Total disclaimer: I don't own this, and I make no money off this and actually loose some on this as I have to be at work soon.
This is for Cleaver Fox.
Red Curls Adorning My Pillow.
"I can't believe the last two years of my life!" I think to myself. A year and a half ago, I'd made my first visit home after traveling so far and for so long. My parents were so happy to see me well, I haven't a clue what it is they tell their friends about my long bouts away. About the same time I started dating Logan, James as he's called now, and now, I'm about eight months pregnant with our babies. I thought this would never happen, I thought I would never be a mother, I certainly never thought I would ever get married again. Logan, sweet and sour Logan swept me off my feet. He recited his own version of poetry while drinking a six -pack of beer. He'd written it one night after we'd first slept in our new house and I know he must have been smoking his cigars because most of it compared me to the beauty of smoke, but at least he said I smelled better than one.
Then, out of nowhere, he had a romantic dinner for two ready when I came back from working in Sidney.
It was out in our yard, and he must have been busy for a week doing this. He built an outdoor pit and some wood chairs and a table, not to mention he made my favorite potato salad. My father doesn't give that recipe to anyone! Then I saw something distinctively Logan, Beer Can Chicken. I had to laugh, Logan had that way with me.
Then, Logan got sick, this was something that degenerated his tissues faster than his body could heal. It almost ate him alive, almost as though he wasn't Logan anymore. We moved back into the mansion so that he could be near the technology that could help him. He looked old. For the first time in the hundred or so more years he had lived, he looked like a feeble old man. His muscles melted away, his hair fell out in patches because of the medicine it took to keep him alive, and what was left turned gray. His chest even looked sunken in.
We almost lost him several times over three days. Part of me was scared to be alone again, and this time pregnant, part of me wished he'd just heave his last breath so he wouldn't be in pain so bad, and I could get on with a life not filled with emergencies and morphine. That sounds so selfish of me, but unless you've been there, you don't know. I don't know who could possibly ever say truthfully that when a loved one suffers so much, that they've never prayed for the end of it.
Scott, bless his crooked heart, has been there for me in this in a way he never was while we were married. Emma, his new wife had been killed ten months ago by a crazed ex-hellion, he knows a little of what this is like. But, his wife went suddenly as my husband, however, keeps languishing. I know if Emma were here, I wouldn't have his shoulder to cry on. He's been wonderful and it's good his children are no longer bothered by my presence.
Forge and Orroro have been kind enough be caretakers for my house while I'm here. Nobody wants me thinking about more than I need to right now, and I can understand that. Even Professor Xaiver has taken some interest in helping Logan, numbing Logan's brain so he doesn't feel the icy burning of the chemical cocktail running through his veins. I can't shake the feeling that I should be uncomfortable about that.
I've been in there to hold Logan down Telekinetically while Hank puts in I.V lines. Logan has a habit of ripping them out and trying to leave. After Logan went crazy a year ago, and everything he did, I'm surprised that Hank gets anywhere near him. I'm surprised that we were even allowed back, particularly after I'd been shot.
I keep telling myself it's because Scott feels guilty about shooting me, or that he truly thinks he can save people. I keep telling Scott that what he did wasn't his fault. I don't bring up it was his wife that mind controlled him to do it. There's no point in rehashing that just as there's no point in bringing up what my husband did to his wife, or what she did to him.
My belly itches as it's stretched around my already loved children. Logan was already failing when I got pregnant, he wanted me to have at least a child so badly, as he wanted to be a father before he died. I hope that he lives that long. Logan has forced himself to muster up the strength a few times to but his withered hand on my stomach just so he could feel his unborn children hiccup, move and do what they do. Scott looks at me weirdly as I have to catch my breath. This has happened many times over the past few hours. I know what must be happening, I'm not stupid, I'm just not ready. He's well aware of this too, having been through it four times himself.
"I'm getting Hank and Orroro." He says bluntly as he rushes down the hall to find at least one of them.
"Don't!" I yell after him. I know that they're tending to my husband, I know that Remy, Gambit as he prefers, and Cable have both gone though much to get this experimental drug from unknown reaches of time, and untainted samples of Logan's DNA from we all know where, to try and save him, I don't want them bothered, and Scott seems to understand why.
"Alright." He concedes as he runs his left hand through his hair. "What do you want me to do?" He adds. "You are early, you know."
I know this, and I'm worried. Who wouldn't be? Hank comes out with a small amount of good news, Logan is breathing on his own, but he eyes me apprehensively. He doesn't say another word, he just picks me up and puts me in the room with an ultrasound machine, and gives Scott a dirty look.
"Hey!" Scott defends himself. "I tried! You know how stubborn she is!"
"Shut up and help me hook up the fetal monitors." Hank says while he gives me his patented "What is wrong with you, dummy?" stare and he pours that cold ultrasound jelly on my purple marked tummy and scans. "Just as I thought." He says as he puts a mask over my face. "Breathe deep, Jean, and count backwards from one-hundred."
I don't get to nineteen before I suddenly wake up and can see my feet. "What happened?" I ask in a slurred daze. Somebody answers me, although I'm not sure who.
"The babies had to be delivered. Hand had them out in under a minute, you did fine."
"Are the children ok?" I asked still high. I'm still so groggy, I can't open my eyes or I know I'll throw up.
"One had to be resuscitated, and they're a little small, but they're healthy and O.K." the voice tells me as somebody holds my hand.
"And Logan?" I'm almost afraid to know.
"Why don't you ask him?" The voice tells me. "Open your eyes, Jean."
I open my eyes and see Scott, and I do vomit, the drugs still have me so dizzy. I also see Logan sitting upright for the first time in weeks and he looks like his healing factor has began to work again.
"Hi Red." He says to me. The first time I've heard him talk for a long time, the tubes have been removed from his throat and nose and he's starting to look like himself again. "I hear Scott stayed by your side, I'm grateful." He says as he looks at Scott stand up to leave.
"I'll give you two some time alone." He says as he looks back at me with a wistful smile.
"Thank you!" I tell him mentally as I'm blushing. That was the same smile that made me fall in love for the very first time, back when I was fifteen, and the world wasn't shades of gray, just black and white with a little color here and there.
"So, Logan, tell me how they brought you back from the dead." I say as I turn to my waiting husband.
"I reached out for you, and you reached back, Jeannie. Same as usual." He tells me as our children are wheeled in by a waiting crowd waiting to meet them.