Crimson

by Dex

I used to wonder what it would be like to not be an X-Man. In the velvet darkness, deep in the bowels of the night, thoughts of who Scott Summers might be if he wasn't Cyclops would haunt me. You know, those dreams used to terrify me. I'd held them close during every training session, every mission, to remind me what could happen if I failed. To goad me into being the best, to ward off the dreams.

I didn't know I could have been such a coward.

Not in the sense of a man unable to fear his fears, but a man who lets his fears replace reality. I've been driving for the last three hours in the world that terrified me so much, and I'm not an X-Man. What was I so afraid of?

Still, most of it is to keep from thinking about... it. To avoid the realization that I've been single now for the last three hours. Don't go there. Don't think about her voice with the hollow echo from the hanger bay, or the intercom static and pops that accentuated each moan and hungry pant. Don't think about feeling every noise penetrate you just as one you used to call 'friend' penetrated her. Just watch the road and wonder what you're doing.

Fuck.

I could have accepted it between others, but never Jean and I. Warren, well... Warren liked to play the field, and Bobby was never good at relationships. To hear that Betsy had cheated on Warren would not have deeply shocked everyone... but Jean and I were always above that. Until Logan. In an odd way, I'm angry at Charles. If he had been here, he might have worked Jean past the Shadow King's damage, or taught her how to handle the loss. So she didn't have to seek out that fucking animal and rut with him on the fucking floor of the fucking hanger in the fucking dirt and-

STOP!

I can't help laughing at myself, even as I pry my hands, white knuckled, from the steering wheel. Anger doesn't help me. Anger doesn't make it go away. Anger doesn't give me back my Jean. Nothing does that now. The logical centers of my brain tell me to turn around, confront Jean and Logan, demand a resolution. God help me, I can't. I can't look into those fathomless green eyes with the realization that she betrayed me intentionally. I can't deal with that. Too many years as a leader, I guess. I could forgive Jean. I still love her, more then the world could ever imagine, I still love her. Until the end of time, until the end of everything, I will love her. But I can't trust her anymore, and that would tear us apart again as surely as another session in the hanger room with Logan.

And Logan... what about Logan? I remember his wedding, and the store put on ceremony and honour. A man's personal honour was his greatest treasure, his most important trait, and his way to righteousness. You told me that, Logan. After you had been rejected by Mariko, you walked away with your honour intact. Even as we watched you grieve, we were so proud that you had mastered the beast. The man was more then the animal. That was the first time I truly respected you, runt. I guess you always were the animal inside, weren't you?

Jean knows it. She liked it. When she died, I almost died with her, almost flung myself into the grave and had them bury me at the same time. You howled at the moon instead. I wonder which one she preferred? The wild call of loss, or the shattering of a like soul? Maybe one day I'll ask her. I'll ask her if she know that honour was a cover? That giri was meaningless to you? If she know that the sweaty beast, led by his nose and stomach and cock, was always the real Logan? Maybe that is what your attraction was to him and not me. Was I the safe rock, and Logan the chosen lover? You built your church on me so Logan could fuck you on the floor of it?

Crying is the worst thing you can do while wearing a pair of ruby quartz glasses. Blinking away the tears, and pulling the car over is all I can do, as my grief washes up again. That tearing feeling in your soul, the giant hand gripping vise-like at your heart. Did Remy weep like this for Rogue, I wonder. Or is he freezing to death in the wastes on Antarctica, like we nearly did. Did his mind freeze and his soul scream into the depths of his loss? Suddenly, I feel more for Remy then I ever did when he was with us.

There is a tavern up ahead. I need a drink. I need a hundred drinks. I need to drown everything from my life. It looks nice, and my stomach tells me food might be an idea. After retching like a bum at the side of the road three hours ago, I need something. It is a nice place, and I get a smile from the girl at the counter as I sit down. A young black girl, with a white streak in the front of her hair, brings me my menu, and I remember meeting Ororo for the first time. So young and beautiful, innocent beauty rather then the stern attractiveness that years of leading the X-Men has left her with.

Ororo.

God, don't hate me, 'Ro. I can't do this right now. I can't lead the X-Men with Jean and Logan. I can't distance myself yet. You understand. That's why you are such a great leader. I motivate people, you understand them. People follow me into the jaws of hell because I can make them understand why they have to. People follow you because they trust you to do what is right for them. I'm gonna miss you, Windrider...

A beer and then a second disappear, along with a plate of fries and a beef dip. I feel better, stronger, even as the tears threaten to overwhelm me again. I will not cry now. I will not. My grief is for a place of my choosing. I will control myself.

Control myself again.

Was it the love? Was it that feeling that snuck in like a thief in the night and took my heart in it's teeth? Was that what took away that control and left me like this? I hate myself as much as her right now. Hate myself because I hurt like this, when I should be above it. I should have it under control and locked away deep inside of me. So deep that even the best telepath couldn't find it. You see, Jean, Charles taught me some things even you don't know. Like how to bury a thought, a feeling, a belief so deeply that it doesn't even register to you. I have a tiny store of those things, things more precious to me then life itself, things I couldn't even let you in on, because they were only mine. I can do the same thing with my love for you. I hope I can do the same thing with my memories of you.

The miles are speeding past me as I revert back to leader mode. Have the X-Men started after me again? Has Jean discovered my message to her and told the world yet? Or is she sleeping lightly beside Logan, waking to fuck and then slip back into sleep on the sheets I used to inhabit? I will not cry yet. It's a sick sort of masochistic need that fills my head with the image of the two of them in their embrace, laughing at poor, stupid, blind Scott as they go to it.

Oh yes, I remember all the names whispered around the mansion after Danger Room sessions and in the depths of nights, when you all thought I was asleep or not around. Stiff Summers, the only active deceased X-Men. The bonding done as comrades, yet the leader stays behind out of need. Always separate, always distant. That was my reward for being made the leader. My lot for life.

Hank was better than that. Never let me get too far away, as Bobby and Warren would have. Hank, you're brilliant. How do you ease a shattered soul? Tell me you have a drug, a treatment, a cure, and I'll turn this car around right now. But you don't, anymore than you have a cure for your own condition. Would you take the cure if you had it, Hank? Would you go back to human, despite the fact that you are our most successful case for mutant relations. I think you would in a heartbeat.

I'm here.

It's a bit of a fight to get the car into the underbrush and on the old road. No one has been here for a long time, that's obvious. I can feel a chill wind blowing up from the Atlantic, cold and deep. It's a bit of a climb, but soon I'm settled on the top of the hill, staring out over the ocean. This was Charles' and my place, a place to reflect why we do what we do. A place to allow ourselves to doubt, and to think...

And to cry.

That's when the tears start. One. Two. Then the flood, trickling down my cheeks. It's not controlled. It has no will. I only have the pain right now. And, for the first time, I wail to the stars. Raw, angry, broken, hurt, shattered. I burst my heart upon the sea, and I don't care if I ever leave this moment.

I leave the car in the parking lot of the rental agency, collecting my visa and my new car from the agent. He agrees to have my old car checked into storage until I return. I nod and climb in, throat raw and my mind askew. I have spent my grief. I will control my pain.

Control.

It returns to me slowly, like an old familiar lover. I welcome it. Internalize the pain, control the grief, own your mind. The car smells like pine as I slide in and open the map. California. I can make it in four days by slipping down the coast, and cutting across the bottom of the country. Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, California. I can leave them all behind. Maybe I can find something for me.

The only thing I have left.

back to Dex's stories | Cyke and Logan archive | comicfic.net