X-Men: The Last Stand (13 page)

He moved ahead with a silence and a fluid grace that belied his personality, gliding through the forest without making the slightest noise, or leaving any sign.

With a hand gesture, he motioned for Ororo to halt while he took a closer look at some leaves on a low-hanging branch. They were thick with moisture from the fog, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. His lips tightened, while Ororo’s formed a small O of astonishment as she joined him; the water was dripping
up
the leaf and falling towards the
sky.

Logan held a hand over the leaf. It felt perfectly normal—except that when the droplets splashed against his palm, they flowed up and around his hand and then plopped free to continue on their way.

Ororo moved on ahead, while Logan homed in on another object, spinning lazily in midair, like a gyroscope that hadn’t quite wound all the way down. He hunkered down to watch, unsure if he wanted to break the spell by reaching out to touch the object. No damage that he could see, nor any sign of violence. Nothing at all out of the ordinary—except its presence, and what it was doing.

With an almost convulsive grab, he gathered Scott Summer’s ruby quartz glasses into his hand.

He was about to call out to Ororo when she beat him to it.

“Logan!”

Despite the flatness of the air, the urgency of her tone was plain. Shock, disbelief, fear, those reactions came through plainly and pulled him to her at a run.

He found Ororo down on the beach, kneeling over a body.

She looked up at him, stricken, but he wasn’t looking at her, he couldn’t bear to, not yet. He’d known at once who was lying there, without altogether knowing why, so he stalled by sweeping the vicinity for signs of anyone else.

Waste of effort. There was nothing to be seen.

He made a wider, more thorough sweep before they left, searching the ground while Ororo paced him overhead aboard the
Blackbird,
using its sensors. He already suspected they’d find nothing—you should expect so much only from a miracle—but they had to be sure.

“She’s alive,” Ororo said, as she turned the aircraft for home. There was a faint catch to her voice; she was both glad and scared, just like him.

He looked down at the glasses in his hand, at the still water of Alkali Lake, taking in a succession of slow, deep, calming breaths, unwilling to trust himself to speak, or take the smallest of actions, until he’d mastered control of himself. He understood instinctively about balance, without being able to articulate the why or wherefore; he had an equally instinctive comprehension of what had likely happened to Cyclops. And with it, a fury at whatever deity or fate or whoever had allowed it to happen. At bedrock, Logan was a far more honorable man than he’d ever admit; for him, there were some things that were fundamentally right, as there were others equally
wrong.
He’d always known that Creation wasn’t fair, his own life was proof of that, but that never stopped him from believing that it
should
be.

Wanting your heart’s desire was one thing. Having it—like this!

Thoughts for another time, perhaps. He shoved the glasses in his pocket and dropped to one knee, reaching out with unaccustomed tenderness to sweep a fall of dark auburn hair aside, and once more looked upon the face of Jean Grey.

“Jean Grey was the only Class Five mutant I’ve ever encountered,” Xavier told them a day later, back in the mansion’s infirmary. “Her potential was practically limitless.”

She lay on the examining table. Her body was dotted all over with direct sensors, surrounded by the information panels of their remote scanning counterparts. They provided a constant and comprehensive stream of data to the Institute mainframe for analysis, right down to the firing of her individual neural synapses, with the most current readings being projected on a phalanx of nearby flat-panel displays.

Her vitals were totally nominal, and had been since they found her, wholly consistent with her last physical, not long before her death.

“Her mutation was seated in her limbic system,” Xavier continued, taking refuge from his own deep feelings by adopting his most professorial tone, “the unconscious part of her mind. And therein lay the danger.”

Logan snorted, gaining him a sharp look from both Xavier, seated in his wheelchair at Jean’s head, and Ororo, flanking him opposite Logan.

Logan didn’t bother explaining aloud; it wasn’t his way. He was still trying to figure things out himself. He’d never been one for movies, yet he found his inner self wandering through the fantastic vista of a planet called Altair IV, to behold the final, fatal argument between the hero, the woman he loved, and that woman’s father—a brilliant and loving, but ultimately misguided, scientist—on the nature of “monsters from the id.”
The nightmares that come from our deepest, most primal and passionate subconscious, that go bump in the night.

Out loud, he said: “I thought you were treating her,” and got another warning glare from Ororo about his tone. He didn’t much care.

“I tried…”

Another image came, equally unbidden, that Logan couldn’t banish, mixing moments from the mission that led to Jean’s death—Magneto’s quiet, constant jibes about Xavier’s failure to treat the mutant son of William Stryker, Xavier’s own very real regret, and worst of all, the very real consequences that arose from that failure. Jason had been made by his father into a weapon; their attempt to stop the use of that weapon had led to Jean’s death.

If Xavier sensed Logan’s thoughts this time, he gave no sign as he laid his hands gently on Jean’s head and closed his eyes. The monitors flickered, charting his progress as he resumed treating her.

Logan paid him no attention. His concentration was locked on Jean’s face, as if his own senses could tell him what Xavier’s telepathy and devices could not.

“I created a series of psychic barriers,” Xavier said, “to separate her powers from her conscious mind, until such time as she could integrate the two properly and safely. However, in doing so, she developed a split personality…”

This was news to Logan and, by the look on her face, to Ororo, too. Neither took it well.

Logan spoke for them both. “What?” he demanded.

“The conscious Jean, whose powers were always under control, and that dormant side, a personality that, in our sessions, came to call itself
The Phoenix.
A purely instinctual creature, all desire, and joy and…rage.”

He checked the monitors, made some notes.

Logan had grown ominously still and quiet, in a way that would clear even the most roughhouse saloons the world over.

Then, “Jean knew about this?”

Ororo watched Xavier shake his head, so engrossed in his work that he missed the cues and warnings Logan was radiating. She shifted her stance just a little, but knew her options were limited. The infirmary was no place for lightning, and Logan was so quick that she’d likely have no time to stop him with her powers if things went south. Ororo knew that Logan was a creature of primal passions who fought to keep them in check with his own rigorous code of honor. Now, with Jean, both elements were in play—his feelings for Jean combining with growing outrage at Xavier’s revelations. It was a deadly mix, more volatile than matches and gasoline.

“It’s unclear precisely how much she remembered,” Charles told them. “The more pressing issue is that I’m not sure whether the woman we see in front of us is the Jean Grey we know, or the Phoenix, violently struggling to be free.”

Logan took a step closer, and Ororo tensed.

“She looks pretty peaceful to me, Chuck.”

“That’s because I’m keeping her that way,” Xavier replied, not rising to the bait. For all the attention he paid them, despite their ongoing conversation, it was as if Logan and Ororo weren’t even there. “I’m trying to restore those psychic blocks, and reenergize them, and cage the beast again.”

Logan’s nostrils flared, and this time Xavier seemed to react to the subvocalized growl that issued from deep in the other man’s throat.

“What did you just say?” Logan demanded.

“Logan, try to understand—”

“We’re talking about a person’s
mind
here, Charles, about Jean! We could be talking about her goddamn
soul
! How could you do this to her?”

“She has to be controlled. She isn’t safe.”

“‘Controlled,’ Professor, or cured? Because sometimes, when you ‘cage the beast,’ the beast gets angry.”

“You have no idea what she’s capable of.”

“No,
Professor,
” Logan spat with finality, and he made Xavier’s title sound like the most profane of epithets. “I had no idea what
you
were capable of.”

After this last comment, Logan knew that, had Xavier still possessed the use of his legs, the professor would be right up in his face, probably challenging him to do his worst. Logan never denied the man had balls, but this was the first he’d ever considered that Charles Xavier might be lacking something essential in the way of a heart.

“Damn it, Logan,” Xavier flared, “I want her back as much as you do!”

Logan shook his head: “Not even close.”

Xavier couldn’t stand Logan’s glare for more than a few seconds. It wasn’t that he lacked the strength, but—being a more intensely private man than even Logan—Charles couldn’t bear to reveal to them the depths of his own pain. Or the concern that walked with it hand in hand, growing with each and every step into a very real and present fear.

He turned his back on Ororo and Logan and motored his chair towards the door, pausing at last to tell them, “I had a terrible choice to make, Logan. Hobson’s choice. I chose the lesser of two evils.”

Logan wouldn’t—couldn’t, Charles knew—let him go. “Sounds to me like Jean had no choice at all.”

Logan looked away from the departing form of Xavier, briefly to Ororo, and then once more rested his eyes on Jean. He had a hunter’s patience. He’d wait as long as he had to.

And after that…

…after that…

He met Ororo’s gaze, then flicked his eyes towards the door, now closed, Xavier long gone, then back to Jean.

More gently than Xavier’s touch, more gently than Ororo’s lightest breeze, he stroked his rough palm from the crown of Jean’s head back across her hair, and breathed in the scent of her. Not a lot of great things happened in his life, but he knew with certainty, this woman was one of them. Likely the best of them.

He repeated to himself what he’d sworn the moment they met, what he’d failed to do at Alkali Lake.

I’ll save you, Jeannie,
he promised silently. Whatever the case.

I’ll
save
you!

When McCoy saw the room, the first thing he did was look for black curtains, finding none, of course, since there were no windows. But from then on, at the most irksome and inconvenient moments, he found he couldn’t get the lyrics to Cream’s classic “White Room” out of his head. Telling Ororo that would make her laugh, he knew.

Hank didn’t believe Kavita Rao had that much of a sense of humor. He doubted she had any sense of humor at all. He was wholly the opposite, but so anarchic in temperament that he’d long ago learned to keep his acerbic wit on the tightest of leashes, lest disaster result. But what else could one expect, he supposed, from a guy who’d been big and blue and furry since college?