I walk through the door and into a distinct feeling that I have just entered my past. It is dim, transient, moving toward me like starlight, like something that happened millennia ago and is just now passing before my eyes. Something I can observe, but not alter.

The room is dark; I expected that. He's visual when he's in pain, he wants it Technicolor vivid, splashed across everyone else like red paint on poster board. Graffiti rage, spray painted and vulgar but overlooked as the understandable violence of tragic youth. We all thought of ourselves as tragic, once. Now it has deprecated to just plain pathetic.

Before my eyes adjust to the darkness-- which is only a shock because I am too tired to resist it-- a spasmodic fear clenches my throat, like the nights in kindergarten when I used to see monsters in my closet, which turned out later to be crumpled socks and misplaced stuffed animals. The monster, here, is the fleeting belief that he is gone, but it deflates into an overstuffed giraffe when I hear his breathing. Heavy. Sharp. Muffled, like he's smothering something inside him that he doesn't want me to hear. He smelled me coming, probably before I even reached the door, he has had time for preparation. For battening down of hatches. I consider it an unfair advantage, but decide I owe him one.

He will make me turn on the lights myself if I want to see him; he is waiting for it and for this reason I hesitate, letting my eyes blend to black. I want to see him the same way he sees me. It is not easy, but I am trying to understand. At first there is nothing, a wall of unvaried darkness, like a quilt pressed too close against  the face. Gradually it becomes two-dimensional, then three, until I can recognize shapes and outlines and more individual degrees of black. He is midway between charcoal and ebony, masked, unreadable. We could stare at each other this way for hours and never see beyond the outline of our shapes.

I suspect we have been guilty of that all along. Squinting to read emotions in the dark, growing frustrated then furious when we could not see.

A fumble along the wall, gracelessly, until I find the light switch. Sub-ambient rust orange glow dirties the room: the light bulb is corroding even as it burns. Ugly light, made uglier still by the numerous bare patches on the cinderblock walls and cement floors that magnify the dinginess. I had never noticed how bad the room is until now, because I am used to cracked walls and cold floors. But now I look and think how barren, how desolate. How far from the places we thought we'd be.

The realization absorbs at least two milliseconds of concentration; subsequently I am slow to realize that he is
sitting beside a fully loaded black duffel bag. He's wearing his good boots, his better jean jacket. The jacket, the boots, and the half-smoked cigar serve as indicators of his restlessness-- they only appear in conjunction with one another when he's ready to hit the road. Of course he doesn't look at me. That would be requiring too much. Though he doesn't ignore me either, rather directs his concentration very carefully somewhere I am not. Recognition by avoidance, as one would avoid a wound.

He expects me to speak. Mine was the last word; reason dictates it must be the first. I am not sure what it should be, but the decision needs to be made quickly. Silence is a killer. Like the sound of dust gathering on violin strings, of cigar ash flaking to the floor, it denotes a paralysis. An impotency of communication both regrettable and shameful.

In the end, I improvise, straight off the top of my head, a shot in the dark because his face still seems covered in the charcoal mask.

"I didn't mean it."
 
The words bounce off the empty spaces in the room, their echoes thinner, more tremulous than I intended. Uniform calm must prevail at all costs; I cannot afford another shattering.

"I know, baby." He shifts his cigar to the other side of his mouth, his voice not so much angry as vacant, like the
room. "I know."

"But you're leaving anyway?"

"I told you. I'm not going anywhere until you give me permission to go." A flick of sardonic smile. "Shouldn't be too
hard to dismiss someone you don't care about."

I flinch, he sees it because his eyes flick toward me for seconds. Instinct. He is afraid I am going to lapse into some act of melodrama, such as tears or fainting. The fainting, at least, would be an advantage. A momentary, willful bypass of time. I would not have to live the next few moments, I could black them out then wake up when everything was right again. There is no doubt in my mind I could muddle through this if I was unconscious. I am so much more eloquent when I am in oblivion.

"You don't live by my permission." I tell him. "I don't blame you for walking. Go right ahead. But do you want to at least give it a talk, first? Last words?"

"I think we've pretty much covered everything that needs to be said."

He still hasn't looked at me. A growing concern; he's never been able to hold out this long before. I try again.

"Would it help if I said please? And that I'm sorry? That I want you to stay..."

"C'mon, kid." Another sign of trouble. He hasn't called me that for two years. "We've both done each other enough harm. Let's just cut damages and move on."

"Thought you promised not to leave me alone."

"You won't be. Scott's here....he's a good man. He'll take care of you."

"I don't want to be with Scott." A fight to keep my voice level, free of any hint of frustration. "I want to be with you."

"That why you can't stand to let me near you? Or talk? Or touch? Like I'm one of them...."

He throws his cigar to the floor, reduces it to ashes with one calculated stomp. This proves to be the most unsettling development yet: Logan never wastes cigars, not unless he is seriously disturbed with the kind of anger that goes past graffiti language and fireworks, the kind that shuts him down one section at a time until it's like talking to stone. His hand moves toward the duffel bag. Our conversation has reached crisis, broken off into a cliff twenty yards in front of my feet. I can try to play it safe and slide off the edge anyway or I can jump and hope for a bungee cord. An intervention.

This time I don't think about it. I close my eyes, I jump.

"I came back hoping to explain that. All of it."
This draws his full stare, a measured gaze that can't quite hide the red swollen circles around his eyes, or the flickers of hope in his pupils.

"Marie, you don't have to do this unless you're ready. If it hurts this much, then we'll just give it time. I'll come back in six months, a year--"

"If it hurts," I cut him off, gently, trying to smile, trying to be the brave one, "then it will heal."

His hand moves away from the duffel bag.

A deep breath, footsteps across the tile, settling myself carefully at the foot of the bed, a good three feet away from him. Room to think, room to breathe, for both of us. I'd use a chair, but there aren't any and the floor's too cold to sit on this time of year.

"So, how do you want to do this?" he says. He says it like we're going to fight hand to hand, or kiss, or execute some other such complicated maneuver. Too casual. Not casual enough. We can't even get our deceptions right, tonight, the little lies usually involved in normal conversation. Only this isn't going to be a normal conversation and we both know it.

The Phoenix Compound
December 10

"No apologies. Apologies are cliched." I say. "We both have enough of them to last all night without really getting
anywhere."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I want to remember it all. Not just the bad things, the good things too. We'll trade them off. One bad memory, and then one good memory. Until we know everything we want to know."

"Fine. Which one do you want to start with?"

"You pick." A gesture of trust, of apology, exchanged with a shift of eyes, a twist of voice. I offer, he accepts.

"The best day was when I came back from Vancouver last fall, found you playing your violin by the lake."

He's looking at my hands, his eyes twisting through my fingers like he wants to hold them. He does not try, though we both wish he would. We wish but we are too scared to ask. He continues, slowly, unfolding the memory in pieces as a man brings a treasure from a box.

"You wore this little orange sweater; you smelled like oranges too, but maybe I was just imagining that part. It's hard, now, to remember what I really saw and what I imagined. Did you really laugh, did you really tease me and smile? Maybe the details are going, but I get the important things right. I still remember that we said we loved each other. I don't think we ever said it again, but that was enough. I still remember it. The best day."

Why didn't we say it again? Was it because we never felt the need or were we just too scared? After all, they were coming for us, cameras and guns and barbed wire cages. He could die, I could die, everyone could die. For the first time we knew that. Youth reserves the right to be invincible, it goes around dodging bullets, jumping off cliffs, running through traffic, but sooner or later the charms wear off. We became aware, gradually, that invincibility only applied to one of us. And that one wasn't me. He never lived with that very well.

So is that why we never said it again? Because we realized in those days that if we said it, that would mean we had something that could be taken away? Something they could use to hurt us?

I want to ask him these things, but that is not in the rules of the game. The rules are a memory for a memory. Light for light, darkness for darkness. An eye for an eye, but not for vengeance. To enable the other one to see something they could not before.
 
"The best day was the day we burned candles in the church. Jean's wedding." A muted grin. "You held up admirably even though faced with the loss of your dream girl and the confines of a tuxedo... although I did catch you trying to worm your way out of the tie when they were reciting their vows. But it wasn't the wedding I remember. I remember the painting, St. Francis in prayer, looking human, like a brother I could have, like a father. And you took off my gloves."

I can't help glancing at my hands, at the thick woolen gloves hiding my skin from the cold and from other, less tangible things.

"You weren't afraid. You should have been. But you weren't, not in the way you should have been. It was the first time I had my gloves off since Magneto. The first time you kissed me. I don't know which one of those makes the best day. Both of them, I guess."

He almost smiles. His mouth moves, shakes at the corners of the lips, creases along the sides, then freezes before the expression can complete itself. He has remembered what is coming next.

"Worst days?"

"Yes." I swallow, twice. "Worst days."

"Every day was the worst." His eyes don't follow mine, this time; he stares at his knuckles, rubbing the skin over the blades as if he feels the metal underneath. "But one stands out. The only one that I almost didn't make it through."

He stands to his feet, paces. Hands rubbing harder against his knuckles. Faster. Eyes darting from corner to corner as if he expects the walls to attack him at any given moment.

"The day I got back to the farmhouse."

He coughs, clears his throat.
I swallow the cotton dryness in my throat, swallow whole the fear.

"It was too late. You know that. You had killed one of them-- I was so proud of you for that-- and the other two didn't last long. I should have made it longer, made them pay for what they did, but I didn't think. I was pretty close to crazy right then. I found everything...the scarf, the mattress, the cloak...everything but you. It was like you had disappeared from existence, that there was nothing left of you but the things I was looking at. I remember thinking that this was going to be the last memory I have of you, the last piece of you I was going to get to touch. And that it was my fault."

The pacing stops, abruptly.

"That was the worst."
 
Conflicting spasms in my gut: nausea (slimy and cold like a dead jellyfish floating in my stomach) and the intense desire to walk up behind him and lock my arms around his waist. To give him another good memory.

In the end, the opposites neutralize each other. I do not throw up, but neither do I embrace him. Instead I pull the blanket up over my legs, over my hands, and I prepare to give him the truth. A pretense of courage, synthetic to the extreme. But then, the worst pretense of all is the pretense of not having any. The trick is, I have learned, to choose the truest imitations. The most  honest deceptions. Example: I will tell him my worst memory but I will not tell him all of it. He only thinks that he really wants to know.

"Two days before the worst day, I killed a man. That could have been the worst, or the things before could have been the worst. But they weren't as bad as the third day."

I take pride in the fact that I can look at him when I say it. I have no qualms; this is the honest part of the lie. He perches on the edge of the bed, listening intently. The way a doctor listens to a pulse, the way a woman listens to make sure her child is still breathing. He regulates his breath and his pulse by mine, by the words I offer him one at a time, like heartbeats. Slow and steady.

"It was the day I made it to a gas station, some filthy truck stop that flaunted its dirt because it was the only place around for a hundred and twenty miles. Or at least that's what the old man told me, when we pulled into the parking lot. He was a truck driver, I didn't want to trust him but I didn't have a choice. It was either get into the truck or bleed and freeze in the snow on the side of the road. At least in the truck I could bleed next to a
heater."

He winces. It is not meant to be something I notice, it is not a jerk or a twitch, but the skin around his eyes tightens just so and I know how much this is hurting him. I know because it's hurting me the same way. This is why I have to lie about the rest of it, because he deserves better. He deserves not to hurt.

" I guess was a bit crazy too, then. Maybe more than a bit. I don't remember getting in the truck, or even getting out, it's just that all of sudden I realized that I was standing under a shower and the water was ice cold and that whenever it ran off my body, it turned red."

My hands are shaking, he does not see this. The blanket keeps the secret.

"I didn't throw up. I'd already done that, too many times, and there was nothing left. But I wished there was. I wanted to push something out of my body so I would feel empty inside and clean again. The water didn't work. I stood under the shower until I couldn't feel my arms and legs, until the bruises hardened and turned purple, but it didn't work."

I can't see him anymore; momentary panic ensues, followed by realization that my eyes are closed. Squeezed tightly shut, like Scott's the day his visor broke. Voluntary blindness, meant to keep back destructive forces such as tears and fear. These things can kill as certainly as red lasers. But I am afraid that these efforts are betrayed be the shaking. It is not just my hands anymore. It is not a secret. I do not open my eyes, this is the lie (not by the addition of words, only the omission.) and I don't want to see him when I say it.

"And then I left, with the old man. He didn't ask and I didn't tell. The heater in the truck broke five miles down the road, and my hair froze because it had been wet, and my fingers turned blue, and three days later I was coughing blood. But that wasn't the worst. The shower  was the worst. The inability to be clean."

There, I said it. He knows but does not know, he has the facts but not the last, cruel detail. I have not told him that in between the shower and the broken heater, I saw him in the parking lot and walked away.

Only there is one thing I have not counted on. He does not accept the story; he is not satisfied to hear the
ugliness, but suspects the truth and acts on it too swiftly. I need time for a denial, time for a plausible excuse. No such allowances are made. His voice, too calm, too thin.

"The third day."

"Yes." Choke the word out, Marie. He's onto you and you know it.

"I was at a gas station that day. The cashier said he had never heard of you."

I open my eyes. I want to see it coming. Whatever it will be, anger, rage, hate. It won't take him long to fit the final pieces together.

"Why would he lie?"

"I paid him...in case the others followed me..."

"Why didn't you leave a message for me?"

"I didn't think. Shock, I told you." I say, too quickly. That sounded like a planned response. He'll pick up on that, ask me one final question and I won't be able to lie to him again. I don't have it in me.

"The man who gave me a ride said that he saw an old trucker pull out of the parking lot after I went inside. Said he had a passenger, but I told him it couldn't have been you. Because I called your name and if it was you, then you would have answered."

His eyes, black like the metal of a gun, lock into place against mine.

"You would have answered, wouldn't you, Marie? You didn't because you weren't there. You weren't." He waits for the reassurance, begs for it. "Tell me."

I don't tell him; I can't say it out loud. I can't form the words, not at first. I can only shake my head. Sometimes that is all it takes. Sometimes it is too much.

"I can't." A whisper, drowning in itself, in the rain that is again falling on my face even though we are inside and I know perfectly well that there are no clouds in sight. "I can't."

There is no explosion, rather the aftermath of an explosion. broken buildings and shattered windows and ruins. It is all in his face.

"Why?"

Not a word, a growl. Hoarse, charred. Another aftermath. He's unseen again, but this time it's because the top of the world is running down into the bottom of the world and it's all smeared together. The rain again, the rain that is not rain. I turn my face from him, turn it to the wall because there is no place else to hide in this barren little room.

I make my confession to the cement, not to him. At this point it's easier to talk to stone. I've broken the rules of the game; I have lied, but I'm about to do something worse than that. I'm telling him everything.

"Afraid." Individual words are all I can manage now; I'm working up to groups and possibly sentences. Give me a
moment.

"Of me?"

I can't answer him as fast as he would like. My teeth are banging against one another, it's hard to talk around the edges. "Of what you'd see when you looked at me."

"I'd have seen you. What else is there to see?"

His voice is moving closer, why? It should be drawing back from me, heading for the door. I should be listening to silence, but he's talking and not at all in the way I was prepared for. Screaming I can handle. Profanities, accusations, righteous indignation. All this I am ready to accept. But not this. Not the sadness and the disbelief, the empathy.

A touch on my shoulder; I am undone. He does not know it yet, but I am. I am unraveling, spinning out and out and out, but it's only now beginning to show in my voice. Threads of words fraying, snapping, curling into knots and snarls.

"Blood. Bruises. Filth. That's all there was left to me, all there is now. I was afraid you would see that, see their mark on me, you would find out that I was no better than any other whore on the street. Not your woman, anymore, but their slut."

"No, Marie. No." His fingers dig into my shoulder bones, his arm slides around me to stop the shaking, only he can't. He can't stop this, it's too late. "Nothing of you belongs to them."

"It would have been better if I had died that night. At least then you would have thought of me as innocent."

His hands slide down my arms to cover my fingers. "Baby, you were never anything but that to me. Nothing can change it. No one can take it away.""

God, I want to believe him. I want to believe him but I know he's just trying to do the right thing. He's just trying to get me to stop trembling, trying to stop the rain from falling from my eyes before I flood us both. I love him for it, but it's not enough to make me accept what he's saying as true. It can't be true. I know what I am, and it's not what he's saying.

This is not what I tell him.

"Of course you will tell me this." I touch his wrists, slide my fingers over his knuckles. I turn my face to his, until we are close enough to feel the other's breath across the cheekbones. "That's how it is with you. You'll say anything you have to. You'll do anything."

A brush of fingertips across his face.

"If I were to put my life in your hands, you'd drop it." I tell him. "You know that, don't you? You'd drop it because you'd try to hold on too tight."

"Would I?" A minimal whisper, barely enough to push the words into my ears. There is something dangerous in his eyes but I do not realize this until it is too late. "Let's find out."

This is the explosion that did not come before: he pulls my mouth to his, his bare hands on either side of my face, the spasm takes us both, blindness. Blind with my eyes, but seeing straight through his. The things I see are burning, everything exploding at the same moment-- faces, images, memories-- like fireworks out of control, like Hiroshima from ground zero. Only there is no sound. His mind burns silently, as in a photograph. Yellow, orange, red, white. No one screams, or maybe they do because I think I hear the sound on the very edges of consciousness. I think it is my voice, but it vanishes beneath a second voice, his voice.

(I said I would do whatever it took.
What's happening to you? What's wrong?
Don't you know?
I'm afraid.
So am I, baby. So am I.
Stop it. Save something for yourself. You don't heal anymore.
Do you believe me now?
Yes, but stop. Enough.)

Dual oblivion. He is unconscious because he is empty and I am unconscious because I am full and bursting at the
seams. This time I do not see fire behind my eyes.

I see snow.

Burning Snow: Marie and Logan
 
You do not remember the past as clearly as you once did; it is impossible when his colors dominate the memory. His vision of the universe, his revelation-- adamantium silver sky, burnished, glowing to melting point and this is what you call snow. It is not the color of snow, the expected angelic white. It is sienna, washed out tan glowing faintly golden at the edges. Faded, neutral, bland. The dead soldier's blood is the color of teak, thick and dark. It stagnates in pools on the ground, melting the snow; it covers his claws, turning to steam with the heat.

He does nothing to wipe away the stain. He sniffs the body, the air, the ground, growling absent-mindedly. If there is one, he mutters, there is ten. A trap. Someone has betrayed you and now you all will be hunted down and they will burn numbers into your shoulders or necks or wrists.

You tremble; you could never stand burnt flesh. He gave you this weakness when he first poured his mind around yours, and this is how you know he is afraid as well. Even if he does not shake, there are other signs. He keeps his body in front of you, a human shield, tight and close as if something will try to crawl through the space of inches. He doesn't allow the claws to retract. He tells you it will be fine, he says it too many times.

(Are there more?
Yeah, baby, but you don't have to worry. They won't find us. It'll be fine.
How can you say that? How can you know?
Just trust me. And keep your head down, behind me.)

You don't want to stay behind, you want to stand beside him. To meet whatever else is coming at the same moment he does, even if it is fire. Even if it means you will burn.

The brothers argue with him, static phrases of fear and panic. Sometimes he answers them, and sometimes he tells them to shut up. You don't listen to specifics. You lean your head against his backbone and listen to the distant echo of his heartbeat.

It is now you remember that this is Christmas morning.

Perhaps this is his gift to you, the heartbeat. A reminder of constancy, of security, of the forward motion of time and life. In a number of these beats, this will all be over one way or another. You envision two scenarios: escape and capture. Good and bad.

You do not realize that they will be turn out to be the same, different only in form and technicality.

(Marie, we have a plan.)

His voice opens your eyes, you are no longer resting on his back but held before him, his hands framing your face. His woolen gloves scratch your skin: a mark of desperate times; he always buys the softest materials he can afford. At first it was leather, then cotton, then polyester, and now wool, with patches over the knuckles and a hole in one wrist.

(We can't outrun them or outfight them.
So what's the plan?)

His hesitation takes too long because the oldest brother interrupts the silence.
 
(Just tell her, Wolverine.)
Your hands tighten on his jacket.
(Tell me what?
Our only chance is if one of us goes to draw their attention and lead them away. The others will wait here for two hours then head back to the farmhouse. It'll be safe to use the main road....they'll expect you to be hiding in the forest...
It doesn't have to be you.
Marie--
I know you're going to say it. You're going to tell me it has to be you, but it doesn't. Let one of them go get themselves killed. You stay with me. You gave me your word.
It has to be me. I'm the only one who can survive it.
Then let me go with you.
No. Absolutely not.
I'm not afraid. As long as we're together it doesn't matter...it doesn't...
It matters to me. You go with them and wait for me at the house. I'll be back by dawn.
I don't think so. I don't think you're coming back.
Of course am I. Don't you trust me?
I do, but you don't understand. You can't leave me with them.
I'll only be gone long enough to do the job. Promise me you'll go back and wait for me.
I can't.
Promise. I've never asked you to do anything for me, but I need this. I need your word and I need it now because we're losing time. I have to find them before they find this place. You have to promise me so I can know you'll be safe.
I do.
Say it out loud.
I promise. But I won't be safe. You know that.)

He will not believe it. He needs a reason, and this is the only one he can find.

You look at him through your eyes and see the weariness at the temples, the sadness and resignation in the corners of the eyes and mouth. You don't know what it means, then; only an instinctive fear and the urge to pull him closer before he slips away. The picture flips; inverts until you are looking at him through his eyes. He views himself in the same color as the background of snow. Unremarkable. Invisible. But you are white, burning like the sky, like metal under heat.

You know you are all he sees.

(Baby, I have to go.
Logan--)

He kisses you, too hard, too fast, but you understand there is no time. Like the wool gloves on your face, it is a desperation. You watch him run from you, you watch it through your mind and his and this is the first time you don't hate him for it. This time you know he is going to die, as you are, only he dies harder. Death can be many things, not all of them final. He will drag his out, without mercy because he wants you both to survive. You more than him.

This is unfair; he doesn't consider the fact that you feel the same way, reversed. You'd rather see him survive any day. You'd rather be the one taking the pain because he's had more of it than you. You want to even the score. He doesn't realize that, or he does and that's why he moves so fast. He doesn't let you change your mind.

In a better world, you would measure your relationship in flowers, in chocolate kisses, in I Love Yous. You would fight over which one got to make dinner for the other.

In this world, you fight over which one of you gets to die. You measure love in colors: sienna, white, red. Not rose red or Valentine's red, but in the color of blood. This is also unfair, but you have made a promise and there is nothing you can do. You can't even say I love you, or goodbye. That constitutes public admission that you will never see each other again.

You watch him disappear into the burning snow until his figure is melted down, disfigured, swallowed up. It does not swallow you, it buries you. You will become as sand, as snow. Written on, rewritten, then smoothed over. Only he will not be the author. It will be a stranger's penmanship, bold and ugly and profane.

But this has not happened, not at this moment. For now both of you decide, inside your minds, at the same second, that this is the worst it can get. When you are in love you earn the right to be naive; it is your only defense.

This is the last day either of you experience such a luxury.

The Phoenix Compound
December 12
 
I always dream when I'm dead, and this time I watch a young woman set fire to herself: a young, slender woman dressed in layers upon layers of the gauzy kind of robe that takes well to kerosene and matches. I never saw her face, there was a veil of thin lace just transparent enough to blur her features into a puddle of anonymity. I should have recognized some facet of her-- the long white gloves, the streaks of hair bleached to the same shade-- but I could not match these familiarities to a name. Looking at her was like the memory of an old love affair, the brief and passionate kind that leaves you with vivid impressions of individual sunrises and specific shadows of firelight on hands although you can't remember the concrete things: dates, names, addresses. For this reason I can never go back.

Was this why she wanted to immolate, I asked myself. Because she knew I had forgotten or was it so that I would never forget? I was being selfish of course. I naturally assumed the bonfire she was making of herself was because of me. Or that it was only because of me.

(Don't do it,)

I begged her.

(Don't burn your life up.)
(Someone has to do it,)

A casual shrug of her shoulders.

(Might as well be me.
Do what?
Give them a witness.
Of what?
Us.)

She held out the match booklet to me, as a duty I was expected to take.

(Go ahead, do it. Strike the match. We have to show them we mean it.
I'm not going to burn you.)

She shook her head and when she spoke it was with the kind of sad disappointment that a mother uses with a child who has said something thoughtless that she knows he didn't mean. She knows he didn't mean it because he didn't understand what he was saying.

(See, that's why you're going to lose me someday.
Did I ever have you?
If you're afraid to burn me up then you're going to make me do it myself.
What's the point? What will it prove?
If you can feel that staying human is worthwhile, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them,
But you don't have to set fire to yourself to be human.
Sometimes you do.)

A match flared, white and orange and blue. Why did I think she was smiling underneath the veil?

(Think of it like a wedding, love. Think of it as 'til death do us part.)

And she burst into flames.
 
I did not wake screaming but this was only because I did not know how to open my eyes. Something holds them shut, dark black staples pressed into my eyelids and along the creases of my brain, preventing me from regaining consciousness. I try to push away the darkness; a sound of something ripping at the seams, a jagged-edged pain pushes me back in turn. For now, it pushes harder.

Yet something from the outside penetrates the staples and the walls. At first it is only static, white noise. Three notes played on a rusty violin. Garbled words, inside my head, a voice that doesn't belong to the person I kissed. But I can't remember who else it could be...who else...not the bonfire girl, she is gone.

/.....God help me, Logan...wake up...heal.../

Hands on my body, shaking me: the violence is out of place with the inherent softness of the fingertips. There are no gloves. Another proof that this is not the right person. I am certain of it now. And since it isn't, why bother to answer? Why push the staples, tear the skin?

/Can you...hear...me.../

The violin again. Flash memories of fall and orange coffee sweaters and a different pair of hands, also without gloves. A momentary wonder at the similarities between hands and gloves-- for example, could you exchange one pair for another if you grow tired of them? Is this what Marie has done? Folded up her regular hands, tucked them under her pillow, and tugged on a new pair for the occasion? One that will let me touch her?

I would entertain the concept but the strange hands and the strange voice refuse to leave me in peace. It is clearer, this time, desperate, close to panic.

/Logan, I have to do something now. It's not right because you're still unconscious and you can't give me permission, but I have no choice. You'll understand when it's over./

A remembrance of a name-- I know who's talking to me. Jeannie. What's she going to do to me? I don't like the way she's promising me I'll understand, she's saying it the way they tell you things you don't really want to know at all.

/You have to know what happened to her. If you know, then you'll have a reason to wake up. And you have to wake up, you have to, they need you...you'll understand./

The hands move to either side of my forehead.

A jolt of unrestrained psychic energy shoves my brain from neutral into overdrive, every synapse and fiber standing on end all at once, twisting my body into a spasm. The soft violent fingers hold me in place; no small feat for something as small as they pretend to be. There is a sudden picture in my mind, like I am looking at a woman from her reflection in the mirror-- only the mirror's cracked. I see reddish brown hair, falling over
a face streaked with more red, only it's sticking to the skin, like glue. I recognize the hair.

/Now I'm going to show you all of it./

The next jolt is not a stabbing but a pouring out, like a vat of hot lead overturned and dumped into every fissure of my brain, every crease. Molten images, words, feelings; fear blends with fascination and I wonder if this is what Marie felt last night, after I kissed her? Drowned, engulfed, yet breathing.

The liquid cools quickly, solidifying into hard metal pictures, shiny and glistening and terrifying.
 
/Marie standing at a door, begging Scott for help. Logan's done something beautiful, she says, but very stupid and I've killed him. I've killed him./

/Jeannie working on my body, the one that isn't moving and isn't even breathing, while Scott sits between Marie and the bathroom door to make sure she stays clear of the razor blades. Metal won't kill her, and he knows it, but he also knows how creative she gets when she's desperate. She caught him by surprise the first time, and when the cuts healed that's how they knew what I'd done./

This surprises me. She told me she didn't care, and even though I never believed it, I had no idea she would go to that length trying to follow me into the places she couldn't go. I made sure she couldn't.

/The door breaks down and there are six of them, big men, men that hate Scott and Jeannie and Marie: I don't have to smell the hate, it's plastered all over their faces like black paint. We're here to take Bondmaid Marie into custody on charges of infidelity and attempt to murder her mate. Scott mumbles something along the lines of over dead bodies (I'm not sure whose) and shoves her back against the walls so they can't take her from behind. I owe him for this one, I do./

/Jeannie steps in front of them, she tries to tell them what happened and they knock her down. Fist to the left side of her face, and she's falling, and her forehead smacks against the concrete when she hits the floor. The baby is screaming. I think that's the only kind of scream that's worse than Marie's because it sounds like the little guy is dying or in pain and maybe he is. Maybe he's like his mother, maybe he feels it inside him and doesn't know what it is. What would that feel like, that sort of pain without a name?/

I can't close my eyes when they're already shut. I have to watch; and I realize that this is why Jeannie was apologizing. Not because she had to invade my mind but because of the things I had to see once she got inside.
 
/Scott grabs the closest thing-- a lamp beside the bed-- and smashes it against the skull of the one who hit his wife. He uses the jagged end to fight like a street kid, like the street kid he must have been once because it all comes out as instinct. Talks ugly and dirty but they deserve it. He's doing a good job but there are six of them, big men, and he can't handle all of them at one time. After he goes down the second time, Marie animates. Explodes. I taught her those moves. Brave, stupid kid./
 
/He's down now, and he's not moving because there's a boot pinning his head to the pavement and handcuffs on
his wrist. They've got her too, arms yanked behind the back. Head jerked to the side by the hair, held in place so she can see what they're doing to him. They think it's funny, because she's supposed to be his lover. They think she'll beg them to stop. Shows how much they know about my girl. She doesn't beg./

/Boot to the stomach, to the groin, twice, to the small of the back. They aren't satisfied; he isn't responding. Two of them are down and all of them are bleeding and they feel he owes them some kind of concession of defeat. Jeannie's unconscious, small mercy, so they can't take it out on her. But Marie's still alive and kicking...they throw her down in front of him and he's snarling that they aren't men, that if they were they'd take it out on him and not on a mere girl.../

I have to open my eyes; I don't care if the staples rip out and if I go blind because of it, I can't see this anymore. I try to push my way to the outside but Jeannie blocks me. Delicate brutality, the kind that hurts the worst.

Let me out, Jeannie. I've seen enough. I'll wake up for you. Just let me go...

/Almost over, Logan. If I can see it again, so can you./

No, please...

Another surge of energy, stronger than before, overrides my protest.

/She spits at them when the kick catches her in the gut, flashes them a mocking smile around the gasp for
breath; because of this they kick her again, this time in the back. Flat along the spine./

/They throw her down on the bed to tie her hands behind her back. Whore, they say, into her ear. Slut. Infidel.
She presses her lips together, two thin white slits./

Why aren't I moving? Why aren't I sliding metal up their spines, pulling out the nerves? I remember. Because I'm dead again. I couldn't even protect myself, much less stop them as she is hauled off the bed, out the door. Scott is dragged after her, then the two unconscious freaks; then there is nothing left in the room. Nothing but Jeannie and the baby and me--she is the one bleeding and the baby is the one screaming and I am the one sprawled out on the floor dreaming of girls who become bonfires.

The last image fades; the staples sealing me in oblivion dissolve. Consciousness descends as a load of gravel dumped directly on my head, left to rattle inside my skull, raising dust and confusion. I am thrust through the cracks of reality one piece at a time: mismatched, dismembered. A hand, a foot, a jawbone, an elbow, a fragment of skull. Whoever's putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again obviously neglected to look at the diagram.

Progress is slow, an effort akin to tuning an old radio. At first I see nothing but a white glare; hear nothing but the overwhelming roar of my blood inside my veins and my lungs inflating and collapsing in counter-rhythm. Stench of blood and fear so strong it's nauseating. Jeannie's brought me back at high frequency, have to tone it down before I can see or hear or find answers for this.

I close my eyes then open them again, blinking to test the connections. Images sharpen, colors appear, seeping through the white like watercolor stains. Left eye, check. Right eye, check. So much for preliminaries. I turn my head-- gritting my teeth when the three-ton gravel headache slides to the forefront of my skull-- to find out reasons for the blood-smell.

Even after what she showed me, I'm not ready to see the cut down the middle of her forehead, slanting from her hairline to her left eyebrow, fat, ugly, mocking. Bruises down her left jawbone. Not fresh; the wound is stitched shut and the bruises have begun to turn yellow. This disturbs. Disturbance leads to fear: if Jeannie's this bad, what will Marie look like?

/Like she always has./

My own voice, this time, working through the emotion to the logic.

/I"m inside her, right? Pushing out the hurt./

Momentary reassurance, then a reverse.

/But what happens when I fade?/

Can't think that. Can't panic just yet. It wouldn't do to go running out to harvest major organs until I know who I'm gonna hunt down after and why they're gonna to be slated for a donation.

My mind forms the questions, but my voice is stubborn, thick and raspy from the gravel in my head, like I haven't used it for several days. Maybe I haven't. Could I have been out that long?

"Two days."  She answers for me; she'd be able to do that. How much of her is left inside me? "You've been out two days. If Marie hadn't told me about your implant, it'd have been longer."

"You...took it....out?"

I intend to growl but my lungs hitch and it turns into a cough.

"Yes. I know, she told me it wasn't what you wanted. But you had to wake up, now...I didn't have a week to wait for you to come out of the coma at your leisure."

She leans back on the bed, her face pale and drained from the effort of sharing memory; hands pull the bundle of blankets in her lap closer to her chest. The bundle smells of formula and talcum powder: her child.

"It isn't your fault," Jeannie says, but it's not true because she can't look at me. Her eyes lock steadfastly on the cracks in the plaster. "You're new here, you couldn't have possibly known the rules. We've been here for seven months and we don't even know them all. So it's not your...fault..."

She's rocking back and forth, little, sharp movements, but I don't even think she knows she's moving. The veins in her hands bulge midnight blue under the pale skin.

"Let me get this straight-- she went to you to save my life so they freakin' beat her and arrested her for it. What freakin' logic does that follow?"

"She was charged with infidelity and for willful attempt to harm her bondmate. Scott was charged with infidelity and attempting to interfere with her arrest."

"How did they even know I was down?"

Talking too fast but I can't slow down. Don't have time. These people are fanatics, I knew it right when I walked through the gates. I also know what fanatics do when their delusions of sanctity are interrupted.

"Someone must have seen her come to us for help. They called in possible violation of her bond. No logic...just an excuse for revenge. Scott killed a man not long ago, the High Elder's son. Should have seen this coming....should have..."

She stops, the words fractured at their joints like broken fingers. Something in me aches like the broken fingers are mine.

I reach for her hand, it is feverish, trembling. The gravel inside my mind has been replaced by Hiroshima: mushroom cloud hate, white fire anger, charcoal shadows of fear burned into place, but I do not show this to her. There is control in my voice because it is all I can control at this point. Everything else has spun away.

"Then what did they do with them?"

Of course I ask, even though it I am not sure if I want to know. She did not show me this part inside my head. Did she think it unnecessary or was she trying to spare me the visuals?

"There was a trial, but it wasn't a trial...witch hunt. With all the trimmings...the things they did...the questions they asked..."

An even greater restraint is required; my words turn metallic, spun very carefully out of cold, unemotional wire.

"Things." I echo. "Questions."

"About their...relationship...and their lust...and their plan to kill you....All lies, all of it. They took his visor to humiliate him. He had to face them blind and she had to wear the veil and when they didn't say the right thing..."

Again her voice fades, in and out like a distant satellite signal, and the secondary fear that she's unraveling on me begins to grow in urgency. She pulls her hand from mine and begins to finger the hem of her dress.

"They sentenced them to a community purge that's what they call the beating, like it's meant to cleanse all of us. Like it's something just. That happens tomorrow. But that isn't the worst part."

"It gets worse?"

"When they wouldn't confess, the council decided to get evidence of the infidelity. To force a confession. They thought they could find it on Marie."

No. Absolutely not, she's not going to tell me that they--

"There was a medical exam," she says, baldly. "For proof."

This is the part where the room turns white again. Even when color and shape return, my vision is blurred once more, all the wires knocked loose, crossed in the wrong places. Metal slices through skin, though I don't even notice that the claws are out until I see Jeannie flinch.

Marie, baby, they're going to hurt for this.
Just you hold on.

The Phoenix Compound
December 12
 
I stand, ignoring the protest of various muscles, pacing the floor in front of the bed, trying to think of words. A naive stab at hope. "You examined her?"

She shakes her head, speaking very low.

"No. They wouldn't let me. They threatened to take the baby...I had to let them do what they wanted. They made me leave and that was when I came back and cut out your implant. So you could stop them. But it was too late."

"I'm taking it real nice and slow when I kill them."

"You can't."

"What?"

"If we interfere, we'll be banished. Scott, me, the baby. We won't have anywhere to live..."

"This ain't living, Jeannie. This is as bad as anything they could do on the outside. Worse, because they're our own kind."

"If we just let it ride out...they won't kill them. They need her womb..."

"Need her *what*?"

Choke on the words, on the implications, on the resignation I see in her face that isn't fair, isn't fair at all. Not to Marie, not to her, not even to Scooter.

"Are you listening to yourself? These freaks aren't our brothers any more than Magneto and his crew. In fact, I'd prefer Magneto. And have you looked at this place?" My hand sweeps the room, the cracked walls, the windows that look out onto the barbed wire. "What makes it any different from the camps?"

She glares at me, half-wounded, half-angry, her chin jutting out as she holds the bundle in her arms toward me.
"My son. They aren't hurting my son."

"Not yet."

She flinches again but does not crumble; Jeannie has always been stubborn when it comes to these things. Justifiable sacrifices, she called them. She and Scooter threw that term around a lot, in the early days of the war. It always meant our sacrifices, our attempts at justification, not those of the other side. They thought they were being noble, now I realize they were just scared. Like we all were.

"Please, Logan. Promise me you won't interfere. It looks worse than it really is. I've survived the worst part of it, Scott's survived it, we can beat the system. At least we're not hunted here. At least we have small moments of peace."

"Small moments of peace. For that you're willing to stand and watch while they beat your husband? To do nothing?"

"Take a glance at my forehead...does it look like I stood and watched anything?"

Her voice sharpens, and it is the most alive I have seen her tonight. I may have pushed too far; she would let me call her a cheap whore before she let me doubt her loyalty to her husband.
 
"There are ways of doing this without a fight. You are Rogue's bondmate. If you talk to them, they have to listen."

"If they want to get back at Scott so much, they aren't exactly going to be open to reason, are they? Not that these are the most logical people to begin with.

"They can't hurt her, if that's what you're afraid of. And I know it is. I feel it."

Afraid? Haha. Not me, the Wolverine, the Man of Steel. I'm not even mildly concerned. I bypassed concern and went straight for the gut-wrenching terror part. Never was much on middle ground.

"You gave her healing," she says. "She'll walk away without even a bruise."

"Two days, Jeannie. She ain't going to be protected from anything. And neither is Scott."

Her eyes glaze over in that defiance again. She's on her feet, face to face with me, squaring off.
"Scott knows that we all have to make sacrifices." The words rapid fire, mechanical like she's trying to convince herself as well as me. "He did when I was taken. He allowed it so that we could stay safe. Now I'll do the same for him."

"So that's what this is about." I growl. "You want him to have scars to match yours? He let you down so now you think you'll even the score no matter who else gets hurt--"

"Stop--"

"No, Jeannie, you stop. Stop calling it noble things and come out with what it really is-- revenge? Payback? Or are you just afraid to do anything because it might actually cost you something--"

"You don't know--"

"Yes, I do. You had it bad, but so did Marie and if it was you and me in a cell she wouldn't cower behind justifiable sacrifice--"

"I said *stop*!"

A chair hurtles across the room to smash into the far wall, caving in the plaster.

I've never seen her lose control like this before. Never seen it this strong. The cabinet doors open, shut, open, shut, the glass in the windows rattles. Every bone in her body is rigid, sharp, waiting to snap. I begin to wonder what the procedure is for calming down a telekinetic on the rampage; maybe I should just duck and hope she doesn't aim...

But then the baby begins to wail. Thin, pale cries of discomfort and fear, as if he can sense his mother's anger. This deflates her; she sinks back onto the bed, but misses the edge and ends up on the floor. A hard bump, her teeth rattle together when she hits the pavement. She ignores it, hugging the bundle to her chest, rocking him, whispering things that mothers whisper to crying children.

(Hush little baby, don't say a word...Momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird....a mockingbird....Momma's gonna buy you the whole flock....don't say a word...)

I am not a father; crying babies create definite flight instincts in me, but I resist them. I should do the heroic thing and kneel beside her, hold the baby with one arm and wrap the other around her and tell her that I didn't mean it. That I am angry, like she is, and scared, like she is, only worse because she has the excuse of trying everything she could. I, on the other hand, have been flat on my back and unable to defend so much as a flea.

But as Scooter's is so fond of pointing out, I'm not a hero. Whatever I say will come out wrong, whatever I do will be misunderstood. I'm better at breaking things than fixing them; look at the bang up job I've done with Marie. So I stand and watch, hands in my pockets, boots wearing a path into the cement, conscience building the justification that at least I didn't run.

Three minutes, five minutes later-- though it feels more like twenty years-- the bundle stops squirming and squalling and begins to suck intently on his pacifier. Thank heavens for modern science. She looks at him a moment longer, her fingers smoothing his eyelids and the tuft of brown hair in the middle of his head. Then her eyes lift to me, holding none of the expected things. They are softer, tired, asking me to understand.

"I love Scott. If I could save him, I would. But I love my son too, Logan, and he loves his son. He is all we have for a future. No more Xavier, no more fighting for the Cause. Just a little boy. We can't risk losing him on the outside."

She pulls the blanket tighter around the tiny body.

"Do you have any idea what the humans would do with a mutant baby? I've heard the stories. They make me sick."

"And Marie is all I have. All I've ever had. What do you want me to do...stand by and watch?"

"There's no other choice. I know it's hard, but if you want to save her life, you have to let this happen."

"No." One firm shake of my head. "I tried to save her life that way once before and it nearly killed both of us. Don't ask me to do it again."

"If we leave the compound, the Registration Bureau will find us. This place is monitored that way. At the most it'll only be a matter of days."

"I have connections. I did some fighting for a man who can smuggle us out; he owes me."

"And you trust him? You have proof?"

"And you trust these freaks here? You have proof that they won't take your son, or kill your husband?"

"They won't. We have a use. We're safe. It costs us something, but don't all sanctuaries?"

Our eyes meet, lock. I unfold my mind to her in a gesture of trust, she needs to know how much I mean this. I could do this without her-- take Marie my own way, have my fun with the freaks while I'm doing it, and then leave her and her husband behind to face the fallout-- but I won't go to that extreme until I can justify it by the knowledge that I've done everything possible to get them to come with us. I can't just leave them behind. Not her, not her child. Not even Scott.

This is why I don't answer her right away; inspiration was never my forte. Charles was the one who gave the speeches before the missions, who painted it all in red and white and blue and made us believe it. I always saw the Cause in two colors-- gray and grayer-- but when he talked, I saw it through his eyes. And I fought from that viewpoint.
 
"It's not worth it. Even though you're right, even though your son is beautiful and deserves to be protected and loved and given a chance."

"That's what we've given him. Here."

"Be honest, Jeannie. You think he's going to get it?" I say. "Life on the outside is hard, yes. The risk is always there, it's real, but look at what he'll be missing here. He'll never know what it's like to decide who he wants to be or what he wants to do with his life. He'll never be able to go to sleep without wondering if his mother will be taken from him or if his father will be killed in a fight."

Her face clouds, wrinkles at the corners of the mouth, but she doesn't stop me.

"He'll never have freedom here...that's what he deserves most of all." My gaze drops back to the baby. "Because if he doesn't have it, he won't be alive. Just like we aren't alive, you, me, Scott, Marie. Don't let him become us. Let him become something better."

She holds me in a steady gaze, the expression on her face not so much as twitching. Granite, unreadable, opaque. She kisses her fingertips then slides them across her son's forehead, down the bridge of his nose. Something in her twists, snaps, breaks and reforms into new thoughts before she speaks.

"Let me go home, Logan. Back to my apartment, where it's quiet and where I can drink a cup of coffee and think."

She rubs her temples with her hands; I wonder how much of Scott is up inside her and how much she's hurting with him. Maybe I pushed too hard, too soon.

"Give me two hours." She says. "Two hours and if I'm not back then you can do whatever you need to do. Then I won't try to stop you. But promise me you'll wait."

I nod.

"Say it out loud."

"I promise."

She walks away, the door shuts behind her and I start waiting. Why do we call it killing time? Is it because we all realize that we are helpless against it, impotent and paralyzed, and so we hope that it is a way of revenge? An ant shaking a fist at the sun. I kill time; I hunt down individual seconds and pound them out into minutes, hoping to link them all together to form hours. 3600 seconds flattens out to 120 minutes, which can be squashed
together to form two hours.

At the same moment, time seeks to kill me. It slows, it bends, it lasts forever. But I'm used to this. Every day was forever when I wasn't with Marie. In that sense, I've already survived eternity.
 
I refuse to die by minutes.
 

The door opens; Jeannie walks through smelling of gasoline, of dried sweat, drug store lipstick, and a man who isn't Scott. She's carrying a cheap handbag-- cracked orange vinyl with one strap missing-- but wearing her best dress, or what passes for best in this place: thin blue cotton splattered with pink and white flowers, held in place by two straps tied in a functional knot at the back of her neck. White trash clothes;  straight out of a West Virginia trailer park, only she carries herself like it's the tailored Gucci wardrobe her husband used to buy her on a regular basis.

The baby is still on her hip, an accessory to the outfit that is laid on the table beside the purse as if she is tired of wearing him.

"Didn't think they were big on dresses like that around here." I say.

"The rules only apply if you turn them down while you're wearing it."

"Right."

"Whiskey," she says, "and don't pretend you're a boy scout because I know you have it here somewhere."

"No whiskey, but I got Scotch. That do?"

"Get it."
 
I open the cabinet underneath the sink and grope around in the cobwebs until I find the bottle and one shot glass. As I pour it for her, I notice secondary details of her appearance that my initial surprise kept from notice: the smears of red lipstick at either corner of her mouth, the smudges of oil and engine grease on her left elbow and on the side of her neck.

She picks up on the stare, doesn't look me in the face when she takes the whiskey. Instead she tosses the whole glass down her throat in one curt motion...a defiance though of what I'm not sure. Her face wrinkles.

"Disgusting."

"Sorry if it ain't as classy as you--"

"Not the Scotch, the other taste. Doesn't matter how strong the liquor is I can't get that taste out of my mouth."

"Taste of what?"

"Anyone who isn't Scott."

She slams the glass down on the table, but not so hard that it will crack; she's been taught the graceful ways of expressing rage, and even now they remain in the background like instincts half-forgotten.

"Don't tell him about this. He's still a boy about these things, he'll overreact."

She wipes the corners of her mouth with a restrained frenzy, the lipstick comes off on her fingertips like colored lard. Oily and thin.
 
"I got us a vehicle," she says. "A way out. And five extra tins of gas for the road. It'll be waiting for us at ten o'clock at the west gate; we have a five-minute window when they change the sentries. We should be able to make it a couple hundred miles or so before we have to stop."

"How?"

"Does it matter?" She rubs the lipstick from her fingers onto the tabletop, ridding herself of the stain.

"You don't owe me any explanations."

This isn't entirely true, I'm itching in my bones to know what turned her around so fast and what she's been doing these past two hours, but I have enough common sense to know that if she wants to tell me, she will. And if she doesn't then it isn't my business to ask.

"Money. I knew he'd do it if I promised him enough money, only I had to be sure. You understand that, right, I had to let him--"

"Jeannie." I raise a finger to my lips to stop her because she's flirting with incoherence as it is. Don't want to push her this time. "I told you, you don't have to say it. You did what you had to do."

"I made him think I liked it."

"You saved your husband."

"He wouldn't look at it that way."

"Doesn't matter. He won't know."

"A beat up Jeep and five tins of gasoline." Her smile twists down, the way Marie's does when she remembers the bad times. Broken ice, cracked glass. "I guess I've been sold for less."

Don't know what to tell her on that one.

I take a step closer to her and rub the smudge of grease from her arm with the end of my shirt. She flinches out of my reach: walls of surprise but also of defense. Her skin is tight with gooseflesh and I don't know if it's due to the wind outside or something else. Answers arise to my question in the form of echoes of Marie telling me the story behind all this.

(Last month. It was...bad.)

When it's finally over, we will reckon this as our greatest loss. Not the burned-out mansion or the forgotten quest or the men we've killed.  We won't regret those things because we have too have been burned down, forgotten, killed. No, the greatest loss for men like me, men like Scott, won't come until we reach out to touch the women we love and respect, only to watch them pull away. Unintentionally, a gut-reaction. The lingering regret will be the shadow in their eyes; the one thing we will never be able to erase totally.

Of course we'll never believe that, we'll never stop trying. Maybe that's the penance.

"Go home, Jeannie."

I want to squeeze her shoulder, to put my arms around her and tell her that she makes the dress beautiful and that Scott would still love her if she ripped out his heart and threw it against the wall. I want to tell her that it's not fair, that it will never be fair, that she's worth more. She and Marie are worth so much more than this.

But it's not allowed. That's something else we've lost-- the ability to comfort through hands and arms and touch. We are contained to the long-distance solace of words, and we know it will never be enough.

"Take a shower." I tell her. "Drink your coffee. Don't worry about this place; don't even think about it anymore. By tomorrow morning it won't exist, for any of us. And don't worry about Scott. I'll bring him to you; in one piece even."

We attempt, and nearly succeed, to share grins.

"Thank you." She nods, graciously, then picks up the handbag and the baby and walks toward the door. She pauses, at the last moment, turns around and presents me with the gift of a smile. "It wasn't just for him. For her too. If it matters to you."

She doesn't give me time to thank her, she's gone and the door shuts behind her. It leaves me with the question of whether or not I would have tried to stop her, if I'd known. Protested, argued her out of it, popped the claws for emphasis? No. I would have let her do it because I'd have known she'd win. That's Jeannie for you-- she may be a slow starter but once she's with you, she'll play it to the bone, no holds barred. That's what you have to do in this kind of mission. It's always easier to think of it in that way: another mission to be completed, another justifiable sacrifice.

Of which I have just about had my fill.

Double Violin Concerto, Reprise: Logan
 
You'll never be able to remember it exactly as it happened because it is not a memory. It has never happened to you and it has never happened to her, but you are aware that this is not the point. The point is that you are here and so she must be here, somewhere, and when you find her, both of you will be able to understand what you are seeing. There is nothing so simple as dreams and reality, but rather endless variations on the stages between. Something is being shown to you; you don't know what. The only key is the vague premonition that surrounds you with a sense of ominous invisibility, like the summer air before a thunderstorm hits. You are looking over your shoulder, waiting for the lightning.

The earth moves under you: no, it's reverse. You move, too fast, and it makes it look like the earth is sliding out from under you like liquid. You watch it drain away outside the window: stubble fields where a black rain falls in sharp hard pellets, brown trees that stand alone and naked apart from the gray soot that covers the branches. Somewhere in the world, the sky has burnt through and now it's snowing ashes. You watch the child stand at the edge of the tracks and wave at you as you pass-- a little girl in the dark blue polka dot dress. Soot clings to her hair and some of the polka dots are scorched brown instead of white. She smiles; do all children smile because they are oblivious, or sometimes is it because they realize everything and know that it is all they can do? What would you have done, when you were her age? Of course, that would require remembering childhood. For you it is impossible, so you determine to remember hers instead. You determine to smile back, but she's already gone. Liquid, streaming out from behind you in waves.

All you see is your face in the night window, smeared with beard stubble and the greenish-black glow of the ceiling lights. Two holes have been punched into your forehead and in these holes a dim black light is glowing: you realize they are your eyes but cannot remember how they came to be so empty. The pupils reflect dark shapes of the liquid earth that rush past at breakneck speed.

You realize you are on a train. Alone. No, you are not alone. You know because you hear her violin.

A melody that is clean, sharp on the edges, a song you have only heard twice before. Once by a lake, once in a concert hall. At first, surprise-- she has convinced everyone that she no longer plays but this song is meant to be a secret. No one else will hear it but you. This is not selfishness on her part; she knows that you are the only person who needs to hear the song. Everyone else in the world has moved on to louder, brassier music: machine gun rattles in city streets, grinding machinations of tanks, screams in the night. But she needs something softer,
something spun from glass instead of wire, something that will not cut the fingers when played. She needs it just like you do.

(Marie is in the next car.)

Charles anticipates your question, again, even though he is dead. The dead have that sort of habit; insinuating themselves into your subconscious until their voices well up all at once in your dreams. At times the roar can be quite deafening. Charles, at least, has the courtesy to whisper.
 
You want to close your eyes and find her just by the sound of her magic, but you could not do this. The train is unfamiliar, alien to eyes and ten times more to touch. You have to peel back the eyelids, catalog every door and seat and window frame, keep on alert for the monsters. This is a dream, after all, and they are inevitable. You follow the melody towards the door that connects the cars. The aisle smells of coal, of stained upholstery, of cigarette smoke and stale bread.

A step, another step, and you open the door. She is standing in the middle of the car, feet firmly planted on either side of the aisle to brace against the rocking of the train; face crumpled inward as if she is fighting to remember the notes. She never had to fight before.

The song snaps in two the moment she sees you; her face smoothes out into a flat white sheet creased at the bottom with an odd grin. Like she has been here for some time already and has expected you.

(I knew you'd find me here. If I played my violin long enough, I'd knew you'd come.
What's going on here, kid?
Maybe we're dreaming.
At the same time?
Hey, you were the one who jumped inside my head, don't complain if weirdness ensues.)

Her eyes sparkle; she's teasing you again.
 
(Wonder what made us choose a train. Not exactly a pleasant memory. If we're going by memories.
Guess this is the only way to get where we're going.
Didn't think travel was safe these days.
It isn't.
Well at least I know we're not getting boring in our old age.)

She walks toward you; takes your hand between hers and leads you to a nearby seat. Your ears ring with the beat of the wheels along the iron track; an oppressive rhythm frantic like an out of control metronome. The seats are stiff and uncomfortable: horsehair bristles irritating the back of the neck, hard plastic armrests that grate against the elbows in all the wrong places. You are too hot and too cold at once, sweating and shivering, burning and freezing.

You turn her hand over, trace finger circles on her bare palm. This time you wore the gloves, because you knew even in a dream that she frees her hands when she plays violin.

(Last time I dreamed, I watched a girl set herself on fire.
Anyone I know?
I think it was you.
I must have had a good reason for it.
You said you had to give them a witness of us.
Then there you have it. Justifiable sacrifice.
I never believed in that.)

Never when it came down to her. Your fingers wander from her hand up to her face, the curls of hair framing the skin, falling down over the eyes.

(Neither did I.) She admits. (Some things you can never justify; you're not even supposed to try. Like what happened to us.
You mean what happened after I left you?
No, I mean what happened after I stopped wanting you to come back. And after you stopped wanting to live.)

You are no longer satisfied with the communication of fingers; you lean forward and plant a kiss on the side of her forehead, through her hair. Then another, then another. Morse code-- does it spell out I Love You or SOS?
 
(In the dream you told me sometimes you had to set fire to yourself to stay human.
I was right. Something has to be given up, something has to be consumed.
What if they're waiting for us at the station? What if they catch us again the minute we arrive?
Then we'll be caught.
Do you want to jump the train?
Not particularly.
I'd hold onto you; you wouldn't break bones.
That's not the point. It's our stop; if we don't show up then they'll just find someone else. And no one else deserves it.
Doesn't mean that you do.
No, it doesn't. But neither do you and we might as well find out together.
Maybe they won't be there. Maybe we'll be somewhere that they can never go.
I don't care where we end up as long as we end up in the same place.
Good, because I don't plan on leaving again.
They could make you leave.
They could try. Maybe they'd succeed, for a while, but no one can keep me locked up forever. Not when I know you're out there.
Why me?
Because you're the only thing in me that's alive.)
 
She leans against your, her head on your shoulder, your hands on her face, covering her eyes. She doesn't have to see whatever's coming; you'll see it for the both of you.

(Does any of this count if this is a dream?
Why should it matter?
Because I want to remember it when I wake up, and I want to know it was real.
You'll remember it.
How do you know?
I'm inside your head and I won't let you forget. I'll take care of you.
Promise?
I promise.)
 
And you hold her by the window and the earth pours itself out around you and you are both rushing toward the end of your journey, only you don't know what it is. It is vapor, the future is, a shimmering iridescent vision that changes shape every time you think you've got it figured out. Only you're not so concerned with prediction and prophecy. Or even with the more absolute things, like life and death and escape and capture.

You are with her.

She's right; you don't have to justify your sacrifices. You have her and she is more than justification or hope. When you are close enough to touch her and she is close enough to smile back, you both transcend hope. You are all that is left when it is gone; you are the light that glimmers from the void.
 

Part Four