X-Men: The Last Stand (23 page)

“Jean,” Magneto commanded, “enough.”

That got her full attention. Perhaps not such a great idea.

She was smiling, a little ruefully. He liked that even less.

“You sound like him.”

“He wanted to hold you back.”

“And what do
you
want?” Jean asked.

“I want you to be
what you are.
As nature intended…”

He took her by the shoulder, speaking with his full passion.

“This ‘cure’ they speak of is meant for
all
of us, whether we want it or not. If we want our freedom as a species, our rightful place among the peoples and nations of our world, then we must
fight
for it. Together, Jean”—he moved close—“we can
win
this war!”

His words struck a chord. She was interested.

Magneto was content.

Callisto was furious.

Followed by Pyro, she intercepted Magneto on his way back to the encampment.

“What the hell was
that
?” she demanded, and he didn’t need telepathy to see that she thought he was crazy for keeping Jean around. “Her power’s totally unstable.”

“Only in the wrong hands,” he assured them.

Pyro obviously didn’t buy it. “And you trust her? She’s one of them!”

Magneto didn’t even spare him a glance. “So were you, once.”

“I stuck with you, all the way,” Pyro protested as Magneto brushed past him. “I would’ve killed the professor if you gave me the chance!”

He took a quick, reflexive step back as Magneto rounded on him, consumed by rage. “The professor,” he roared right in the young man’s face, “was
my friend
!” He paused, for breath and for control: “Charles Xavier did more for mutants than you’ll ever know. My single greatest regret is that he had to die to turn the tide.”

“So what now?” asked Bobby Drake. It was the morning following Xavier’s memorial. A bunch of kids had gathered in one of the common rooms after breakfast, to be joined by Ororo and Hank McCoy and ultimately—to a smile of warm relief from Ororo that wasn’t returned—by Logan. “What do we do?”

Ororo shrugged. “I don’t know, Bobby.” Hank knew that none of them had really thought that far ahead. They were still too much in shock.

Hank spoke up, reluctantly, the doctor delivering the worst of news—news that seemed to be just about what everyone was expecting.

“Charles Xavier founded this school,” he said. “Perhaps it should end with him?”

Ororo didn’t comment, but Kitty gave a shallow nod.

“We should start calling parents,” she suggested.

“What?” Bobby sounded outraged, not only at the motion on the table, but also by who it was coming from.

“She’s right, Robert,” Hank said. “We should tell the students they’re going home.”

“Most of us,” Peter Rasputin reminded him, “don’t
have
anywhere to go.”

Bobby shot to his feet. “I can’t believe this! I can’t believe we’re not going to fight for this place!”

Ororo didn’t move from her place by the window, so it was Logan who answered Bobby’s challenge.

“Charley’s dead, kid,” he said. “The professor is dead.”

Bobby, angrily: “So
what
?”

“There is no school,” Logan explained patiently, although it was clear to Hank that what he wanted far more was a session of unrestricted berserker mayhem. “There is no choice.”

“There’s
always
a choice!” Bobby threw his own words back at him, and then, rushing onwards: “But what do you care? This was never your home!”

Logan looked ready to reply, but instead turned to face the doorway.

Facing them was an angel.

“I’m sorry,” Warren said, picking up on the vibe. “I know this is a bad time…” His body language and manner told Hank that he fully expected to make things worse.

“My name is Warren Worthington,” he introduced himself, then with a shy, self-deprecating smile added, “the third.”

Everyone knew the name. Warren plunged ahead regardless.

“I was told this was a safe place for mutants.”

“It was, son,” answered Hank.

“No, Henry,” snapped Ororo. “It
is.
”

With a long and even stride, every step proclaiming the rightness of her decision, Ororo crossed the room to the doorway leading to Xavier’s study.

“Bobby,” she told him as she passed, “show Mr. Worthington to a room.”

She threw open the door and entered, with the rest of them following—curious, expectant, impressed, outraged—like fish caught in her net, to behold her taking her place behind the desk, as though it were hers and always had been.

“And tell all the students the school will remain open.”

Hank watched her look past the assemblage to Logan, who hadn’t made a move.

“This
is
our home,” she told them all, but her words were mainly meant for him. “And as long as I’m here, this will be a safe haven for mutants.”

There were smiles all around—even from Hank—and a muffled chorus of “Aw-
riiight
!” “Outstanding!” “Way to go, ’Ro!” From Logan, though, not a word, not even a nod. Ororo had made her decision. He made his. He left.

Upstairs, a little later, Bobby ushered Warren into a room.

“Might not be what you’re used to,” he semiapologized.

“It’s perfect,” Warren assured him.

“Yeah,” Bobby nodded, comprehending the multiple meanings. “No parents.”

With just those few words, they made a connection. And from it Bobby intuited at once that Warren had a lot to process, work best done in private. Telling the new arrival he’d give a yell at dinnertime, Bobby stepped out into the hall to leave the boy alone. As he closed the door, though, he caught a glimpse of Warren flexing his wings, stretching the gleaming alabaster pinions so wide they scraped the walls of the room.

With that sight came the obvious code name for so glorious a creature, that encompassed his strength and the evident courage it must have taken to break from his father—whom it was equally apparent the young man still loved—and of course his unearthly beauty.

“Welcome to Xavier’s,” Bobby breathed,
“Angel!”

He left the room by a different route, to knock eventually on Rogue’s door and quietly call her name, “Rogue?” And then, answered by silence, “Marie?”

It wasn’t locked, and his eyes widened as the door swung open on an empty room. She hadn’t taken much, and the chaos surrounding the bureau and closet told him she’d packed in a hurry. No note, no clue.
Damn her and her impulses!

Outside, he encountered Peter and asked the obvious.

“Hey, Pete, you seen Rogue?”

“She took off.”

“When? Where?
Why?
”

Peter had no clue. Bobby’d have to figure out this one on his own.

Logan stood before Xavier’s cenotaph, replaying those final moments over and over in his memory. He hadn’t moved for most of the day, but everyone at the school had the common sense to leave him be. His eyes were at half-mast, giving the impression he was dozing—but the tension in his body totally belied that. He was in full predator mode, waiting for…
something
—damned if he could articulate precisely what—and when it arrived he’d be ready to deal with it.

Trees rustled as his patience was rewarded. The woods were deep in shadow, and as he looked he found nothing there to see. Both trees and air seemed still, yet his ears reported the sound of movement. It was big, and coming straight for him.

He flexed his fingers, but left his claws retracted. The same instinct that alerted him to the approaching presence now assured him he was in no danger. This thing was as much the predator as he was, but it wasn’t hunting tonight. At least, not him.

And just like that, within the space of a single breath, his head was filled with the scent of her.

He heard her call his name. “Logan!”

Before he could reply, his perceptions twisted inside out and he found himself tumbling through a cascade of waypoints, laying out a trail he could easily follow that led unerringly to a hidden forest encampment below a towering cliff.

“Come to me,” Jean pleaded, and the force of her desperation, her need, her stark terror, drove him to his knees.

“Help me,” she begged, and he realized that both sets of his claws were now extended, gleaming despite being shrouded in twilight shadows. Her doing, he sensed, a further tweaking of her perceptions, to show him what was needed.

“
Save
me,” she asked of him, in the barest whisper, and then the air fell still once more and the scent of her was nothing but a memory.

He sat up, back ramrod straight, blades resting open on his thighs, legs folded under him in the Japanese manner that was an unexpected constant in his nature and the source of much speculation among the student body. How could a roughhouser from the Canadian backwoods have a real affinity for one of the most structured, mannered and
ordered
societies in history? Logan had no answers either. He simply accepted it as a part of himself, like the healing factor.

He stayed that way as the evening turned fully dark, then with uncharacteristic formality, folded both forearms across his chest, so they formed the shape of an X, and retracted his claws. With a fluid grace he rolled to his feet and laid a set of fingertips on the crest of the great stone, his eyes meeting the face emblazoned on its side. There was a little bit of humor to the way his mouth quirked; he was, after all, a man with an appreciation for irony.

“You were right, Chuck,” he admitted at last. “You were always right.”

Nobody heard him retrace his steps through the Mansion, but Ororo was waiting at the carriage house, where she had her loft, with the keys to his bike. There was no need for words. They parted with an embrace that carried with it an acceptance of what was, but also a promise of a future not yet even dreamed of.

Then, with a roar that woke the house as he opened the bike’s throttle wide, he hit the road.

Logan had a lot of miles to go before he slept—and a promise to keep.