X-Men: The Last Stand (12 page)

She was life incarnate, in all its glory.

She was his love.

And the smile she gave him when she heard that thought proved it beyond all doubt.

“Scott,” Jean called, laughing with delight at the sight of him, yet still skittish to somehow find herself alive once more. Those last moments were still vivid in her thoughts. The wall of water had struck like it was made of steel, shattering her on contact; she didn’t even have a chance to drown. Everything was over in an instant.

Or so she’d thought.

“How?” he asked, reaching out in surprise to her hair, which now fell in glossy waves to the small of her back.

“Dunno,” she told him truthfully.

And for a long while there were no more words, nothing at all save for two lovers holding each other close, savoring the joy that comes with finding your heart’s desire. Neither had ever been more happy, or at peace.

Jean pulled back, just a little.

“I want to see your eyes,” she told him, reaching for his glasses. “Take these off.”

“Jean—don’t!”

She shook her head. “It’ll be all right.”

“You’ve seen what my optic blasts can do. You know these glasses and my visor are the only things that can control them!”

“Trust me,” she said. “
I
can control them.”

She laid a palm against his cheek, and he couldn’t help leaning into it. Smiling in that special way that was for him alone, Jean slipped her hand along the line of his jaw, her forehead creasing with concern at how harshly the last few years had dealt with him, stroking the curve of his ear in a way that made him tremble.

She thought her own heart would crack when he brushed his lips against hers, and wanted to cry to the Heavens that he didn’t have to worry, that there was nothing he could do to hurt her. Instead, she returned the kiss, both of them eager for more.

“No more glasses, Scott,” she said, as she gently plucked them from his face, “no more fear. I want to see your eyes.”

They were tightly closed.

“Open them. Please. You can’t hurt me.”

He did, because she asked, because she knew at bedrock that he would always trust her, without hesitation or question, because she held dominion over the best part of him.

Nothing happened.

She’d put a telekinetic film over his eye sockets, configured by her thoughts to the same resonance frequency as the ruby quartz crystal of his lenses, holding in check the power within more easily than the glasses ever did.

“They say,” she told him, “the eyes are the windows to the soul.”

He couldn’t hide a bit of bitterness: “Imagine what that says about me?”

Jean would have none of it: “Yours, like your soul, my love, are beautiful.”

Looking into Jean’s eyes reminded Scott of staring up at the stars, back before his power manifested, when he was a kid, with a kid’s dreams, when he could see the world through normal eyes. In that moment, he knew he beheld forever, as rich with endless possibilities as it was with mysteries. And, unbidden, jarring, a warning:
Danger.

One kiss begat another, each caress built on the one before, stoking a passion more intense than either had ever known. They surfed the crest of a tsunami, a wave that would engulf the world, where one misstep would mean oblivion, and neither cared.

They were happy, and they wanted it to last forever.

Then, the light in Jean’s eyes turned to fire.

They opened wide, her lips turning from the latest kiss to an O of alarm, shared in that perfect moment by Scott. Something basic had changed, and neither knew what would come next, nor how to cope.

Scott started to shiver, his skin like the corona of a star boiling off excess plasma.

He looked into the eyes of the woman he loved and saw something that had never been before, that had never even been suspected, and he knew what was coming, both now and in the days ahead.

And because it was his turn, because he knew what it would mean to her, he gave her a smile, the one that came to him when he realized this was the woman he loved and that, now and forever, she would love him. He gave her trust, he gave her strength, he gave her courage.

Not forgiveness, though—because for him, there was nothing to forgive.

Then the world went white.

Two thousand miles away, Charles Xavier screamed.

For Logan, it was a spike through the skull, a lance of pain not even his healing factor could mitigate.

He threw himself out into the hallway, staggering because his head was so screwed up he couldn’t walk straight. He heard cries and whimpers, and more than a few sobs, from every direction. Making his way through the rapidly crowding halls, he passed students by the score, some holding their heads with pain, a few nauseous to the point of vomiting. All were scared, demanding answers he didn’t have or comfort he was ill-equipped to offer.

Ororo caught up to him at the base of the Grand Staircase. She had farther to come, from her attic loft, but she could always move faster.

“What happened?” she demanded.

“No clue,” he replied, and bulled his way into Xavier’s study.

“Professor,” Ororo called, while simultaneously from Logan, “You okay?”

He was sitting at his desk, pale as the sheet of paper held in trembling hands.

“I’m fine,” he assured them, although neither believed it. Logan could smell blood, and a quick glance at the trash can revealed a badly stained handkerchief that Xavier had used to wipe clean his bloody nose. Forebrain hemorrhages, Logan knew, because he made it his business to catalogue the strengths and weaknesses of people who mattered, and of those he may one day have to fight. A major sign of trouble in a telepath.

“You need to get to Alkali Lake,” Xavier ordered, in a tone he rarely ever used with the two of them. It mandated absolute, immediate obedience, no back talk, no bullshit.
“Now!”

They went.

They got the
Blackbird
prepped and airborne in record time. Ororo took the plane suborbital, shooting almost straight up once they cleared the launch bay, arcing north by west as they cleared the atmosphere along a track and at a speed that would bring them to their destination in barely a quarter hour.

Neither said a word during the ascent. Ororo was busy piloting, while Logan struggled not to lose what remained of last night’s dinner. The intensity behind Xavier’s command had been such that there’d been no time for uniforms. They’d departed wearing the clothes on their backs.

“Shit,” Logan grumped as he dropped into the copilot’s seat.

“You don’t want to go back to Alkali Lake,” Ororo noted.

He said nothing at first, but instead rubbed his fingers over the space between the knuckles where his claws were housed. So much of his life was bound up in that place: It was there Logan had become the Wolverine. It was there he’d found a place and purpose greater than himself. And there he’d found the woman who made it all worthwhile, who had owned him from the moment their eyes met, only to lose her, knowing that she loved another man more.

He figured his answer was too obvious to be spoken aloud. Instead, as Ororo canted the nose downward for reentry, he asked: “Do you?”

“No,” she said plainly. “I don’t.”

The hull heated with atmospheric friction and bucked like a mule as the Blackbird started the transition to the deeper atmosphere. Logan busied himself with his harness, growing less thrilled with every incident of turbulence.

“You know,” Storm said, “if you ever want to talk…”

“Oh yeah,” he retorted, “absolutely. That’s what I want.”

The look she tossed his way spoke volumes.

Damn,
he thought,
she’s a lot less of a princess than when I first rolled in the door. Still a long way from “just plain folks,” but she’s got possibilities.

“Look,” he said, the best he would offer in explanation, “talk is not what I do.”

Her sigh was even more devastating then the look.

“Right,” she said, her tone assuring him that this conversation was most definitely not finished. “Same old Logan.”

He wasn’t, really, any more than she was the “same old Storm.” But the oldest habits are the hardest to kick.

One of the glass panels on the flight control console generated a schematic map of the valley and the lake. As they continued their descent, and their scanning array got down to business, a dot of light began pulsing. Logan didn’t need coordinates to pinpoint the location. It was within spitting distance of where Jean had died.

“ ’Ro?” he began to say, intending to make amends. But she didn’t give him the chance, throwing the
Blackbird
into a tight descending spiral that pinned him to his chair and made him suddenly wonder if she was going to land the damn aircraft right on its pointy nose.

“Hold on,” she told him, after the fact, which was just about as unnecessary a command as he’d ever been given.

She flattened out at a hundred meters, shifting to vertical flight mode and skimming the treeline like they were flying a helicopter. Logan had taken his turn in the simulator; if the need ever arose, he could take the controls. But with Storm it was different; she handled the plane as if it were part of her. She could dance it through maneuvers the others wouldn’t dream of trying—except maybe Scott. He was as much a natural flier as she was and the only one to ever match her skill in the air.

Unfortunately, there was no sign of the ground. Below thirty meters everything was shrouded in fog, for as far as the eye could see, from one end of the valley to the other.

“We got nowhere to land,” Logan commented.

Without a word, Ororo’s eyes went momentarily white and, just like that, the fogbank melted obligingly away, revealing that they were right where they wanted to be.

Eyes normal again, she cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Anytime.” Smooth as could be, without even a bump, she eased the ebony aircraft down from the sky. “In preparation for landing, please restore your seats to their upright and locked position, store all carry-on items and tray tables, and make sure your seat belts are securely fastened.”

He gave her a look; she gave him back a smile.

The moment passed. They got ready for business.

With his first step off the ramp, Logan knew it was bad. Every sense screamed alarm—the air smelled wrong, the ground felt wrong. There were no natural sounds, nothing to indicate the passing of a breeze between the trees, or water lapping against the shore. Not the slightest hint of animals of any kind. Logan wasn’t surprised at the last; the part of him that was most like them was shrieking to flee this haunted, accursed place. And Ororo, whose sensitivity to the world around her was just as acute, seemed spooked as well.

Even the crunch of boots on snow was strangely muted, reminding Logan of an anechoic chamber that deadened every sound.

Something caught his attention, right at the edge of his peripheral vision, tumbling end-over-end as though possessing a personal exemption from the laws of gravity—and of motion as well, Logan realized, as the object accelerated past him, not the slightest bit affected by the resistance of the air it passed through.