Title:           Reflections

Summary:   Xavier's thoughts on Jubilee and Logan's wedding day.

Warnings:  Kind of sad.

Rating:        G-general

Setting:       Chapter 11 of 'Love Lights Your Way'

Characters: Xavier, guest starring Logan/Jubilee, Jean

Reflections

                I must remember to thank Ororo for the lovely weather.

                It was nice of her to assure that Logan and Jubilee's wedding will not be spoiled by the inclement weather I can vaguely see hanging over Greenwich Village. Jubilee, I know, has already thanked Ororo for her consideration; she's standing over there now next to the groom, both posing for pictures. Logan has, I see, forgotten to fidget with his tie; and who could blame him?

                Jubilee is radiant, standing beside him there in the wedding dress she has taken such pains to keep hidden from him until this day. Logan has no eyes for anyone except her. It is as it should be; though I had my doubts about this relationship, they have fortunately been proven wrong.

                I wheel my chair back under the tents set up all around the green lawn. It's easier for me to move my personal transport…or as my X-Men have taken to calling it, my 'hoverchair…but as there are some non-mutant guests at this wedding, freedom of movement must be sacrificed to keep up the normal image. It is something like an inside joke that only the mutant guests at this wedding understand. Not that this is meant as an insult to the human guests; it is meant simply to shield them from knowledge for which they are not yet ready.

                Ororo is standing by the drinks table, talking quietly to Jubilee's big friend, Moose. He looks somewhat more relaxed, now, and even deigns to take a sip from the glass of champagne dwarfed in his large hand. Jubilee walks over and reaches up to hug him, and I hear her silvery laugh float through the air Again I find myself shaking my head at the sight of her standing next to him; they are so dissimilar! Then Jubilee swipes a shot glass from the table and downs it in one gulp. Okay, maybe not so dissimilar, after all. I laugh, and it attracts someone's attention.

                Jean says something to Scott telepathically, where he's standing next to Warren and Remy, working on a beer, then drifts over to where I sit with a glass of champagne in my hand. "Having a good time, Charles?" she asks me.

                I nod and take a sip. "Yes, Jean. The caterers outdid themselves; everything is excellent. Even down to the weather, which I must remember to thank Ororo for."

                Jean stands next to me, her mint-green bridesmaid's dress rustling softly as she turns to see who I am looking at. "Lovely bride, isn't she?" she says. "The dress was perfect. She looks perfect. And Logan is so in love with her. I'm so glad everything turned out all right for them in the end." She gives me a sidelong glance. "Even if Scott and I did nearly wreck it all."

                I smile. She's right. She and Scott had lectured Logan and Jubilee on the wisdom of becoming involved early on in the relationship; it had caused them to break up for a short period of time. Jubilee had been miserable…and Logan had disappeared. "You didn't wreck anything, Jean," I said. "If Logan and Jubilee weren't meant to be together, this day wouldn't be happening."

                "I guess you're right," Jean said. "But if Scott and I hadn't stuck our noses in where they didn't belong, Logan would have been with Jubilee when she went up to Professor Cohen's wedding upstate, and Sabretooth would never have had the chance to hurt her."

                "Water under the bridge, Jean," I start to say, but I'm interrupted by Betsy, who is calling Jean from the back door. There's a problem with the oven inside. Scott and Jean go back inside to take care of it, and I am left sitting alone with my thoughts again.

                Not for long. Logan comes over, beer in hand, and sits down in a chair beside me. "Somebody asks fer one more picture, I swear I'm gonna break their damn camera," he grumbles. I smile.

                "It doesn't look as though anyone's going to ask for any more," I tell him, and indeed it doesn't. Couples are already forming on the wide stretch of grassy lawn for the dancing, and the DJ is obligingly beginning to play some songs suitable for what passes for dancing these days. I shake my head. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned waltz? I see Hank out there, surprisingly, and at first I can't see who his partner is; then he turns, and I see Jubilee's friend Amanda Greene. That surprises me.

                Jubilee comes over. "Hi, Professor!" she says gaily, her blue eyes sparkling. She's almost glowing from within with happiness. For a fleeting, all too brief moment, I see the little girl I knew in the woman she's become. That smile is reminiscent of her younger days, before life grabbed her and put her through its forge. "Logan, come dance with me. Just one, please?"

                Logan never could resist her when she smiles like that. He puts his empty bottle down on the table and gets up to join his new wife on the green lawn. The other couples get out of the way for them.

                I take another sip of my champagne, hoping the bubbly, sparkling beverage will chase away the dark thoughts that crowd my mind as I think about the young girl I knew. Jubilee was always good at hiding her feelings. I don't think anyone knew how much she missed her parents; I don't think anyone knew all the things she keeps inside.

                Even when she was younger, she hid her fears, her self-doubts, and her sorrows behind Ray-Bans, bubblegum, and roller-blades. No one ever saw her cry, except Logan. He was the one she always ran to when she needed to talk; when she needed to cry, to let the emotions she kept so tightly under control slip out. And Logan was always there for her, a shoulder to cry on, to laugh on, to beat on when she got angry and needed to take it out on something…or someone. She talked to Jean; she talked to Ororo. But for something that really bothered her, she always went to Logan.

                And that's why I'm surprised now that Jubilee won't talk about what's bothering her even to Logan. Because I know there's still something inside her that's bothering her; I see it in her eyes, sometimes, when she wakes up in the morning. There's a haunted, anguished look in her eyes that has to do with the dreams she has, and I know, despite outward appearances, that she's not entirely all right. She hides it well. She's as close to her usual self during the day as she can be; or at least she pretends to be; even I have a hard time telling which is the case. She's very good at hiding her feelings.

                But when I touch her mind, I can see the walls she's built around portions of it, closing off the pain and anguish she feels from herself. She does it consciously, too; she knows it's there. But she won't acknowledge that the emotions are there; she buries it all deep inside her, as if, if she ignores it, she can forget it's there, and she won't have to deal with it. I've tried, tentatively, to bring up the subject, but she brushes it away and refuses to talk about it.

                I know what it is; it's Sabretooth. Logan's enemy might be physically gone, but he's still a large presence in her nightmares. She refuses to discuss it with anyone; she acts like it never happened. She had a brief relapse of pneumonia soon after she regained her memories, and when she recovered from that she acted as though nothing had happened. She ignored it. And that worries me, more than anything else.

                Love is blind. Very, very blind. Logan can't see the shadows in her eyes; can't see the shadows in her mind, the uncertainty she feels. He doesn't see how she almost has to force herself to initiate physical intimacy between them. And he can't feel her pain. Jean, too, seems oblivious to it. But I can see, during the third week of the month, how much pain she feels, the pain that literally forces her to stay in bed during the worst of it. I've seen her swallowing overdoses of aspirin; never enough to kill her, or do her any harm, but enough to dull the agony in her body. I can feel the pain in her ribs and knees and other parts of her body when old injuries that didn't heal properly bother her.

                I wish I knew what to do, what to say, to break the wall of silence that she has built up around herself as protection from the abuse she's suffered, first at Bastion's hands, then at Creed's. She's never talked about what happened to her at Creed's hands. Hank, Jean, and Logan don't feel she has to. The very fact that she had a miscarriage with Creed's baby speaks for itself, or so they think. But I know better.

                Creed did something to her. I'm not talking just about the physical, though I know that something happened that's so terrible she can't talk about it. It's mental. Creed said something to her (I hesitate to use the word 'brainwashed', though it's probably a more accurate term) that has made her believe something about herself that isn't true. I wish I knew what it was. I wish I knew what drives her from her bed at night, when everyone's asleep, to wander around the mansion. I've heard her go to her old room, just sit there, and cry as though her heart would break. I want to help her, but I'm helpless. I'm powerless to do it. I don't know how. I devoted so much of my energies toward gathering my X-Men together, and now I try to sit back and leave them alone. Jubilee in particular; she was so very young when she came to live here, and I had to sit back and let her make her own mistakes growing up, or she wouldn't be the woman she is today. But that policy of noninterference doesn't, shouldn't, apply now. It can't, or she'll never be whole.

                I hope that maybe her marriage to Logan will help her open up more. She can't keep all her sadness and pain bottled up. And she needs to stop hitting that aspirin bottle so heavily, and I'm not really happy with how much she drinks, either. Logan, thankfully, is keeping track of her bar habits (we've all been treated to an earful of choice words from her when he takes her keys and refuses to allow her to go out at night.) And so is her friend Max; if she defies Logan and goes out anyway, he calls Max and he will bring Jubilee back. She hates the fact that Logan 'watches over her', as she's told him at full volume many times, but I think that's a good thing. I think Jubilee knows in her heart that she needs to be watched over and taken care of. She needs someone to tell her she can't go out drinking.

                She needs someone to break that wall down and let out what's hiding behind it. She needs to acknowledge that pain, fear, anger, and misery before she can really move on with her life. At this point I don't think even she could break those walls around her mind. If she doesn't do it on her own soon, I'm going to have to corner her and do it myself. She needs to let out what's bothering her.

                And here she comes, smiling, and happy. There's no trace of the shadows today. She's just a delighted, happy woman marrying the man she loves today. So I'm not going to ruin the mood. There's a time and a place for all of that…and now is neither. I turn my thoughts away from the path they're on, and put a smile on as Jubilee walks toward me.