Empathy's Echo
Chapter 4
by
NYC
Disclaimer: All X-men and X-villians are Marvel's characters. Please don't sue me.
"Song for a Midwinter's Eve"~ By Sarah McLaughlin
The lamp is burning low upon my table top
The snow is softly falling
The air, still, in the silence of my room
I hear your voice softly calling
If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter's night with you.
The smoke is rising in the shadows of our heads
My glass is almost empty
I read, again, between the lines upon each page
The words of love you're sending
If I could know within my heart
That you were lonely too
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter's night with you.
The fire is dying, my lamp is growing dim
The shades of night are lifting.
The morning light steals across my windowpane
Where wisps of snow are drifting.
If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter's night with you.
And to be once again with you.
Two months later--December
Melody had never been Christmas shopping with a man before. Not in a romantic way, not like a couple. She'd been with her father, whom she had always had to help every year, and Andrew had always wanted to take her Christmas shopping, but she'd never felt comfortable going.
Logan looked rather charming, dressed in his traditional jeans and leather jacket, standing in the middle of the mall with all the Christmas tinsel glory around him. He had a dusting of snow on that curious hairdo of his from where he'd come running in after parking the car--he'd dropped her off to let her get a head start of mapping out where she wanted to go.
Right now, he was watching a stand with moving characters, each one making the same moronic motions over and over again. Melody poked lightly him in the ribs.
"You wanna go sit on Santa's lap?" she teased.
He grinned at her. "You first."
She laughed and shook her head, taking his hand. They stalled a bit until they hit a department store, and Logan's sensitive nose caught the myriad of perfumes.
"Maybe we should go have a look," he said, raising and eyebrow and looking toward the softly-lit displays of expensive-looking bottles. Melody wrinkled her nose.
"I'm allergic to that perfumy stuff, I prefer body sprays." Then she gave him a rather cocky look. "Are you trying to tell me that I stink?"
He laughed. It made his face look so different than the scowling, angry Logan that so many people knew. Melody felt a rush when she realized that it was because of her that he could laugh like that. That she was counted among those he trusted and cherished most and felt he could let down his careful guard around her was better than the best Christmas morning she had ever had. She squeezed his hand.
"No, no," he said, pulling her closer, getting an arm around her. "It's just something I hear women like, having their man buy them perfume."
"Oh really," Melody giggled. "Jean's been giving you advice again."
"Well...not Jean," Logan mumbled, a bit embarrassed.
"Who, Rogue? Jubilee?" Melody's eyebrow arched, her eyes sparkling as she teased him. Jubilee had gotten a bit attached to him since they'd all had to spend all that time together on that Halloween arrangement. And Jubilee was one of the few who was privy to their little secret--but really only because she'd been there. It was only a matter of time before the compulsive gossip cracked. Only fear of death from Rogue was keeping her tongue.
"They're both darlin's, but no," Logan sighed.
"Then who? I know you didn't come up with this on your own."
"Hey," he said, lightly defensive, "you know, I'm not a complete moron when it comes to women."
"Well, you're lucky, because I'm a complete moron when it comes to men."
He kissed the top of her head. "You do just fine, darlin'."
"It was Scott, wasn't it?"
He sighed, heavily. "Yeah."
Melody shook her head. "Better be careful. The two of you might wind up liking each other."
"Never happen," Logan returned, grinning ruefully.
"Oh, I see. He just wants to keep us together so you don't go chasing after Jean again." Perhaps even as little as a month ago, that comment would have been impossible for her to make. But now, Logan knew she was teasing. He got his fingers around her ribcage.
"What was that?" he said, purring into her ear. "Something about another woman?"
"I take it back," Melody said, her nerve endings coming to life underneath his touch.
He wiggled them a bit. "You do?"
"Yes, now stop it!" she almost shrieked. "I'm ultra-ticklish!"
"I know," he returned mischievously. She had to wrap both her hands around his fingers to get him to let her go, and she barely succeeded. In the process, the two of them had wound up tangoing all the way over to the outside wall of a jewelry store. They stood between the glittering windows filled with expensively set stones.
"Knock it off!" she said, but she was still smiling. When he finally let go, she looked around, embarrassed. "We're making a scene."
"Yeah, so what?" he said, getting her close again.
"Well..." and she drifted off, her eyes still on the crowd. She had never liked public displays of affection. It struck her as completely ironic that she, in her own temperament, would be so cagey with emotion, when she could so easily create and manipulate emotions in other people. Feeling was her thing. It made no sense to her why she should want to hide her own self so much. Logan, on the other hand, was turning out to be a real sap. In spite of his overly-male, bad-ass attitude, his strutting and his proclivity for marking his territory, he had absolutely no problem with letting the world know how he felt about...well, at least about her.
"So," he said, deftly changing the subject, "what do you want for Christmas this year?"
She shrugged. "I don't want anything, Logan," she sighed, leaning her head lightly against the wall. "I've got more than I know what do to with as it is."
He wiggled an eyebrow. "Well, thank you."
She giggled. "You know what I mean. But what about you?" She wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her chin on his chest as she gazed up into his face. "What do you want?"
His grin made her insides simmer. "Well," he said, leaning closer to her, but his eyes going up and across the way to the Victoria's Secret. "You see that black lacy thing in the window?"
Melody cocked an eyebrow. "Well, Logan," she said, her eyes dancing with merriment, "I think it'd be a little small on you, but whatever makes you happy, I won't judge." She giggled at the mocking glare he gave her. "And of course, black is definitely your color."
He growled and lowered his head to nip at her neck. Melody tried to smother her laughter, temporarily forgetting that they were still in public.
"Oh, gross," wafted over a voice from the mainstream of traffic. Two figures popped out, one a pretty Asian girl with short cropped hair, and the other with a familiar silver witch's streak. "Look out, Rogue, the old people are making out again."
"Why don't you two just go get a room and get it over with?" Rogue sighed, rolling her eyes.
"Watch who you're calling old," Logan said, lifting his head and sending them both a withering look.
Melody put some air between her and Logan. He let out a little noise of disappointment, and she winked at him. "So what have you two been doing?" she asked casually.
"Ah managed to find something for mah mom," Rogue sighed, looking through her shopping bags, "but nothing's popped up yet for mah dad."
Jubilee gave the two of them a positively evil look. "So what are you two doing for Christmas?" she said. "Making any announcements?" Her eyes had caught on the jewelry display case and Melody followed them. She grinned at Logan.
"What do you think, Wolvie?" Melody asked lightly.
He shrugged. "It's your call, darlin'," he said. Then he shot Jubilee a look. "Although I'd say we'd best do it before she beats us to it."
Rogue elbowed Jubilee. "Trust me," she said, "her lips are sealed. Even if Ah have to use duct tape."
Jubilee threw up her hands. "I haven't said a single word to anyone."
"No, but you're dying to," Rogue reminded her.
"I can't help what I want," Jubilee protested.
"Neither can I," Logan murmured, giving Melody a sideglance. Her cheeks looked like shining apples, but she was still smiling.
Melody sighed. "We'll see how it goes," she said, then grasped Logan's hand. "Come on, we still have to shop."
It was a pleasant memory, Melody reflected that night as she got ready for bed. She was exhausted from going up and down the mall's corridors all that afternoon. Logan never seemed to get tired. In fact, he seemed to be more excited by everything than she was. But neither of them had spent a Christmas with people they really cared about in too long of a time.
Logan had never really done it at all.
It would probably be a good idea, Melody thought as she ran her brush through her hair, to cement the occasion by letting him make their announcement. She hadn't wanted to tell anyone right away, the fear that it would all fall apart the second it hit the light of day preying upon her mind. Even though she was absolutely sure that Logan loved her, she still couldn't help but ask herself why.
She just didn't feel like she deserved him.
They'd talked a lot in the last six weeks, although lately Logan had talked less and less, and was more content to just listen to her. Maybe he'd run out of things to say. He'd never been that much of a talker. She didn't want to push him--she had watched the younger days of her friends' relationships to know that men usually hit the point of contentment sooner than women did. They were happier just being with the person they loved, while the woman still felt like they should be doing something with their time together, at least talking. So many good relationships had never made it past that point. She didn't want that to happen to Logan. She didn't need to hear him talk to her all the time to know what he was thinking, how he felt. He was doing a lot for her as it was, keeping the secret, going to the preparations as she asked...he'd even gone to Church with her on more than one occasion.
Going back to Church had helped her more than she could ever understand. Maybe it was time to take the step forward, to let some control slip out of her tenacious grasp and just put her faith first.
It sounded so easy. What it felt like was like standing on the edge of a precipice with only foggy clouds beneath you and not being able to see how far down it was, but knowing that you had to jump anyway.
She stood up and walked down the corridor to his room. She tapped the door lightly before going in. He was lying on his bed, looking at one of her books. She had to smile in amusement. All the work with the Professor and all the preliminary reading she'd been beating into herself over the last month and a half had somehow piqued his curiosity. He was looking at a book on emotional behaviors. He glanced up at her and wrinkled his nose.
"How can you read this stuff?" he asked, tossing the book aside. "It reads like the back of a cereal box--all those complicated words and listings and psychological lingo. You're going to wind up sounding like Freud."
"Don't worry, I won't try and diagnose you with an Oedipus complex, I promise," she teased.
He grinned at her. "You know, you're lucky I'm pretty easy going--"
"Underneath all that hairy, testosterone-laden exterior," Melody murmured.
He slapped the bed beside him. "Shut up and get over here."
She obeyed, sitting on the edge of the bed and leaning over his torso, folding her hands over the center of his chest and resting her chin on top of them. Logan shifted a bit, his skin rubbing against the soft material of her two-piece pajamas.
"When are you gonna switch to nightgowns?" he whispered.
"As soon as I have someone sleeping with me who cares what I'm wearing," she returned.
He looked into her eyes, and Melody lost herself there for a moment. She remembered how it had happened. She remembered Rogue and Jubilee wanting her desperately to try out the pin-the-tail-on-the-Sabertooth game they had come up with, and had blindfolded her. Logan came up to her and handed her a pin with a tag hanging off the end of it. Then they'd let her go, but Melody could sense Logan dashing out in front of her, trying to be so quiet that she wouldn't even feel it. She didn't--not a single movement of air gave him away. It was only that she could sense the tense excitement in his mind that made her realize he was up to something.
She went along, putting the tail into the soft corkboard with the crayon drawing of Sabertooth on it that Jubilee and Rogue had done up together, making the mutant look particularly foolish. Then she pulled back the blindfold.
Somehow, she had stuck the pin right into the middle of a very beautiful ring--the stone was a brilliant blue, which Logan said later that he'd picked because it reminded him of her eyes. The tag she had used, the one Logan had given her, was not the tail, but instead a card attached by string to the pin. On the card read two words.
*Marry me.*
Melody chuckled to herself as she came back to where she was, with Logan, on his bed. She had gotten the sappiest she had ever been in her life, crying and laughing and kissing him all at once. His smile softened, realizing what she'd been thinking about. His hand went to her stomach, caressing it lightly.
"So," he whispered.
"Yeah," she replied, answering his unspoken question. "Yes, Logan. You just say when."
He arched his head forward, pulling her face in closer for a kiss. "If you're sure," he murmured as he pulled away. "I'll do it at dinner."
"With your usual charm and grace," Melody said sardonically.
"I can be pretty charming and graceful when I want to be," he returned, ruffling her hair.
"Well, just don't make it a habit."
The main room of the mansion had been beautifully strewn with lights of all colors. So many that no lamps were needed--in the evenings all that lit the room was the gorgeous multi- colored glitter of the Christmas tree and its accompaniments. The kids had all taken a turn at their own unique arrangement of the strings, and they had come up with some pretty interesting ideas.
Melody's eyes traveled over it from where she lay on the carpet, where the fire was dying. The kids were scattered here and there, doing various Christmas preparations--the Christmas break had started a few days ago, and the house was a bit empty. A lot of the younger children just couldn't bear to be apart from their parents for the holiday, no matter what the cost, so they would travel back for the special day and then come home late the day after. It was a hard holiday, Melody realized as she caught the emotions that flittered to and fro across the wide, comfortable sitting areas of the main room. Joy and sorrow seemed to blend together in a deliciously curious mix. She had to remind herself to dampen her powers, or else she would overload. She was getting better at the dampening part.
She heard the soft padding of Logan's feet as he came into the room. He had on his black breeches and a sweatshirt with an X over his heart--the same sweatshirt, he claimed, that he stole from the uniform room the first day he had woken up in this place, being attended to by Jean Grey. The joke was that once Logan had stretched it out, it couldn't fit anyone else.
She had a fluttering memory of lying on a living room floor that was hundreds of miles away, in another country, even, and Logan coming up to her...no, not Logan. Ferro.
They hadn't talked about that much. Since their experience of the discovery of their mental bond, she had just accepted that he was Logan and had called him such. It didn't matter where the name came from. It was his, one of the few things he had in this world.
Other than her.
He dropped to his hands and knees beside her, then stretching out to lean on his arms and lie flat on his stomach. He turned to gaze into her face, pushing back the stray hairs that fell across her cheeks.
"An X-pin for your thoughts," he teased. She smiled at him and fingered the gleaming silver and black enameled X that she wore around her neck. They had given it to her after she'd gotten better from her encounter with Toad. She was one of them, whether she wore a uniform or not. She had proven herself somehow, they said.
Somehow, in the back of her mind, she doubted it.
"I dunno," she sighed, shutting her eyes. "They're cooking something in the kitchen, aren't they?" she mused.
Logan smiled. "Dinner." He looked out the window. "This time o'year always threw me off," he sighed. "Get's late so quick, don't even feel like dinnertime."
"Who's cooking?" Melody asked raising her head slightly. "Diana went home yesterday afternoon to be with her father." The cook, to no one's intimate knowledge except Melody's, had a rough holiday to face--her father's first one without her mother. Melody had persuaded both Diana and Prof. Xavier to let her go home early and help her dad through it. It had been almost a personal crusade.
"Jean and Scott," Logan snickered. "I can't wait to see what they get."
"Smells almost like shrimp," Melody commented, laying her head back again. The smell grew more intense for a moment, and she shut her eyes, her mind suddenly drifting back to a time...
On the floor of her living room she had stretched out, just nineteen, her cheeks glowing red. She had just spent her evening in the company of the best friends she had ever had, and they'd been at a coffee house, enjoying the snowfall that would give them a white Christmas. Her sister was there, flipping through a book, her father was watching television, her mother was making shrimp creole, a dish they always had a few days before Christmas, because it was simple. The only lights were the ones of the Christmas tree and the archways where her mother compulsively hung strands and strands of lights every year, as well as the ones in the window. She'd enjoyed her friends, but toward the end the strain of being around them was just too much after a while. Here, she felt safe and protected. Everyone was in their own world, doing their own thing, but soon it would be Christmas.
She had felt safe and happy. That had been only seven or so months before she'd cracked and taken off. She hadn't felt that way again in years upon years.
Until now.
"Hey," Logan whispered, his face close to hers, his lips grazing her cheek. "Are you okay? Where did you go?"
She turned into him, her hand idly going up and running through those strange curling points on top of his head, the ones that would never go away. "I'm fine," she said, and he brushed her cheeks with his thumb. Only then did she realize she'd been crying.
Puzzled, he patiently waited for her to explain. Instead, she pushed even deeper into him, and he rolled onto his back, letting her rest against his chest. The tears wet the thick fabric of the sweatshirt, turning warm against his ribs. She took several minutes to regain herself--through the bond, he couldn't even tell if she was really upset. Her emotions were so mixed it was impossible to untangle them without actually being a telepath. But whatever it was, it had been powerful.
Finally, she lifted her head, and her eyes caught the colors of the Christmas tree, making them literally glitter. "When are we going to tell them?" she whispered.
"Christmas Eve," he reminded her.
"Do you think you could do it any sooner?" she asked quietly.
He smiled, just a bit. "Well, this is a switch. What's the rush?"
She looked around. "Maybe we should tell just Jean and Scott and the others," she suggested.
"Why?" Logan asked, raising his head a bit.
She looked down. "I don't want to turn us both into targets," she said, her voice slightly rough. "I mean, word gets out, who knows how many moles Magneto has lurking around?" She shook her head. "I just keep having this terrible feeling, over and over." She pulled away from him as her joy and warm fuzzies were ultimately squashed by the disturbance she had been trying so hard to push from her mind for the last week. Over and over, without any pictures or concrete evidence, she just kept getting this awful feeling...and it happened every time she thought about--
"I don't think it's about Magneto," he said as he sat up. He looked at her, very hard. "I think it's about your parents."
It was a softly spoken accusation, but it felt like an accusation nonetheless. She abruptly turned back to him, surprised. "What makes you say that?"
He scowled a bit. "Come on, Mel. I'm not stupid, and I know you too well."
She glowered a bit. She didn't know how he could know her so well and still love her. She didn't know how he could know her so well when they'd only been together for less than three months of their almost-sixteen-year relationship. And why were her emotions so abruptly turning over and spoiling this peaceful evening? If they didn't get it under control they could wind up calling everyone's attention to them, and Melody really hated it when that happened.
He took her silence. For what, she wasn't sure, but he took it. Strangely enough, in spite of the growls and the glowering, he really wasn't angry. Finally, he said, "Do you want to try and find them?"
It surprised her. "Find them?" she echoed. "How?"
"The old fashioned way," he replied with a wry smile. "Look."
Melody considered this. The thought of looking for her parents, each time it had fluttered into her mind, had always been discarded because of many reasons--fear, lack of funds, lack of knowledge of where they were, unwillingness to go traipsing all over the country only to find the thing she dreaded most--but the key one was that she was unwilling to do it alone. She just didn't have it in her. She had never, ever wanted to ask for Andrew's help--that thought mortified her for reasons she didn't understand but felt perfectly clearly.
"You mean," she said, hesitantly, "you'd go look for them with me?"
"Yeah," he said, reaching out and taking her hand. "Hell, Mel, who else is gonna give you away?"
Jean and Scott managed to deep fry a few vats of shrimp and served it with french fries and cocktail sauce. They sat around a few tables in the dinning room and ate, along with the few students who were left. Logan quietly asked Jean, Scott, Ororo, Rogue (along with Jubilee, who had to be nearly gagged to get her to shut up) and a few others, as well as the Professor, if they would be willing to meet in the study after dinner. Puzzled, they all agreed. If they had realized that Melody was cheating, dampening their curiosity with just a very light touch, they might have all figured out what he wanted to tell them.
"We're getting married," Logan said, raising the thick crystal brandy glass as he stood beside Melody's chair, in front of the Professor's desk. What followed what a series of congratulations, kisses and hugs for the happy couple (and on the rarest of occasions, Scott actually hugged Logan, which all agreed was a sure sign of the coming apocalypse), and the inevitable question from Jean--
"Where's the ring?"
Logan smirked at Melody, who smirked back, and then reached down and pulled up her button down shirt, which she never tucked in. Around her belly, which had grown a bit smaller since her time here with the X-Men, was encircled with a delicate silvery chain, and on that chain was the ring that Logan had given to her. It hung right by her bellybutton.
This was a new development that not even Rogue had been aware of. "Why there?" she asked.
Melody sighed. "It was a stupid thing, really," Melody said. "I was teasing Logan, saying that I'd always wanted a belly button ring." She gave him a sideglance as he recalled the memory with the slightest hint of a blush. "Well, when he gave me the ring, he gave me the chain as well, and said that not every girl could brag that their fiancee had given them a belly ring for an engagement ring. Plus," she added, "it was the best way I could think to keep it secret."
"A wise idea," Prof. Xavier mused. "Perhaps even wiser still to have it remain a secret from the public."
"You mean from Magneto," Melody said in a low voice.
Xavier nodded. "Perhaps a good defense is the best offense at this point. Please, guard yourselves carefully, and report anything you find suspicious."
There was an awkward pause. Obviously, Prof. Xavier had been very distracted since Magneto's escape and resurfacing. They dispersed after a while, and went about the rest of their pre-Christmas business. In a bit, the festive mood managed to return.
Melody jumped on the bandwagon of the idea that she could somehow locate her parents, but the thought filled her with a terrible anxiety that she couldn't quite understand. Her first inclination was to call her old telephone number, but the line was listed as no longer in service.
But the house had been burned to the ground. The memory was painful. She hadn't called it into her mind in a while. She had gone back, once. Saw the ruins. Saw the fence and the "lot for sale" sign. She'd asked around to learn that they were going to tear down the rest of the house, but some mysterious benefactor had bought the property, and wouldn't take down the "lot for sale" sign. She never found out who owned it. She suspected Andrew. She never asked him.
Then she tried something a bit more tactful. Her parents had had an email account, which they could have easy reactivated on another computer. She tried to contact them, but within fifteen minutes the message had come right back to her, "address unknown." She had the brilliant idea of sending a postcard to the old lot in hopes that maybe, by some slim chance, it might get forwarded, but she knew that was a useless hope, as it was confirmed right after Christmas.
It was a beautiful Christmas Eve. They had dinner, acted like a real family. They exchanged gifts, drank wine, brought down the rest of their exchanges and arranged them under the tree for Christmas morning. The whole simple process moved Melody beyond what she expected. She could only watch in silence most of the time, too overcome with her emotions to speak.
Logan noticed. He noticed everything about her. He tried to distract her, talking to her about maybe teaching her some self-defense moves. They spent a good portion of the afternoon on Christmas Eve down in the gym, going over some basics. She didn't mind doing something so unorthodox on Christmas Eve--it helped clear her head. He appreciated it, too, as all this holiday closeness made him a bit uncomfortable.
After the gifts had been exchanged and everyone parted for the final wait until Christmas morning, Logan slipped into the kitchen, waiting for Melody to come and find him. She did, after hugging Rogue goodnight, and as she entered the kitchen she realized that he had turned off all the lights, leaving only the strings that Rogue had insisted be hung around the bottom of the cabinets. Off the reflective metal and white porcelain, the lights gave the room a very interesting look.
"Okay," she whispered, her voice carrying in the dim, colorful light, "I know you're up to something, Mr. Grinch."
"Bah Humbug," he teased.
She giggled and shook her head. "No, that's Scrooge. The Grinch was a Dr. Suess story." She looked up at him, getting closer to him with slow, even steps. "Did you ever read it?"
"If I did, I don't remember," he sighed, his hands going to her shoulders and pushing back her hair. His thumbs idly danced across her clavicles, sending chills through her.
"Then I'll have to read it to you sometime," she whispered. "You'd like it. He's your kind of guy."
"Bad tempered?"
"And hairy," she added with a wink.
"Hmmm..." he lowered his head, placing his cheek so that it just lightly brushed across hers, their noses lightly touching. The hair she spoke of scratched over her skin, thick but soft. She smiled at a memory that wasn't so far away from her at present. "You know you love me like this."
"I certainly do," she said, kissing the corner of his mouth. He turned a bit into the kiss, but just then she shifted just out of his reach. "Now...what are you up to?"
He let his breath run out through his nostrils and it floated warmly across the bridge of her nose. "I wanted to give you your Christmas present."
He had told her before that he wanted to give it to her in private. They'd gotten a bit of a teasing from the others during the gift exchange, especially from Scott, who was curious as to how much of a mushball the Wolverine really was underneath all that muscle.
"Now?" Melody said. "But it's not Christmas yet."
Logan glanced at a nearby clock. The large hands were almost folded over each other in an upright position. "By the time I get done kissing you, it will be," he growled, low and velvety, and he was true to his word.
When they finally parted, before Melody had finished catching her breath, she felt Logan slipping something around her neck. She looked down, and a small, glittering crucifix lay on her chest, intricately carved and absolutely beautiful.
"I hope you like it," he said as she picked it up. "I don't know...somethin' about it just told me that it was fer you."
Speechless, Melody tried to swallow over the lump in her throat. There was no way he could have known..."Thank you," she managed, her voice trembling.
"Well, it ain't all that," he said, taken a bit by her sudden surge of emotion. "I just wanted to...I don't know. I think you do, though."
She nodded. Finally able to breathe, she began to explain. "I had a cross just like this when I received my First Communion. You know what that is?"
"Yeah, I remember," he said, thinking of their preparation meetings with that priest.
"Well, I always wore it. For years and years and years. I never wore anything else. And then I got a job working fast food, and one day, it was irritating me so I took it off and put it in my breast pocket. When I got home, it was gone. It wasn't anywhere around the store, and I think what happened was that it slid out of my pocket when I bent over and then got swept underneath the grill or something. I was...devastated. I never saw another cross like it. I never wanted anything else, either." She looked down. "I think that was when I really started to loose touch with a lot of things." Her eyes came back up to him. "I don't know if you can really understand what this means to me, Logan."
He nodded, running the tip of his finger across her lips. "You don't have to explain, darlin'," he murmured. "I do understand. An' I feel the same way."
The smell of roasting duck with cherry preserves hit Melody as soon as they came through the door on Christmas morning. Logan was covered with snow--it dusted his hair like sugar, giving him a rather awkward look. He'd borrowed a suitcoat from Scott to go to church with her, and it was a bit small on him, so that didn't help either. Rogue agreed with Melody, though--he looked adorable. But now it was a bit too much for him, and he had to take the thing off, getting snow all over the carpet, causing a bit flurry of it to surround him and flutter like a cloud of diamond dust.
Melody headed for the kitchen. She felt a little guilty, leaving everyone else to deal with the meal preparation while she and Logan had slipped off to church. But after last night, Christmas morning had been rather anti-climactic, and getting away for a bit had been so good-- for more reasons than one. Still, now she was back and she had as much responsibility to chip in as anyone.
Rogue caught her right before she could dive into the kitchen. "Help me set the table," she said, her silver streak particularly bright that morning. She realized it was because Jubilee had given Rogue an assortment of accessories, one of which was hair glitter. The closer Melody looked, the better she could pick out the distinct red and green Christmas colors that sparkled in Rogue's dark locks.
They went to the cabinets with the Professor's carefully obtained permission and pulled down the heavy stacks of dishes. Logan had gone to his room to change--the shirt and pants were handsome, but he longed for his broken-in jeans and the sleek, black, designer shirt that Rogue and Jubilee had pitched in to get him. It had been expensive. Melody hoped that the cost would mean it would last for a long time, considering the sort of punishment Logan usually gave his clothing.
Melody had just gotten to arranging the crystal goblets that the Professor only let them use on the most special of occasions when Logan came into the room. She nearly dropped a glass.
"Wow," she murmured.
Rogue paused, looking Logan over. "Glad to see the shirt fits," she said, her voice rather dreamy.
He rubbed his hand over the material at his stomach. "You think it's me?" he asked with a rather rakish grin.
Melody carefully set the glass down. "You look," she said, searching for the right word, "extremely, extremely--"
"Extremely," Rogue added for good measure.
"--sexy."
It was Rogue's turn to jump a bit. "Ouch," she said. "That wasn't quiet where Ah was goin'...but Ah guess it'll do."
"Will it?" Logan asked, arching an eyebrow at Melody.
"You look more like a rogue than Rogue," Melody teased. "Now get that grin off your face and get the silverware. Plenty of time to drool--I mean gawk---I mean---"
"Later," Rogue said, leaving the room. "Ah don't wanna watch you two make out again." She said it extra loud, causing Melody to flush.
Logan laughed. He couldn't help himself.
The day passed like one long, huge dinner. No one was in a hurry for anything, not even the clean-up. Melody and Jean and Rogue were drafted into doing the dishes, and since Jean had not really done much outside of make the stuffing--Scott had been in charge of just about everything else, much to his chagrin, after a straw-drawing about two weeks before the actual holiday--she took it upon herself to get the dishes to the kitchen. She made them float. It was the first time anyone had seen the Professor actually sweat. Logan commented that she'd had a few too many glasses of wine at dinner. It didn't help the Professor's confidence.
The week passed into New Years. Melody covered up her disappointment over the returned postcard, but had known from the beginning that it was a futile move. She didn't know enough about computers to do any intense searching, and doing her independent study for her degree was beginning to pile up on her. She hadn't been in school for so long, she wondered if she'd be able to handle it. It soon distracted her, and it was almost Valentine's Day when the Professor approached her.
It was in the middle of one of their training sessions. He'd caught the thought in the back of her head, and then nonchalantly said, "You know, Melody, I have some good connections in the computer industry. I have several slicing wizards at my disposal. They could help us in finding your parents, if you'd like. It will take time, but--"
Melody shook her head. "I'll have to think about it, Professor," she said. "I don't want people to go through all this trouble just for me."
Xavier gave her a look. "Now we're not going down that road again, are we?" he chastised.
She smiled at him. "I just don't want to be a pain," she said. "I'm sure those hackers have better things to do."
He shrugged. "If they're going to invade the F.B.I.'s database anyway, I just thought having them look around for your parents while they were there might be of some help to us."
She chuckled. "All right, if they see anything, then great. But I don't want--"
"Yes, I know, them going to any trouble," the Professor finished. "If I'm not mistaken, you have an exam over aberrant behaviors in two weeks. Perhaps you should begin your reading now."
Winter turned into spring. Melody had a small entourage behind her as she went shopping for her wedding dress. The wedding was set for the last day of April, but it had a strange, unearthly feeling attached to it for the bride-to-be. It was like a beautiful dream, one that wasn't real, that was going to crumble the second she reached for it, unable to be touched.
School got harder. Logan found her one night, sleeping, curled up in a chair in the quietest corner of Xavier's study. He seemed to have leased the room out to her, she was in here so much. Almost more than the Professor himself.
Logan bent over her and she stirred, murmuring his name. Her eyes opened, and she blinked, trying to get them to focus.
"You should be in bed," he admonished her.
"No, I had to study," she said, her voice in that low, dragging, half-asleep tone.
"A heck of a lot of good it's doin' ya, sittin' in here, sleeping on yer book," he growled, turning off the lights around her. He took her book away, and she promptly folded her arms and legs up into a fetal position, her eyes draping shut again. "Ya gonna learn by osmosis or something?"
She laughed, although in her drowsy state it was no more than a quick shudder down her body. "If I move," she said, "I'm gonna wake up."
He grinned and bent over her, turning off the lamp beside her and then scooping her up into his arms. He made it all the way to her room before she spoke again.
"Have you heard anything?" she asked as he pulled the covers on top of her. "About my parents?"
He paused. "No, darlin'. You know you'd be the first one I'd tell if there was." It had been delegated to him, agreed upon by both Melody and Professor Xavier, that if any news of her parents should surface, he would be the contact, and the one to tell her. It seemed easier this way, easier on Melody, to know that someone she was as close to as Logan was watching out for this particularly delicate aspect of her life. Xavier was, realistically, too busy to do it himself, although he would have liked to. Logan was still settling into a pattern of life at the school, and as a result his time was more flexible. Plus no one wanted to pin him down anywhere until after the wedding. He was really too jittery to try anything like that. Melody teased him regularly, saying that if he wanted to back out he'd better do it quick, because once he said, "I do, you're done."
He had no intention of backing out. To her surprise, it wasn't that he was nervous. He was excited. It was flattering to her...the brightest spot of her current life, considering everything else. That and the swords.
On Valentine's day, Logan took her down to the Danger room and shown her Prof. Xavier's collection of swords. They were rather exotic, some of them, but others were beautiful, extremely deadly, and entirely useful weapons. For her valentine, he'd formed a heart made of red tape on the floor, with one of the swords sticking upright out the center. It was a samurai sword, a Katana. It had a beautiful white ivory handle, and the metal blade practically sang when it was pulled from its equally beautiful holder.
"I'm going to teach you how to use this," Logan said, grinning at her.
She took the sword from him. "You're serious?" she asked.
He nodded. "You're a bit too slight to do any serious hand to hand combat damage, although you're not bad," he added, "but I think that maybe something like this might be more your style."
"If I'm not strong enough to swing my fist," she said, "how am I gonna be strong enough to swing both my fist and this thing?"
"That's the point, darlin'," he said, getting behind her, putting her hands in the right place, posing her stance into a more warrior-like position."You don't gotta be stronger to fight with one of these. You just gotta be smarter and faster. And it doesn't hurt at all," he added, but she finished for him--
"--if I can feel my opponent's moves." She beamed. "You think I can use my empathic power to help me learn how to use a sword?"
"I think it's worth a try," he said. "I know what you and Chuck have been doing," he added. "He knows your powers are a lot more versatile than we ever thought."
"We?" Melody echoed with an arched eyebrow.
He tightened his grip on her waist with the hand had had been resting idly on her hip. "You know what I mean."
"Yeah, I do." She let him guide her through a few more practice moves, and then broke away from him. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure," he said, but he had a feeling...
"Have they said why they can't find my parents?"
He'd expected this question sooner. "Well," he began, "there're a lot o'problems. First of all, finding the names isn't a problem. But they can't find a trail that leads to them. It's like they're hidin' for some reason."
"Hiding?" she whispered. Her stomach began to sink. Hiding. They'd been hiding because of what she had done, because like a fool she had gone to the house and not just stayed in the hotel. They had had to go into hiding and give up their lives because she had ruined the old one.
"Now don't go doin' that, darlin'," he said, taking the sword from her and holding her close to him. "It's not as bad as all that. But people who go into witness protection--"
"Witness protection?" she cried. He could hear her heartbeat accelerate.
"We don't know, we just suspect." He paused, turning into his own clouded memories. "You know, I've seen a lot of things in my wanderings, and I know that havin' people like the ones who kidnapped us knowin' where you live is never a good thing. Whatever happened, the authorities got involved, and your parents vanished. Whether they did it on their own or they were relocated, the hackers can't seem to tell yet. And when witness protection says protection, it means it's gonna take a while for even expert hackers to find out where they're hidin'. They need time to crack this nut. It ain't gonna be easy, but they think they can do it."
"Given enough time," Melody whispered. "Oh God...I hope I don't crack first."
*Me too,* Logan thought, then banished it before Melody felt it.
St. Patrick's day came and went. April was just beginning, and the wedding plans went into full swing. No word came about Melody's parents. She began to get angry, burying herself in her work, not even wanting to deal with all the fuss over the wedding menu and the bridesmaids dresses, even though everything was in and set to go. Logan began to wonder if she was having second thoughts, until one night, when they were enjoying their first peaceful evening together in a full week, she let her thoughts slip out.
"I just wonder," she said, as she sat on the couch of the main room, long after everyone had gone to bed, with Logan's head in her lap, her fingers entwined in his thick hair. She had been scratching him and rubbing his tired muscles after a long hard day in the Danger Room.
Picking up on the disturbance in her voice, Logan asked, "You wonder what?" Softly, so softly he wouldn't have heard her if he hadn't had enhanced senses, "If maybe they're dead."
He raised his head and she lost her grip. "You think that someone would've--that They would've done that?" he asked.
"Some people strongly believe in the 'no witnesses' policy. We don't know for sure who the people who took us were. Not even Andrew knew for sure, I don't think."
Logan's expression tightened. "You think maybe we should track him down and ask him?"
Melody tensed. "What do you mean?"
"Well," and he shrugged, as much as he could as he was half-lying on her, "it just seems silly to wonder 'bout this stuff when we can go ask somebody."
"But," she pressed, "it wouldn't be just that, you realize."
He nodded. "I know. Maybe...maybe it's time." He shrugged again, setting his head back down on her thigh. "Maybe I'm just babblin' out loud. Maybe I'm just tired of watching you walk around in this funk when our wedding is just a few weeks away. A guy could get the impression that you don't want to go through with this."
She smiled down at him, running her hand along his cheek. "A guy could...but you know that's not true." She looked away, her eyes tearing up a bit. "It's just that a part of me still feels so empty. It's always been hard for me to do things half-way, Logan. I've always been an all-or- nothing person. And with having a life here now, I just can't let myself---" she shook her head, fumbling for the right words. "It's like trying to build a house on top of a graveyard. The house maybe the most beautiful and happy home in the world, but--"
"But you gotta move the bodies first, or else it's gonna make a huge stink later," he finished for her. He wrinkled his nose. "That's a gruesome metaphor if I've ever heard one."
"Yeah," she agreed, "but it fits."
"Then it's settled. We're going."
"I don't know--"
"Look, you don't have any school work for the next three weeks. We've got two of them until the wedding. On Scott's bike, we could cross the country and be back by Saturday. I'd say we should wait until after the wedding, but I don't wanna be makin' vows with all this hangin' over us. And it's both of us, darlin'," he added. "I've got more ghosts to face, too. Your life and my life were twined together from the beginning of this mess. Whatever we do, we gotta do it together."
She bent over and kissed the corner of his mouth. "I love you, you know that?"
He reached over and fingered the engagement ring, which still hung at her belly button. "Well, I'd hope so," he said, "I don't give out trinkets like this to just anybody."
It came as a surprise to all the others the next day, that Logan and Melody would think to make such a grueling trip, especially before such a monumental occasion. But understanding their strange relationship was something they all figured out was nearly impossible, so Scott loaned his bike again, without too many questions, other than, "How long?"
"Hopefully a week, maybe a few days longer," Logan replied.
"What about the wedding?" Jean asked.
Melody shrugged. "It'll still be here when we get back," she answered.
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