That night Logan sent Joss to bed at eleven completely sober, if a little miserable, assuring her that he was right next-door. When she had arrived Joss had been given the room next to Logan's in the corridor he was supposed to supervise and, coincidentally the one that got away with the most.
He was lying awake a few hours later not looking forward to his own dreams when he heard a noise in the next room, pricking up his ears he listened intently and could hear her through the wall moaning and crying out. He slipped out into the corridor in his jeans and knocked gently on her door, no response, checking down the corridor he opened the door and approached her bed. She wasn't in it.
Joss was on the floor in the corner, still asleep and in the middle of a very deep dream, crying out and shouting, in a language he recognised as Gaelic though he only caught a few words, and trying to get through the wall, repeatedly ramming her head against it.
Logan rounded the bed and reached out a hand towards her placing it on her shoulder and shaking her gently
"Joss? Come on Joss wake up, it's just a nightmare." The very second he touched her, her eyes snapped open, pupils completely contracted in fear and she spun around throwing him, with considerable strength, across the room into the chest of drawers opposite.
He was still getting up when the door opened and Jean entered followed by Scott and Storm.
"Logan!" she noticed him standing there, shirtless, pulling a large piece of the wooden chest out of his bare back, gritting his teeth against the pain. Storm moved forward and had just reached him when they heard a low growl coming from the corner; turning round they found themselves confronted with a very large, very pissed Bengal tiger.
Logan moved Storm behind him and glanced at Jean.
"She was having a nightmare" he explained.
"We know." Scott answered, "Jean saw it too." Jean nodded
"It was horrible" she said, "poor girl, she's terrified."
The tiger was advancing slowly growling and baring it's teeth.
"And a little pissed." Storm added.
"Jean," Storm asked "how much of that tiger is a wild tigers mind and how much is Joscelyn's mind?"
"Its hard to tell," She answered, "One is so full of fear the other anger, it's like they're one and the same…Logan what are you doing?" she gasped.
Logan was moving slowly towards the tiger, crouching down slightly to bring his eyes level with hers all the while he kept his hands out in plain view and maintained eye contact with the animal.
The tiger now backed up against the wall snarled and raised a large, clawed paw ready to strike. Logan stopped and raised his left shoulder just in time to protect his head, but his shoulder, taking the full force of the blow, was knocked out of joint and opened up halfway across his back with three deeply, bleeding gashes.
Rolling under the raised paw Logan grabbed the tiger by the neck with his good arm, forcing it onto its back and extended his own claws until they nicked it's throat, all in one fluid movement. Knowing it was beaten the wild animal lay still, growling and he began speaking to it softly, soothing in the language Joss had been speaking, andrunning a hand down its long bodyuntil the growling ceased and was replaced by a quiet whimpering as the full grown predator before him changed back into the mutant girl it really was.
Logan continued speaking to her quietly in that beautiful language until she stopped knocking her head on the wall and allowed him to take her in his arms and rock her back into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
As soon as she was asleep he stood up and wincing walked over to Scott
"Here, take her for a second would you?" he held her out and passed the sleeping girl in to his arms then excused himself and stepped out of the room. Scott exchanged confused looks with Storm and Jean, wondering what he was doing until their question was answered by a loud thud and the sound of a shoulder being forced back into place followed by a sharp grunt of pain making them all cringe. A moment later Logan stepped back into the room rolling his shoulder in the joint and, holding out his arms, took her back without a word.
They all went down to the infirmary where they were met shortly afterwards by the Professor who had also experienced her dream. It seemed that while Joss was not psychic her mind was powerful enough to mean that the two in the building who were psychics picked up her nightmare because it was so vivid.
Jean administered a sedative to Joss to keep her in the dreamless sleep she had slipped into while she cleaned the cuts on her head from pounding it against the wall.
"Logan," she warned "I want to x-ray that shoulder later and give you a jab. We don't know what that tiger was carrying."
"That tiger," he snapped angrily, "was Joss and she's not 'carrying' anything!" Jean looked a little shocked, Logan had never snapped at her before. Storm was inspecting his back where the last marks of the claws were fading and quickly changed the subject not wanting an argument.
"What language was that you were speaking Logan?" she asked "It was beautiful." He took the scrubs shirt she handed him and pulled it over his head before answering.
"Irish Gaelic, it's her mother language." She looked surprised.
"That's an unusual language to know, why did you learn it?"
"I didn't" he answered, "I just know it. I've never found a language I didn't." he waved the back of his hand in the air indicating his claws "Package deal."
"Why didn't you say?" Storm exclaimed, "You could teach languages here!" he shook his head and pulled up a chair next to where Joscelyn was lying unconscious.
"No, I'm no good with kids" he replied "wouldn't know how teach." Before she could challenge this he turned to Jean asking, "How long will she be out?"
"Well" she responded "the drugs should work for about nine hours but she's absolutely exhausted so it could be much longer."
They all sat around the table at the other end of the infirmary discussing her dream with Hank, who had arrived shortly after the Professor. The Professor and Jean relayed all they could remember of it and Logan translated the few words they could recall between them as 'Mama' and 'Daddy'.
"It was mostly just images cobbled together into a repeating sequence" Jean explained "Darkness, blood, bodies I can only assumed belong her parents, horribly mutilated and a tall, thin figure laughing the whole time, but I never saw its face. Horrific." The Professor nodded in agreement.
"It's not surprising that she allowed herself to regress so deeply into the tigers mind, all that power must be quite reassuring."
Hank blamed himself for making Logan refuse her drink and digging up memories of her parents but Logan revealed that she did in fact have nightmares most nights anyway, just nowhere near that bad, that he'd experienced. He came under fire for not telling someone and left to sit across the room with Joss.
It was just four hours before she woke up. Logan was sitting next to her bed reading when she began to stir, he leaned forward as she opened her eyes, squinting as her pupils contracted sharply at the bright light in the large white room.
Her eyes stared into the middle distance for a while, closing again as memories of the previous night flooded back.
"Hey, kid." Logan said gently, smoothing a lock of dark hair from her face.
"Hey." she answered weakly
"How you feeling?" she responded with a look and he smiled. "Yeah, I can imagine." There was a silence.
"Sorry I tried to kill you," she said after a while and he showed her his back.
"No permanent damage. Bloody hurt though, damn good thing it was me you got." She laughed a little, struggling on to her elbow.
"Well, you're the only one fool enough to approach a full grown Bengal tiger when it's cornered." She plucked at the shirt of her green flannel pyjamas covered in a large bloodstain. "This yours or mine?"
"Mine." She raised her eyebrows
"Wow, I got you good."
"Knocked my shoulder out of joint" she winced.
"These were nice pyjamas! They glowed in the dark!" he snorted, feigning offence.
Joss reached out and took Logan's copy of "Pride and Prejudice" laughing and throwing off his protests that it was the only book in the infirmary as she pointed out the bookshelf in the corner.
He tried to wrestle it from her and they ended up sparring in the large open space next to the door, the book forgotten, both enjoying the opportunity to practise the skills not really needed in the mansion as they both switched from one form of martial art to the next trying to drop the other to the ground.
They were circling each other trading friendly fighting banter when the door opened and Professor Xavier entered with Jean, Storm, Scott and Hank all in tow. They all took in the situation and leapt to the same conclusion.
Jean, using her telekinetic powers, threw them apart and held them both suspended fifteen feet in the air. They turned to her, surprised, and Joss struggled in the air trying to kick Logan, who was just out of reach.
"Jeanie," Logan teased from the air "if you want to join in you've got to obey the no powers rule!" realising she had been mistaken Jean blushed and released them dropping Logan a little further from the ground than Joss, he landed deftly on his feet and grinned flirtatiously at her.
"What were you doing?" she demanded rushing over support Joss, who shook her off irritably.
"Don't," she protested, "I'm fine." Jean frowned
"The sedative I gave you shouldn't have worn off for at least another five hours yet. What woke you up?" she shot a look at Logan who held up his hands in innocence. Joss shrugged.
"I don't know, guess I just metabolise it quicker than others." Jean frowned again but let it go.
"How are you feeling?" asked the Professor wanting to talk to her straight away but Logan put a stop to their questions demanding that they let him get her breakfast and have her change and shower pointing out her bloodied pyjamas. They consented and they left, still playfully shoving each other down the corridor.
Professor Xavier sent a psychic message to all of the children in the mansion declaring what he liked to call an occasional day where they could all do as they wished so that he could spend the day with the rest of the staff trying to decide what to about Joss.