Special, just for Pia, 'cause she asked so nice...

Chapter 22: Wounded Creatures are the Most Dangerous

Xavier's eyes snapped open to keenly regard the tormented man sitting before him. He could sense that it had worked, but was surprised at Rogue's decision to send even the original Wolverine back to his own head. He hoped she would be all right, alone in her head with just the enemy.

Logan's mind was reeling. Suddenly he could see and remember everything that his two selves had talked about, and he knew what Rogue's mind was like from the inside out. Man, was this what it was like to be a telepath? Suddenly he felt sorry for Xavier. His mind whirled with thoughts – his own thoughts, which had been hidden away from him safely inside Rogue's mind for the past year – and he started to hyperventilate. His gaze swept up to Rogue's, whose eyelids were beginning to flutter open, and suddenly it was all too much. "I… I gotta go," he choked, and fled.

Too involved in his own thoughts to notice his surroundings, for once, he barrelled around a corner and crashed into Kurt. The impact knocked them both over. Kurt, being an acrobat, was on his feet in a flash and offered the slower Logan a hand.

Logan got slowly to his feet, still not paying attention to Kurt due to the whirling in his brain.

"Are you all right, Herr Logan?" queried Nightcrawler.

"What?" Logan asked distractedly. He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up all over. He was still breathing heavily; he felt as if he was running a marathon. Kurt's question finally registered. "'M fine," he mumbled. Turning, he staggered across the hall toward the door.

Nightcrawler, eyebrows drawn together in worry, thought for a moment. He had never known this man to be distracted – indeed, he had never met anyone as keenly single-minded as Logan. He thought the man might need his help at some point, so he decided to follow him at a safe distance.

Rogue slowly came back to consciousness in Xavier's office. Blinking, she sat up and looked for Logan. She flicked her eyes back up to Xavier's. "He's gone, isn't he?" Xavier nodded. Rogue sighed and combed her fingers through her hair, lifting the heavy mass up off her neck. "Hope he's all right," she muttered.

"Rogue," Xavier began, not quite sure how to phrase his question. "What was your purpose behind that show of affection? Before you pushed him – them – out of your mind?"

Rogue lifted one shoulder. "Reassurance, I guess," she said. She glanced at Xavier with a twinkle in her eye. "Mostly, 'cause it seemed like the thing to do at the time."

He smiled back. "I see." Shifting his weight in the chair, he asked, "When would you like to start on plan B? It is likely to take some time; quite probably all day."

Rogue sighed, exhausted. All this mental stuff was hard work! "How about tomorrow?" she asked. "Something tells me that Logan won't want to see me for a while anyway, after he knows what he knows."

"Tomorrow, then. Good night, Rogue."

Kurt was having a hard time keeping up with Logan, who seemed to know these woods fairly well for someone who hadn't actually spent much of his life there at Xavier's. He slipped from one dark tree-trunk to another in the night, and if Nightcrawler hadn't been able to see in the dark he never would have kept up with the other man. Finally, deep in the woods, Logan came to a small clearing and released his claws with a metallic-sounding shink! sound. He growled, and plunged them into a tree. Slicing another tree, he growled louder. His slashing became more frenzied and his growls turned into a roar of fury, and Kurt came to understand that this clearing hadn't existed a year ago, before Logan's advent at Xavier's.

About twenty minutes later, surrounded by fallen trees and wood chips, Wolverine seemed to have worked through the worst of his fury. He sank to the forest floor, panting. The claws slid back into his knuckles. He calmed down after a few minutes, then gave an inquisitive sniff. And another.

"What the hell are you doin' out here, elf?" he growled when he recognized the scent: mostly human, but with an underlying hint of sulphur. He glanced up to see Kurt hanging by his tail from a tree branch, about fourteen feet up. His eyes glowed in the night.

Kurt knew he wouldn't be able to keep his presence a secret from Logan's sharp senses. "Praying for you," he said simply, tucking his rosary back into his belt. "For peace in your soul, mein freund," he told Logan sombrely. "You seem very… conflicted."

Logan barked a short, bitter laugh. "Conflicted. Right." He was silent for a long moment while Kurt continued to pray. Then he spoke again. "You'd think I'm old enough to know better, wouldn't you? Apparently there's just no plumbing the depths of human stupidity."

Kurt finished his mental recitation and opened his eyes again. "I have found that humans can run the entire gamut of being. For every stupid person, there is one equally wise. For every coward, there is a brave man. For every cynic, there is someone filled with hope. And do you know what the strangest thing of all is, Herr Logan?" He let it lie until Logan looked up curiously.

Kurt let go and dropped down to crouch next to the other man. "I have found in my experience that both extremes are frequently demonstrated by the same person."

Logan slid out a claw, slowly, and used it to trace idle patterns in the forest floor. "I think in this case that I'm the fool and you're the wise man, Kurt. Best I can hope for is being a wise-ass."

"Would you like to tell me about your problem?" Kurt offered.

Logan glared at him suspiciously. "Why?"

Kurt's glowing eyes blinked slowly at him. "It is said that a burden shared is a burden halved. And forgive the observation, mein freund, but you appear burdened." His eyes travelled slowly around the clearing, now more full of sawdust than trees, and settled back on the man before him. His blue face held a hint of a smile that only Logan's night-vision could have picked up.

Logan was forced to chuckle at his new companion's sense of understatement. He was fairly a blunt and obvious man himself, but that's not to say he had no sense of irony or subtlety in others. His shoulders relaxed, and he closed his eyes and started to speak. "Well, there's this girl…"

A/N: This is about 3 chapters from the end, so bear with me, guys. We're gonna get there, I promise! I'm amused by how many people have commented on how close this story is to this or that comic, because I've only read one or twoof the comics! My husband read them in his youth, and I'm mostly working off of his descriptions of everyone. Glad y'all approve, though; gives me a feeling of authenticity.