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Logan thought he’d be done with the smells of sad drunks once he got home from the bar. It was nice to get away and to be somewhat alone with his thoughts, but the atmosphere got old after a while. As much as he hated to admit it, he preferred the more hopeful environment of the X-Mansion. There were mutants here who had seen the ugliest parts of humanity and still dreamed of a better future. Maybe Logan wasn’t capable of that kind of dreaming, but damned if he didn’t like to be around it.
Which was why he was surprised by the heavy smell of beer, a trace whiff of salty tears, and Cyclops’s scent.
Logan moved silently through the entryway, past the kitchen, and toward the living room. An intermittent blue light flickered from the room, accompanied by the calm voice of a narrator on TV. The scent was heavier as he got closer. He stepped into the living room and saw their team leader on the couch, slumped back with his feet on the coffee table. On the table lay four crushed beer cans. Cyclops held a fifth one in his hand.
“Yo, Slim, what’s the depression scene about?”
Cyclops turned his head.
“God, you startled me, Logan. Give a warning when you’re skulking around in the dark.”
“What’re ya doin’ down here, anyway?” Logan grumbled. “Yer up late for a boy scout.”
“Mind your own business,” Scott said, before drinking noisily from his can.
Logan sniffed the air and cringed. “You really drink this shit, Summers? It smells like wet dog.”
“You’re one to talk,” Scott said.
Logan sighed. The personal digs were annoying, but he got the feeling he ought not leave Cyclops alone in this dark mood.
“It’s three in the A.M., bub. Yer halfway trashed, and yer watchin’ a snuff film starrin’ some of my friends.”
Logan had to look away as a grizzly bear on the screen took a deadly swipe at a stupid adolescent wolf. For all the violence he had committed in his life, it still broke his heart to see this scene play out with his animal kin. Before the X-Men, those creatures were the most welcoming family he’d known.
He grabbed the remote and flipped to some show about home renovations. He remembered how he’d once found Jubilee up at night like this, watching that house channel. She said she watched it for comfort. She liked to imagine living the sort of lifestyle where choosing a kitchen backsplash was the biggest dilemma you’d have to face.
“Well, don’t polish those off all on yer own,” Logan said, and grabbed the last beer in the six-pack, before Cyclops could get himself even more drunk.
He sat on the opposite end of the couch, with a cushion in between to keep space.
“Trouble in paradise or somethin’?” he probed. He couldn’t believe he was voluntarily getting into the business of the most annoying person in his life. But there was something kind of pitiful about seeing Mr. Perfect acting more like the Wolverine.
“Huh?” Scott asked. It was clear he had not even heard the question.
“Jeannie kick ya out of bed?”
“Oh,” he replied. “Not exactly… We have been fighting today. She’s not happy with me.” He added bitterly, “Now’s your chance to move in.”
Logan’s stomach turned. That remark felt like legitimate poison. It wasn’t like Cyclops to make such a blunt accusation, or to give into such blatant self-loathing.
“Fuck that, Slim. The hell are you on about? And maybe put down that sewer swill before you answer that.”
Logan popped out his claws, just to pierce through the top of Scott’s fifth beer can. He pulled it in toward himself and downed the contents as fast as he could. He shuddered.
No wonder Cyclops was in a poor mood. He really had been drinking garbage. If he had known Scott wanted to be a sad drunk tonight, he might have considered sharing some of his decent whiskey. But at this point, Logan felt he ought to do some damage control.
“So you wanna play broody protagonist, or you wanna spit it out?”
“I didn’t ask for company,” Scott said.
“Maybe not, but you got it now, bub. And right now, yer scarin’ me just a bit. The Cyke I know woulda lasered me in the face for stealin’ his beer.”
“Mm, it would be a stupid thing to get upset about. It’d wake up the whole house, too.”
“So tell me, Slim, what would be a not-stupid thing to get upset about?”
Scott removed his glasses, squeezing his eyes shut. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids for a few moments, then put his protective eyewear back on.
“Um. It’s Christopher’s birthday today. Well, yesterday, now... Ah, damn.”
He pulled off his glasses again and rubbed his eyes. After a minute, he just rested his face in his palms, with his elbows on his knees.
It didn’t take a telepath to know Cyke’s head was throbbing. Logan knew that pain too well. The grief that was worse than any time he had ever been broken and eviscerated.
He sat and waited for Cyclops to speak again. He needed to talk through the pain. Logan’s way to survive the loss of his own boy was to lose his soul, as well. He figured Cyclops needed a better option. He could not quite see their team leader running away to Madripoor, turning off his conscience, becoming a force of sheer violence.
“I guess I haven’t been at my best today. I’ve been mean. To everyone, not just Jean. It’s just… I keep thinking of what it could have been. A life in Anchorage. A normal job. A happy day today. I would still be with his mother. His mother would… would still be alive. And we would celebrate an ordinary milestone. Y’know— cake, balloons, pictures, the whole thing.”
“Ya try talkin’ to Alex lately?” Logan asked. It was the only concrete thing he could think of that could potentially be of help.
“Alex and I aren’t really on speaking terms.” Scott said. “Not since X-Factor...”
“Ah,” Logan said. He felt a very real pain inside his chest.
He was equipped to deal with this kind of suffering. Not any of the other X-Men. There was pain that was too much to take. He couldn’t imagine facing it without a healing factor and a century of scar tissue. Cyclops was basically a pup, hardly more mature than Kitty, on the scale of Logan’s timeline. His mind flashed back to that young wolf in the documentary, snuffed out in one blow.
“‘M sorry, Slim.”
Cyclops put his glasses on a second time.
“It’s my own damn fault. I’m the one who left them, aren’t I? I did what Corsair did to me and Alex. I don’t really have the right to grieve any more than he does.”
“Grievin’ ain’t about rights, Slim. It ain’t somethin’ you earn by bein’ a good enough guy. If it were, I figure I’d be walkin’ around pain-free.”
“Well, I definitely was not the good guy today. I took it out on Jean, who has no responsibility for my mistakes. I’ve kind of been a dick to everyone.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time, Summers.” Logan realized that probably wasn’t as encouraging as he had planned for it to be. “What I mean is, the team’ll forgive ya. This crew’s forgiven folks for a whole lot worse.”
Logan swore that sorrow had a scent all its own. It had something to do with sweat, and stress. It was heavy. It usually hurt his sinuses. Right then, he caught a giant wave of it, at the same time as Cyclops started picking at his nail beds. Logan suddenly detected a whiff of blood. He figured Scott was making his cuticles bleed.
“Hey, Slim,” he started to say.
Logan’s skin could not scar, but he believed it bore the memory of every injury. As he spoke, he felt the echo of each wound he had ever borne. He wasn’t sure which part of him was piloting his voice, but he allowed it to continue, despite the pain.
“I got somethin’ to say. I need you to let me say all of it. An’ I need you to forgive me for not tellin’ it, back when would have counted.”
He waited, then took Scott’s silence as acceptance.
“While back— no, ages ago, I was startin’ on the kinda life you were talkin’ about. It was in Honshū, not Alaska, but mostly it was the same story as you wanted. I had a wife. A house that I built. Gettin’ ready for our kid to be born. Hell, I’ve never been happier than when Itsu told me the news. Lit up a part of me I didn’t think existed anymore.”
Again, that sensation of phantom scar tissue. His healing factor only worked on physical wounds, but a body could die from the emotional ones. It was a biological necessity for him to get this out. And somehow, he sensed this old piece of his story might be a lifeline for Slim.
“Maybe ya know what that feels like. But, neither of us are exactly lucky people. And the worst day of my life came on the heels of the best one.”
Slim kept picking at his bleeding cuticles, but he was listening. Logan cleared his throat and went on. He was getting to the hardest part. He’d never said a word of this out loud, and didn’t know whether it was something he was even capable of doing.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, cursing the overwhelming tension in his chest.
But he knew the dark place Cyclops was in. He knew how it felt like death and so much worse. He couldn’t leave someone else inside that hell, not without at least attempting a rescue.
“I lost ‘em both,” he said. “I came home one day after takin’ a big hit. My teacher kicked me out of his temple, and all I wanted that night was to hold Itsu, to feel our kid kickin’ around in there, to know that tomorrow was gonna be a better day.”
Logan shuddered, drew a deep breath, and continued.
“But there was no better tomorrow. And I didn’t even understand how bad my life could get until I made it home. Itsu was dead. Someone had murdered her in our home, the home I built to protect us. And that bastard, he…”
Logan paused. Scott was in a depressed enough mood, he didn’t need to hear the details about what they did to his tiny little boy. The last Cyke had seen of his own kid, something terrible had happened to his body, too. The truth was that nobody knew if Christopher actually survived. There was only the torture of hope— that punishment that Logan never had to endure regarding his son.
“The guy who killed her made sure to finish off my boy, too,” he said, at last. “And he ripped out the better part of me when he did it. Then I did exactly what you did. What Corsair did. I walked away. I didn’t even have the courage to bury them. The pain, it turned me into an animal. So I ran.”
Scott sat folded over, propping his forehead up with his hand.
Logan kept talking. “I lost myself for a while in Madripoor. Tried to forget it ever happened. That they ever happened. But it can’t be done. They were alive. Then they were gone. And I was a goddamn fool for trying to pretend I didn’t love them.”
Scott let out a shaking sigh. He straightened up his posture just a little bit.
“I never knew a body could hurt so much and still function,” Scott said. “I’d rather you sliced me clean open than feel this anymore.”
“I know, Slim.”
Scott made another poor attempt to breathe.
“What do you do, Logan? How do you go on?”
“You keep survivin’. Day after day after horrible fucking day. Don’t worry about feelin’ better. Just wake up in the morning, stay alive all day, go to sleep, and repeat. It’s all there is.”
Scott swallowed hard, holding back a sob.
“And Slim?” Logan said. “I’m sorry.”
That was strange and difficult to say. He had never apologized to Cyclops before, for anything.
“I ignored ya when that all happened with your boy. Kept my distance. I was lookin’ out for myself, tryin’ to keep old wounds shut. When I coulda told you how to survive it. I walked away while you were bleedin’ out.”
“Sounds like you were bleeding out, too. Does it ever stop? Or does it hurt like this forever?”
Logan drew a deep breath and tried to think.
“It doesn’t stop. Not really. But it stops bein’ the only thing you feel all day. You get back your other senses in time. Drinkin’ doesn’t help you get them back quicker, though. Alcohol ain’t a great way to stop the bleedin’.”
“I know,” Scott said. His breath shook audibly as he sighed, as though his chest muscles were spasming.
“That ain’t how you’re supposed to breathe, ya know. Try again.”
Logan thought about it for a second, then put his hand on Slim’s shoulder. He felt Scott make a better attempt this time.
“Some days, this is all you gotta do, Slim. Just keep breathin’ all day long. Eventually you’ll remember how to do other things, but for now this is the best you can do.”
“And you’re the best at what you do,” Scott said.
“Damn right,” Logan said. “Best at stayin’ alive. You’ve got an expert here.”
They sat there in silence for a minute. Logan modeled the slow, deliberate breathing that would help ease the pain. He listened as Scott gradually matched his pattern.
Finally, Scott picked up the TV remote and spoke up again. “I’m gonna get some sleep here. I’ll talk to everyone in the morning. Apologize for taking my feelings out on them.”
“We might wanna clear out these beer cans before you pass out on the couch. We gotta set a better example than this.”
They both stood up and put all the empty cans back into the cardboard case. When they got to the kitchen, the recycling was already full, so they headed outside to take out all the trash.
The September night was crisp and still. Logan loved the cool air as the end of the year approached. It reminded him of Alberta. He was grateful to have so many of his memories back, even if they hurt him. It was worth it to remember the climate in Cold Lake, how he snuck out to play in the snow and climb the giant spruces as a boy. He wondered if the cold weather brought back any good memories for Cyclops as well, maybe of a kinder time back in Anchorage, before all the loss and chaos.
“Sun’s gonna be up before you get any sleep,” Logan commented, looking at the deep purple beginning to tinge the sky.
“It’s happened before,” Scott said, as they walked back toward the house. “They invented coffee for a reason.”
“Hey— you got a lesson plan for tomorrow?”
“Yeah, my notes are on the Professor’s desk.”
Logan swung his arm and punched Scott’s shoulder. “You’re covered. Rest up, bub.”
Cyclops looked a little surprised. He almost spoke, but then just nodded and let out a proper exhale, like the ones Logan had him practicing inside.
“Jean didn’t make me sleep on the couch or anything. I was just being avoidant. I think I’m gonna go back to our room to sleep.”
“Good idea,” Logan said. “‘Sides, the early risers are gonna start headin’ downstairs in just a couple hours.”
Everything was quiet as they headed inside. It was still too dark for the birds and insects to start stirring. Logan always liked that four o’clock hour, when it was too late for the revelers and too early for the ultra disciplined. Remy would have finally come home and Chuck would not yet be up and about. It was the quietest time of day, and usually one where he liked to be by himself.
Today, though, he was glad to take that time to help someone out. Besides, he felt just a little freer, having said Itsu’s name, voiced their story for the first time in fifty years.
“Hey, Logan?” Scott said, pausing before the front door.
Logan stopped and looked.
Scott seemed stiff and very tired, but at least he had sobered up.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said. “And… just thanks.”
Logan clapped him on the back. He couldn’t remember any time before this when they had physical contact that wasn’t sparring or legitimate fighting. It was nice that they had achieved some peace tonight.
He wished there were something he could say that would ease the suffering of not knowing. That he could know for sure that Nathan was safe and sound somewhere in the future. That Sinister would stay the fuck away from the Summers family forever. But what he told Scott earlier was right. All they could do was stay alive, one day at a time.
“Sure thing, Slim. We make it through. Just gotta keep breathin’.”