A World Not My Own: Chapter 2
An X-Men Fanfic
In the past several years, the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters had grown exponentially, despite their somewhat . . . unconventional methods of recruitment. Where they had usually been able to reuse the few textbooks they owned every year, there were now too many students to go without ordering more.
A new shipment of books was left outside, and Ororo carried it in. They needed to go to the professor, so she headed towards his office, but stopped outside the door when she heard shouting. She was about to leave them to it, until she realized the one shouting was Logan, and, given his temperament lately, she didn’t think it wise to leave them alone. She stayed outside the door, ready to intervene if necessary.
“And how exactly am I supposed to act?” Logan asked. “Whoever that man you hired to be a history teacher is, I’m not him! I’ve lived a different life. There’s been–there’s been too much!”
“Logan–” the professor began, but he didn’t stop.
“I watched you die.” A chill ran down her spine. It didn’t make sense, but the truth rang heavy in Logan’s voice.
“I watched you all die. You, Scott, Rogue, the other kids, and Jean. I killed her, Charles. I killed her. You don’t know what that’s like. You can’t even imagine. And then to see her here every day? Talking to me like nothing’s wrong, and all I can hear is her voice, begging me to kill her.”
Were these nightmares he was describing? His behavior made a little more senes. She hadn’t been able to look her students in the eye for weeks when she had her first nightmare about one of them dying.
“I heard you’ve been fighting with Storm,” the professor said, and she winced, remembering her angry words. “Is it for the same reason? Did you watch her die too?”
Logan laughed–a dull sound that spoke of numbness born of pain, so much pain. “Yeah, I watched her die. I watched her die every day, over and over, just to stand up and keep going until I wasn’t sure how much of her was left. She knew every time one of those kids died. I don’t know how, but she knew. Sometimes, I swear, it was like she was the psychic one. And every morning we got up and kept moving, pretending we hadn’t heard her cry herself to sleep the night before. So tell me, how am I supposed to look her in the eye now and talk about history tests?"
“Logan, I am sorry you had to live through that, but these people here? They are here to help you.”
Logan gave a dry chuckle. “Right, of course. Cause we share so many experiences.”
“Logan–”
The door swung open and Logan froze, eyes widening when he saw her. Then his jaw tightened and he pushed past her.
“Storm.” Her name came out of the professor’s mouth as a sigh, though of relief or regret, she didn’t know.
“Some new geometry textbooks came today.” She nodded at the boxes in her arms.
“Put them on my desk.” She set them down on the desk behind him and lingered a moment longer than necessary.
“You heard the conversation.” It wasn’t a question.
“He’s been . . . unstable lately. I thought I should stay nearby.” She turned back to face him. “I didn’t understand it, though.”
“It’s not my place to explain,” the professor said. “But don’t be too hard on him. He’s been through more than you can understand.”
She remembered his numb laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Despite how many years the mansion had been her home, Ororo knew she would never be truly comfortable walking through it at night. The usual creaks and sounds of an old house settling took on a ghostly nature. The twisting corridors shut out every trace of light, even that of the moon, as they led further in and away from the windows. Every one of her footprints prompted a series of echoing ones, as though she were being followed by a dozen spirits.
She found the room she was looking for–the one where a shadow sat in the corner, hiding, though from what, she didn’t know.
She clicked on the lamp, and he flinched at the sudden light. He didn’t seem surprised to see her, though, and she wondered when he had sensed her coming. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.
Logan shrugged. “What are you doing up?”
There were a dozen answers to that. She started with the most pressing. “I wanted to apologize for yelling at you the other day.”
He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and stared at the burning end of it. “You weren’t the only one yelling, as I recall.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
He grinned, but it didn’t look quite right. “Doesn’t it? Two negatives make a positive, the kids keep telling me, or something like that.” He stuck the cigar back in his mouth. “Don’t know why they keep coming to me for help with their math homework.”
“That’s only in multiplication, and I hardly think it applies. And it doesn’t change the fact that I wanted to apologize.”
“I’m sorry too.”
She assumed that meant he accepted hers as well. That was the hard part, she supposed. If only she could figure out how to bring up everything else she wanted to. “May I sit?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I was wondering why you hadn’t.”
She settled next to him on the couch. “I wasn’t sure if you were willing to talk to me.”
“I’m always willing to talk to you.”
She leaned back and looked at him, wondering if he heard the inconsistency there. “Unless I’m being stupid and don’t want you telling me,” he amended. “Or afraid I’m going to do something stupid.”
“And which was it this time?”
He blew out a mouthful of smoke. He shouldn’t be doing that in there, she knew, and she was sure he did too, but she didn’t want to argue about that tonight. At least he had waited till the kids went to bed.
She sighed when no further answer came. “Logan, I am sorry for how I handled things before, but I did mean what I said. I know you well enough to know something is wrong, and I wish you would talk to us about it.”
“You sure you know me so well?” Those casual words lanced straight through her heart, and her breath caught.
She sat up straighter. “No,” she said firmly. “I do know you, and I know you’re hurting, but that does not give you the right to hurt me too.”
She couldn’t see his face anymore, but his grip on the cigar tightened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. What’s going on with you, Logan? Let me help you.”
He gave a bitter chuckle. “There’s nothing to help. It’s all in my head this time. Shame, isn’t it? There’s nothing to hit this time.”
“Sometimes,” she said slowly, “talking about my bad memories or my worries helps me to move past them. Tell me, in all your sessions with the professor, have you actually talked about what is bothering you?”
A cloud of smoke flickered through the dim lamplight. “Not much.”
She settled back against the couch. “Then why not try it.”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I did.”
She thought of Apocalypse and Cairo, gaining more power than she could imagine as a teenager. She thought of being offered a home and family among those she had fought against. “Try me.”
He shook his head. “Careful, Storm. I’m bad enough tonight I might actually tell you.”
“Good.”
He laughed and rolled the cigar between his fingers. “You sure are good at getting your own way.” He took another puff of the cigar, then stared down at it, as though it held all the secrets of the universe. “Did you know Kitty can send people’s consciousnesses back in time?”
There was no good reaction to that. He might have changed the subject, or he might now. She couldn’t be sure. “I did not.”
“Yeah, I don’t think she does either.”
“Are you . . . saying you’re from the future?” she asked hesitantly. If he really had changed the subject, he would make fun of her for this for the next decade.
“No, I’m from, well, a different present, I guess. I did go back in time to change something, it worked, and now–” he gestured around them. “I’m the only one who knows how bad it could’ve been.”
She wanted to believe him, wanted to show him his trust had been deserved, but it was hard. Time travel was hard enough to believe in, but everything in her rebelled at the idea that the world could ever be bad enough to need it. “How bad was it?”
“Bad. There were no X-Men fighting for peace anymore. There was no peace to fight for. We were all just fighting to survive. We lost . . . a lot of friends.”
“Jean,” she said softly, remembering his argument with the professor.
Pain flashed across his face. “Jean was . . . before.”
“You said you killed her.”
“I had to,” he said quickly, as though she didn’t know that. As though she didn’t know that no matter how he acted like he didn’t care, he would die before he let anyone in that mansion be hurt. “She would have killed–a lot of people.”
“Is that why you’ve been avoiding her?”
His eyes darted away. “She doesn’t need to know what happened. She doesn’t need to know about Scott. I don’t want her in my head.”
“What about Rogue?” she asked. “Did something happen to her? Is that why you panicked in the Danger Room the other day?”
He shot up from the couch, and she thought he was going to leave the room. She knew, then, that something had certainly happened to Rogue. He didn’t leave, though. He put out the cigar in his palm. He stared at the burn as it blistered, scabbed, then faded. He started pacing. “It was my fault.” She doubted that. “Some–some scientist made a cure. It–it was supposed to cure mutants and suppress their powers.”
Indignation flared up inside her and she forgot that she was needed to listen now. “There’s nothing to cure! It’s not a disease!”
He turned around and what was almost a grin spread across his face. “Trust me, I know all your feelings about the name, but we never did come up with something else to call it.” The grin fell away and he started pacing again. “Rogue got it. I watched her leave. I just figured she was old enough to decide for herself, you know? I shouldn’t–I should have stopped her.” She wanted to say something, to reassure him, but she suspected that wasn’t he needed right now.
“There were these robots,” he continued. “I guess that’s what you’d call them, but I’ve never seen robots like them before. They were made to hunt mutants, even ones that had taken the cure. They–they blew up the school.” He glanced over at her, then quickly away, as though afraid of her reaction. “Those of us who made it out–we had to scatter. Rogue came with our group, but when the sentinels found us the first time–she didn’t have anything to defend herself–I told her to run, but she–she didn’t get very far.
“If she had her powers, I could have saved her. I could have–but instead all I could do was–was hold her while she–” He propped his arm against the wall and leaned against it. She couldn’t see his face, but she could see his shoulders shake.
Ororo had never seen Logan cry before, and it shook her more than she wanted to admit. The school had blown up, he said, and he mentioned those who got out. But what about those who didn’t? How many children had died in a war they didn’t even understand? Her students, children sleeping soundly in their beds right upstairs. One moment in class, playing games, living, and the next–
She thought of Rogue, so desperate to be “normal” she had taken that cure, and even then losing her life because of her birth.
Logan had apparently composed himself because she felt him sink into the couch beside her again. She turned her head away so he couldn’t see her own tears streaming down her face.
He didn’t let her hide, taking her chin in his hand and turning her face toward his. His other hand reached out towards her face, then stopped, fingers nearly touching her skin. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. It’s my burden. You already had to suffer through it all in one future. You shouldn’t have to do it again.”
She lifted her chin out of his hand and wiped her tears away. “I told you, I wanted to hear it. I’m glad you told me.”
He turned away and leaned into the arm of the couch. They sat quietly for some time, each lost in their own thoughts, then Ororo asked, “Who else knows?”
“Just the professor and Hank. That’s it.” He hesitated. “Well, here at the school at least.”
Well that was ominous, but before she could ask what he meant, she yawned, and he chuckled. “I think you should go to bed,” he said.
That was very tempting. “What about you?”
“I’ll be up a little longer.”
“Not too long, though, right?” She smiled. “Can’t teach if you’re passed out on the couch.”
“I’ll go to bed soon,” he promised.”
“Good.” She stood up and was about to leave, then, on impulse, bent down and kissed his forehead. “Good night, Logan.”
“Good night.”
Logan was exhausted. It had been a long day. Two history classes to teach, a meeting Scott had called for the team that he hadn’t really paid attention to, and then three Danger Room sessions with different groups of older students.
By the time he got out of the last one, the sun had set and he had missed dinner. Most of the younger kids had gone to bed, so things were thankfully quiet. He headed to the kitchen for something to eat before he went to bed early, but stopped just outside the door.
Something was wrong.
Someone was in the kitchen, though they hadn’t turned on the lights. The open fridge’s light projected a shadow on the wall. He didn’t know who it was, but it wasn’t a student. He stayed in the doorway, waiting for the intruder to reveal themselves. His claws slid out.
A flash of blue as the figure stood up, and then the light caught her face.
Mystique.