WHOA O.O!! I haven't updated this fanfic for more than two weeks O.O!!! But anywayz, CHAPTER 79 IS FINALLY HERE :D!!! I am so incredibly sorry for the delay of this chapter x.x! I started working last week and it's been keeping me busy during the weekdays x.x!

Thank you SO MUCH for those who reviewed the past few chaps :D! ANGELICA, it was AWESOME hearing from you again :D! W000T! Great to see you still around, girl ;)! SKETTY24 and HUGHLOVERX, I hope you like this next chap too :D!

Chapter 79: Bordering between dream and reality

She suddenly gave out a brief cry and then her eyes shot wide open. The first thing she saw was Logan's face. He was looking at her and he seemed really worried about something. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest while quick rugged breaths escaped from her parted lips. Though she could feel the cool morning air against her skin, she felt so hot inside. She could even feel her own sweat dampening her forehead.

She could still feel her mind replaying the dream at the back of her head. Was it even just a dream? Or another vision? Yes --- the dream that she had was another vision of her past. And she couldn't believe what just happened in the dream. Unlike her other visions, she was able to hear and feel everything that happened in it, as if she was really there in her own body in that specific time. It was like she was transported back in time to relive and experience that part of her past again.

And in that dream, she was able to realize how truly important William was to her life before he became the man she had known for the past decade. She couldn't believe that in the past, she was the one who needed him...That in the past, before they became master and slave to each other, William was the one she couldn't live without. He was her brother, her best friend, her companion, her twin...while Logan was her lover.

Yes...Logan really did love her in the past that they have both forgotten. She could still feel the way he held her in his arms and the way he comforted her when William left for Vietnam. She felt it. Logan truly loved her. But where has all that love gone now? Has it gone down the drain together with his forgotten memories? She couldn't help but wonder that as she looked at his face. Was there any of that love left in him?

"Yuriko..." Logan whispered as he looked into her eyes. He could see fear in her face --- and not just purely fear, but fear mixed with agitation and confusion. Something was wrong. He could tell just by looking at her. She seemed to be having doubts about something...an inner struggle that he couldn't decipher.

Yuriko suddenly grabbed Logan by the front end of his tank top and then she moved her face closer to his. "William..." She gasped. She heard her voice shaking as she spoke his name.

Logan furrowed his eyebrows and looked at her confusingly. "What? William? --- William Stryker?" He asked. He couldn't understand her. She was speaking in fragments. She had said nothing but William's name since he woke up, and he wanted to know what it was all about. He wanted to know what was going on in her head.

She clutched his shirt tighter and pulled him closer to her so that their face was right in front of each other. "Yes!" She said as she looked at him with widened eyes.

Logan still couldn't understand what she wanted. If only she would speak in complete sentences...not in words that didn't make any sense. "What about him?" He asked. He looked baffled as he stared back into her widened almond-shaped eyes.

"Where is he?" She asked in a panicky tone. Her hand continued to clutch Logan's shirt tightly. She tugged on him with every word. "Have you heard from him? Anything? Where's William?!" She looked like she was about to break down and cry.

Logan furrowed his eyebrows and looked at her in a perplexed manner. What did she want from Stryker? When she first woke up, he was actually expecting her to storm out of the room with the divine urge to kill Stryker, or to speak out his name as if he were the devil. But what he was seeing in her eyes right now was different --- there was no fury in them --- just a pure desire to see that bastard's face again.

"Yuriko...What are you talking about?! Why do you ---"

"I need to see him, Logan!" She pleaded. She didn't even let Logan finish his sentence. She couldn't contain the urgency in her voice any longer.

He gripped her upper arm tighter and slightly shook her in an effort to pull her together. "Why do you need to see him again?!" He asked firmly. "What's wrong, Yuriko?" He asked again as he looked deep into her eyes. "What's wrong?!" He could feel his hand gripping her arm so tightly as he asked her.

He wanted to know why Yuriko was acting this way. He had never seen her talk about Stryker in this way before. Where did all her anger and resentment towards Stryker go? Why was she looking for him, like a child would his father? Like a fish would for water...when last night, she wanted nothing but to never ever see his face again. None of it was making any sense. And there was something so different with her right now that he couldn't identify. He almost felt like he was looking at another person.

He didn't want to admit it, but he also felt a pang of jealousy when she pleaded to see that mad man again. When he first woke up and looked at her, he actually couldn't wait for her to wake up so that he could be the first thing she sees. He couldn't wait for her to open her eyes and smile at the sight of his face. But instead, she opened her eyes, and the first thing she wanted to see was Stryker. And it pained him that Yuriko yearned to see that monster more than she wanted to see him.

Yuriko loosened her grip on Logan's shirt and she gasped as she tried to catch her breath. Though she had just woken up, she felt like she had just run an entire mile. "It's William." She said abruptly. She pressed her hand against Logan's chest as she talked. She wanted him to hear her out. She needed him to listen.

Logan looked at her curiously. "What about him?" He asked.

She breathed in, bracing herself for what she was about to say. "I'm letting him go, Logan." She said, gasping. "I'm letting him go." She said softly. She was obviously trying to hold back her tears with each and every word.

She had finally said it. She had finally said the words she thought she'd never say. She was finally going to let him go, and she was going to let her past go with him. After reliving her past in the dream, she realized that Stryker deserved to have a second chance in life. He deserved to be the man that he once was before he was driven mad.

Logan furrowed his eyebrows as he looked at her. What was she trying to say? She was still speaking in sentences that he couldn't decipher. Was she talking about something that she and Stryker talked about during their argument in the kitchen last night?

"What do you mean?" He asked.

Yuriko looked deep into Logan's eyes. She wanted him to fully understand what she was about to say, especially since she knew that he wouldn't agree to it. "Last night --- in the kitchen ---" She could hear her voice faltering. "--- he begged me to let him go. He begged me to give him another life. He told me that during his talk with the professor, the professor said that he could erase his memories so that he wouldn't have to go back to the man he once was. He wouldn't have to hate mutants again, Logan. I could have let him go. I had the power to give him freedom --- freedom from his nightmares and his pains and his past...I could have done all those things with a simple 'yes'..."

Then she gasped as she tried to fight back the tears that yearned to ebb from her eyes. Her lips shook as she ruggedly breathed. "But I didn't. I didn't. I could have set him free last night. I could have easily given him the freedom that he needed. But I didn't...because I wanted my past back. I was thinking of no one but myself. It was all about me....me. And that was selfish of me, Logan. That was so selfish of me." She sobbed. Her last words faded into a faint whisper.

Logan couldn't help but feel her pain as he looked into her sad eyes. He could really feel the sadness and sincerity in her voice. Everything that she had said truly came from her heart. She meant each and every word. Though Yuriko seemed to have changed her mind about Stryker, he still didn't care about him. He could never ever care for Stryker, but he hated to see Yuriko like this. She had done nothing wrong. And yet she was in pain, thinking that she had committed a crime. How could she even think that she had betrayed a man who had been betrayed her own humanity?

He looked deeply into her eyes and held her upper arm firmly. "You weren't selfish, Yuriko. You hear me? You weren't selfish! You never were! You did nothing wrong!" He said through gritted teeth. He wanted to prove a point.

"But he begged for his freedom, Logan. He begged for it and I turned him down. I pushed him away when he needed me the most." She gasped.

Logan couldn't understand how she could say such words. She sounded as if she was the one who 'owed' Stryker, when Stryker was the one who had taken away so much from her for the past decade. "Because he doesn't deserve freedom, Yuriko! He doesn't deserve it! You know as well as I do that he has to pay for his crimes." He spat out.

"You've seen the kind of man that he was! You've seen his insanity with your own two eyes." He said firmly. His hand continued to grip her firmly as he talked. "I've only seen the work he had done through the papers we found, and that was enough to make me want to gut him alive." His voice was filled with anger and hatred, but most of his anger for Stryker stemmed from the fact that Stryker had called him a mindless animal. He found it unfair that he wanted Yuriko to feel his own anger towards Stryker, but it was the only way for her to realize that a man like that deserved no ounce of redemption.

"The man wants nothing but death! Have you blind for the past decade that you've been by his side?! He almost killed millions of mutants, for Christ's sake!" He shouted. "How could ever give a man like that freedom? How could you send a rabid animal back into the wilderness knowing that he'll go back to his old ways?!"

Yuriko's eyes suddenly widened with anger, and she clenched her jaw as she looked back at Logan. The sadness in her face was suddenly replaced with that of animosity. "How could you say that about him?" She whispered angrily. "When you know nothing about him?" She asked, looking deeply into Logan's eyes.

Logan furrowed his eyebrows and looked at her confusingly. Was she defending that mad man? What caused this sudden change of heart in her? She was also talking as if he himself was supposed to know something more about Stryker. Perhaps she was referring to the past that the three of them once had together...

Without saying another word, she suddenly clutched the front end of Logan's tank top and pulled him close to her, so that their faces were less than two inches away from each other. Her widened, teary eyes looked into his, as she whispered the words that would forever leave an impression in Logan's mind.

"He was once your friend too, Logan." She whispered. "He was like a brother to you." Her words echoed into Logan's head, as if he would eternally hear them in his mind.

"You two were very much alike back then. Whenever we were in the battlefield, I could never tell the two of you apart." She said softly, still holding him so close to her. She couldn't believe that she was talking like she had never forgotten the way they once were. "And you loved him, as you would your brother. You saved his life countless of times, as he had saved yours." Then a soft smile curled up his lips. "We were like a family, James. And back then I thought the three of us would never part."

Logan's eyes shot wide open as each and every word from Yuriko's lips sank into his brain. Quick breaths escaped from his lips, as if his chest had become too tight to allow him to breathe. He couldn't believe what she was saying. He did not want to believe what she was saying. None of it could have been real. She was lying to him.

But why would she? Why would she say such things if there was no ounce of truth behind them? Was it because she was truly a part of his past? Was it because unlike him, she remembered most of her past memories? He wanted to deny her words...He wanted to deny his entire past's existence. But he couldn't help but feel a sense of familiarity as Yuriko told him about his connection with Stryker before.

That Stryker was like a brother to him...That's what she said. He knew that he once had a past with Stryker, but he never thought that he was that close to him --- like a blood-brother. And he never wanted to admit to himself that he was. Perhaps that was why he wanted to feel so much hatred and enmity for the man...perhaps that was the real reason why he wanted Stryker to die together with his past in Alkali Lake...because he wanted to forever bury the fact that in the past, he was so much like him in so many ways.

Yuriko could see a hint of awareness in Logan's eyes. She clutched on his shirt tighter and gently tugged on him. "You know what I'm talking about don't you?" She asked, pulling him even closer to her. "You can feel it --- those long lost memories nagging you at the back of your mind. I know you want to deny it, Logan. I know you want to deny what you used to be, but you can hear your past whispering into your ear..." Her eyes looked deeply into his. To her, he was now like an open book that needed to be read.

Logan gritted his teeth, and then he suddenly pulled away from her and quickly stood up from the floor. "No!!!" He shouted as he stood up. He walked backwards, a few paces away from Yuriko, while he continued to look at her. He clenched his fists and breathed in deeply as he tried to contain the inner struggle within him.

Why was she doing this? Did she want him to remember his past too? Why did she have to unearth his forgotten memories, when he had already made a pact with himself that he would never ever think about his past again? And why did she have to tell him about his past with Stryker? What did he want him to do? Forgive the bastard for old time's sake? Or maybe she wanted his permission to let Stryker go.