Cracked and Healed
NR
Logan POV

***

"Excuse me?" Laughter. "Excuse me?" Light and high, docile and airy. "Uhh - uh hi. Hi." A smile as he finally turns to see her standing there. Long blond tresses that fall in waves over bare, slimly naked shoulders. A black dress with this straps that aren't too thin, and a little black purse on its spaghetti-sized strap. Again, over that bare shoulder. Pale white and looking even paler than usual under the light and with the black all around it.

"Yes?" he asks her.

"I'm sorry - I'm a bit lost and I was wondering if you could point out to me which of these men is Scott Summers?"

He looks at her. His eyes dart away as hers dart away and then they both meet again in a flash and she's got that smile, and now he's smiling, too.

"Well. I'm not really sure."

She looks past him, scanning. Delicately tragic blue eyes seem urgent to his own dark ones. "Well, thanks anyway," she says. Walks away looking light as air - she can't be touched by the fires the rest of the world walks on. He picks up a glass and follows her. Someone says something to him but he's not hearing them, so intent is he.

She stops in the large hall. It's empty and he's smiling. "You know," he taps her on the shoulder. Smooth skin under his fingers - she jumps. "You shouldn't wander around in a stranger's house, especially when there's a party going on just down the hall the other way." He absently waves a hand but he's not really paying attention to his own speech. More into her eyes. Flecks of gold, it looks like in the light -

He wakes up with a shake of his head and runs sweaty fingers through the blackness, in front and above. He shakes himself in the dark. Third time this week. Except he doesn't know who it is or how he's supposed to find her. She means something, though. He can feel it. Somebody pounds on a piano downstairs and there's singing, too. He's been busy recovering so he hasn't joined in the party. No fun, anyhow.

Empty hallways are much better, and quiet dark rooms.

Drags himself downstairs and then there's a tap tap at the faucet until it turns on and he can cup his hands to drink a little of the water. Tastes good going down his throat, cool and his stomach has that feeling he can only get when he drinks cold water from a rusty faucet. Like iron and chlorine and old minerals. Hard and cold and not really natural.

In Ireland they all have long red hair - but then, he's never been to Ireland so he doesn't know how he knows that. Maybe he doesn't and it's just been one too many hours in front of the TV watching re-runs of Touched By an Angel while he was trying not be sick in the trash next to his bed.

Fever dreams are bad things. It doesn't help matters that he's got some kind of problem where his body doesn't heal them correctly. The dreams stay with him and the rst goes away, so that weeks after he's better he still has the crazy women in his head.

It's gotten to the point where he knows he's dreaming. But it seems so real.

Then his second grade teacher is over him. How the hell does he know her? He never went to school, did he? But she's a gorgeous brunette with her hair tied tight behind her head and a big Veronica Lake wave down the side. And normally he'd think "Bad Catholic school girls in plaid dresses' but this time he's looking up at her, with his 8 year old hands, shaking pencil in small fingers, and he thinks she's the most beautiful thing he's ever laid eyes on.

But she's yelling at him.

"Get up, will you!?"

Ouch, it hurts!

"How many fucking times do I have to tell you to get your scrawny ass out there an work before I beat it into you, huh!?"

I'm sorry.

"NOW!" comes the roar and he runs. Out into the fields past the large estate where a girl with auburn hair stares sadly from a window. But he's running too fast to stop and look at her, even though he wants to bad.

He runs until he's safe in the hallway again, and then he's sitting there. It's ironic that he's right back where he started. Trapped.

And there she is again, with that black dress and the black purse and that pale pale skin and those blue eyes that make him feel tense and warm.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?"

"Excuse me."

"Yes?"

"Can you tell me ...

"No I'm sorry I don't know."

"Thanks anyway."

"Hey wait won't you stay for the party?"

Now this is different. Not like the usual. She smells like lavender and hyacinth and maybe jasmine. She smells like a woman should smell. He remembers the foul reek of the cabin he had to grow up in, and when it would get so cold he'd go leave it and she'd let him in. She smelled the same. But more real.

"Thanks," the little boy with dark hair said.

"Of course, you know you're welcome here."

"I am!?" he asks with bright eyes. I am!

He opens his arms wide and falls into it. Into that longing embrace he's needed for so long, but couldn't ever find. Into the arms of the mother he never knew and the sister that never was and the lover that might never be.

When he wakes up she's there with him, snuggled into his chest. Perched delicately against his shoulder, her small body rising and falling under the sheet, one naked breast falling across him. He puts a hand to her hair, pulls away a few loose strands from the rest of it and smells it.

I'm always welcome here.

It smells like her. It smells like home. It smells like childhood and innocence and all the things he lost or maybe never had.

~