CHAPTER IV – PHOENIX
From the passenger seat, Jean could see Wolverine trying not to look at the moon, as he tooled his jeep down the winding hill roads that led from the Xavier Institute. The moon did seem to glow especially bright and big in the sky tonight, she noticed. Almost like it was hanging lower to earth than it always had.
Before long, she realized she had been staring too.
She put her feet up on the dash. The wind blowing through the open cab of the jeep also blew up the skirt of her dress, an unexpected rush of sensation that made her squeal.
She blushed, and giggled into her fist, with her other hand pushing her skirt back down, as she rolled over on her side to see Logan grinning just despite himself. A few shining teeth peering back from a crack in his wrinkled, stubbly face: a hint that he couldn't help but have fun in this world, no matter how hard he thought his heart was.
Wolverine coughed, swallowing his smile, and nodded at the sky. At the moon, Jean thought at first.
"That must be Chuck."
Then she heard it, what Wolverine must have heard long before he mentioned it: the whine of jet engines approaching and passing overhead. The silhouette of the Blackbird jet crossing through the sky. Charles was back from his lecture tour. In a few minutes he'd be rolling down the ramp of the Blackbird and onto the blacktop landing pad on the mansion's roof. Maybe he'd see the restored pool four stories below, illuminated by a row of lights installed along the walls of the deep end.
"Maybe he'll talk to Scott and fix whatever's making him such an asshole today," Jean thought to herself.
…
Logan took an exit off the freeway, long before hitting downtown. They were heading into the suburbs, and Jean was disappointed: she had dressed up, after all. A white spring dress with a sparse green pattern, a pearl necklace, and chunky green heels. Green nail wraps that matched her dress. She was particularly proud of those. Getting all "prettied up" had never came natural to her, even if she had never been quite a tomboy. More of a Joan of Arc, she liked to think - if her self-esteem were high enough on a given day.
She looked good, she knew, and she wanted to show off in front of the alpha males that flood downtown on the weekend nights. She knew, but resisted acknowledging to herself, that she wanted to make up for the negative attention her husband had been showing her.
But Logan was heading her off, pulling the jeep into a dusty neighborhood full of run-down ramblers and scotch-broom, the kind of area she would only visit if she had ran out of gas on the way to somewhere real.
"Logan? I thought we were…"
"I know. You think too much, Ginger."
Wolverine hung a left and parked on a gravel strip outside of a dive bar, one with an unlit neon sign, and with an array of beat-up pickup trucks and motorcycles parked in the front. A not-very-romantic couple were exiting, visibly drunk, and arguing about some petty domestic transgression. A man with a satchel of roses, intended for sale, sat asleep against a wooden post in front of Logan's chosen parking space.
"Wolvie?" She looked for him to respond. But he didn't. "You can't be serious."
Logan turned off the engine and lit a cigar, winking at Jean as he exited the Jeep. A wink that said he knew this was a somewhat unsettling surprise, and that he was enjoying watching her reaction pay out.
And yes, this wasn't Jean's kind of place. Everything about it screamed "Logan." But she felt oddly happy to be walking in the entrance, even as overdressed as she was. Because she liked Logan. She liked him a lot.
And so, she liked being granted this opportunity to pretend she wasn't having a good time.
…
A mug of cold beer appeared before Jean Grey, just as her bottom met the barstool she had just brushed crumbs from. Logan hadn't ordered, either, but he had a matching mug in front of him too. He blew the foam off the top and took a swig that nearly killed the glass, and then belched. Then she saw him blush – more of an expression than an actual bloom on the cheek (never seen that on Logan, she thought, maybe the healing factor prevents it?) – but he seemed to be faking embarrassment anyway.
She saw as a friend of Logan's – some slurring trucker in a vest with a fur collar – slapped him on the back and motioned at her. Wolvie pretended to look over his shoulder at her, muttered something, and his friend exploded in good-natured laughter: "so that's her!" she overheard. Logan laughed too, and so did the rest of the bar patrons, even though if Jean didn't hear half of the joke, they surely hadn't either.
Jean joined anyway, and took a long drink of beer.
Logan was having fun. More fun than Jean had seen him having in a long time. He actually seemed like a real person for once. And as she pondered what it was that was finally loosening the stick up his ass, Jean realized it was her that was being real. That was what was fueling Wolvie's chuckles: seeing the good, married, off-limits matriarch of the Xavier Academy let her hair down, be bad, slam a beer, and just be a beautiful woman for once, without the weight of mutant-kind weighing her super-mind down.
She finished her beer and let out a belch of her own. Fur-collar-drunk drifted over, guffawing, and slapped her on the back. She spilled some beer on her dress. Nobody cared.
…
As closing time approached, the patrons drifted out of the bar, Fur Collar included, and both Jean and Logan drooped in their posture as the beers piled up. She was getting giggly, and he was getting sentimental.
Logan lit a cigar. "That reminds me of a time. You know which one?"
"What?" Jean didn't notice that she was covering her mouth as she spoke, nervous about her good cheer. Not sure what to do with it.
"That time back in Siberia, we were bailing Colossus out of trouble with his old buddies, they had a gang or something…"
"Oh yeah! The… alley cats? Street cats? Something like that."
"Yeah, they were the Street Wolves."
"Yeah!" Jean slapped the bar, rattling all the empty glasses, then immediately went back to covering her face and blushing. "Damn it, I'm sorry."
Logan laughed. "Who are you apologizing to?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry."
"Stop that!"
Now it was Logan that was laughing. And Jean thought she heard him speak over his own laughter: I have to have her.
But he didn't say anything. He couldn't have said that. She was watching his face, and he was laughing his ass off. You can't talk when you're laughing like that. That's the whole fun of it.
God, she is such a beautiful person. What am I going to do?
That time, she recognized it. The voice was the one she heard when she had tried to read Logan's mind in the past. She was hearing what he was only thinking to himself.
But she wasn't trying to pluck those private thoughts from his head. That wouldn't be right, and she knew that.
It was the alcohol.
It was lowering her inhibitions, smoothing out her thoughts, and one of those thoughts was the one that kept her wide-band scanning of thoughts turned to "off". Logan's brain was like a busted fire hydrant to her; the information kept bursting through the cracks, unfiltered, and she couldn't stop it if she wanted to.
And she wasn't really sure if she wanted to.
Jean had to bring him back to the conversation. "So the Main Street Wolves, what about them?"
Wolverine wiped a tear from his eye. "Oh, so Colossus had that friend, real hard case. Kaspar."
"Oh! I remember him. He smelled."
"You're tellin' me… anyway so i guess he had been in some prison out there, since before Colossus found his powers."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, cuz he shows up one night. I was at the bar with Peter, he was having a hard time. Found out the girl he left behind when he went to America didn't wait up for him."
Jean sighed. "Poor guy."
"Yeah." Logan slowly spun his nearly-empty glass.
"So?"
"Eh?"
"What did Kaspar do?"
"Oh! Right. Well it was just me and metalhead at the bar. Drinking vodka, me tryin' ta cheer him up, but you know that ain't my strongest skill."
Jean held her hand out,pal down, and wobbled it: the "so-so" motion.
"Right. So Kaspar busts in, drunker than both of us put together, and yellin' and hollerin' about mutants being freaks or mistakes or whatever. He started the Street Wolves, dammit, and if a bunch of genetic defects wanted to roll into town and bust up his gang, god dammit, he was going to show them the real power. Pulls up a stool next to Colossus, hopin' for a sympathetic ear."
"Oh, god."
"Yeah, now it's 'poor guy,' eh?"
"Piotr didn't kill him, did he?"
"Ah, would that just break your heart?"
"Logan..."
"Nah, he didn't kill him. He was surprisingly calm, given all that vodka. Guess girl trouble does that to guys like him. Lucky for anyone nearby. Anyway, he just says "Comrade Kaspar, do not disparage others just because you do not understand them. It's-"
Jean fell off of her stool, laughing so hard she barely produced a sound.
"What?!"
"Do it! Do it again!" she managed get out from the floor of the bar.
"Do what?"
"The russian voice! You sound Just like him, it's priceless!"
Logan had barely realized he was doing an impression. And he didn't have the heart to tell Jean he was actually doing the voice he associated with Omega Red.
No matter. She was enjoying it too much.
"Well, Kaspar tells him to blow it out his ass. Says he'll humble him in combat if he keeps it up. Basically what you'd expect. Then..."
Logan chuckled, then pulled his hair back, flattening it, and put on a stern, Russian expression. He fixed his posture military-straight. He bellowed at the top of his lungs, exagerrating the accent to the hilt:
"I HAFF WARNED YOU KASPAR, NO MORE VILL I WARN YOU AGYNE!"
That practically killed her, as she fell back down just as she was struggling to her feet. She was trying to cover her face again, too. But there was no hiding a laugh when it was that hard.
"Just for you, Jean."
"That is too good…"
"Yeah. That's not even the funny part. The funny part was when he gave Kaspar the first punch, and seeing Kaspar's eyes bug out when his fist hit metal."
"Poor guy."
Jean struggled to her feet, still stifling giggles at Wolverine's impression of her friend, and wiping away a tear. Finally she managed to regain her composure, putting a hand on Logan's shoulder to commend him for the performance.
She left it there. Tapped her green fingernails on his shoulder.
"You know, Logan, I think we both forgot the whole reason we came out here. You were going to tell me about your dream."
Logan put his hand over hers, on his shoulder, and squeezed her lightly, looking into her eyes.
"Yeah. I think I think I needed this more anyway."
"Yeah. This was fun. You can still tell me, though."
"I know, Jean."
And that was the last thing Logan would remember: the hand of the woman he was afraid to love, curled under his, as he committed in his mind to tell her everything.
…
Logan woke up naked, flat on his back. Looking down at his feet. Unsure if he had just opened his eyes or if he had just started to see again after a blackout.
His feet were covered in blood.
He reached down to touch them, to see if it was really blood, and as his hand entered his field of view, he saw his claws were out. And they were covered in blood too.
*SNIKT*
He popped the claws back into his hand. The hand was drenched in blood too.
He sat up.
He wasn't at the bar anymore. He wasn't sure where he was; it was a swath of dirt, uneven and craggy. As he took in his surroundings, he could see the yellow scoop of a backhoe hanging some yards to his left, and tire tracks in the dirt, crisscrossing around him.
Logan stood up, and immediately fell down.
Drunk? Maybe. He couldn't tell. Couldn't remember how had gotten there. Or what had happened to his clothes. So yes, probably drunk, he thought.
"What…where…" he thought, and realized he had spoken to the blanked and black sky.
He stood again, bracing himself on a mound of dirt, and waited for the world to stop spinning.
It was a construction site. A foreman's trailer was planted a few yards away, ringed with jackhammers, ropes, racks of hardhats, and assorted tools. It was the dead of night, though, and he was all alone. The night was hauntingly still. Not even crickets interrupted his fear.
"Jean!" he called. No reply.
Climbing out of a shallow depression in the dirt of the construction site, he felt the sting of wounds all over his naked body as they met the cold night air.
"What the hell…" he muttered, this time intentionally aloud. He approached the foreman's trailer, which was adjacent to the fence surrounding the work site.
Gazing at the portable's window, he jumped as he met his own reflection: his face had deep scratches across it, the claw-work of someone's fingernails who had been fighting with ferocity.
As the reality sank in, so did the fear.
"Jean! Where are you?!"
Some birds took flight from the power lines overhead, but that was all. He could smell her, though. She had to be close.
Logan uncoiled a garden hose that was bolted to the exterior of the foreman's portable, and cranked on the spigot, dousing himself with icy water, hoisting the nozzle of the hose high over his head to wash away all the blood.
He was thankful to see that as the blood washed away, there remained dozens of open cuts all over his body; maybe this is all *my* blood, he dared to wonder.
He turned off the spigot. Even before the water was done cascading down his lacerated skin, he could see the wounds closing. His healing factor going into effect.
But as the blood washed away, so did Jean's scent.
Logan started to get his head together. Figure out the when and where first, mutie. Then we can track down Jean. But as he tossed the hose aside, he felt a hitch in the healed skin on his shoulder-blade.
Wolverine reached to check his back, and felt a speck left buried in his freshly healed skin. He grimaced as she seesawed the matter back and forth, dislodged it, and brought it forward for inspect.
It was a fingernail.
Painted green.