of them eating toast and cold cereal, and Ororo was quietly tending to the vases of orchids scattered about the room. With her head hunched and her glasses sliding down her nose, Dr. MacTaggart was pouring over what looked like copies of the professor's medical records, her breakfast mushy and untouched. Her broad-shouldered partner was nowhere to be found. Scott was obviously still at the hospital, and Kitty was probably there with him. Wolverine, Kurt guessed, was still out combing the area for a trace of Nat's whereabouts.
Kurt smothered a sigh.
There was a round of mumbled greetings. Rogue looked like she was trying to avoid his eyes, and Evan looked almost artificially cheerful, while their red-haired friend looked more relieved than anything else. Moira ignored all of them, too engrossed to even realize that she wasn't alone in the room.
It was Storm's eyes that met his most intently, their clear blue surfaces glossy and pained, but happy at the same time to see Kurt looking virtually normal. She smiled brightly, beckoning to him gently with one imperial, long-fingered hand. Her bracelets bangled lightly together, and they sparkled under the lights with a quiet tinkling sound.
"Will you please assist me, Kurt? Grab that vase by your side and bring it into the kitchen. The poor things are desperate for fresh water, and I made a mess the last time I summoned rain clouds in the dining room." She didn't pause long enough to breathe between sentences, not giving him the time to protest or even hesitate before she took a vase and disappeared into the kitchen. He briefly wondered why she didn't simply bring the rain to the flowers, as she so often did, but shrugged and followed her with a vase in hand. He thought he saw Evan and Jean exchange a glance as he passed. Kurt smiled faintly at them, and they seemed to relax.
Storm paused at the sink, pouring the dirtied water down the drain and waiting for Kurt to hand her his vase. When he did, she took it silently, and didn't look up to meet his curious gaze, apparently too focused on her task to do so. She creased her brow ever so slightly and brought the fresh water that the flowers needed out of thin air, handing a vase back to Kurt.
Her fingers lightly pressed against the back of his hand, and he was silent, looking up at her. Ororo Munroe was a striking woman, with an almost overwhelming air of sovereignty about her, like a matriarchal statue carved from chocolate-colored marble. He knew why she had been seen as a goddess, and where she had earned the name "Beautiful Windrider". Snowy hair tumbled down her back, and cerulean eyes peered at him, quizzical. She stared calmly with an inquiring look on her face, asking things that remained unspoken.
Kurt felt his lungs tremble, unable to take in all the air that they required. "I…I'm alright, Storm."
Her slender white eyebrows lowered in thought. "Are you, child?"
He paused, taking in a shallow, trembling breath, and nodded. His hands tightened around the thin crystal neck of the vase. "Ja," he sputtered, softly.
She nodded at him, not speaking lest her words seem somehow inappropriate, or not entirely welcome. There was a long hush, broken only by the sound of the drumming rain outside, and he realized for the first time that this rainfall, like the one that had replenished the orchids in the vases, wasn't entirely natural. The realization donned on him with an internal nudge, and he felt somewhat vacant when he figured it out. It was hard to accept, even in its evident straightforwardness.
The African goddess called Storm, the epitome of reserved collection and placidity, felt as hollow as they all did at the loss of their professor. A knot had formed in the younger mutant's throat.
The quiet was devastated by a sudden noise not far away, and both Kurt and Ororo jumped at the sound. Kurt whirled around, and the vase slipped from Storm's hand, shattering on the edge of the countertop and scattering the fuchsia-budded orchids into the sink.
Wolverine stood in the open doorway, the dark summer sky behind him looking heavy and gray with the rain coming down in sheets that had plastered his hair to his forehead. He glanced at Kurt, frowning deeply, and turned his attention to Storm with a quick nod before returning it to the younger mutant. His face looked craggy and angry, as usual, but uncharacteristically apprehensive as well. Sickness welled in the bottom of Kurt's stomach.
"We gotta talk, Elf."