Autumn Leaves

by Alestar

the falling leaves
drift by my window . .

when autumn leaves
start to fall

I look up at the orange sky and take a deep breath. The smell of smoke fills my nostrils, same as it has for nineteen years; and still, after all this time, it chokes me, and I double over in a fit of coughing. It lasts longer this time, bringing the telltale sting of iron in my mouth.

You're getting old, Scott.

After a moment, allowing my body to calm, I make my way back to the Hole. I pick my way along the hollowed out corpses of trees, careful not to leave any signs of my passing; and I forgive myself the small, deprecating smile at my continued precaution, even now, long after the death of the last person who would've had enough interest in me to kill me.

Pride perhaps, eh, Scott?

You've got to stop talking to yourself, Scott.

Among the scattered boulders I find the small pile of stones covering the switch which triggers the hidden door. I look around me cautiously, ignoring the persistant mocking voice in the back of my head, and flip the switch. One of the larger boulders begins to roll away in a way that has long since ceased to remind me of any long-forgotten story.

Once inside, I flip the close switch, and make my way down the passageway leading underground to the main living quarters.

Living. Heh.

I ignore the main light switch as I pass through the main room to the kitchen; but stop as soon as I hit the doorway. From the dim glow of the heater which is always running in the lower rooms, I can make out the dim outline of something resting on the counter.

It's a beer.

Suddenly, I am thrown to the ground, tackled, my arms brought painfully back and pinned behind me. I struggle to gain enough leverage to bring my attacker into my optic blast line; but cannot move from my iron-bound position.

Dammit, Dammit, DAMMIT.

Scott, you must be-

"Yer loosin' it, Cyke."

I stop struggling.

"Wolverine?"

A few moments hesitation, and then I am released; my captor backing away.

"Haven't been called that in quite a' while, but yeah, it's me."

I remain sitting on the floor, rubbing my sore arms, too overwhelmed with shock to be angry. Yet.

My god. Wolverine.

After all these years.

"What are you doing here?"

In the dim light, I see him shrug, and his form as he walks to the counter and picks up the open beer.

"Got word you were still alive, thought I'd pay a visit."

"How did you find me?"

I can't see his face, but I can hear the smirk in his voice.

"You ain't exactly hard to track, Cyke."

After all these years.

The same old arrogant, posturing-

My rising anger reminds me to stand up, and I stride over to the light switch and flip it, flooding the lower rooms with light. I turn around to get a look at my guest, the first look in near twelve years.

And he looks exactly the same.

His hair is longer, long enough to be pulled back with the black cord that matches his black war togs, and he has a few fresh scars which will inevitably fade in matter of days; but on the whole, he is a mirror of the man who fought by my side all those years ago.

I wonder what he thinks when he looks at me now. I know I have changed dramatically. My hair is now brown among white, and my eyes are tired and lined. I have several visible scars; and a good chunk of my right arm is now inorganic, due to an explosion in a raid about four years back.

We stand quietly as we allow ourselves to be watched, each incongruity catalogued. The silence is heavy between us until, in an uncharacteristic act of mercy, Logan breaks it.

"Got a six pack in the fridge. Want one?"

"A six pack? Of beer?"

Logan smirks. "Yeah, a beer."

"Where the hell did you get a six pack of beer?"

Logan moves to the refrigerator, leans in, comes out with a cold can of Red Stripe, and offers it to me. "We raided a plant in A5-21; guard had it on 'im. Figured he wouldn't need it anymore, right?"

"Area 21 is one of the most secured facilities in Sector A5; how did you get past the preliminary defenses?"

The sudden suspicion in Logan's eyes is fleeting; but it reminds me of how different, how separate our lives have become.

"We had an inside operative."

The sting of the beer catches in my throat, and I choke. Coughing, I manage out,"An inside operative? How did you manage that? We tried for years, and everyone we sent in ended up dead."

Logan makes a motion that, in another man, might've been a grimace.

"Yeah, well, this was no exception," he says quietly, tightly.

I nod my understanding, freeing him from any obligation to explain. I know the story all too well.

Everything starts out routine.

//"Okay, people, we're approaching the drop site. Storm, you and Sam take point; Beast and I will go a-ground."//

Then something goes wrong.

//"Somethin' ain't kosher here, Cyke. I can smell it."//

And though you fight against it with everything you have

//"Gambit, there's nothing you can do for her now! Everybody, hold formation!!"//

You know the moment you step into the place that this is the last time you'll ever see them again.

//"JEEEEEAAANN!!!"//

It's a moment before I realize that he's watching me, and that I'm staring off into nothingness, that Eve's apple oblivion that is the past. I shake myself, like a wet dog.

"Who's left?"

Wolverine turns away, under the pretense of retrieving another beer from the refrigerator.

"You're lookin' at 'im, bub."

My god, Logan, I'm so sorry.

"What are you going to do now?"

He gives a bitter laugh. "I dunno, ya know anybody who's in the market for a resistance fighter with no army?"

"If I did, do you think I'd be here?"

"Good point. You want another beer?"

"No, you've got a limited supply; no need for me to guzzle them down."

He shrugs. "I got nothin' to save 'em for."

"Sure you do, Wolverine; I'm sure you-"

"Don't, Cyke. I'm no rookie; and you're no morale officer."

I stop, biting off the instinctual words of comfort, but my heart bleeds for him. It was only two years ago that the last of my team died, Johannson, a girl of no more than twenty. I can remember how furious I was, at myself, at the New Order, at all those who had dared to leave this world before I had. That had been before I'd sunk sufficiently into frustrated self-pity to ignore the anger.

Is that what Logan's feeling now? He doesn't seem angry; and Logan was never one to tolerate self-pity in anyone, least of all himself. So why, then? Why come here, to me?

"Why are you here, Wolverine?"

He turns to me, holds my gaze for several minutes before breaking away, another sign of time passed.

"What, Cyke? Can't a man pay a visit to an old drinkin' buddy?"

I give a small smile. "You and I were never buddies, Logan."

An ironic laugh, and then the man across from me is serious, meeting my eyes unflinchingly, speaking quietly.

"Believe it or not, bub, you're the only friend I got left."

It catches me off guard. I was expecting the old banter, or maybe a flash of the old anger, but there has never been honesty between us; and that's what this, his presence here, is: honest. I answer him in kind.

"I know, Logan. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he says. "It's not your fault."

A humorless snort is my only response to that.

//"Somethin' ain't kosher here, Cyke . . . "//

"Scott."

I start, and he is suddenly standing before me; voice forceful; hand on my arm, dragging me back from the past.

"It's not your fault."

The proximity is too much; the past, present, and future rushing together in this man to form something of unbearable intensity. I pull away from him.

"C'mon, Logan. They knew we were coming; the source was faulty-- *my* source was faulty."

Logan holds with the distance I've put between us, but if anything, his gaze becomes stronger, willing me toward something.

"You were told the source was clean. You couldn'ta known."

I notice the way he avoids saying her name. We'll have none of that. I'm not going to be the only one drowning in memories here.

"So what should I do, Logan? Blame Jean?"

He flinches, but, instead of faltering like I expected, he takes a step closer.

"I'm not tellin' you to blame anyone, least of all . . Jean. There's no blame to be placed, no blood to be repaid. It happened. It's over."

And then he is beside me again, but this time there is no place to run, and he's saying my name

"Scott."

and he's telling me to

"Let it go."

and suddenly, after twelve years of dead man walking, I do.

"Scott . . "

And when I go to him, wrap myself around him tightly, it is in the arms of here and now; and the twelve years of tears that fall land on a warm, real shoulder, and not on the ethereal whispers of ghosts.

I cling shamelessly to him. Had he stiffened and pulled away, I might have been able to staunch the flood of emotion; as it is, he pulls me to him, cradling, and I hear the flow of words spoken low-- voice rough but soothing-- against my ear. Words like "forgive" and "move" and "time" and "love".

We sink to the floor, my head still held tightly against that hard shoulder, a warm hand stroking my hair; and it is a comfort I have not felt in years. I nuzzle closer, needing it.

I make a sound that escapes as Logan's grip loosens; but I look up, questioningly. His eyes meet mine, and they are blazing blue in a way I've never seen before. There has never been honesty between us . . .

He lowers his mouth slowly to my temple, pressing there. A small sound escapes me, and I gaze up at him, needing it . .

And then his kiss against my mouth sears to the bone. It cauterizes the past and anything but this moment of forgiveness and hard, warm body against mine. His hand in my hair tightens, bringing me up to him.

My emotional release exhausted me, but, with this curious hum coming from the back of Logan's throat, my blood soon begins to move again. I move as well, not breaking the kiss, shifting so that my weight in no longer lax against Logan, but pressed into him; and it becomes apparent that the growing need here does not solely belong to me. I move my thigh against the hardness that it meets, and Logan growls into my mouth.

He pulls away then, enough to look me in the eye, a question; a wild-eyed, precipitous question, but an option nonetheless. I move my thigh again, in answer, and that is enough.

He pushes me back, my back against the cloth-covered floor, and lowers himself over me, for another deep kiss.

One hand props him above me, the other travels down, wrapping around my hip and pulling it upward, bringing my erection into contact with his own through two thins layers of cloth. I throw my head back in a moan.

We move faster now, Logan and I, moving against each other in an unbearable friction; and I feel it sweeping towards me, but I don't want it to. I want that tidal wave to find me in a different place, with this man over me, against me, inside me. I open my eyes in pleading.

"Logan!"

He understands, and with what I sense are his last vestments of control, he pulls away from me. With no hesitation, he rips his way through his tight black uniform, as I do the same to my uniform, with only a tad less violence; and then we are shed, and he is against me again, with a warmth I would have thought was impossible in this cold, undead time.

He positions himself between my thighs and, through some superhuman act of will, forces himself to shoot me a questioning look again, maintaining the pretense that he could stop if I asked him to.

In response, I bring my legs up to rest on his shoulders.

He reaches forward, testing the opening, readying me as much as he by spitting on his palm. He spreads me wide, then, with a low growl, thrusts in.

The friction screams through me and my eyes tear with it; after all, it's been a long time. It's been almost four years since Maloney, and Logan has nothing even closely resembling restrai-

"Jesus!!"

My god, he's found it already, that-

"Ah!"

-spot.

Again and again and again.

"Oh."

"God."

My knees on his shoulders tighten, bringing my hips up to meet his thrusts; just as my own cries rise up to meet his growls, which galvanize to a roaring peak, iron hands slamming hips into hips, until one last powerful thrust, and the tidal wave hits, and I am filled and gone, and never more truly here.

And then the weight of a hand against my stomach, and I open my eyes. I am disoriented for a moment, before I realize I am still on my back on the kitchen floor, and the hand belongs to the man laying beside me. I turn to look at him.

He is propped on one elbow, watching me through calm blue eyes. I return the gaze for a moment; then lean over for a deep kiss.

"How long was I out?"

The man beside me shrugs.

"Long enough for me to have another beer."

I laugh, and he smiles; and then he rolls to his feet with a grace I've never noticed before. He walks to the corner and retrieves a small black duffel bag which I hadn't noticed before. As he opens it and begins riffling through it, I notice something odd.

"Logan? Is that a flower?"

With the pair of slacks and the beaten flannel shirt he retrieves from the bag, he pulls our, sure enough, a small flower.

"Yeah. I found it on the way here; thought it was odd, with there not bein' hardly any vegetation in this area since the blast. Don't know what kind it is; Ororo was the flower person."

"I grow my own food down here; I had to learn a little something about plants. Let me see it."

He offers the fragile, purple flower, and I take it.

"You recognize it?"

"Yes," I say.

I smile up at him.

"It's a chrysanthemum."

-end-

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