Chapter 7

The next few months were very, very long. Sara couldn't go back to work at the hospital. She stayed home now when the team went out on missions, watching sadly as the Blackbird lifted off without her. When they were injured, Hank pressed her into service as his assistant. He forbade her to use her powers. She couldn't, anyway, and that frustrated her to no end. Small scrapes, cuts, bruises, she could heal by herself, but anything harder and her power stopped cold. Gambit came back from a fight with Sabretooth one afternoon with a cut across the back of his hand deep enough to require stitches. She tried to do for him what she had done for the little boy at the hospital, and found she couldn't do it. She sank deeper and deeper into despair while trying to hold onto the fragile mask of cheerfulness she maintained for the benefit of the others.

Logan had not returned to the mansion. She had realized about a week after she had gotten out of bed that he was gone. A tiny part of her said that it was best, said she was glad he was gone, but another part of her, an increasingly larger part, cried out for him. She finally admitted to herself, a month after he had gone, that she missed him, that she loved him more than anything in the world, and she desperately wanted to see him again. But everyone was staying very quiet on that subject, and the few questions she did ask were met with monosyllabic answers and changed subjects. One night, unable to sleep, she took the lift upstairs and went into his bedroom. There, she took down one of his flannel shirts and wrapped it around herself, imagining that it was his arms wrapped around her, holding her, comforting her, loving her. She slept in his bed that night, soundlessly, dreamlessly, for the first time since the accident. After that, she took to sleeping up there when she was sure no one would notice. And if they did notice, they didn't tell her.

The truth was that they were all glad he was gone. Sara had helped them all so many times in the year since she'd come, healing wounds, taking away aches, pains, and hurts, usually at cost to herself, and on several occasions had incapacitated herself because she overextended herself on a major healing. They still blamed him for her accident, and forgiveness was a long time in coming, as they watched her struggle to do things that before had been so simple for her. They all felt acutely their luck in having whole bodies, and felt they had taken for granted Xavier's presence. He had been wheelchair bound when they had all met him, and only Moira remembered how hard he had had to struggle to find the independence he enjoyed each day. Now, watching her, they realized just how hard that battle had been for him.

Xavier himself felt a degree of satisfaction, and felt bad for it. He was used to watching the X-Men go about their business with little help from him; he was proud that Scott was the leader he had trained him to be. But he felt, every now and then, just a bit useless, unneeded. Sara changed all that. She badly needed someone who had been through all this before, to show her how to do things she had taken for granted before. And when Hank decided to begin her physical therapy, in hopes that if she tried to use her paralyzed legs her body would remember how to heal itself, she needed Xavier there to encourage her when she felt like giving up. He could knock her out of the well of self-pity she fell into on occasion, and to goad her on when she felt like giving up.

She kept to herself though, never letting him touch her, never letting Jean or Betsy inside the shield she had built around her mind. Sara was afraid of what they'd do if they saw what was inside. She needed their help desperately, and she was afraid that if she let them in, they would see she had done this to herself with her own stupidity and bull-headedness and decide to let her manage by herself, to let her lie in her own bed. She couldn't do this alone, she knew she couldn't. If Logan were still there by her side she could have faced them all, she could have faced all the pain and anguish if only he were there beside her. But he wasn't. And she had to accept that he didn't want her anymore, but it hurt so much she was sure that dying would almost be preferable to living without him.

They sensed the walls around her, but the assumed those walls were in place for the wrong reasons. She was twitchy whenever his name was mentioned, but they assumed it was because she was still upset with him for getting her in the accident on Hell's Road. They assumed she didn't want them to feel sorry for her. They assumed she was coping, that she was getting better, and sometimes her cheerful mask fooled them into thinking she was all right.

Xavier was the only one who seemed concerned about her mental welfare. He remembered his despair when he learned that no matter how he tried, how much effort he put into his therapy, he would never walk again. The only thing he had left to cling to in that dark time was Moira's love for him. But Sara didn't feel that way about anyone except maybe Logan. He wondered if she was feeling the same despair he had, but never asked, and she never told him.

Sara sat on Wolverine's bed one night, wakened from a dream of the day they had first made love. Tears made wet tracks down her face, and suddenly loneliness and despair got too much for her. She went to the bathroom she shared with Xavier and opened the bottle of pain pills she took for the constant agony in her back and swallowed half of them before her nerve gave out. She waited until reality became pleasantly fuzzy, then took the razor she used to shave her legs and drew it across her wrists. She watched her blood run down her arms dazedly, and when the medication kicked in she dropped to the floor, unconscious before she hit the cool tile.

Far away, in the wilderness of Canada, a man woke from a troubled sleep in a cot in a seedy little inn. Something had woken him; an urgent feeling that she was in trouble, that she needed help. He had a fuzzy recollection of seeing her fall to a tiled floor in her own blood. The feeling was so urgent he ran to the phone and called the number he had wanted to call for the last two weeks but hadn't because he was afraid to. It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered except finding if she was all right. He waited, growling impatiently, as he was connected, then another eternity as he waited for someone to pick up. A familiar voice said finally, "Hello?"

"'Ro!" he nearly exploded with relief that it wasn't Jean or Scott. ""Ro, somethin's wrong with Sara!"

There was silence for a moment, then Storm spoke again. "Logan? Is that you?"

He spoke frantically into the phone. "Yeah its me, 'Ro, please, go check on 'er! She's in trouble, please!"

"Where have you been?"

"That doesn't matter! Ororo, please, ya gotta believe me, Sara's gonna die if ya don't find her! Now!"

Silence, then a sound as if she had placed her hand over the receiver. His sharp hearing picked up the words, "Betsy, please go and see if Sara's all right. Logan is on the phone and insists that we check up on her."

"She should be in bed by now. She usually is."

"Yes, I know, but please check."

Ororo returned to the phone. "Betsy will check. Logan, where are you? We have not heard from you in months!"

"'Ro. I know ya'all blame me fer what I did. I blame meself. But how is she? Please, I gotta know."

Storm heard the desperation in his voice and said, "She has been doing fine. Charles moved her to the second floor and is sharing his facilities with her. She is doing well, and has started physical therapy with Hank to encourage her body to heal. She is quite cheerful, and is adjusting well."

He hated the quiver in his voice as he asked, "Has she asked fer me?"

Storm's voice was slightly cooler as she replied, "No. She has not. After what you have done, did you think she would? You cost her her legs, Logan. She will never be the same. It is hard to forgive such an injury--"

There was a sudden commotion in the background and he heard Jean yelling, "Hank! Someone wake him up! Oh God, she's lost too much blood, where's the damn pressure bandage! Storm, please, put pressure right there, we have to stop the bleeding--"

The line went dead.

Wolverine howled in anguish, at being so far from her and not knowing what had happened. In his frustration he didn't notice he had popped his claws and shredded the cheap plastic table and phone like it was paper. When the fog in his head cleared, he could think of only one thing; he had to see her, to know she was all right. He picked up his bag, left money on the bed to pay for the ruined table, and started traveling back to the U.S./ Canada border.

Sara heard the beeping of the heart monitor before she opened her eyes. The stories never said Heaven had beeping monitors. She moaned in anguish as Hank's concerned face swam into view as she opened blurry eyes. Her throat felt raw, and she figured that was because they had pumped her stomach. Her eyes filled with tears as she heard Jean tell someone she couldn't see, "She's coming around."

"Why didn't you let me die?" she whispered to the faces above her that she couldn't quite see. "I miss him so much. He hates me. I can't stand it. Let me die." Tears rolled down her face, tears of exhaustion, pain, despair, loneliness, and hopelessness. " Logan…I can't live without you. Please," she whispered with a voice so full of anguish her listeners felt like crying themselves. Hank quietly injected something into her IV, and she slipped back into darkness gratefully.

Jean stared at her. "We were so busy blaming him we never thought to ask her," she said more to herself than anyone else. "She's blaming herself for what happened. She thinks she should have had more sense than to try a strange road at that speed at night. She thinks that Logan left because she was hurt, because she was stupid and he doesn't love her anymore." She looked at him with horrified realization in her eyes. "She thinks we won't like her, help her, anymore if we knew she made that mistake on her own. Oh, God, Charles, if we'd touched her mind before, when she woke first, we'd have found that all these months of pain for her were unnecessary. For her and Logan." She turned to Storm. "Where did he say he was?"

"He didn't," Storm said. "I hung up on him before he could say where he was. I asked him, but he was so insistent on my finding her and helping her we did not have a chance to exchange locations."

Xavier headed for the door. "I will try to locate him using Cerebro," he said. "If we can convince him to come home we won't have to worry about her trying to kill herself again. If he doesn't come he'll be signing her death warrant. She won't stop."

He emerged from Cerebro's chamber quite a long time later, exhausted and bitter. "I can't find him. He's not in range. I hope to God he's on his way here." Scott, Jean, Ororo, Betsy and the others fell silent.

Two weeks of hard traveling, stopping only to get the barest minimum of sleep and food at cheap, inexpensive inns, brought Wolverine to New York City. He barely stopped there, driven by the overwhelming need to get back, to see Sara, to know she was all right. Since the terrible dream of her dying he had been plagued by others of the same sort, dreams he couldn't remember in the morning but that left him with the certainty that once he got back, the danger to her would be over. It was the end of a crisp, cold February day, with snow on the ground and ice on the lake behind the mansion. He paused across the street at the end of the drive, suddenly uncertain as he saw a dark-haired figure in a wheelchair come out and look over the lawn toward the road. For a moment she didn't see him, and then she did. The breath caught in Logan's chest as he saw her fully for the first time in four months. She looked thin and pale, lost and lonely, her shoulders drooping in despair, her face lined with sadness and pain. Then she saw him. There was uncertainty in her frame as she turned the chair to face him, then suddenly a look of pure joy came over her face. "Logan!" she screamed. "Logan!" She leaned forward, as if she were going to get up and run to him, but of course she couldn't. His eyes hungrily drank in the sight of her as he stepped into the street. His senses were so full of her that he didn't see the car until it was too late. The sound of screeching tires and squealing brakes filled his ears, and the world seemed to be turning around and around, then there was blackness.

Sara screamed as she saw the man she loved go down under the bumper of a car before her. She jumped up and ran down the walk, screaming his name, and crumpled to her knees beside him, whimpering his name brokenly, over and over. "Please, dearling, please, don't die! Please come back! I love you, I can't live without you, if you die I will too! Oh, love, please, you can't die, I just found you again!" Her hands were frantically caressing his face and the bloody scratches on his cheeks and hands. Suddenly she felt something inside her break, like a dam, and she felt her old healing fire flood her, filling her palms with its familiar blue radiance as the scrapes, scratches, and bruises healed on Logan's body. She felt a blinding pain in her legs as the torn flesh in his legs transferred to her own, but she barely registered it as his eyes opened and he pinned her with the brown eyes she so loved.

"Sara," he whispered. "Darlin', fergive me, please. I didn' mean it, I f'rgot ta tell ya 'bout that turn. It was my fault, please f'rgive me, darlin'," and he looked at her with eyes that pleaded for her understanding. She kissed him, long and hard, on the lips she had so longed for, feeling the two-week stubble on his chin abrade her face, and not caring.

"Logan," she whispered back, "love, dearling, listen, there's nothing to forgive! I was stupid, I was trying to impress you, to show you there was nothing you could do that I couldn't, and I paid for that stupidity myself! I thought you wouldn't love me now you knew I was crippled, that you wouldn't want to tie yourself to a cripple like me."

His eyes widened. "Sara. No matta what ya done, what ya look like, I'll always love ya! How could ya even think I'd stop lovin' ya when ya got hurt?" He kissed her back, with all the hunger in his soul, his senses full of her; seeing her, feeling her gentle hands warm against his cold cheek, her legs under his head, the smell of her blood…Blood!

He sat up as that smell reached him, and looked at her. She knelt there in the middle of the icy, slippery road, swaying in shock. He caught her as she fell, looking at her legs, thin, wasted, the muscles atrophied from disuse, and…mangled? His legs were whole, healed, and he stared at them numbly, his mind trying to wrap itself around the significance of that. The sight of drops of her blood staining the snow snapped him out of the numb state he was in, and he sprinted up the drive calling for the others at the top of his lungs.

Sara woke to unbelievable, unbearable pain coming from her legs. She whimpered helplessly with it, crying in anguish until she suddenly felt a tingling in her arm and the pain receded. She opened her eyes, to see Hank, Jean, Xavier, and Scott leaning over her. Her throat tightened. "Logan?" Scott stepped aside, and Logan took his place. "What happened?" she whispered, reaching for his hand.

Hank's blue furry head filled half her vision. "You got up and walked, Sara!" he exclaimed jubilantly. You saw Logan get struck by that car and you ran to get him. Not only that, your healing power came back and you healed him! The metal front of that car drove into his legs but gave way to the adamantium laced bone. His flesh was torn but the bone didn't break. When you touched him you absorbed those injuries--"

Sara's mind wrapped around the significance of that. "I can feel it," she whispered to him. "I can feel the pain in my legs. That means I'm not paralyzed anymore. I can walk! Oh, dear God, thank you, I can walk again!"

This time they were tears of joy, not pain or sorrow.