14

Logan jolted awake, still in darkness, and almost painfully disoriented.

“Jeannie?” He asked, momentarily forgetting he was strapped down to the table and trying to sit up.

The metal fell away from his head and wrists, and when they hit the floor they shattered into dust, as if they were a million years old. What the fuck?

“Jean?” He repeated, and suddenly realized he could only smell two things: superheated air, and blood.

Looking around and brushing the dust of his former shackles off of him, he saw he was in a lab of some sort, all chromed-steel and glass, a sterile dungeon. There were three bodies on the floor, but only two had heads. A huge splatter of blood decorated the far wall, along with a clump of lavender hair. Delirium’s head had exploded like Timebomb had come in the door while he was out cold.

He looked around in mild disbelief. Was this another mindscape scenario?  But how could it be?  Jean wouldn’t do something like this to him … would she?

He confirmed one of the dead men on the floor was Dorn before walking out the door, popping his claws preemptively. The funny thing was, while Delirium’s head had obviously burst, there was no signs of violence done to Dorn or the other man; they were simply dead.

He knew when he smelled the charred air and death in the hallway that there was no longer any need for caution, or for his sprung claws.  Jean had hit the entire base. “What have you done?” He asked, horrified. The only noise was the thrum of the air conditioner, echoing through building as quiet as a graveyard, until his claws retracted with a quiet wet noise.

Walking down the metal halls in an aimless fashion, he eventually came across bodies - soldiers fallen where they had been walking, caught in mid-stride by … what?

By Jean - whatever she was, whoever she was.

After a moment, he decided to find whatever passed for a control center here, but even as he walked around there was a sense of being lost, even when he had a vague idea where he was going.  Jean couldn’t have done this - she didn’t kill.

“I would do this, not you,” he said aloud, even though he knew she was no longer here.  But he was just trying to understand what must have happened while he was out.  And just how long was he out?

The control room was full of dead people, mostly slumped on control panels, their wall of small television and computer monitors showing nothing but static and idiot cursors blinking on empty black screens. There wasn’t even white noise coming over the speakers, because the transmitters were completely, utterly blown.

Logan idly pushed one of the corpses out of its chair, and it hit the floor with a dull thud.  He sat in the  recently occupied seat, attempting to bring something up on any screen, but of course it was pointless. 
Everything had beenl destroyed.

Jean had killed the entire base - machines as well as people.

Some small, logical part of his mind tried to figure out how she could have done that.  If she'd manifested, she could … what?  Send out an electromagnetic pulse?  That would probably do it.  She would've had
to shield him from it somehow, but surely she could have managed that. Just like she could have managed to molecularly destabilize his shackles; she could have done that last bit even before she got Camaxtli’s powers...

...Camaxtli.

Logan rested his head in his hands, and wondered if - dead or not - Camaxtli had had the last laugh on
all of them.  Bastard.  Camaxtli should have taken him; why hadn’t he taken him?

He didn’t know how long he sat there, wondering if he should mourn Jean’s loss or not.  Maybe it was
an accident; maybe she was a hell of a lot stronger than she'd thought. Even she had told him she was afraid she couldn’t control her powers.  That had to have been what happened.  She didn’t mean to wipe everything out. Maybe, briefly, she'd been like him - she'd lost her temper, and everything in the immediate area had paid dearly for it.

Why was he finding that so hard to swallow?

He felt the vibrations in the building’s metal shell, but he didn’t actually care if he had company or not. He’d take care of them or he wouldn’t - maybe all the dead bodies would scare them off.  It was pretty apparent everyone had died without a struggle; no one had even had the potential to fight back against whatever overwhelming force had just wiped them all off the face of the world.  Even knowing who they were, Logan felt a little sorry for them, dying suddenly without a chance to fight or flee.

Thanks to the forced air running through the complex, he caught their scents as soon as they were inside, and while he was mildly surprised - were there really any surprises left? - he couldn’t be bothered to get up.   He felt completely wiped out, like he’d had all the life kicked out of him.

After a moment, the door slid open, and he found himself looking down the barrels of twin Glocks. “Hey Marc,” he said, still not bothering to get up.

Marcus raised his guns, prior to holstering them. “Man, what did you do?”

He held his hands wide before letting them fall, and stared at the static filling up the t.v. screen with digital snow. “I didn’t do anything. You don’t see any blood, do you?”

Marc came inside, and Storm appeared in the doorway, along with Spider (what the fuck was he doing here?). “If you didn’t do this, who did?” Storm asked.  It wasn’t quite an accusation, but close.

He glanced at her, feeling weary to the pit of his soul. He finally figured out he was honestly done here. “Jean.”

Her pale eyes went wide, and Brendan, now in the doorway, said, “What? You don’t mean Ms. Grey,
do you?  She’s dead.”

“Jean wouldn’t do this,” Storm replied, looking stunned.  He wondered if the implication was “But you would.”

“Umm, you’re talking about a dead person.” Brendan insisted, then paused. “Right?”

The usual suspects filled out the room - Rogue, a pale Bobby, a slowly de-metaling Piotr. They all seemed a little shaken, as if the sight of all the carnage they'd to pass by had bothered them more than a full on battle ever would.

“You’re saying she’s here?” Storm asked, looking around as if expecting Jean to pop up any second now.

“Not anymore. She just …” What did she do? “… rescued me and left.”

“Left where?”

He shrugged. “I was out cold.  I have no idea.”

Marcus had gone over to another console, trying to make it functional, but gave up with a slam of his fist. “What the fuck happened here?  Did they still have time to self-destruct their system?”

Logan let out a breathless laugh that had no humor in it at all. “No, Jean killed the computers too. I don’t think it was on purpose, she just … took it all out.” It couldn’t have been on purpose. She knew how much he wanted to discover something true about his past.  She wouldn’t have gotten rid of any information about it deliberately; he had to believe that.

“Now hold on,” Rogue interrupted. “You’re all saying she’s not dead?  Not only not dead, but powerful enough to wipe out a whole bunch of people and a computer system?  That sounds more like Magneto.”

“He wouldn’t save me,” Logan pointed out in a desultory manner. “And hell, I wish that fuck would show up now. Jeannie would wipe him out.”

“She isn’t dead?” Bobby repeated, clearly not sure how he should take it. “H-how long have you known this?  Why weren’t we told?”

“And how did she get this powerful?” Rogue interjected.

Storm was just staring at him as if considering slugging him for lying to her, but she was slowly starting to accept it.  If he had killed all these people, there’d have been blood; lots of it.  All these deaths were perfectly bloodless - well, except for Delirium, who obviously found out what happens when someone makes telepathic contact with a god, times twelve.  But they hadn’t gone far enough into the base to find that room yet. “What were they doing to you?” Storm finally asked.

Was she trying to reason it out?  Trying to figure out what could possibly have been so bad that Jean would simply snap?  He shook his head. “Play time.  Just a little telepathic mind-fuck.  Nothing new.”

“Well, they must have pissed her off big time,” Marc said. “She really toasted this place.”

“Is anyone gonna tell us what's going on?” Rogue demanded.

Logan slumped in the chair, wondering if there was any possibility of coming up with an answer they
could all live with.

15

Marcus had thought about asking them to drop him off in Baltimore, but it seemed insensitive.  Besides, Storm was bound to say no.

Logan was unusually quiet all the way back to New York; he seemed numb. He’d tried to get him to talk about it, but he apparently had no desire to talk about anything.  The theory in the cockpit was that Logan had been tortured again, hence his unusually subdued nature, but Marc was pretty sure they were wrong. Physical pain was something Logan dealt with all the time; of course he could take it.  This was all about Jean.

If he ever encountered that bint, he didn’t care how powerful she was now - he’d punch her in the nose. If she was so fucking godly now, couldn’t she see how much she was haunting him, like a guilty conscience? She must have been able to tell, hence Marc’s desire to smack her - she was doing it on purpose. She had to be. But why? What could she possibly get from toying with Logan?

He let Logan be; the poor guy had had enough shit dumped on him for one day. Rogue kept trying to coax him into opening up, but once she got the “Keep talking and die” look, she backed off.

By the time they landed, Logan was the first off the jet, barely even waiting for the landing ramp to fully deploy. He seemed to be in a hurry to escape all the people, and again Marc felt bad for the guy.  All he wanted to do was be left alone, and all the others wanted to do was interogate him.

As Marc disembarked, eerie little Spider followed close behind, and said, “Umm, Mr. Drury, may I have a word?”

How British of him. “Marcus. And yeah, sure, you can have more than one word - they’re pretty cheap.”

Spider’s weird face remained expressionless. “Cute. Anyways, a moment?”  He gestured to the side of the docking bay - or whatever the fuck this was - and they both moved out of general view as the rest of the Wonder Squad trailed off the plane, gripped by an awkward silence.  Some were trying to digest the fact that Jean was saved by a friend of Bob’s that was no longer a friend of Bob’s as well as not being told about it; others were grappling with the knowledge of what this “new” Jean had done, and Logan’s broken reaction to it all.  Spider played it close to his vest; if any of this bothered him, it didn’t show. But then again, Marcus had no idea how to read his facial expressions yet.  His body temperature was slightly above normal, and didn’t spike or variegate too much, making him rather like Logan in his internal temperature readings, except for the fact that Logan’s temperature - while bizarrely uniform - was slightly cooler than normal.

“What’s up?” Marc asked, crossing his arms over his chest.  He still didn’t know what his powers were, but he figured if the weird guy was going to give him shit, he could take him.

Spider glanced around, to make sure no one else was listening, then replied, in a low voice, “ Unlike poor Logan, I remember what the Organization took from me.  I want to hurt them badly, Mr … Marcus.  I was wondering if you could be persuaded to give me your program algorithms, or, lacking that, help me hunt down and nail these fuckers.  I want them to bleed.”

Marc grinned at him, looking past his narrow shoulders to confirm they had no nosy X-Men eavesdropping on them. “You know, Spider, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

****

Logan found a cell phone sitting on his bedside table, and figured it was something Xavier had put there, since Bob was not the type to avoid a grand entrance.

He laid down on his bed, thinking he should try and sleep, but was afraid to try.  If Jean did show up, what would he say? “Thank you.” “What the fuck’s wrong with you?!” A combination of the two?

Why couldn’t he believe it was an accident?  Because he wasn’t hurt?  Maybe he was - maybe he'd healed from it.  How did he know?

How did he know anything?

He was staring up at the ceiling, feeling vaguely sorry for himself and for her, when the phone rang.  It had a short, shrill ring, the kind that made him instantly want to throw it into the wall.  He eventually answered it, if only to make the damn thing stop ringing. “What?” he snapped.

“Wow, he even answers the phone aggressively,” Yasha commented dryly.

He sighed, closing his eyes, and felt strangely relieved.  He was actually glad it was her. “How are you doin’?”

“Better than you, from what I’ve heard.  I’m sorry about Leonie.”

“Aren’t we all?”

She paused respectfully before asking, “You went after them, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Kill them?”

“Jean did.”

“Did she?  Good for her. But why aren’t I getting a happy vibe from you?”

“What is there to be happy about?” He sighed, rubbing his eyes.  Dorn was right - he was drowning, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be saved.  To prevent her from trying to delve into that - he really didn‘t want to have to think about it, let alone talk about it - he asked, “Tell me about Mei Li.”

Judging from the thick silence, the non-sequitur threw her a little. “Mei Li?  What is there to tell?  She
was restless, probably brighter than her station deserved, but she was a dutiful daughter.  In spite of her unhappiness, she would have toed the line, settled for the arranged marriage and played the perfect, submissive little Oriental flower to whatever the rich old bastard who bought her wanted.  She’d have lived a life of quiet desperation and died unnoticed, missed by no one.”

“That sounds contemptuous.”

“No … or at least it’s not meant to be.  After all, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here.”

It was odd, but he didn’t really think of Yasha as something different from Mei Li until this moment. “Tell me about vampires.”

“What don‘t you already know?  We are blood-born parasites that feast on the living; we are killers who forever wear the skins of our first victim.”

“Now that's harsh.”

“Not really. We're sexless and bodiless things that borrow everything from our prey.  We need their body to walk in this realm; we need the blood of others to keep going, to reproduce and spread our sickness; we need the personality and memories of our first kill to insinuate ourselves into your society, to make it easier to kill more. On our own, we are nothing.”

Maybe this was what he knew he could love about her; she didn’t flinch.  Yasha could be brutal, in more ways than simply physical. “What about Angel?”

She clicked her tongue. “Not an ideal example of the species.  He’s in a constant power struggle with the soul of the man whose body he wears.  He has the genuine personality, for good or for ill.  The rest of us just mimic, and eventually become a synthesis, depending on the receptivity.  Although some vampires are unstable, and are easily convinced they are the person they wear -”

“Receptivity?”

“Yes. Sometimes, before they die, the host is receptive to us.  This is especially true if they‘re very reserved, such as Mei Li.  Everyone has a dark side, but most people are very scared of it.  Apparently they hadn‘t heard Jung‘s theory about “owning your shadow“.  Anyways, those people are the ones you want to watch out for.”

Oddly enough, he got the feeling she was telling him something about Jean.  Perhaps she was.  Maybe this was why he had asked. “Why?”

“Because when they finally get the opportunity or the reason to give in to their dark side - and they will; it’s only a matter of time - they go overboard.  That release feels like freedom, and they let it carry them away. The most vicious vampires were often milquetoasts when they were Human beings, people afraid
to give in to passion or anything they considered unseemly.  People like Mei Li.”

Or people like Jean, he thought darkly, aware now of why he had asked Yasha about this.  He was looking for insight into what had happened to her - vampire, god, maybe, in the scheme of things, it was all the same.  He had always thought of her as grabbed by Camaxtli, taken against her will … but what if she wasn‘t?  What if she'd agreed to it?  What if it felt like embracing the freedom she'd long denied herself? (In that case, wasn’t it a good thing that Cyclops had never embraced his inner fiend?  He was so tightly wound, he’d probably explode in an orgy of evil.)

“What about me?” Logan wondered. “Sometimes, I - I try, you know.  But usually I’m overwhelmed by … rage, hate. I can’t control myself; I’m not even sure I want to.”

“But you feel bad afterwards, yes?”

“Yeah, sometimes. And sometimes I just feel insane.” Had he ever admitted that to anyone?

“The rules that apply to us don’t apply to you.”

He wondered if by “us” she meant vampires, or herself and Jean.  Either was possible. “Why not?”

“Because you’re a torture victim; because someone spent a lot of time and money trying to break you down and make you all dark side. You do try and control it, but you don’t try and hide it either; you’re actually doing remarkably well, all things considered.”

He wondered if he would always be qualified: “…considering …” or “…in spite of…” “So why don’t
I feel that way?”

“Because you wouldn’t; because you’re an interesting dichotomy of arrogance and self-hatred.”

“Oh jeeze, thanks.”

“You asked.”

“I’m sorry I did.” But of course that wasn’t completely true.  He knew, by asking her, he was asking for trouble. Things must have been bad if a vampire was your island of sanity.  Or maybe that was just an arrogant, Human way of thinking. “I wish you were here,” he admitted.

“Why don’t you drop by?” she suggested, a hint of playfulness in her voice. “I’m in L.A. - use Bob’s name to grab you a teleporter.  You’ll be here before I hang up the phone.”

“L.A.?  I thought you went back to Vancouver?”

“No, no need. But don’t worry, I’m not cheating on you with Bob.”

“Hah.” He was tempted to say “Go ahead, I owe him one,” but if he did, she might ask why.  That wasn’t really a conversation he wanted to have, although he thought she’d take it well enough. This was a no-strings relationship, after all - he was Human, and she was vampire.  How long could it last anyways? “What about you coming back here? We could meet up at a nice hotel, maybe somewhere in the city, and forget all about this shit.” That sounded really good.  Maybe he couldn’t drink his troubles away, but sex was a wonderful diversion, and it was one of the few pleasures he hadn’t been robbed of.

“I don’t know. Will you ever tell me what happened?”

“I did tell you what happened.”

“No you didn’t.”

He sighed heavily, and briefly tapped the phone against his forehead (not too hard, or he’d bust it). “I don’t wanna talk about it right now, all right?”

“Fine.  But I do expect to hear the details when you can talk about it.”

“Deal.” She was not without compassion, which was really odd for a vampire.  No, scratch that; nowadays compassion was just odd, no matter the species.  It was a hard world, getting more calloused every minute, which made her that much more remarkable. Out of simple curiosity, he asked, “You ever kill a god?”

But Yasha was too used to oddity.  Either she was indeed showing her age, or simply extremely jaded, because this non-sequitur didn’t even faze her. “Not recently.  Not ever, in fact.  Lowly demons don’t usually stand a chance against gods, especially my breed.”

“Oh? Vamps have a god weakness?”

“No, but we’re considered “half-breeds” by demons and gods alike, because we need Human bodies to survive on this plane. They swat us down like flies. We are, essentially, a race of bastards.”

“No wonder you’re all so gung-ho to kill things.”

“Oh yes. We vampires all had bad childhoods. We’re full of bitterness, and lash out at society at a whole, which just fosters our neglect and discrimination.” She coughed, and he admired her for being able to get this far with a deadpan voice and surely a straight face.  After she composed herself, she said, “Sorry. Bit of toddler in my throat.”

He laughed, mainly because it was such an absurd thing to say. “You have a weird sense of humor, Yash.”

“I have a weird life. It helps.” There was wisdom in that. “After a pause, she asked, “What god do you think we’re gonna have to kill?”

“No one. I was just thinking aloud.”

“Thinking aloud about theocide?”

“There’s a name for it?”

“Oh yeah. God killing isn’t exactly new.  It’s rare, but it ain’t new.”

“I guess so.” He’d never told her he’d helped Bob kill a god, had he?  So it really wasn’t new to him either. But why was he even thinking this?  Jean was no god, and he’d never hurt her anyways. (Would he?) Besides, he knew he owed her for what happened at the base down in Mexico (he'd known where they were as soon as they got outside, and the wall of heat had hit him like a fist). She done it for him -
she had anhililated all those people for him. (Right?)

But which one had done it for him?  The Jean he'd known before, or the Jean … after?  He now had the sinking feeling they were two distinctly different people.

“Why don’t you get a move on?” Yasha suggested, breaking the silence. “Call me back from whatever hotel you pick- there’s no way I could come back to the mansion anyways - I think Xavier’s afraid I’ll get puckish and eat one of the kids. When I hear from you, I’ll grab a spellcaster and get ‘em to ‘port me directly there, okay?”

“You’re up for that?”

“’Course I am; I’m starting to get bored.  But chop-chop, before I get a better offer.”

He smiled as he sat up, feeling strangely better, even while painful thoughts battled for supremacy just beneath the surface of his mind. “I’m startin’ to wonder what I’d do without ya, darlin’.”

“Oh, wither and die, I suspect.” She then made a kissing noise. “Sayonara, meat heart.”  She hung up before he realized what she had said, but he laughed anyways.

Even as he grabbed his coat and pocketed the phone, he wondered how long he could avoid thinking about this - and how long he could avoid talking to Xavier about what Jean had become.

And how much of it was potentially his fault.