A/N: I promised I would update as soon as someone reviews. Tada, here it is! I hope you like it. Please let me know if you do. And again thx to Carmilla!
You Dela
CHAPTER THREE
He lay wide awake in his bed. For over one hour he had watched the sleeping form right beside him.
The morning sun shone softly through the window, breaking through the half closed curtains in various rays. The light gave everything a strange glow and a bright aura. Isobel was one of those things. Her even breathing body was surrounded by a golden fringe, dust dancing in the ray of light around them.
It has been a long while since the last time a woman had slept in his bed and Charles enjoyed the presence of another person's body with all his senses.
He kept watching her, although he knew every little wrinkle in her face, every birthmark on her body and every movement of her eyes under her eyelids while she was dreaming.
He breathed the perfume in that still clung on her body, that was a part of her. He suspected that she had bought the whole stock of this perfume to have it for ever and always once she had found it. This fragrance belonged to her like the moon belonged to the earth.
He touched her skin, stroking softly, so to not wake her. It was still the same, soft, warm and young.
He kissed her forehead and tasted the salt of the thin layer of sweat.
He listened to the steady breathing, to the words she mumbled in her sleep. He listened to the sound of her voice in his head that kept whispering his name.
All this calmed him deep inside and he had missed this state of peace. He knew that the students and even his X-Men thought that he was kind of perfect, that he was as firm as a rock and would never break down. But the truth was that he needed a break. He was so tired and, he had admitted that a long time ago to himself, lonely.
He loved the children and was glad that he had the support of every one living in this mansion, but that was not that same as someone who sometimes only cared for him. Someone who asked you after a long day how you were. And so he was even more glad that Isobel was here. She gave him the break he so desperately had hoped for.
He closed his eyes and was about to listen to her breathing for a while, to get himself lured back to sleep by her presence. He felt that she was dreaming and that it was a nice dream. He smiled inwardly, got hooked by her feelings and drifted off to sleep when he suddenly felt something darken this happiness. It began to cover it like a big rain cloud darkened a sunny day and finally engulfed the sun until no light got through.
He opened his eyes with a start only to find Isobel looking at him with sleepy eyes.
"Hey, handsome." she whispered and smiled at him.
He breathed a bit faster, still shocked by the sudden change of the emotions he had received from her.
"What's wrong?" she asked slightly troubled by his actions and was suddenly wide awake.
"I was about to get back to sleep when I got...it was so strange. Do you have something on your mind. Are you in trouble?"
She frowned. "What? No! Charles, what's wrong? You look as if you've seen a ghost."
"It suddenly went all dark and..."
"Oh that." she said as it dawned on her what had happened.
"What?" he asked, still slightly shaken. This darkness, it was cold and hard, like a brick wall and getting it from her made it even worse. She was anything but this darkness. The worries rose anew.
"I've spent some time...some years training my mind to build a wall."
"Why?" he asked frowning. A wall, what for?
"Do we really have to discuss that now? I just woke up, it's going to be a beautiful day and..." but his stern look showed that he wanted to know now. She let out a rather annoyed breath and went on.
"Charles, even you must have registered that the world is not the friendly place we hope for. And you are one of the few mutants or normal humans who has good intentions. The time has come that I have to get myself prepared. Apart from that, even I have some things I don't want to think constantly about. The logical consequence is to lock it away. Are you happy now?"
He thought about it for a while. She had never hidden her thoughts or memories. Though it sounded logical and she was right about memories who sometimes needed to be locked away but still. Something was strange. It kept nagging at the back of his mind, though he nodded. He had to think about that for one moment or two.
She seemed satisfied because she asked him something and tore him out of his reverie.
"Okay, now that you started this uneasy conversation I can ask you what I wanted to ask you anyway. I want to make you a gift..." she began but Charles interrupted her immediately.
"Isobel, I appreciate your offer but I've told you twenty years ago and will tell you again. I don't want my youth back. I'm glad the way I..." he said in a stern voice but he got interrupted, too, for she laid one hand over his mouth to make him stop.
"Shut up. That's not what I intended to say. Although the thought of you and me and eternity is still worth thinking." He shot her a more or less angry glare and she smiled at that.
"No, let me finish." He nodded and she lowered her hand again. "Science made a quantum leap forward the past fifteen years. They discovered the true meaning of the DNA and particularly of it's functions. They know mostly how atoms work and what they do. So, with this knowledge I'm capable of using my powers more precisely."
He waited for her final statement because at the moment he had no idea where she was heading.
"Well, to make a long story short I could repair the damage on you legs, Charles!"
He stared at her, unbelieving.
"I see you need some time to think about that and you'll have it. I'm going to stay for a while." She got up and turned to him and he instantly forgot what she had offered him.
"I'm going to have some breakfast now. Do you want to join me? I could use some company." Isobel reached her hand out to offer him help but he made no effort to move in her direction.
"You know, you're still a sight for sore eyes like mine."
She waggled her eyebrows and smiled seductively at him. "And this is all yours!" she said and drove her arms from her chest down over her belly to her waist of her naked body.
"I'm not really hungry ", he said and smiled ambiguously.
"Me neither!" she said and jumped back into the bed. "I love lazy mornings", she said as she bent down and kissed him.
'Marie!'
'Marie!'
'Marie!'
The Wolverine inside of him growled with every beat of his heart.
'Shut up!' Logan ordered but the animally part of his personality had ceased to obey a long time ago.
At first it had been some kind of subconscious whisper which brought him to look up everytime his heightened senses felt her presence, long before Logan really noticed her. Back then he had thought that it was nothing special, because he'd promised to protect her and that he had to know where she was. But he became suspicious when the little voice in his head told him from time to time to take a look further down instead of her eyes, when it told him to turn every now and then when she passed him and observe her back and her butt.
He knew that something was different when he started watching her lips, her soft and young lips, very closely, every time she talked to him.
And he had no idea when all of this had started, but he knew damn well that it had to stop soon before it got worse - though it already did with every passing day.
It was bad already and he was sure that some had already noticed his strange behavior when it came to her. He had been her guard ever since they first met but now...now he was miles apart from that. He was obsessive. He tried not to show it and was sure that he usually did a good job hiding it, but sometimes he just didn't. Once he had almost beat the jerk behind the counter at McDonald's up because he had smiled at her. It had been a very embarrassing moment holding that guy by his collar and Marie asking what the hell he was doing. Not good. And at the moment he was close to hell. There she sat at a table with her wimp of a boyfriend laughing and smiling at him, for him, not wasting one thought about Logan, or at least that was what he thought.
He wanted to jump from his chair, over the tables of the breakfast hall and get a good hold onto Icy's neck for just one minute.
Angrily he swallowed his craving for her and the want to get her away from Iceboy. He looked down into his bowl filled with cereals and almost smashed it when he rammed the spoon furious into the milk
This earned the attention of some students who turned but thought about it and spun around again when they noticed who had made this noise.
No woman in his life had ever made him feel like this, stupid, helpless and he hated feeling stupid and helpless. Since when did she have this effect on him? He didn't recognize himself.
But to top it all he was not only drawn to her physically. No, he began to suspect that it was way more serious, that he really wanted to be with her longer than one night or two. He was afraid that he was in love with her in some sick kind of way because he could be easily fifty or sixty years older than her for all he knew. Logan, the Wolverine, in love with the untouchable girl! In his head it sounded like a joke worth telling but in his heart he wasn't able to laugh about it, because he wanted it too much to laugh.
He took a deep breath, took his tray and got up to get in the Danger Room for some mind distracting work out.
Logan took one last glance over his shoulder to steal one last look of Marie and found her staring at him with a look he only knew as longing.
He turned and closed his eyes tightly. Great, she really was able to make his bad situation even worse with one look – and he'd thought he had already reached his lowest point.
'This is going to be a hell of a work out!' he thought and left, not seeing Marie watching him with a sad expression on her face, struggling with her own feelings.