She glanced down at her register book, and then at the glowing computer screen on her left. He wondered why she had to consult both, but didn’t ask. She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at what she saw on the screen, and asked, “Are you his son?”

The way she said it, and the look on her face, both told him his son had never come, and no one thought highly of him for it. Since he figured the guy was old enough - and he didn’t know the son’s name anyways - he said, “No, I’m his grandson.”

She glanced at her screen again, and said, “Adam?”

“Yeah.” Sure, why not?

She put the register up for him to sign (what was this, a fucking hotel?) and she asked, with more sympathy, “Are you aware of his condition?”

“No, not really,” he said, signing the name Adam Easton (was that his last name?) so sloppily he could have passed for a Doctor. As for street address, he just wrote down the one for Wolfram and Hart, just because it was in California and she probably wouldn’t know it on sight.

“He suffered another stroke after finishing chemotherapy, and he remains highly disoriented. He can speak, but his vision is limited, especially on the right. “

“Disoriented? How so?”

“He often forgets where he is, what year it is. He mistook me for a woman named Katie once, and just the other day he thought it was 1973. “

His heart sunk. All this way, and all this courage, for absolutely nothing. “So he’s not lucid?”

He gave her back the register and she stood up, closing it and leaving it at her desk as she started down the corridor, motioning for him to follow. “It really depends. He has moments when you’d think … well, he’s almost okay.”

“How is he today?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t been on rounds yet, just the desk.” She led him down a corridor painted the palest blue, the well scrubbed floor a pale beige; it was as if everything hadn’t been just sanitized, but bled dry of anything even remotely stimulating. What a depressing place. Clean though.

They passed door after door, and finally she paused just a few feet from one, turning to look at him with pained sympathy. “I’m glad you came when you did, Mr. Easton,” she said in a confidential whisper. He noticed some of pale pink lipstick had smudged on her teeth. “He doesn’t have very much longer.”

Logan nodded, and wondered why the guy’s family had abandoned him. This wasn’t a bad place to be abandoned, but still he seemed to say there was something wrong in his family, or just a rift within it as huge as a canyon.

The nurse, whose partially hidden tag identified her as Janeen Pierce, led the way in, with a falsely cheer, “How are we today, Julius?”

It was basically a hospital room given deceptively homey touches such as a dresser drawer, a worn pink armchair in the far corner, and lace edged curtains over a narrow slice of a window looking out on something approximately green. He was propped up in a hospital bed, a tube attached to each arm and snaking to i.v. stands behind his bed. Monitors bleeped at a sub-audible level, and a tube beneath his nose hissed with oxygen. He looked like a mummy in training, diminishing in the ocean of starched blankets, melting like ice cream in slow motion.

The mummy in the bed didn’t answer her, or even stir, just half raised thin eyelids, and while it was hard to tell with his rheumy eyes, Logan might have sworn there was a modicum of contempt in that glance for the mockingly cheerful nurse.

Janeen busied herself checking monitor readings and attachments, and after making sure everything was as it was supposed to be and ticking something off on a chart, she said, brightly, “I’ll leave you two alone, shall I?” As she walked passed Logan, she paused to whisper low, “If he seems … ill, there’s a button over the bed. Don’t hesitate to use it. But I can only allow you fifteen minutes to visit.”

“Got it,” he agreed. He was almost disappointed when she left and the door shut behind her, because he now knew it was a mistake to come here. All he could do was confuse a man who was slowly dying. Maybe if he hadn’t noticed him, he could just leave.

But then he craned his head up slightly from the enfolding mounds of pillows, and said, in a voice as creaky as an old hinge, “Do I know you?”

Oh great. Logan shook his head. “I’m sorry, but there’s been -”

“Lingo?” He said curiously, making Logan shut the hell up. That was a nickname on the back of the photograph, wasn’t it? Supposedly his. “God, Canuck, is that you?”

A new burning started in Logan’s stomach. How the fuck did he know he was Canadian? Even Logan couldn’t really hear it in his own voice. “You remember me?”

The old man snorted, and let his head drop back to the pillow. “Hell with you. Course I remember you, Mister Smarty Pants.” He seemed to glance around the room, as if for the first time. “Shit. I got hit, didn’t I? How long have I been out?”

Hit? Oh hell, did he still think it was the ‘40’s or something? “No -” he began, and then wondered why he’d try and disabuse this man of his beliefs. He seemed awake if not exactly animated; if he wanted to believe it was 1939 France, what the hell harm was it going to do? Could he die any faster or harder? “Not long,” he quickly amended.

Easton looked down at himself, inspecting the goods. “I still in one piece?”

“As far as I know.”

He grunted an affirmative, and seemed to relax a bit. “Do they give Purple Hearts to guys on missions that don’t exist?”

”I’m sure they do, t hey just never tell you where to pick ‘em up.” Logan approached the man’s bed warily, heart still pounding a thousand miles a minute, and he wondered if he had ever been quite this scared before. Well, when it didn’t involve drowning or bone saws or needles as long as his forearm.

The man cackled and glanced in his direction. He seemed to only focus on him with his left eye, which was so pale it almost wasn’t a color at all. “Always were a cynic, weren’t ya?”

“Was I?” After a moment, he said, “I - uh, I took a bit of a hit myself, you know, and I can’t exactly … remember some things.”

Easton’s single good eye focused on him with a surprising scrutiny. “Wow, Canuck, something actually rattled your cage? I wasn’t sure that’d ever happen.”

Logan shrugged a single shoulder, feeling his mouth go as dry as parchment. "I'm only Human."

"Oh, I dunno," he said, the left corner of his mouth quirked up in good humor. It occurred to Logan his grin was crooked because the right side of his face probably didn't work properly anymore. Time got to everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

"You always seemed pretty super-human to me," Easton said, his voice light enough to make it a joke. "Rogers always said you must have been the luckiest guy alive. We still never knew how you got through Ardennes without getting shot. 'Member, you had those bullet holes in your jacket? But they just passed through the fabric, not you. Luckiest sum bitch alive, you know?"

"Oh yeah, I'm really lucky," he agreed darkly, pulling up a hard backed plastic chair and sitting down at his bedside. He knew he shouldn't be here, that he should never have come here, but now that he was, he couldn't leave. Not just yet. "What can you tell me about myself, Julius?"

He made a noise of disgust, and said, "God, how I hated that name. You guys used to call me Jules - not that that was any better."

"Sorry - Jules." Up close, Logan could see his skin was thin and starting to turn ever so slightly yellow; Logan could smell the slow collapse of his kidneys, shutting down with an inexorability that would be impossible to stop. His skin was drawn taut over his skull, and yet still managed to collapse in folds on the underside of his jaw. His eyes seemed sunken into the hollows, his existing hair as dry and brittle as hay, drained of all pigment to a dull, drab silver. Veins and capillaries looked like dark worms burrowing beneath jaundiced flesh.

"Tell you about you, huh? Well, lessee ... we always figgered you fer an egghead."

"Huh?" Of all possible responses, that had never been on the list.

"Well, 'cause we heard, before goin' in, that the Canadians had a polyglot - and I had to look that word up - on the ground, behind the lines. We figgered we'd have to coddle yer ass, ya know, keep an eye on you 'cause while you were our Rosie, ya couldn't fight for shit."

"Rosie?"

"Rosetta Stone - we called you Lingo on the ground, but the HQ guys usually called ya Rosetta Stone, 'cause you could get stuff it would take them hours to translate." A certain animation seemed to spark in the left half of his face, even though he seemed to be staring into a past that only existed in his head now. "But weren't we surprised? I mean, the Ruskies were a lot more vicious, ya know, but you ... man, you could scare me good sometimes."

His heart skipped a beat. Here it was. “Why?"

"Well, it was like you had ice water in your veins; you'd react the opposite to the situation around you. When the shit really hit the fan, you never lost your cool. It was like you weren't scared a nothin', ever, even when bullets were whizzin' past us. I asked you about that once, and you told me, with this big kid in the candy store grin, that they could only kill ya, so why be afraid? Man, I thought you'd be on point too long and lost all your marbles - you meant it."

Well, that wasn't as bad as he feared; not yet, anyways. It still felt like his heart was skipping beats. "So, I wasn't a cold blooded killer?"

That made Easton cackle again. "Hardly. It was just like ... you existed where it couldn't get to you, ya know? I think you said it was Zen, that you were "cultivating Zen" - we figgered it was a drug."

That made Logan chuckle right along with him. “I sound pretty annoying."

"You had yer moments," he agreed. "But you saved our lives so many fucking times ... oh! Do you remember that time on the Polish border?"

"What time?"

"Oh, we had to go and smuggle this scientist out 'fore the Nazis got him - he was a Jew, ya know - so we traveled in on foot, avoidin' the main roads and checkpoints, but we couldn't avoid this one just outside a village we needed to get into. There was this lone guard, and while we tried to get past him, he confronted us, barking at us in German and wavin' his gun around like it was his dick or somethin'. I thought we were done for, I was just about shittin' myself, but you were as cool as a witch's tit. You responded in something - ya told me later it was Polish - and even ta me you sounded politely confused. He kept barkin' and jabbin' his rifle at ya, but you kept responding in mild Polish. When he turned the gun on me, you said somethin' and made some gestures that I knew meant I couldn't speak, and was prob'ly soft in the head, so I didn't say anything, just tried my best to look more confused than scared. Eventually, you said something in the most broken, mangled German I have ever heard. Even I couldn't speak more than "Drop yer weapons!" but I knew what you were sayin' was all wrong - you didn't hit the right syllables, you emphasized the vowels all wrong, and yet I knew you spoke perfect, fluent German. But not that night.

"Oh, god, the look on that guard's face," he said, and laughed, a harsh noise that turned into a brief cough. "He looked so confused and so pissed off, I thought he might start bludgeoning you with his rifle butt. Finally he waved us on, barking at us more, and you were very conciliatory and grateful. Once we were passed, I asked you what you told him, and you said you said, in German, that you spoke a little German, but only potato oven brick.”

“What?”

“You screwed it up; you deliberately spoke gibberish in hopes he’d think you were a complete washout and a waste of time to yell German at.” He chuckled in remembrance. “God, you had balls. You weren’t even afraid he might frog march us back to his post; you figured you could him kill him - quietly, so it wouldn’t be heard by others - before he could get a shot off. As soon as we were sure we were outta earshot, we laughed our asses off. Just about pissed myself. I can still hear that mangled German. Some of the guys thought you had to be nuts, but I loved bein’ teamed up with you, Lingo. I knew, no matter what, I’d be walking out alive. It was yer good luck, rubbing off.”

He smiled wanly at him, trying to figure out exactly who he was from what he said. “So, I was a smart ass?”

“Oh yeah. And while Steve spoke a little French, and one of the Ruskies knew a little Polish, and Dan knew a bit of German, none of us were fluent like you. When you were acting as interpreter fer any of us, we always knew you were having some fun at our expense, but of course we never knew how.” He drifted off for a second, looking at s sliver of sunlight on the far wall. He thought he was gone for good, but suddenly he said, “Hey, how’s that French crumpet of yours?”

“What?”

He attempted a sly grin, but since it was so lopsided it was a bit more hideous. “Y’know, that little thing with the nice gams who was in the French Resistance. She shot most of us down, but not you. Steve chalked it up to your luck. She make it through?”

He was forced to shrug. “I dunno. Do you remember her name?”

He considered it a long moment, then said, “Something French isn’t good enough, is it?”

“Not very helpful, no.”

“Sorry. I just don’t remember.”

He nodded. That was fair enough. Even if she did survive the war, she was surely dead by now. “Umm, this might sound weird, but … do you remember my name?”

Easton gave him a surprised look with his one good eye. “Your name?” He considered that long enough that Logan noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the highest monitor was keeping track of a very irregular heartbeat. No, he didn’t have much longer at all. “We called you Logan. Logan … uh … I don’t recall. Something Scottish, I think.”

“Scottish?” Somehow, he never expected that. But then again, he hadn’t expected anything. Just an answer was mildly startling. “Like Mac something?”

“No, not that kinda Scottish.” He paused briefly. “Maybe it wasn’t Scottish.”

“It’s okay,” he sighed, trying to cover his disappointment. “Just tell me I was one of the good guys.”

“You were one of the best,” Easton told him. Although he still had his lopsided half smile, his voice was starting to fade, and there was a certain slackness creeping into his face. Logan could smell the morphine in his drip as it started to ooze through the pores of his thin skin. If someone could be said to be on a fast track to death, it was him. “It’s over, right?”

“It’s over.” In more ways than one.

“We won?”

“We won,” he agreed.

“If you don’t mind, soldier, I’m a bit tired …”

“No problem. Get some rest. I’ll be around.” Maybe he would be; he really didn’t know. He felt slightly gutted, kicked around, but he didn’t know if it was just the aftermath of fear, or these bits and pieces of information that still didn’t add up to a coherent whole.

Easton, to his surprise, patted his hand. His flesh was dry, like tanned snake skin. “I know, Lingo. We could always count on you.”

Logan held his hand as he drifted off to sleep, aware he could feel the small bones in his hand, barely contained by the thin, leathery flesh. His pulse was like a butterfly, almost too faint to be noticed as it beat in his blood.

Logan simply sat at the old man’s bedside, and waited for Janeen to return, and relieve him of duty. It was probably the very least he could do.

_____________

The End (again, for now)....  ;-)