[ficlet] X-Men: Clair Obscur
Oct. 17th, 2014 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kandai_suikakandai_suikaTomorrow uncolored by the shining past
He dreams of Jean sometimes.
In his dreams – nightmares – memories, oh, he wishes they were, he wishes they were – she is every bit of the woman he remembers: beautiful, soft but with a core of steel, an edge of determination that had made him fall in love with her in the first place. She is walking in the light, in the soft light of an imaginary sunset and her body is gently pressed against his, warm and perfect, but when he looks at her face, there is darkness in her eyes, a shadow who tells tales of power and fire, fire – and Logan wakes up, his face numbed by the coldness of a bed made of stones.
There are tears on his cheeks when he wakes. More than he would have thought for someone who had lived countless and countless of lifetimes – and he is tired, tired of breathing, tired of crying, tired of remembering his losses every night – but he stopped caring about tears and broken hearts a long time ago so he dries them and gets up – up, he needs to get up.
Sometimes, he dreams of other things. Happier things – a place he dared to call home in the silence of his mind, people he thought as friends or a sort of mismatched family. Somehow, it hurts more than dreaming of Jean because Logan doesn’t know if the laughter and the touches are a dream, a memory or both. Somehow, it hurts more than feeling Jean’s dying again and again in his arms because he can’t remember the fading warm of her body against his but he still remembers the good time, the inescapable sense of rightness.
Jean had never kissed him like she does in this fucked up fantasy his mind has brought up but he remembers the time when Ororo threw her arms around him or the roughness of Kurt’s hand gently patting his arm; he remembers the determined look in Marie’s eyes when she went to take the serum, the always-confused face of her moronic boyfriend and all the kids calling him “Professor Logan”, even when his lessons looked more like a camping trip into the Amazon jungle than academic classes.
Stupid kids and their manners. He is no more professor now than he was back then and every time someone called him like this, he always felt like usurping a title that should have belonged only to the Prof and himself alone.
Now, he feels hollow when he remembers that Kitty Pryde burst in tears when she called Ororo “Professor” for the first time after… well, after.
Sometimes, Logan dreams of him – the Prof.
In this particular dream, he’s back at the Mansion – he often is. The halls are empty, bathed in quietness but not of the oppressive kind; Logan walks with the feeling that if he pushes the right door, he will see a class full of students eagerly listening to Ororo’s lecture or a kitchen full of giggling teenagers enraptured by one of Scott’s stories. Sometimes, he sees Marie’s at a corner and she has a mischievous look in her eyes, a smile that can bright an entire day; she’s happy, proud and beautiful, the embodiment of everything he wanted for her. He can only pray she is, wherever she decided to do.
Sometimes, Logan pushes a door and steps into a familiar office, his heart heavy with dread of finding it empty.
It isn’t. It never is.
When he tries to remember the Prof, he always ends up picturing him as a busy man, giving lectures, grading student’s papers or discussing with someone about the troubles they had with the government or Magneto or whatever causes them problems, but this Charles Xavier, the one who still lives in his broken mind – broken heart – is simply looking at him with an obvious fondness, like he expects Logan to be there. The sun leaves little spots of light on his face, somehow softening his solemn expression. He greets him with a knowing smile; sometimes, he doesn’t speak at all.
Logan wants to tell Charles – the one in his mind, memory, the one he never got the chance to tell, tell, tell before it’s too late – that he is deeply missed by everyone who knew him. He wants to tell him how proud he would be of his students who carry his dream as if it’s theirs, how bright their future seems to be. He wants to tell him he left a gap behind, an open wound that refuses to heal no matter how hard he tries to forget.
But it would be useless, wouldn’t it be? The Prof would never know all of this, because his mentor – his friend is dead; sometimes, the realization is painful enough to waking him up, a howl full of grief rising in the back of his throat and hot tears shamefully burning his cheeks. Sometimes, he wakes up with the urging need to destroy something because the last thing Charles Xavier left him was a smile and an empty wheelchair and that’s not fucking fair. He wakes up angry at the whole world, at the Prof for being a damn martyr and confronting Phoenix alone, at Magneto for stirring up her anger, mostly at himself for letting all of it happen.
Sometimes, he doesn’t wake up and the ghost of Charles looks at him as if he knew everything that happened in San Francisco and after – of course this is totally something he would do, the sorry bastard – and there is darkness in his eyes too, not like the one he saw in Phoenix’s eye but darkness born over sadness and pain, so much pain –
It fucking hurts.
He says it then because he can’t stay silent any longer; he says it in front of Charles’ memory or whatever illusion his grieving mind has created, he says he wants to forget, for the pain to fade into scars and into blissful nothingness, for the memory to disappear and oblivion to claim him. He says he is tired to outlive the people he came to respect and to love – loved, loves still – and the Charles in his dreams is still gently smiling at him, a quiet sorrow gradually setting over his face while Logan is slowly baring his – angered, battered, oh so lonely – soul.
And when his breath falls short, when his voice stutters and halts, when he finally falls silent because he doesn’t have any more words to express the rage – the grief – the emptiness he feels then suddenly, he finds himself kneeling on the floor, his face cradled by a pair of strong hands.
It’s an odd gesture, one he can’t remember the Prof doing so it must be a dream after all but this is his mind, the last jail of his sanity, so Logan mentally send all tiny bit of reluctance straight to hell and leans into the touch. The hands move in comforting circles, smoothing the creased lines over his forehead and it should be weird except it isn’t, not really, because it’s Charles and he trusts him.
This is the man who looked into his mind and chose to help him despite everything he saw in the dipshit he must have instead of a soul. This is the man who gave him the place he called home, the people he called family, the friends he could have called beloved. If he can’t trust Charles Xavier, he can’t trust anybody.
“My dear Logan.” the Prof whispers; his tone is tender, full of a forgotten compassion and Logan wants nothing more than hearing this voice again. “My friend, how I wish you hadn’t lost so much.”
“Come back.” Logan wants to say. “Stop haunting my dreams. Stop – stop being dead, damn it, you fucking martyr.”
He stays silent but he has the feeling that Charles hears it anyway.
The dream doesn’t go further or if it does, Logan doesn’t remember it. He wakes up with Charles’ soft words in his ears and a burning ache in his knuckles, the pain like a grim reminder of who he is now: a man who had known of love, of its multiple faces, of the hollowness it leaves behind when lost.
It hurts, of course, but Logan never seems to remember how much.
It’s probably strange to seek the meager comfort of an illusion such as the one he sees in his dreams, be it in Jean’s warm body or Charles’ tender touch, but Logan has too many sorrows to share and not enough fucks to give, memories with graves he doesn’t visit talking in his empty head. Who cares about it? It’s not like he can’t slit his skull open to free the ghosts lurking behind his skin.
He thinks about it sometimes but it would probably be a waste of time and pain and he has so much of those, he can tell it won't make any difference.
In the end, he is still breathing and Jean's blood is on his claws. In the end, he is still alone and Charles only left him a smile and a empty wheelchair.
Sometimes, he dreams of Jean’s smile and how she could brighten an entire room simply by walking in. Sometimes, he dreams of Charles’ gentle hands and words of faith, of how he could bring up the better in everyone, even those who were deemed lost. Sometimes, the dreams and the memories – of another life, a better life, of a time when he was oh, so much loved – are enough to make the day go by.
But for every time the sorrow wins, when he ends up curling up on his bed made of stone and dirt, Logan can’t keep himself from hoping he won’t dream at all.
