Author's Note: Yes, I realize that the chapter and its sections are short. I hope that's OK with everyone. After all, it's true that good things come in small packages. Let me know what you think.
xXx
"You know what the doctors said, 'Ro," Logan told her, reaching for her hand beneath the sheets.
"I know," she whispered, letting him touch her but not returning the gesture.
"I know it hurts, 'Ro. It hurts me, too. But it's not the end. You can still have more, and we have years for…" he tried to comfort her, but was cut off abruptly.
"No, Logan," she said fiercely, "I don't want another baby! Don't you see? I wanted this baby!" With that, she let out a sob and turned around to bury her head in the pillow. He lowered his head into his hands and tried to battle the tears that threatened to escape…a battle that proved to be a losing one.
"Yeah. Yeah, I know," he whispered. She turned around to look at him, and, upon seeing that this was killing him, too, she snuggled next to him, burying her face in his chest, letting his body catch her tears as he cried into her silver hair. He wanted to tell her something, anything, he wanted to say that it was all going to be all right, but that was the same thing he'd told her about the baby. The same damn thing, and look at how that had turned out.
Long after Ororo had cried herself to sleep, Logan was still staring at the ceiling with tears drying on his face.
"I wish we didn't have to talk about it, but everyone says it's the only way," he said to himself sleepily, and then, his last waking thought came to him, "It's only been two weeks since she got home. Maybe in time it'll change…"
xXx
After gladly surrendering her duties as headmistress to Professor Xavier, Ororo had nothing left with which to occupy her days but her classes, and she'd thrown herself into those headlong. When she wasn't physically in the classroom, she was making and grading tests, preparing lesson plans, and even, in her spare time and on her off hours, reading the textbooks from which she taught, claiming that she had to "familiarize herself with the material."
"Ororo, you've been teaching history for years. And anyway, all that there is to it is memorizing a bunch of dates and events. If you're not familiar with it by now, honey, you're never gonna get it," Logan had once pointed out to her. This argument was met with nothing more than a dirty stare and her refusal to speak to him until he had apologized to her later that night. After that, she threw herself into his arms and bawled out her own apologies for nearly an hour until he kissed her eyes and ordered her to get some sleep. These days, Ororo was like a puppet in Logan's hands, complying with everything that he asked of her simply because she didn't know what else to do.
Although he had to admit that this did make it easier for him to take care of her, Logan didn't like it any more than anyone else did, but he didn't know how to stop it, either. Ororo was exactly the train wreck that she'd been two months after the deaths of Scott and Jean. She was hollow and empty, a workaholic who put no feeling into anything that she did, and simply went through the motions of every day like a robot, and she was withdrawn from everyone, with one exception. She clung to Logan for dear life, as though she was adrift in the Atlantic and he was a life preserver. Her sad eyes haunted him wherever he went, and all he could think of every time that he saw her was what he could possibly do to bring her out of it.
He had found a rare moment of solitude within his office after having left his eighth-grade Phys. Ed. class with a handful of basketballs and the excuse that he needed to make some copies of a test. In reality, he was slumped forwards in his desk chair, his head in his hands, thinking of the night before, when Ororo had slipped a condom into his hand, looked at him as though she were about to break down, and said, "Make love to me, Logan, please." He'd tried to do his best for her, but she had simply lain beneath him like a rag doll the entire time, waiting for him to finish, which had taken longer than usual because he was not turned on by the experience at all, and, by the time he was about to climax, he had been wishing that men could fake it the way that women did.
After, he had rested his head on her chest, listening to her as she cried.
"Maybe I should let you get me pregnant again," she'd said, "A baby would make you happy, and at least one of us should have something…" She shook her head and let that thought trail off.
"Ororo, we're not trying that again unless we both want it. Anyway, you don't have to have a baby to please me. You make me happy; you're the only thing that's keeping me alive, and that's all that I want," he told her.
"I wish that I could be happy," she whispered.
"Yeah," Logan replied, "so do I."
xXx
He awoke to an empty bed, his arm stretched out over the spot where Ororo usually slept. Logan jerked up in panic and searched the entire mansion for her scent,worried that she was not with him. He found her vanilla and sandalwood smell, but it was faint and cold, as though she'd been gone for hours. Fear snaked around his heart, and he felt cold and hollow. His eyes searched the room for any trace of her, and then, he saw it, sitting on his nightstand, weighted down by the pen that she'd used to compose it.
He lifted the sheet of notebook paper from the stand and his eyes traveled over it, reading but not comprehending, not at first, anyway:
Logan,
I'm sorry for whatever effects that this will have upon you, but you must understand that I could not stay. It's too painful for me to see you every day and know that I've failed you, failed us, and that nothing can ever be the same between us again. Everything's changeed, and it breaks my heart and crushes my spirit, but, though I am bent and broken, I refuse to allow myself to destroy you. You're too precious to me, too beautiful for me to watch you wither beneath my sorrow. I myself don't even know where I'm going or what I'll do when I get there, so please, don't follow me. Remember that I'll love you forever, and that's why I must leave you.
Always,
Ororo
The note fell from his hand and fluttered silently to the floor, landing like a teardrop.
xXx
The eyes of Charles Xavier followed the man who had been pacing the floor of his office for nearly an hour.
"I just don't understand how she could do this, Chuck," Logan said, running a hand through his brown hair, "How could she think that leaving would be the answer to all of our problems?"
"According to Ororo's rationalizations, it was, Logan," replied Xavier.
"Bullshit!" cried Logan, "This isn't going to solve anything. It'll just make matters worse, for me, for her, for both of us!"
"Perhaps not," the professor said, "You never know what could happen. Things like this have an odd way of working themselves out, if you just give them time."
"I don't want to give it time, Chuck. I don't have any time to give. I need her. I don't know what I'm going to do without her here," Logan said, sitting on Xavier's sofa and hanging his head in defeat.
"Logan, I know Ororo, and I know that when she loses control, it's difficult for her to gain it back, or even to think clearly," Charles said in an attempt to reassure the other man, "What's happened here is that she no longer knows what to do, and all she needs is time away from you, awayfrom this place, time to think. I'm certain that once she ponders the matter for a few days, she'll realize that she needs all of this as much as you do. She'll come back to you, my boy; it just may take a while. You know what they say: if you love it, let it go, and if it comes back to you, then it's yours."
