Fic: "Where Dreams Are Found And Lost" (X-Men)
I know it's something less than the ideal time to post fic, with everyone off being family-ish, but I had a challenge to myself to get these posted before the actual holiday, and so. One more to go after this...::beats self with shovel to get it finished::
For likeadeuce. Thanks to sionnain for beta'ing and soothing of flail, and romanticalgirl for help with brainstorming.
X-Men Movieverse, post-X2. Guest appearance by a character from Astonishing comicverse.
Me, well I lost my faith when I lost my wife
Them things don't seem to matter much to me now
Tonight I'll be on that hill `cause I can't stop
I'll be on that hill with everything I got
Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town (Bruce Springsteen)
Three days since the riots, and Mutanttown still smells like smoke and tear gas. Logan's lungs burn, stinging and healing constantly as he walks down the street. Broken glass crunches under his boots, a grating counterpoint to the mutters coming from the doorways and stoops as he passes. He isn't visibly-mutant enough for the recently-suppressed discontent of Mutanttown; no scales, no extra appendages, no tattoos marking his skin to declare his status as one of us. He could put his claws out, but he'll be damned if he's a performing monkey for these rats in their warren.
Nah, you only perform for Xavier these days.
He shoves that thought down and snarls at the next kid who passes and gives him the eye, looking him up and down and thinking he's a flatscan or a traitor trying to pass or maybe an asshole with an ugly jacket, for all Logan knows, for all he cares. Let the kid say word one out loud, though, and he'll have fight. X-Man or not (and since Alkali Lake, not was fading fast as an option), the Wolverine isn't taking any shit off Mutanttown. He'll make their riots look like a kid's game if that's what they...
What's with the rage, Logan? Where's the kinder, gentler boy we've been seeing these days? The one who came all the way down here looking for his buddy? The one who's all worried about his teammate because he's sad?
He growls, sending the next passer-by about three feet in the air, where she hovers and curses and spits at him. He flips her off and keeps walking, his nostrils flaring as he tries to sift through the lingering smoke and gas burning his sinuses, searching for the fading traces of high-octane fuel, worn-in leather, fancy-ass shampoo.
"Where the fuck are you, Summers?" he mutters, out loud because the thoughts in his head don't come through in his own voice anymore. They're all mocking, critical commentary, ever since Alkali Lake, following him back down here and not letting him have a minute's peace. Jean's voice, and Stryker's, and sometimes Xavier's, laughing at the man without a past who suddenly seems to think he can change.
Is it all for me, Logan? Jean never sounded like that in life, superior and a little cruel. He supposes that going bugfuck nuts and hearing the voices of the dead and the indifferent was bound to be a little detached from the reality.
"Hey baby."
He looks up and bites back another growl. The last thing he has time for is a Mutanttown whore.
"Not interested," he snaps, then ducks back as she flicks her wrist and a spray of something comes at him, something that dissolves the glass and the first inch of the sidewalk like sugar.
"Asshole," she says coolly, and he realizes a minute too late that in Mutanttown, six breasts and black vinyl do not a whore make. "You look like maybe you need information. And I got that."
"I'm looking for someone. A friend." That's something new, for the Wolverine, Stryker chuckles, and Logan's claws itch under his skin.
"Don't know that anybody wants to be your friend down here, baby. You're a little too close to human for us. Trying too hard."
"Yeah, well, the guy I'm looking for takes trying too hard to a whole new level." She stares at him, indifferent, and he takes a deep breath, ignoring the pain in his lungs and his growing desire to stab something and not-Jean laughing her ass off in his head. "He would've come down here on a motorcycle. Red sunglasses. Dark hair."
"Oh." She shrugs, which makes her chest do improbable things, and he can't help but stare. "You're looking for the boy who comes down to visit the Dreamer."
"Who's the Dreamer?"
"She makes it stop hurting, baby boy. Takes all the pain away." She pulls a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her purse and shrugs again. "And your friend must be hurting like crazy, because he's down here all the time."
Two weeks since Alkali, and Summers had spent every day but the first two out on the bike. Damn Logan for not trusting his gut and following sooner. Damn Storm and Xavier for telling him to give Scott his space. Damn Mutanttown and damn Jean for dying and damn--
"You want an address, baby, or you just gonna stand there and watch me smoke?"
"Address. Please." She blinks at the second word, manners apparently something like a rarity down here, and he wonders when he started throwing words like that around at all. More of the school's influence, probably. Another way he's been changed by the Professor and Rogue and stupid uniforms and Jean.
And Scott. Stryker's voice again, so fucking amused at how his pet project has turned out in the end. Don't forget dear Mr. Summers, who's tried so hard to show you the light and trim down your claws.
"Go down to the end of the street, two blocks east, third house on the left." She blows a puff of smoke at him. "But you're only gonna find the Dreamer if she feels like being found. Otherwise you won't see her place at all."
"I don't need to see it to find it," he says, sniffing again at the fouled air. "Thanks for your help."
"Wasn't out of the goodness of my heart, sweet thing." She raises an eyebrow and he curses himself for being an idiot. Where have all his instincts gone? Declawed, Jean chirps sweetly. You're a kitten, Logan.
"How much?"
"Whatever you've got, baby."
"I have ten bucks and a better lighter."
She thinks for a minute and then nods, and presumably whatever overmuscled backup she's got lurking in the shadows goes back to sleep. "Works for me. Good luck finding your boy."
"I don't need luck finding him," he mutters, handing over the money and the lighter and turning to squint down the length of the street. "I'll need the luck to get him to come home."
**
He can smell Summers, all over the sidewalk like he stood here for a long time or like he's been here over and over again. Both are probably true. He can picture Scott standing here, fists clenched, staring up at the building that Logan knows damn well is here, until he made up his mind to go inside.
He can smell Scott and he can smell the bike, even though the space along the sidewalk stubbornly refuses to appear as anything but a solid brick wall to his eyes. "I know you're there," he says, flashing his claws as much to reassure himself as to threaten this invisible and trying-too-hard-to-be-spooky Dreamer. "Give it up and let me in."
Jean and Stryker and the rest in his head have gone quiet, because he's got no time to be crazy now that there's an enemy around. He'll go out on a limb and guess that the Dreamer's an enemy; people who throw imaginary brick walls in his face usually are.
"Open your damn door," he says. "I'm not leaving without Cyclops"
The wall shivers a little, and a soft female voice sighs in his ear. "Not Cyclops right now. He dreamed that Cyclops never was, and it was nice so I dreamed it for him all around. And he's so very happy and he wants to live there all the time..."
"Well, he can't," Logan manages to say around the cold catch in his throat that comes from the feel of invisible fingers sliding up his arms, across the back of his neck, and ruffling his hair. "Let me in. Let me talk to him."
"You dream you're a hero," the voice croons. "Dream you're riding in to save the day. Pretty dreams, for a lonely little boy. Do you dream that you can remember? I can dream it for you. A whole history, a storybook, can dream that you fought dragons and kissed a princess on the hand..."
"I kissed the princess on the mouth, and she sucked my life out," he snaps. "Open your goddamn door."
The wall shivers again, then fades, and he sees an ordinary house like the other run-down, beat-up places along this street. The door's unlocked, of course; why lock it when nobody can even see it unless this Dreamer wants it to be seen? Inside, it's dark and dirty, the blinds pulled down over every window and a thick layer of dust coating the floor.
Logan follows the footprints through the dust to a small room in the back. Unlike the other rooms he walked through, this one has furniture: a table, an armchair, a sofa. Sitting in the armchair, knees drawn up to her chin, is a girl probably about Rogue's age. She's wearing a black dress and black-and-white striped stockings, her face made up white as a clown's and a stocking cap pulled down low over flat black hair. Apparently she doesn't dream in color.
He doesn't spare her much more than attention than that, because Scott is stretched out on the couch, his body loose and relaxed, a soft smile curving his lips, and one hand moving in the air above his head as if he was tracing someone else's face with his fingertips.
"He's dreaming," the girl says, smiling and hugging her knees closer to her chest. "He asks so nice and so pretty for things, and I dream them for him."
Whatever she's dreaming for Summers, it must be pleasant; Logan's never seen that look on his face before, open and peaceful and...happy. Makes him look ten years younger. Like a kid. And that throws Logan off all the way down to the bone, the thought of Scott Summers as a kid. It makes Jean laugh in his head, Jean who isn't Jean at all, and the Professor nod and murmur Indeed. Scott is rather our inverse Peter Pan, older than me since the day he was born.
The Dreamer is still rambling on, her voice rising and falling in a singsong chant. Scott moves with her voice, half a beat out of synch, his body shifting on the couch and his fingers sketching at the air. Logan knows what he's touching in his mind, what he sees, even without the crazy girl's whining.
Psychic doesn't mean crazy, Logan, Jean reprimands him. Though it helps.
Scott's mouth opens slightly, breathing out a word--Jean, of course, what else? It's a dream, after all, a perfect fantasy planned out and painted in watercolors by the goddamn whack job in the tights over there, who's still yakking on about who knows what, on and on and--
"Will you shut up?" Logan snaps, flashing claw at her as he turns. She stares at the claws and then at his face, some of the distance clearing from her eyes, sharpening into a glare.
"Metal grafted to the bone," she says flatly. "Can dream you back to how much that hurt, making the Wolverine into a weapon."
"You can dream about whatever you want, as long as you do it from the other room." Logan turns away, suddenly tired of her, tired of all this shit. All this aching nagging unending pain. All this fighting. "I'm going to wake him up and take him home and you can do whatever the hell you want. Dream about bunnies and kittens or...dead plants or whatever it is you..."
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees on the spot, and the burst of laughter in his head almost puts him on his knees. Oh, Logan, Jean, Stryker, and Xavier mock in unison. You just don't learn, do you?
Your mind has so many holes, even a baby psychic could walk in and set up camp, Jean giggles. And the Dreamer's not a baby. You think Scott would go looking for less than the best? After me?
He can't answer, can't think, because the Dreamer's voice is overriding the others, too loud inside his skull, too big, painful, snarling into the back corners of his mind. I will dream what I want, little hero-who's-not. You want your friend to wake up and go home? I dream you good luck.
The room gets even colder, fast enough for frost to form on the claws Logan can't make himself pull back, and then the lights go out.
***
They come on again to the mournful howl of a jukebox and the rattling of metal bars. Logan spins and stares, looking for the Dreamer, but he's off by a few thousand miles. This is the bar in Loughlin City, one room over from the cage where he'd earned his money for beer and jerky. This is a dirty, unpleasant, weirdly empty bar on the other side of the continent from Mutanttown, NYC, and that is Scott Summers on the stool where Logan first met Rogue.
He knows it's Scott by the back of his head, and the smell, and just the twist in his gut that means Summers, the way some people have come to mean certain feelings and reflexes over the years. Have to learn to trust those feelings, when you don't have a memory to speak of. Logan's body says Summers and he opens his mouth to say "Cyclops," but the other man turns to look at him and what he says instead is "Holy shit."
Summers isn't wearing his glasses or his visor. His eyes are open and the building is still standing--his eyes are a bright and clear and emphatic blue--something is very fucking wrong here and Logan doesn't know what but he has a feeling--
"Logan," Scott growls, sliding off the stool. "I should have known."
Logan's hands flex on instinct to unsheathe his claws, except nothing happens. There's no sharp pain of adamantium breeching his skin, or ache of bone grinding on bone; nothing except his knuckles popping as he makes a fist. And he only does that to block the one Scott swings toward his head.
"What did you do?" Scott kicks at Logan's knees, sending him scrambling back. If there are no claws and no eye-blasts here, there might not be any healing, and the doctors in Laughlin City suck. "Where's Jean?"
That particular dumbass question sends Logan over some kind of internal edge, the Wolverine's unthinking anger stronger than confusion. He grabs Scott's wrist on the next punch and yanks him in close. "She's dead," he shouts, an inch from Scott's face. "You know that."
Scott's other hand comes around in a hard punch to Logan's throat, cutting off air and blood for a stunning, blinding second, enough for Scott to jerk free. "I paid for a dream, Logan, a goddamn hour where she's with me and we're happy and we've never even heard of mutation or Xavier or you. And you come along and ruin it and bring me here--where the fuck is this, anyway? What did you do?"
Logan actually takes a step back, the raw howl of those words something he's never heard except from wounded and dying animals with nothing left to lose. "I came to take you home, Scott."
"Home?" Scott laughs, shrill and a far enough left of crazy that Logan hopes however the hell the Dreamer's mutation-killing mojo works, she can keep it up a little longer. "Where's that, Logan? Never had one of those."
"Scott, don't." Logan can't believe his own voice, the pleading note in it, the lack of edge. What have these people done to him? The last time he stood in this bar, he didn't give a damn about anybody, and he was stronger for it. Personal crisis later. Do what you came for. "Cyclops. You think this is what Jean would want for you? Paying some Goth girl in Mutanttown to get serviced?"
You should make the 'psychic blow job' reference explicit, Jean muses in the back of his head. That would be a very old-Logan thing to do.
"You can go to hell," Scott says, stepping in close to Logan again and shoving him back. "What gives you the right to tell me anything about Jean? Who do you think you are? You think you know what she would want, you think you know what I need, what I should do, who the hell are you anyway, Logan, stray trash off the--"
Logan falls back step by step, giving ground to the assault and trying to figure out if he can knock Summers unconscious inside of a dream at all, and if he can, will it wake either one of them up? He doesn't see an escape hatch here, or a panic button, and if the Dreamer decides to leave them in an empty bar with no powers forever, that's just the kind of sick joke he could appreciate if it wasn't on him...
"Answer me," Scott snarls, grabbing Logan's shirt and yanking him forward, the switch in momentum taking his feet out from under him and sending them both crashing through the doorway into the arena room and down to the floor. Scott lands on top of him, hard, and Logan grunts in pain, turning his head to look for something he can hit with.
Scott punches him in the stomach and that's just the last fucking straw. If this isn't going to work for business than he might as well have some fun. He gathers everything he's got and flips them both over, pins Scott to the floor and starts punching. "No powers, Summers. Must be part of your dream world, not mine, but I don't need powers to beat the shit out of you, prissy little..."
A sharp scream cuts through the room, and Logan falls back, staring up at the cage that's suddenly filled with light.
It takes a minute for his eyes to cut through the glare, and make out the shape of a bird, nearly as tall as a person and with a wingspan as wide as the cage and glowing with flame. Jean whispers something Logan can't understand even in his own head, low dark ancient words that belong to something else, something as alien as that bird. It throws its head back and screams again, high and clear and loud enough that all he can hear in the moment after is his own heart.
He looks at Scott and for a long, dizzying moment he's in two places at once, two bodies, two minds. He feels Scott's heart pounding in his chest, and the burn of air in two sets of lungs, he sees the world through those blue eyes as well as his own and feels the heat coming off the firebird, making the blood race faster and hotter in his veins, and there's something, just barely out of reach, something he thinks might be perfection--
And the world snaps and goes dark again and he falls, down through forever until he hits the Dreamer's floor.
***
The Dreamer's shaking like a leaf and won't look at either of them, just covers her eyes with one hand and waves at the door with the other. "Get out. Both of you out, out, go away. Can't look. Won't look. She'll pluck my eyes out, burn me blind..."
"Crazy," Logan mutters, running his claws in and out just for the relief of the pain. "At least she wasn't good enough to keep us locked up in there, though. We got out."
"Didn't get out," she says, rocking back and forth in her chair. "Wasn't you. Wasn't either of you."
"So you let us out," Scott says flatly, adjusting his glasses on his nose. "Suppose you expect us to thank you."
"Wasn't me." She shakes her head, her dark hair whipping around her face. "Was inside you both. What you carry with you."
"Whatever Logan's got, I probably had my shots for it." The banter has a razor edge, sharpness to keep Logan back and away from discussing anything that has to do with dreams. That's fine with Logan. He's had more than enough of this shit and wants a beer and a smoke and someone to punch, with Scott and the Dreamer tied at the top of the list.
"Listen, bub, I came down here and--"
"Bye now," the Dreamer whispers, and the door slams in their faces. The fact that they never actually crossed the floor is irrelevant.
Scott shakes his head and walks over to the motorcycle. "You're lucky that didn't get stolen," Logan mutters.
"You're the only one who's ever managed to steal it." Scott squints up at the sky. "Suppose you're going to get back to the mansion and go running to tell Xavier all about this."
"That you're stealing the petty cash to get your astral knob polished?"
"Well, that was tasteless."
"You come down here to a place like this and you're going to scold me about taste, Summers?"
"The petty cash isn't exactly going to get me Emma Frost, right?" Scott shakes his head and settles onto the bike. "Goodbye, Logan. I'll see you upstate."
"Wait a minute."
Scott looks at him, still standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. "Yeah?"
"Well, you've got the bike."
"It's my bike."
"How am I supposed to get back?"
Scott blinks and runs his hand through his hair. "How'd you get here?"
Logan grinds his teeth in irritation. "Took the bus."
"You took the..." Scott laughs, and laughs, and keeps laughing until he has to slump forward and brace his elbows against the bike's dash. "The great and terrifying Wolverine, the guy who saved the world, taking a Greyhound...oh, that's great. That's awesome. Thank you, Logan, for sharing that with me." He sits up again and digs his wallet out of his pocket, pulling out a ten-dollar bill. "Here. Your return ticket's on me."
"Go to hell, Summers."
"Yeah, Logan. Me and everybody else." The bike's engine roars to life and Scott tears down the street out of Mutanttown. Logan watches him go and then glances back at the house he can't see anymore, where the Dreamer's hidden herself away, weaving walls out of the shadows people crawled under to hide from themselves. All those dreams she made were really nightmares, the underside of wishes, the dark and damp hollows of the self. The rot you carried with you.
What you carry with you.
Logan frowns to himself as he starts the long walk back to the station. She'd said that, when they came out of their dream. Something they carried with them got them out. Something bright and hot, with wings.
Phoenix, Jean whispers in his head, quieter now, sounding almost tired.
Soon.
For likeadeuce. Thanks to sionnain for beta'ing and soothing of flail, and romanticalgirl for help with brainstorming.
X-Men Movieverse, post-X2. Guest appearance by a character from Astonishing comicverse.
Me, well I lost my faith when I lost my wife
Them things don't seem to matter much to me now
Tonight I'll be on that hill `cause I can't stop
I'll be on that hill with everything I got
Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town (Bruce Springsteen)
Three days since the riots, and Mutanttown still smells like smoke and tear gas. Logan's lungs burn, stinging and healing constantly as he walks down the street. Broken glass crunches under his boots, a grating counterpoint to the mutters coming from the doorways and stoops as he passes. He isn't visibly-mutant enough for the recently-suppressed discontent of Mutanttown; no scales, no extra appendages, no tattoos marking his skin to declare his status as one of us. He could put his claws out, but he'll be damned if he's a performing monkey for these rats in their warren.
Nah, you only perform for Xavier these days.
He shoves that thought down and snarls at the next kid who passes and gives him the eye, looking him up and down and thinking he's a flatscan or a traitor trying to pass or maybe an asshole with an ugly jacket, for all Logan knows, for all he cares. Let the kid say word one out loud, though, and he'll have fight. X-Man or not (and since Alkali Lake, not was fading fast as an option), the Wolverine isn't taking any shit off Mutanttown. He'll make their riots look like a kid's game if that's what they...
What's with the rage, Logan? Where's the kinder, gentler boy we've been seeing these days? The one who came all the way down here looking for his buddy? The one who's all worried about his teammate because he's sad?
He growls, sending the next passer-by about three feet in the air, where she hovers and curses and spits at him. He flips her off and keeps walking, his nostrils flaring as he tries to sift through the lingering smoke and gas burning his sinuses, searching for the fading traces of high-octane fuel, worn-in leather, fancy-ass shampoo.
"Where the fuck are you, Summers?" he mutters, out loud because the thoughts in his head don't come through in his own voice anymore. They're all mocking, critical commentary, ever since Alkali Lake, following him back down here and not letting him have a minute's peace. Jean's voice, and Stryker's, and sometimes Xavier's, laughing at the man without a past who suddenly seems to think he can change.
Is it all for me, Logan? Jean never sounded like that in life, superior and a little cruel. He supposes that going bugfuck nuts and hearing the voices of the dead and the indifferent was bound to be a little detached from the reality.
"Hey baby."
He looks up and bites back another growl. The last thing he has time for is a Mutanttown whore.
"Not interested," he snaps, then ducks back as she flicks her wrist and a spray of something comes at him, something that dissolves the glass and the first inch of the sidewalk like sugar.
"Asshole," she says coolly, and he realizes a minute too late that in Mutanttown, six breasts and black vinyl do not a whore make. "You look like maybe you need information. And I got that."
"I'm looking for someone. A friend." That's something new, for the Wolverine, Stryker chuckles, and Logan's claws itch under his skin.
"Don't know that anybody wants to be your friend down here, baby. You're a little too close to human for us. Trying too hard."
"Yeah, well, the guy I'm looking for takes trying too hard to a whole new level." She stares at him, indifferent, and he takes a deep breath, ignoring the pain in his lungs and his growing desire to stab something and not-Jean laughing her ass off in his head. "He would've come down here on a motorcycle. Red sunglasses. Dark hair."
"Oh." She shrugs, which makes her chest do improbable things, and he can't help but stare. "You're looking for the boy who comes down to visit the Dreamer."
"Who's the Dreamer?"
"She makes it stop hurting, baby boy. Takes all the pain away." She pulls a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her purse and shrugs again. "And your friend must be hurting like crazy, because he's down here all the time."
Two weeks since Alkali, and Summers had spent every day but the first two out on the bike. Damn Logan for not trusting his gut and following sooner. Damn Storm and Xavier for telling him to give Scott his space. Damn Mutanttown and damn Jean for dying and damn--
"You want an address, baby, or you just gonna stand there and watch me smoke?"
"Address. Please." She blinks at the second word, manners apparently something like a rarity down here, and he wonders when he started throwing words like that around at all. More of the school's influence, probably. Another way he's been changed by the Professor and Rogue and stupid uniforms and Jean.
And Scott. Stryker's voice again, so fucking amused at how his pet project has turned out in the end. Don't forget dear Mr. Summers, who's tried so hard to show you the light and trim down your claws.
"Go down to the end of the street, two blocks east, third house on the left." She blows a puff of smoke at him. "But you're only gonna find the Dreamer if she feels like being found. Otherwise you won't see her place at all."
"I don't need to see it to find it," he says, sniffing again at the fouled air. "Thanks for your help."
"Wasn't out of the goodness of my heart, sweet thing." She raises an eyebrow and he curses himself for being an idiot. Where have all his instincts gone? Declawed, Jean chirps sweetly. You're a kitten, Logan.
"How much?"
"Whatever you've got, baby."
"I have ten bucks and a better lighter."
She thinks for a minute and then nods, and presumably whatever overmuscled backup she's got lurking in the shadows goes back to sleep. "Works for me. Good luck finding your boy."
"I don't need luck finding him," he mutters, handing over the money and the lighter and turning to squint down the length of the street. "I'll need the luck to get him to come home."
**
He can smell Summers, all over the sidewalk like he stood here for a long time or like he's been here over and over again. Both are probably true. He can picture Scott standing here, fists clenched, staring up at the building that Logan knows damn well is here, until he made up his mind to go inside.
He can smell Scott and he can smell the bike, even though the space along the sidewalk stubbornly refuses to appear as anything but a solid brick wall to his eyes. "I know you're there," he says, flashing his claws as much to reassure himself as to threaten this invisible and trying-too-hard-to-be-spooky Dreamer. "Give it up and let me in."
Jean and Stryker and the rest in his head have gone quiet, because he's got no time to be crazy now that there's an enemy around. He'll go out on a limb and guess that the Dreamer's an enemy; people who throw imaginary brick walls in his face usually are.
"Open your damn door," he says. "I'm not leaving without Cyclops"
The wall shivers a little, and a soft female voice sighs in his ear. "Not Cyclops right now. He dreamed that Cyclops never was, and it was nice so I dreamed it for him all around. And he's so very happy and he wants to live there all the time..."
"Well, he can't," Logan manages to say around the cold catch in his throat that comes from the feel of invisible fingers sliding up his arms, across the back of his neck, and ruffling his hair. "Let me in. Let me talk to him."
"You dream you're a hero," the voice croons. "Dream you're riding in to save the day. Pretty dreams, for a lonely little boy. Do you dream that you can remember? I can dream it for you. A whole history, a storybook, can dream that you fought dragons and kissed a princess on the hand..."
"I kissed the princess on the mouth, and she sucked my life out," he snaps. "Open your goddamn door."
The wall shivers again, then fades, and he sees an ordinary house like the other run-down, beat-up places along this street. The door's unlocked, of course; why lock it when nobody can even see it unless this Dreamer wants it to be seen? Inside, it's dark and dirty, the blinds pulled down over every window and a thick layer of dust coating the floor.
Logan follows the footprints through the dust to a small room in the back. Unlike the other rooms he walked through, this one has furniture: a table, an armchair, a sofa. Sitting in the armchair, knees drawn up to her chin, is a girl probably about Rogue's age. She's wearing a black dress and black-and-white striped stockings, her face made up white as a clown's and a stocking cap pulled down low over flat black hair. Apparently she doesn't dream in color.
He doesn't spare her much more than attention than that, because Scott is stretched out on the couch, his body loose and relaxed, a soft smile curving his lips, and one hand moving in the air above his head as if he was tracing someone else's face with his fingertips.
"He's dreaming," the girl says, smiling and hugging her knees closer to her chest. "He asks so nice and so pretty for things, and I dream them for him."
Whatever she's dreaming for Summers, it must be pleasant; Logan's never seen that look on his face before, open and peaceful and...happy. Makes him look ten years younger. Like a kid. And that throws Logan off all the way down to the bone, the thought of Scott Summers as a kid. It makes Jean laugh in his head, Jean who isn't Jean at all, and the Professor nod and murmur Indeed. Scott is rather our inverse Peter Pan, older than me since the day he was born.
The Dreamer is still rambling on, her voice rising and falling in a singsong chant. Scott moves with her voice, half a beat out of synch, his body shifting on the couch and his fingers sketching at the air. Logan knows what he's touching in his mind, what he sees, even without the crazy girl's whining.
Psychic doesn't mean crazy, Logan, Jean reprimands him. Though it helps.
Scott's mouth opens slightly, breathing out a word--Jean, of course, what else? It's a dream, after all, a perfect fantasy planned out and painted in watercolors by the goddamn whack job in the tights over there, who's still yakking on about who knows what, on and on and--
"Will you shut up?" Logan snaps, flashing claw at her as he turns. She stares at the claws and then at his face, some of the distance clearing from her eyes, sharpening into a glare.
"Metal grafted to the bone," she says flatly. "Can dream you back to how much that hurt, making the Wolverine into a weapon."
"You can dream about whatever you want, as long as you do it from the other room." Logan turns away, suddenly tired of her, tired of all this shit. All this aching nagging unending pain. All this fighting. "I'm going to wake him up and take him home and you can do whatever the hell you want. Dream about bunnies and kittens or...dead plants or whatever it is you..."
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees on the spot, and the burst of laughter in his head almost puts him on his knees. Oh, Logan, Jean, Stryker, and Xavier mock in unison. You just don't learn, do you?
Your mind has so many holes, even a baby psychic could walk in and set up camp, Jean giggles. And the Dreamer's not a baby. You think Scott would go looking for less than the best? After me?
He can't answer, can't think, because the Dreamer's voice is overriding the others, too loud inside his skull, too big, painful, snarling into the back corners of his mind. I will dream what I want, little hero-who's-not. You want your friend to wake up and go home? I dream you good luck.
The room gets even colder, fast enough for frost to form on the claws Logan can't make himself pull back, and then the lights go out.
***
They come on again to the mournful howl of a jukebox and the rattling of metal bars. Logan spins and stares, looking for the Dreamer, but he's off by a few thousand miles. This is the bar in Loughlin City, one room over from the cage where he'd earned his money for beer and jerky. This is a dirty, unpleasant, weirdly empty bar on the other side of the continent from Mutanttown, NYC, and that is Scott Summers on the stool where Logan first met Rogue.
He knows it's Scott by the back of his head, and the smell, and just the twist in his gut that means Summers, the way some people have come to mean certain feelings and reflexes over the years. Have to learn to trust those feelings, when you don't have a memory to speak of. Logan's body says Summers and he opens his mouth to say "Cyclops," but the other man turns to look at him and what he says instead is "Holy shit."
Summers isn't wearing his glasses or his visor. His eyes are open and the building is still standing--his eyes are a bright and clear and emphatic blue--something is very fucking wrong here and Logan doesn't know what but he has a feeling--
"Logan," Scott growls, sliding off the stool. "I should have known."
Logan's hands flex on instinct to unsheathe his claws, except nothing happens. There's no sharp pain of adamantium breeching his skin, or ache of bone grinding on bone; nothing except his knuckles popping as he makes a fist. And he only does that to block the one Scott swings toward his head.
"What did you do?" Scott kicks at Logan's knees, sending him scrambling back. If there are no claws and no eye-blasts here, there might not be any healing, and the doctors in Laughlin City suck. "Where's Jean?"
That particular dumbass question sends Logan over some kind of internal edge, the Wolverine's unthinking anger stronger than confusion. He grabs Scott's wrist on the next punch and yanks him in close. "She's dead," he shouts, an inch from Scott's face. "You know that."
Scott's other hand comes around in a hard punch to Logan's throat, cutting off air and blood for a stunning, blinding second, enough for Scott to jerk free. "I paid for a dream, Logan, a goddamn hour where she's with me and we're happy and we've never even heard of mutation or Xavier or you. And you come along and ruin it and bring me here--where the fuck is this, anyway? What did you do?"
Logan actually takes a step back, the raw howl of those words something he's never heard except from wounded and dying animals with nothing left to lose. "I came to take you home, Scott."
"Home?" Scott laughs, shrill and a far enough left of crazy that Logan hopes however the hell the Dreamer's mutation-killing mojo works, she can keep it up a little longer. "Where's that, Logan? Never had one of those."
"Scott, don't." Logan can't believe his own voice, the pleading note in it, the lack of edge. What have these people done to him? The last time he stood in this bar, he didn't give a damn about anybody, and he was stronger for it. Personal crisis later. Do what you came for. "Cyclops. You think this is what Jean would want for you? Paying some Goth girl in Mutanttown to get serviced?"
You should make the 'psychic blow job' reference explicit, Jean muses in the back of his head. That would be a very old-Logan thing to do.
"You can go to hell," Scott says, stepping in close to Logan again and shoving him back. "What gives you the right to tell me anything about Jean? Who do you think you are? You think you know what she would want, you think you know what I need, what I should do, who the hell are you anyway, Logan, stray trash off the--"
Logan falls back step by step, giving ground to the assault and trying to figure out if he can knock Summers unconscious inside of a dream at all, and if he can, will it wake either one of them up? He doesn't see an escape hatch here, or a panic button, and if the Dreamer decides to leave them in an empty bar with no powers forever, that's just the kind of sick joke he could appreciate if it wasn't on him...
"Answer me," Scott snarls, grabbing Logan's shirt and yanking him forward, the switch in momentum taking his feet out from under him and sending them both crashing through the doorway into the arena room and down to the floor. Scott lands on top of him, hard, and Logan grunts in pain, turning his head to look for something he can hit with.
Scott punches him in the stomach and that's just the last fucking straw. If this isn't going to work for business than he might as well have some fun. He gathers everything he's got and flips them both over, pins Scott to the floor and starts punching. "No powers, Summers. Must be part of your dream world, not mine, but I don't need powers to beat the shit out of you, prissy little..."
A sharp scream cuts through the room, and Logan falls back, staring up at the cage that's suddenly filled with light.
It takes a minute for his eyes to cut through the glare, and make out the shape of a bird, nearly as tall as a person and with a wingspan as wide as the cage and glowing with flame. Jean whispers something Logan can't understand even in his own head, low dark ancient words that belong to something else, something as alien as that bird. It throws its head back and screams again, high and clear and loud enough that all he can hear in the moment after is his own heart.
He looks at Scott and for a long, dizzying moment he's in two places at once, two bodies, two minds. He feels Scott's heart pounding in his chest, and the burn of air in two sets of lungs, he sees the world through those blue eyes as well as his own and feels the heat coming off the firebird, making the blood race faster and hotter in his veins, and there's something, just barely out of reach, something he thinks might be perfection--
And the world snaps and goes dark again and he falls, down through forever until he hits the Dreamer's floor.
***
The Dreamer's shaking like a leaf and won't look at either of them, just covers her eyes with one hand and waves at the door with the other. "Get out. Both of you out, out, go away. Can't look. Won't look. She'll pluck my eyes out, burn me blind..."
"Crazy," Logan mutters, running his claws in and out just for the relief of the pain. "At least she wasn't good enough to keep us locked up in there, though. We got out."
"Didn't get out," she says, rocking back and forth in her chair. "Wasn't you. Wasn't either of you."
"So you let us out," Scott says flatly, adjusting his glasses on his nose. "Suppose you expect us to thank you."
"Wasn't me." She shakes her head, her dark hair whipping around her face. "Was inside you both. What you carry with you."
"Whatever Logan's got, I probably had my shots for it." The banter has a razor edge, sharpness to keep Logan back and away from discussing anything that has to do with dreams. That's fine with Logan. He's had more than enough of this shit and wants a beer and a smoke and someone to punch, with Scott and the Dreamer tied at the top of the list.
"Listen, bub, I came down here and--"
"Bye now," the Dreamer whispers, and the door slams in their faces. The fact that they never actually crossed the floor is irrelevant.
Scott shakes his head and walks over to the motorcycle. "You're lucky that didn't get stolen," Logan mutters.
"You're the only one who's ever managed to steal it." Scott squints up at the sky. "Suppose you're going to get back to the mansion and go running to tell Xavier all about this."
"That you're stealing the petty cash to get your astral knob polished?"
"Well, that was tasteless."
"You come down here to a place like this and you're going to scold me about taste, Summers?"
"The petty cash isn't exactly going to get me Emma Frost, right?" Scott shakes his head and settles onto the bike. "Goodbye, Logan. I'll see you upstate."
"Wait a minute."
Scott looks at him, still standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. "Yeah?"
"Well, you've got the bike."
"It's my bike."
"How am I supposed to get back?"
Scott blinks and runs his hand through his hair. "How'd you get here?"
Logan grinds his teeth in irritation. "Took the bus."
"You took the..." Scott laughs, and laughs, and keeps laughing until he has to slump forward and brace his elbows against the bike's dash. "The great and terrifying Wolverine, the guy who saved the world, taking a Greyhound...oh, that's great. That's awesome. Thank you, Logan, for sharing that with me." He sits up again and digs his wallet out of his pocket, pulling out a ten-dollar bill. "Here. Your return ticket's on me."
"Go to hell, Summers."
"Yeah, Logan. Me and everybody else." The bike's engine roars to life and Scott tears down the street out of Mutanttown. Logan watches him go and then glances back at the house he can't see anymore, where the Dreamer's hidden herself away, weaving walls out of the shadows people crawled under to hide from themselves. All those dreams she made were really nightmares, the underside of wishes, the dark and damp hollows of the self. The rot you carried with you.
What you carry with you.
Logan frowns to himself as he starts the long walk back to the station. She'd said that, when they came out of their dream. Something they carried with them got them out. Something bright and hot, with wings.
Phoenix, Jean whispers in his head, quieter now, sounding almost tired.
Soon.