Here's the epilogue!!! It took forever to up load, the site hated the format or something, idk...I don't do computer speak.
The insperation for this chapter is the weepies' "Can't Go Back" listen to it during or after.....it's an amazing effect.
and this is set after X3
Dislcaimer: I own nothing at all
Epilogue: The Beginning.
"Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality."~Emily Dickinson
There's only bad news to be read; no different than any other day, Logan realizes as he flips to the next page. It's full of nothing but murder, war, terrorists…. the world's going to hell in a hand basket.
"What time is it?" A small voice asks next to his elbow.
Logan glances at his watch, but doesn't lower his paper. "Eleven eighteen. Five minutes later than the last time you asked."
"She said they'd be there at eleven," Amara complains, drawing her knees up to her chest. "She's always late!"
"Who?" Logan asked absent-mindedly as he flips to the next page.
"My mom and sisters." Amara replied. "They live in Connecticut. I told you yesterday."
"Right, right. Storm was telling me about it," Apparently Amara's mother, Mrs. Starling, had once been a student here. But it was long before Logan had ever heard of Charles Xavier. So, Logan goes back to his paper, he doesn't know any one by the name Starling. He scans over the headlines about the new American representative to the U.N., Hank McCoy.
Amara rolls her eyes at him and goes back to what she was doing before. Logan lowers the corner of the paper to glance at her; she lies on her stomach on a stone bench, bobbing her head in time with the music and flipping through some teenage magazine.
It's a quiet average Sunday morning, actually. No hurry, no worry; a bunch of the kids have gone home for the weekend. And while Logan was not the first choice babysitter; he didn't mind Amara so much, she wasn't as…insane as some of the younger kids. There was something familiar about the kid, something he couldn't put his finger on.
Not five minutes pass, when a car brake suddenly jars him from the paper. "I think she's here…." He mutters to Amara.
"You just want to see me run up and down the stairs fifteen times," she retorts, turning her iPod up and flips through another page in the magazine. "I'll believe it when I see it."
"Fine." He chuckles as he hears the car park in the courtyard. "Have it your way."
But not two minutes go by before there are two girlish squeals from the door at the patio where Amara and Logan are sitting. Amara jumps up, iPod and magazine forgotten, and she runs toward the two other girls screaming all the way.
The second oldest is a honey blonde with her hair cut into a shaggy bob and the smallest of the three looks no older than twelve and her hair is the same dark shade as Amara's with bangs so long she has to continually shake them out of her eyes. Come to think of it, all three girls have the same deep blue azure eyes. They're familiar somehow but Logan can't put his finger on why.
"My God." There's a new voice at the door way, this familiar too. "Logan?"
Logan puts down his paper now, as the girls laugh and giggle over each other's clothes and hair styles. The woman walking toward him is so familiar, it's making him uncomfortable. She's in her late forties maybe, her blonde hair is shot with silver grey but instead of clashing, it fits her. Logan catches a glimpse of her huge blue eyes in her round face and in his mind he sees those eyes on another woman.
This one has olive skin, freckles across her nose and long curling black hair, so black it shines blue in the dying mountain light. She's smiling, laughing, calling him by name and just as quickly as she's come, she's gone.
"Logan…" Mrs. Starling shakes her head in disbelief. "You look exactly the same."
"Mom," Amara chides. "Didn't you meet Logan last time you where here?"
"No," Mrs. Starling disagrees. "He was away."
"Oh," Amara knows which trip she means. "Well, this is my mom, Emma Starling and my sisters; Irina." She points to the shaggy blonde. "And Kay," the minute brunette.
"Mom," Kay tugs on her mother's sleeve. "Mom, it's the man from the pictures."
Mrs. Starling smiles down at her daughter, smoothing away the long bangs. "Yes, I know. Now, 'Mara, why don't you take your sisters to see Bobby, Kitty and Pieter? I'm sure they'd love to see them? Hm?"
Irina and Amara exchange a glance and drag their younger sister into the house.
When they're gone, Logan watches the woman come to sit across from him. "Do I know you?" he asks quietly.
Her round face falls a little. "The professor said you didn't remember anything." She sighs, digging through her purse. "But I stupidly hoped you would."
"Sorry," he mumbles. "I don't."
"Amara seems to have taken to you," she observes, switching subjects.
"She's a good kid." Logan admits. "Quiet.
"I've always told her that she takes after her aunt. " The woman shoots him a look like there's something he supposed to know or say.
"I wouldn't know," he shrugs.
"No," Mrs. Starling shakes her head. "I think you do, but you can't remember her. I'm surprised, actually. Of all people, you remember Stryker-"
Logan narrows his eyes at her, his hand balling into a fist. "Who the hell are you? How do you know about Stryker?"
Mrs. Starling looks him straight in the eye, and in Logan's mind, the years melt away until she sits before him twenty with bright gold hair, those bright haunting blue eyes and in a t-shirt with multi-colored paint drips on it. "Logan," she leans forward. "It's me…." It's the plea he knows too well; the soft cry for recognition that he cannot give.
"It's Emma…?" She phrases it as a question. "Emma Frost."
"Emma?" The name is surprisingly familiar.
"I got married to the girls' father when I was twenty six, to David Starling."
"How do you know me?" He demands finally.
There are a few tears shining in her eyes before she finally responds: "You loved my sister; Makayla Rose Silverfox. For five years."
Five years? There had been no Makayla he could remember. No Emma either for that matter.
"You saved us both from Stryker, from Three Mile Island in 1979." She goes on. "You loved Kayla and she loved you too."
"Where is your sister now?" he wonders, maybe if he were to see her, it would help.
"Dead." Is the short, stony reply. "She died that day."
He looks up at her, realizing that he's been staring at the table for the last five minutes. Her lower lip quivers and there is a resolve in her face to hold back tears. "Where's your proof?" He demands. If he's going to make her cry, at least there should be a good reason.
"Here," She hands him an envelope with his name written across the front. There's a signature across the back, it's never been opened. "Read it. I'll wait."
Logan rips it open and there is a letter for him written on what appears to be Billie Holiday lyrics to "It Had to Be You".
"Dear Logan,
If you've gotten this letter, it means that I'm no longer with you. For whatever reason; Stryker finally got to me, like I think he will, or your gift has kept you from aging and I've gone on, or you won't forgive me for what I've done to you. I hope you don't rip it up on sight, but I really wouldn't blame you if you did.
You have to know that I never wanted to hurt you. But I chose this path before I knew who you were, how you are and what a wonderful person you are. I chose it because I had to try to save Emma. She was in trouble and I thought Stryker could help me. I was wrong and now I have to pay the price. But I've never been so sorry in my life.
I tried not to lie. It wasn't a trick or a lie that I love you. I do. Completely and forever. Nothing will ever change that. Whatever happens to me, know that I will always love you, always be with you. So don't be sad when I'm gone, you have my love and while it may not change what will happen, it will never leave you no matter where you go, who you become. That is something that Stryker cannot take away, not even death can take from you. It is yours forever.
In the end, you're the only one for me. The only once I could want and wherever I'll go, I'll wait. I wish I had more beautiful words, but I don't which is why I left you with Billie Holiday and the song that I love so much.
Goodbye my Wolverine.
Love always
Kayla."
Logan looks up from the letter. Emma smiles tearfully as she looks down from the patio at her daughters. "I got the letters when the bank contacted me." She swallows. "She loved us both so much that she gave her life for us."
Logan doesn't say anything only stares at her signature, trying hard to put a face to her name and love. The only thing he sees are bits and pieces, just meaningless flickers of a life that isn't his.
"I held on to your letter for a long time, hoping you'd turn up. You never did. And then the Professor wrote to me last year to tell me that you had finally appeared on the radar again.
"I wasn't sure if I could see you face to face after all these years, but." Emma smiles "I'm glad I did."
"So," Logan finally finds his voice. "Your sister is gone?"
Emma takes a deep breath. "I used to think so. "
"And now?"
"She sacrificed herself for us. It's left its mark on the both of us. In a way….she'll never leave us."
"How on me?"
"She gave you your name, Wolverine." Emma grins. "I named my youngest daughter for her. And," She pulls out some photos and hands them to Logan. "I have these."
In the first one is a picture of just Logan sitting on a house porch. The next, to Logan's surprise, is the dark haired woman he imagined earlier, kissing his cheek and another where the woman and him and are both looking back at the camera. And the last is that same woman sitting on a huge rock next to a turquoise lake.
"Kayla," the name comes unbidden to his lips. But there it is. "Makayla Rose."
Emma's eyes go wide. "Yes. She-"
"Hated being called that." He flips the photo over to read: "Kayla, Grassi Lake, summer 1976." He starts to hand them back but Emma won't have it.
"Keep them. That's your favorite anyway, you told me so." She points to the one of Kayla at the lake. "I don't expect you to remember everything, and I don't know if you really want to. I just thought you should know that she loves you. Very much. Where ever she is." She casts her gaze up to the sky for a moment as she started for the door.
"Where are you going?" He wondered without moving from the table.
She shrugs. "Pay my respects to the professor, Scott and Jean. They were very dear friends; family when I needed it…..I was in China when it happened." She digs something else out of her purse and hands it to him. A business card with the National Geographic logo on the front bearing her name and on the back, an address in Hartford Connecticut. "If you're ever in Connecticut, feel free to stop by. I know Amara would love it and my husband would love to meet you as well." She gives him a real smile.
"Why did you do this?" Logan puts the pictures down. "Why….I don't remember you. I-"
Emma's eyes are bluer in this light. "You loved my sister, and she loved you. You looked out for me, you taught me to change the oil in the Beast, you were there to take of my sister when I couldn't and to me that makes you family. You do what you can for family." She kept walking back into the house.
Later that night, Logan tosses and turns as the nightmares he's suffered since before he could remember recede suddenly. In his dream, he's standing in the doorway of a house on top of a mountain. Behind him the sun is setting and casting a pale gold light into the living room.
"Logan?" The voice that calls his name is a little deep but smooth and sweet. Familiar. "Logan? Baby? Is that you?"
He turns to find the woman in the pictures walking toward him. She has her head cocked to one side as if she was confused about something but she still had a smile on her face. A few black strands fell across her bright blue eyes as she shook her head in disbelief. "God, Baby…you look good."
"Kayla…?" He breathes as she slips her hand across his cheek. She's so close he can smell her perfume; rosehips and spice.
She nods only once. "Yeah, baby. It's me."
"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" He whispers.
Kayla smiles, eyes bluer than the sky. "Yeah, yeah, you are."
"I wish I wasn't…" Logan admits more to himself than to her.
"Baby, don't say that…." Kayla frowned. "Please. You're happy aren't you?"
He nods. "Yeah, I'm happy….I guess….I wish I could remember you…."
She smiled and leaned in close. "You will." She kissed him once before he woke up.
Logan sat up in his bed, hands gripping the sheets. Outside his window, the sky was as blue as it could possibly be.
And it's the end of another story!!!
I will probably try to finish "The Wedding Date" and then I might be back with a sequal featuring Emma. So put me on Author alert and You'll know!!
Peace, Happy reading and much love
The Red Pen of Doom 87!!!!