Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to anything from Marvel, but I'm sick and I think it would be very lovely of you to not sue me...please? Oh, I also don't own the rights to either of the songs used in this chapter, but they're two of my favorite. The first is 'I Can Still Feel You' which I loved ever since I was like, ten. The other one is called '24 Hours' and if you want to look it up, it's by an artist named Jem and I love her voice and the music is brilliant. I love doing song stories because I get to peddle my odd music taste off onto everyone else. Muwhahaha! Yeah, like I said, I'm sick. Please enjoy the next chapter!
Logan felt a hand brush against his face and woke up, sat up bolt right and looked around his room wide eyed. There was no one there. His breath panted and he shook his head. He had been dreaming about me and somehow thought that he felt me running a hand down his cheek. As he was catching his breath, he heard footsteps coming down the hall and stop in front of his door. He sniffed the air and could tell that it was Haylie; what did she want? Slowly she pushed open the door.
"Hey, are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she lied.
"I heard you talking in my room, were you having a bad dream or something?"
"No," he said. He had actually been having a good dream about me and wished that she would leave so that he could go over it in his mind before it faded away from him.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," he said, still trying to catch his breath and ran his hand back through his hair.
"Was it about…Chloe?"
He debated whether to tell her and decided it would be the perfect opportunity to make good with the deal that he and the Professor had made earlier that day. He looked at her and nodded his head. "Yeah, it was,"
She took his response as an invitation to let herself in the rest of the way, and so she did, and went and sat on the edge of his bed. "Do you dream about her a lot?"
"I didn't used to,"
"But ever since she died you have?"
"Yeah,"
"Good dreams or bad dreams?"
"Both,"
"And tonight?"
"Good one,"
"What was it about?"
"It, uh…it was about the time we drove to Seattle together,"
"Seattle from Westchester?"
"No, from Laughlin City in Northern Alberta, Canada," he said with a small smile. "It took fourteen hours to get there and I think she only slept for about two or there of them, so she talked nearly the whole time,"
"What did you talk about?"
"Whatever she wanted, she would turn on the radio to some bad music station and then talk over it. She was entertainin' to be with,"
"When did you go?"
"About six and a half years ago,"
"Why?"
"'Cause her father was getting' out of prison and she wanted to meet him,"
"Did she like him?"
"She didn't meet him that day; she met him at her trial when she found out why he was in jail,"
"Why was he?"
He looked her right in the eye. "Chuck didn't tell you?"
"I didn't ask,"
"She said he killed a kid who lived next to 'em 'cause he was a mutant,"
"He killed someone before Chloe?"
Although it had been nearly a month since my death, her question still stung as she tossed around the words to carelessly. "Yeah,"
"Why?"
He paused for a second. "I don't know…" he said, shaking his head. "I don't know,"
She was quiet for a while. "So, this isn't just about her then, is it? You want him to be put back in jail because he's killed two mutants?"
'No,' he thought. 'It's all about her,'
"Yeah," he said dumbly, feeling as though that had been his only appropriate response to every one of her questions.
"If I go and talk to the Professor tomorrow to see if he can help me, will you go with me?"
He nodded his head. "If you want me to, yeah,"
She grabbed his hand and held it. "I think I would feel better if you were with me,"
Logan wondered how he found himself in the predicament that he was in; there was a beautiful, young girl sitting in his room, wearing a shot, reveling nightgown and he couldn't have been less interested in a woman than he was her right then.
Haylie stayed in his room for another good thirty minutes before he casually mentioned that he was tired and had classed the next day…aright, so perhaps not so casually, he pretty much told her that she was going to have to leave so that he could sleep. I don't know why she put up with him being quite as rude to her as he was, granted he was even trying to be nice. However, if he had acted like that with me, I would have told him to check his attitude with me, but I guess that was the difference between the two of us; I actually had some self-respect. Then again, Logan would never have treated me that way; I was, after all, his darlin'.
It's that feeling that someone
Is standing behind me
And I turn around and there's no one there.
And it's the sensation
That someone just whispered
Yeah and I still hear your voice but you're not really here.
Your memory is like a ghost
And my heart is it's host.
I can still feel you just as close as skin
Every now and then
All by myself, in a crowded room, or my empty bed
There's a place you've touched
With your love no one gets close to
I can still feel you,
I can still feel you,
I can still feel you,
I can still feel you
"So, you know what you're supposed to be doin' right?" Logan asked Haylie as they sat in his car in the parking lot of a bar that they were waiting for her to go into.
"Yeah, I go in, I talk to him, I'll get a call on my cell phone from Dr. Grey who will then call the Montreal Police Department and send them over here to arrest him,"
The two of them, along with Jean, had flown to Montreal, Canada that Saturday to meet with our father. With the help of the Professor, they had been able to get in touch with him and set up a meeting. Haylie had fed him a long, very detailed, albeit fake, story about how she had 'always wanted to know him and wanted to meet with him as soon as she could'. Professor Xavier had done his best to get into his head enough to make him agree to it without him finding anything suspicious. It had worked and he had agreed to meet her in a bar in the town where he was hiding. He had, however, failed to mention that that was in fact what he was doing; hiding.
"Yeah, but when Jean calls you, you can't let him know what it's about, so you've gotta' make something up,"
"Like what?"
"I don't know, this is your idea, you'll think of something," he said.
"Alright," she said and then unbuckled herself. "So do I get a good luck kiss or anything?" she asked, but didn't wait for his response. Instead, she leaned over from her seat and crushed her mouth down against his, kissing him fiercely. Now, Logan's skill has amazed me but perhaps he was getting a little too into character, because he seemed to actually be enjoying himself while kissing her.
After a few minutes, he finally pulled himself away and swore. "You better go in there or he's gonna' wonder where you're at,"
"Yeah, okay," she said before climbing out of the car. "Why don't you come in with me, maybe I won't be so nervous that way if you're in there with me?"
"He's seen me before, I can't,"
"But you'll come in and get me if I need you, right?"
"Yeah, don't worry about it. If anything's gonna' go wrong, Jean'll tell me and I'll come and get you,"
"Alright," she said, biting the edge of her lip out of nervousness for once. "I guess I'll see you in a little bit, then,"
"Yeah, okay," he said and then she shut the passenger's side door.
He watched her walk from the car up to the bar and go in and then he waited as Jean opened the same door and climbed into the seat beside Logan's.
"So, how much good luck do you think she's going to need for this to work?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it's just that her good luck kiss lasted an awfully long time, I was just curious about how much luck you thought she might need," she teased.
"Not a word to anyone,"
"You are her boyfriend after all,"
"Jean," he warned.
She laughed and then they were both silent for a few minutes, just watching the door to the bar. "You know, you really shouldn't worry about anything, it's all going to work out,"
"Yeah, but it's not gonna' bright her back, though,"
"Logan, you can't do anything to bring her back, but you're doing everything you know how to do to somehow make it as right as it can be, even though it never will be right," she said. "I am sorry Logan, I know that you really loved her and still do, but everything's going to be fine, you're going to be okay,"
He picked up her hand and kissed it. "I know Jean, it's just gonna' take me a while, I still miss her,"
"You're always going to miss her and long as she's gone, that's just how it works, but I know you and I think that after this ordeal is over with and Haylie's gone you'll be able to rest a little easier. And to be quite honest with you; you could do with a little more rest,"
"I can't right now,"
"You're going to have to; it's not healthy for you to be this stressed out all the time. I've never seen you like this before, not even when you first got to the school,"
"I was like this when you were gone,"
"Well, I wasn't there to see it and somehow I think this is a little bit worse, you really loved her, didn't you?"
"Did you have to read my mind to figure that out?" he joked.
"No, it's just the woman in me," she smiled.
"Yeah," he said slowly. "I did,"
"You always did, it was just in a different way when she was younger,"
"You don't know how many nights I spent awake, just wanting to go and take her away. She was only sixteen," he said, playing with the bracelet on Jean's wrist, the one that he had bought her. "When Chuck told me that I had a wife and a kid and that if they hadn't been killed she would have been sixteen, all I could think about was that she would have been the same age as Chloe was when I left her. Maybe that's why I wanted to take care of her, maybe there was something in me that remembered my little girl and knew that could've been her in some bar, waitin' on a bunch of drunk guys, sloberin' all over her. I don't know, but that night when I saw her and she was grown up…there was something about it that killed me that I hadn't been there that whole time,"
"But you couldn't have been,"
"I know, she knew that too, I just wish that I could have taken care of her the way she deserved to be. I don't know how to explain it, but I was…relieved, I guess, when I saw her again and knew that she was okay. I had never been as happy as I was while she was livin' at the school. I could keep an eye out for her, take care of her and then one day I looked at her and I don't know what happened. I always knew she was beautiful; she was gorgeous when she was younger and I knew her, but something that day made me realize she wasn't a kid anymore. I tried to not think about it, 'cause I thought there was something wrong with it. How had I gone from thinkin' about her like a kid that I wanted to take care of to all of a sudden thinking about her…the way that I do now,"
"There's nothing wrong with that, you were both adults,"
"I know," he said with a sigh. "You better call her; I think it's been long enough now,"
"Yeah, you're right," she said.
After Jean called Haylie to make sure that the meeting was going well and was assured that it was, she called the local police department, which arrived in only fifteen minutes. They had to speak to Haylie and after an hour of questioning her, they let her go and the three of them all headed home.
"So, how are you feeling?" Jean asked Logan as he came to sit in the seat beside her as she was flying the jet.
"Like it's not good enough,"
"You'll probably feel that way for a while,"
"Yeah, but this is what I was waitin' on, this is what she wanted, but it doesn't feel like it's enough,"
"I know," she said quietly. "You better go check on Haylie; I think she's still a little shook up,"
He looked back at her sitting in her seat. While she had been talking to our father, he told her about going to jail for killing that boy; he had also explained what he had done, proudly and in very graphic detail. It had scared me terribly, causing horrid nightmares which led to many sleepless nights, but for someone like her, someone who had been sheltered all of her life from anyone other than people like herself; rich and uppity, it got inside her a little deeper. I had always grown up knowing that some people did evil things. I had lost my mother in a murder-homicide by my own stepfather and I had seen a lot of cruel things in the foster care that I had lived in, but to her, the things he said only happened in scary slasher movies. I knew there were terrible people who did terrible things, it was all very real to me and still what he had done had been enough to haunt me. I could only imagine what it had done to her.
"You alright?" Logan asked, sitting down in the seat next to hers.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she lied.
"Good," he said and sat back in his seat. As much as she needed to be comforted, he couldn't do it, but more to the point, wouldn't. If she wasn't going to say something was wrong, the he wasn't going to drag it out of her; he had enough to think about as it was.
It didn't take too long for them to get back to the mansion and once they got there, Logan went straight to his room. He grabbed his nearly empty bottle of whiskey and went out onto his terrace. He knew that just sending my father to prison wasn't going to bring me back or even make his pain any less than it was, but he felt completely unsatisfied with just letting him go to jail. He had done everything he could to stay inside of his car when he watched the police drag him out of the bar. He so wanted to just take his claws and cut him open. He wanted to guy him. He had seen him, saw that he hadn't regretted what he had done to me and that brought up more rage inside of him. He wanted to kill him more than he had ever had a desire to kill someone. He wanted to watch him die slow and painfully. No, he decided, he didn't want him to die, because then it would be over to him. He wanted him to suffer as much as possible. To cut him apart, piece by piece, slowly so that he felt it all. The alcohol did nothing for him, it dulled no pain, but it gave him something to do while he mentally tore my father apart.
"Ain't it too cold for you out here?" Rogue asked, joining him out on his terrace. She didn't sit down; instead, she stood right in front of him, as she leaned back against the railing.
"No, but you should probably go back in," he said, puffing on his cigar.
"Nope, you're not gettin' rid of me right now," she said with a kind smile. "How did it go today?"
He looked up at her and cocked an eyebrow. "You mean the whole school ain't already talkin' about it?"
"No, they're all talkin' about Haylie and how brave," she said, rolling her eyes. "She was for actually doin' something. Apparently, everyone thinks he knew she was a mutant and she went there anyway. If Jean hadn't told me she was one, I wouldn't even know. She goes through so much trouble to hide it so everyone'll think she's perfect,"
"Let her gloat; we needed her, we used her and she's gonna' be leavin' soon,"
"When?"
"Beginning of the week, Monday, I don't know,"
"Are you gonna' be sad when she leaves?"
"No," he answered quickly.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't like her, kid," he said with a swig of his whiskey.
"Good, me either,"
"Really, I thought the two of you got on pretty well?" he said sarcastically.
"You're right, I'm just sayin' that to make you feel better," she joked. "So, how did it go?"
"They arrested him and he's being brought back here to the states. I don't know what they're gonna' do now, though,"
"They'll try him for murder, I'm sure, but then he ran away and left for Canada, so I think they might could get him for something on that. If they bring up that she's a mutant he could be charged for hate crimes, too,"
"And only sent to jail for thirteen years like last time," he spat angrily.
"Well, they might not bring it up," she said, pulling her jacket to her. "I didn't really hate her as much as I thought I did, I think I was just kind'a jealous of her,"
"Why?" he asked, looking up at her. She looked so beautiful with the light of the moon shining around her, lighting her fact. His little Marie had grown up, all right in front of him.
"Well, when she came here, you pair more attention to her than to me and I got a little mad,"
He shook his head. "I didn't give her more attention that you, you got married, you weren't my girl anymore, you're Bobby's,"
"I'm always gonna' be yours Logan, and you're always gonna' be mine. I've got a little too much of you up here," she said, tapping a gloved finger to the side of her head. "For you to be anyone else's,"
He smiled at her. "That's not always a good thing; me bein' up there,"
"Yeah, well, you keep the others in line; I think they're a little scared of you,"
"They should me,"
"I'm not," she smirked.
"Have you ever been?" he asked, tipping back his whiskey bottle. "I think you were the only kid in class when I first started teachin' that didn't tell Chuck when I yelled at you,"
"I'm used to your yells and growls by now," she said and then they both fell quiet for a few minutes.
"I'm sorry," he said after a while.
"For what?" she asked,
"If I didn't give you enough attention while she was here,"
"You gave me enough, just not as much as her, but I guess you had a lot to make up for, didn't you?"
He nodded his head. "Yeah,"
"I think I might have actually liked her just a little bit, I just didn't want her to know," He let out a small chuckle. "You can't tell her that, though," He looked up at her. "Am I not supposed to know that you talk to her?"
"No, it's fine,"
"I think it's good. I used to talk to my momma after I left home; it made me feel better to be able to tell her what was goin' on in my life. After a while I stopped 'cause I didn't need to talk to her as much, I had you and everyone else here. One day you might stop talkin' to her, but right now I think it's good for you, you need it," She said to him and he nodded his head. "I won't tell anyone,"
"I know,"
"Are you gonna' tell Haylie that you don't really like her before she leaves?"
"Yeah,"
"Are you gonna' tell her why you were actin' like you did?"
"I guess so," he said, taking another sip.
"Good,"
He looked up at her and smiled. "You're lookin' forward to me tellin' her, aren't you?"
"What, me? That would be mean and I'm certainly not mean," she said with a small smirk. Rogue wasn't mean, but when it came to her family, she, like Logan, was very protective and so everything she said about Logan, the other teachers, even me, it all mad Rogue more than just a little upset with her and so yes; she was looking forward to Logan telling Haylie everything that was really going on. He laughed and shook his head. "I think that's the first time I've heard you really laugh in about a month,"
"Come over here," he said, setting his bottle down and grabbing her hand. He pulled her over to him and sat her down in his lap. He kissed the top of her head and held her to him as he would a child. "I'm proud of you, Marie,"
"For what?" she asked, resting her head against his chest and playing with the zipper on his jacket.
"For growin' up as well as you have; if anyone else had to deal with the same things as you, they would've been screwed up,"
"So you think I'm grown up?" she asked, looking up at him.
"No that I'm happy about it, but yeah, you are,"
"Well, you're partly to blame for home I turned out, you know?"
"Am I?" he asked with a smirk.
"Yep, it's your fault," she said and then she fell silent for a moment. "Logan?"
"Hm?" he grunted.
"When you get done with that bottle of whiskey, do you have another one?"
"Why, do you want some?" he joked.
"No,"
"No, that's the only one I've got right now, why?"
"I was just thinkin' that maybe you cold go a week or two without it, for me,"
"Yeah, I'll see what I can do, kid,"
"Kid? I thought just a few minutes ago I was all grown up?" she teased.
He laughed at she felt it rumble through his chest. He was getting better and she was helping. The last time he had seen me in his room and I was talking to him, I had told him that I would never leave him because I would always be in everything that made him laugh and smile, which right then was Marie. He held her close to him, knowing that it was true, that as long as he had Rogue, or Jean, or Storm, or any of the people he considered his family, then he would have me. There's always a turning point during any grieving process and Logan was experiencing his right then. He was still sad that I was gone, but he realized he always would be, no matter if it was four weeks or four years. But right then, he noticed something; he didn't have to remind himself to breathe. From the moment that I had died, he had had to make himself breathe, move, speak, everything that at one point, had been simple and natural, but with the fog of pain, had caused him to forget. And he knew from then on, as he sat, holding Rogue and breathing on his own, that he was going to be okay, a little rough, a little hurt, but he was going to survive it all. That's what he did; he adapted to the situation and he survived everything that he had been through. Losing me may have been a bigger blow to him than anything else may have been, but sure enough, he was still alive, everything was still moving around him and life was continuing on. Even if it had seemed like everything else had faded out in the background, had slowly moved past him, it had all kept moving and though he wasn't eager just yet to join everyone in their normal lives, he knew that one day, at some point in time, he was going to go back to his normal life. However, he was quite content at that moment just to be holding someone that he loved that was still alive. She was a silent reminder of everything good that he still had. Sometimes good can come out of something bad. In his case, Logan knew to never take a single second of his time with her for granted, and he didn't, because however depressing and pessimistic it sounded, he learned that at the least expecting time, he could lose her or anyone else and he wasn't going to take any chances.
Been given 24 hours
to tie up loose ends
to make amends.
His eyes said it all
I started to fall
and the silence deafened.
Head spinning round
no time to sit down
just wanted to
run and run and run.
Be careful they say
don't wish life away,
now I've one day.
And I can't believe
How I've been wasting my time.
In 24 hours, they'll be
laying flowers
on my life, it's over tonight.
I'm not messing no I
need your blessing
and your promise to live free
please do it for me.
Is there a heaven a hell
and will I come back
who can tell?
Now I can see
what matters to me
it's as clear as crystal.
The places I've been
the people I've seen
plans that I made
start to fade.
The sun's setting gold
thought I would grow old,
it wasn't to be.
And I can't believe
How I've been wasting my time.
In 18 hours, they'll be
laying flowers
on my life, it's over tonight.
I'm not messing no I
need your blessing
and your promise to live free
please do it for me.
I'm not alone, I sense it, I sense it
All that I said, I meant it, I meant it.
And I can't believe
How much I've wasted my time.
In just 1 hour they'll be
laying flowers
on my life, it's over tonight.
I'm not messing no I
need your blessing
and your promise to live free
please do it for me.