Heyoka: Chapter 6
by Minisinoo
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Notes: They're Marvel's (mostly), not mine. See Part I for other disclaimers. Yes, Gracie's t-shirt is a little bow to the film, Smoke Signals. The lyrics that Scott sings and Gracie doesn't recognize come from Live's, Throwing Copper, "Shit Towne." And our dear Wolverine is back. Peace and love shall reign in X-Men land . . . .
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So this was the infamous Logan.
Gracie had heard the motorcycle even before Rogue, who had been sunning on the lawn with Gracie, Kitty and Jubilee. Rogue was often with Gracie these days. It was more than just the fact that Grace could touch the girl. Teenagers needed adults around who weren't their parents. In a tribe, Rogue would have had a hundred uncles and aunts and older cousins. Here, she just had Grace. And Logan's dogtags.
Now, it looked like Rogue had Logan back in the flesh.
Gracie smiled, hoped the poor man could stop the bike before Rogue impaled herself on it and didn't have an accident himself in the process. She knew whose bike loan that was, and knew how much Scott would bleed if the damn thing got even a scratch. He was such a white man sometimes.
She stood up from the towel where she'd been lazing in the sun in nothing but jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt that read Frybread Power in red on blue. An unusual break in the weather for mid-November. Not warm, but warm enough not to need a jacket after noon, and the whole day since dawn had been lovely. She was beginning to understand why the Iroquois had fought so hard for this land. Now, she shaded her eyes and observed the meeting between Rogue and Logan. The girl had taken advantage of the man's biking leathers to throw herself at him and hug him so hard, Grace feared he might choke. If that grin he wore didn't get him first. He hugged Rogue back, lifted her bodily and swung her up on the bike behind him, then started for the mansion again at a sedate crawl, like a parade bike. And he was parading, too.
Scott Summers had exited the front door, stood with arms crossed. His face was a blank, but Gracie could read him like a book. Posture, not her gift. He wanted to be pleased, but his pride prevented him, locked him into the role they all expected him to play.
"Logan's back," Jubilee said now, needlessly, at Gracie's left elbow.
"I kinda gathered that."
"And, oh Mr. Summers has seen him!" Kitty added. "Fireworks dead ahead!" She sounded positively gleeful.
In truth, Gracie was less interested in Scott than in another figure approaching up the path from the direction of the pasture.
Jean Grey.
Gossip at a school as small as Xavier's was inevitable, and teenagers could be at once more perceptive and more blind than their elders might wish. In the two months since her arrival at Xavier's, Gracie had heard an earful about Jean Grey and the man called Wolverine. But she wasn't sure how much of it was true and how much was adolescent exaggeration induced by over-active hormones and too many romance novels read under the covers after lights out. Grace knew the depth of the woman's attachment to Scott, no matter what Grace might think of the health of it.
This was the moment of truth.
Grace moved quickly. She had to be closer to the fulcrum on which it all balanced.
Logan called Wolverine.
The man had rolled the bike to a stop at the very foot of the high front steps on which Scott stood before a bank of glass windows. Logan reached behind him again and with easy animal grace grabbed Rogue by the waist and swung her up into the air a little and off the bike, planted her on her feet. She squealed in surprised delight. Logan's leathers were dusty and his hair tousled from the wind of the road. He looked a pleasant mess, handsome in a vampiric way. Grace was close enough finally to feel him: all solid stone grey and the black strength of a bear or a wolverine. Just now, he was shining happy and grinning like a maniac. He'd effectively stopped all activity on the mansion lawn and drawn a crowd. He had the welcome he'd desperately needed but not dared to hope for. He was home.
She was close enough to feel Scott, too, feel the smile he was struggling to keep in check behind his scowl. These two men had made a game of their antipathy. They liked disliking each other, weren't about to surrender it for anything as mundane as social concord at Xavier's academy.
"Hey, One-Eye. Looking for these?" Logan tossed the bike keys so fast Gracie wouldn't think anyone could catch them. Scott did. Trained reflexes. Logan grinned. All teeth. "Thanks for the loaner. I took good care of her."
And he had. Logan was dusty but the bike wasn't. The man had obviously stopped somewhere before reaching the mansion to wash it down and shine it until the chrome gleamed. Gracie would bet the gas tank was full, too.
On the porch above, Scott let his smile loose finally, but like Logan's, it had an edge. "I can see that." He came down the steps then to offer his hand with a hesitation all prickly on the edges, emotional echo of a past embarrassment, a snub.
Logan gripped Scott's arm and slapped him on the shoulder hard enough to rock him. The students around them seemed torn between disappointment and surprise.
"Logan."
A new voice. Grey's voice.
Logan swung around fast.
And everything shifted. Cheerful antagonism became genuine tension and a heart-thud miasma of emotion. Gracie couldn't even tell from whom it came. Logan? Grey? Scott? Not Scott. This wasn't anger or jealousy. It was a mix of giddy excitement and stark fear so powerful that it made Gracie draw an involuntary breath.
Logan. And Grey. It came from them both, mixed and drowned them like sand grains impossible to separate but implacable and heavy.
In the background, Gracie could now pick up Scott's reactions, too. They should have been simpler. They weren't. Fear and anger, yes; bitterness, yes. But relief? Gracie narrowed her eyes to study his face. It gave away nothing. But then, it rarely did. Unless he was smiling.
Grey recovered first. She plastered on a smile that looked convincingly reserved and offered Logan her hand. "I'm glad you're back. You came in time for the holidays."
He took the hand and bowed over it. Very gentlemanly. But his face was confused, closed off; surprise and disappointment had replaced the excitement in him. "That was the idea, madame. Everyone goes home for the holidays."
It was flip, but he meant it.
Ororo who had been following Jean Grey now came forward, too, hugged Logan lightly. "Welcome home," she said. Her easy affection seemed to unsettle him, but in a pleasant way, not like his reaction to Grey. He patted her cheek. From his perspective, Ororo probably didn't seem much older than Rogue. And it was Rogue, still jittering up and down in her excitement, who drew Logan's attention to Grace. She tugged on his arm and exploded all in one breath, "Logan, Logan! Look! This here's Gracie. I'd say she's the newest to the school, but we got another new boy last week so I guess Piotr's the newest. But Gracie's the newest before that, so I guess she's still new. She's my friend. You'll like her." She wasn't the only one talking at Logan now. The other kids showered him with questions. How far had he gone? Had he found what he was looking for? What was Canada like in summer? He was Rogue's friend, so they were proprietary of him. Gracie could see that this left him torn between amusement and discomfort. Kids weren't his cup of tea. But bears were mostly placid; he had that side, too. Gracie, who called the animals her relatives, wasn't frightened by the animal in Wolverine. Her brother Victor had taught her that animals are only dangerous when scared, annoyed, or hungry. Now, at Rogue's continued insistence, Logan turned away from the seething mass of teenagers to find 'Gracie.'
And Grace was suddenly aware of Scott standing behind her. Not behind Jean Grey, who had moved to the other side of Ororo, almost directly across from them.
Go away, Scott. Go to Jean. Go where you belong, where you don't make me feel guilty.
Logan spotted her then. "You're no student," was the first thing out of his mouth.
She offered him her hand. "No. I pretend to be the secretary. Or 'administrative assistant.'" She shot a smile at Ororo, who returned it. "I'm Gracie Kills-his-Horse."
He took the hand. Warm grip. The confusion in him boiled all focused on Grey. But he was trying to concentrate on other things to distract himself. "And did he, your ancestor? Kill his horse?"
"Riding back from one raid to warn his band of another. Burst its heart."
He studied her face a moment. "Plains?"
"Very good. Lakota Sioux. Oglala band."
"I thought so. Those Lakota cheekbones." He let her hand go to tap his own, not nearly so wide.
"I thought it'd be the nose that gave it away."
"Too small," he replied. "Not enough like an Indian nickle."
She laughed.
"You know about the Lakota, Mr. Logan?" that from Jubilee, who seemed impressed.
He glanced down at her, then at Scott, still behind Gracie. "I knew a man in prison once. He was Dakota."
"Cousin tribe," Gracie explained. "Lots of Indians in prison. Fastest growing Ind'n reservation."
"He was a good man. He didn't belong there."
"A lot don't." Like Victor, her brother.
Logan had glanced at Scott again, gave his teeth-grin. "What is it, One-Eye?"
"Why am I not surprised to hear that you were in prison?"
"I wasn't. I said I knew a man once who was." Gracie watched his eyes flick quickly between her and Scott and back to her. His expression didn't alter at all, but his nostrils flared and Gracie knew that he knew.
Scott go to Jean!
Maybe the force of it got through to him even though she was no true telepath. "Well, I don't think he's going to eat you," Scott said to Grace with a smile. "I'll take my bike back to the garage now." And then he was gone. But to the bike, not Jean.
Too little, too late. Frowning, thoughtful, Logan watched him go, then took a stogie out of his pocket and set it between his teeth. The irony of it was that there was absolutely nothing here for Logan to suspect. Nothing but what couldn't be. Gracie looked up and met the eyes of Jean Grey on the other side of the loose circle about Logan.
What a tangled web we weave.
Gracie wasn't sure if the thought was her own or sent to her by the doctor.
Scott didn't come to dinner, an affair otherwise packed with the curious and the welcoming. Even the professor showed up, though he often as not ate in his study, and Valeria outdid herself whipping up something special and "hearty" on the spur for the prodigal. Gracie doubted that Logan cared, as long as it was edible. Now that the initial excitement had worn off, he seemed mostly tired and hungry, and not inclined to make small talk, though he kept up a good front for Rogue's sake. He kept shooting glances at Jean when he thought no one was looking, or at Gracie. He must be trying to figure it all out. She could feel his tense uncertainty like a ripple on a lake. Was Jean free, or not free? She doubted he could tell from what he'd so far seen. After all, Scott had gone to stand by Grace, not Jean. And then he'd gone to the garage, not to re-emerge though the rest of the mansion was boiling like an anthill stirred.
But there was something else here, too. Gracie wasn't sure what. From everything she'd heard and sensed Logan wasn't the type to hold himself back if he had a clear shot for the hoop and nothing in his way. For that matter, he'd gone for the hoop even with Scott in his way. But he wasn't now. He was behaving very properly towards Jean Grey.
"Where is Cyclops?" Ororo asked at one point.
"Bike," Logan said between bites of chicken fried steak. Gracie had been told it was his favorite.
"The bike was fine," Ororo replied.
Logan didn't look up, actually smirked. "I think he went to make love to it, afraid I might've replaced him in the ol' girl's affections, eh?" It was entirely too pointed. In the moment of shocked silence that followed, he looked up at Jean Grey. "Then again, maybe not."
"Logan " Jean started.
But Logan stood abruptly, looked off. He'd said even more than he'd intended; Gracie could feel his embarrassment. "It's been a long day. I'm tired. I should go to bed." And he walked out, leaving his half-eaten steak on the table. There was a pause in conversation as teachers and kids both watched him go. Even if the kids hadn't overheard the conversation, they could tell his departure was abrupt. Rogue went after him. Predictably.
The professor wasn't watching Logan, however. The professor was watching Jean, who'd colored almost as deep as her hair. Ororo frowned and focused her attention on her pasta.
Definitely something else going on and whatever it was, the other three weren't inclined to enlighten her.
But Gracie was nosey. It was a well-kept secret about Indians. Reservations ran on generation grudges and gossip. She had no gift to go snooping about in Jean Grey's head, and the woman was tightly locked up right now anyway, protecting her secret from the professor. But Gracie had talents Grey couldn't protect herself against. Rising up to return her plate to the kitchen, Gracie made sure to pass behind Ororo and Grey, used the excuse of a snug fit between the backs of their chairs and those at the next table to knock against Grey. "Sorry," she said, set a hand on Grey's shoulder. The woman glanced around. It was just an instant of contact and Gracie pulled her hand back, went on. Grey probably suspected nothing.
But Gracie had her answers. She hoped her face didn't show her shock. How the hell had Logan figured it out? And Gracie was sure that he had.
She dropped off her plate in the sink for the kids on kitchen clean-up that night and headed for the garage.
Scott was alone in there, on his back half under the bike. Music blared too loudly to hear the clink of tools as he set them down on concrete, picked them up again. Hard rock music. Angry music. She didn't recognize the band though he obviously knew it well. He was singing along. He had a good voice. "We don't bother anyone, we keep to ourselves. The mailman visits each of us in turn. We don't bother anyone, we keep to ourselves "
She laid her head against the door jamb. What were they going to do? He was a wasicun, a white man, for god's sake. He was organized, on time, linear-thinking, and hyper-rational. He was also funny. It was that blasted, self-depreciating humor that got to her. She still wasn't quite sure when she'd realized that her feelings were returned. She'd just looked over at him one morning a few weeks ago when he'd come in to get his coffee and tease her, and she'd known. It wasn't a childish thing. It was quiet and simple and as solid as his soul. He didn't try so hard, in her presence, he wasn't nervous, he laughed more, he stood loose. Despite culture, despite their very different lives, despite their previous attachments, they walked in unison. They made each other happy. Was that love? She didn't know what else to call it. But it was a love that could exist without consummation. It would have to.
"Gotta live, gotta live, gotta live in shit towne. Gotta live, gotta live, gotta live in shit towne," he sang now to the CD.
"You have no idea," she whispered to herself, pushed away and went in.
It was just too tempting to sneak up on him while he was distracted, tinkering. Despite the sobering situation, she couldn't resist, moved in quiet to bend and lift away the wrench he'd just set down. Then she sat back on her heels and waited for him to notice.
He reached again, didn't find it, felt around blindly, then unwedged himself from beneath the bike to roll up on an elbow, look about. There was grease on his chin and on his grey work sweats, no doubt most of the latter old. "Looking for this?" she asked, held it up.
He grinned, snatched it from her. "Tease."
It wasn't the best word choice just then. He seemed to realize it at the same moment it came out of his mouth. Flushing, he looked away, then went back to his bike, apparently at a loss for anything else to say.
She sat down and waited, handed him tools when he asked for them. If she was quiet long enough, he might tell her something. She had no idea how to tell him what she knew. It wasn't her place, anyway. Instead, she watched him work and wondered what kind of father he would be. Perhaps a bit strict, but if it was a girl, he would dote, too. She'd seen him with his female students. He was protective, but all platonic. It made him safe for the girls to flirt with, and he was young enough yet for them to nurse their adolescent aspirations. She wondered how many secretly wished for a voodoo doll of Jean Grey to punch with pins. It was a good thing for the doctor that Gracie had chosen the medicine way. Lakota witches knew strong magic.
He pulled away suddenly from beneath the bike and, still on his back, stared up at her from behind the protection of his glasses. "Penny for your thoughts."
"Jubilee has a crush on you." It seemed the least volatile of possible conversation topics. "That's why she gives you such a hard time, ain't it? Kitty, too, but Kitty falls in love once a week on a rotating basis."
He laughed. "What? This isn't my week?"
"No. This week it's the new kid, Piotr. Jubilee, though, she is fixated."
His eyebrows hopped. "I'm not sure if I should be flattered or terrified." But he didn't return to his work. Instead he sat up, pulled his glasses off and wiped sweat from them on the bottom of his shirt. His eyes were closed. He brought the glasses back up but hadn't, apparently, gotten the smears because he pulled them right back down again and went back to work.
"Give them to me," Gracie said, and took them out of his hands. "You can't see what you're doing."
She cleaned them for him, couldn't resist raising them to her own face to look at the world as he had to. "It's all red."
"Yeah. Can I have my glasses back now?"
But she didn't hand them to him. Instead, she leaned over to set them on his face herself. It was impulsive, and probably a mistake, but she couldn't stop herself now any more than she'd been able to stop herself that morning from trying to take the pain away. Her fingers brushed the sides of his face, his cheekbones. "They're as high as an Indian's," she said.
He caught her hands, held them to his skin and watched her from behind mirrored red two pinpoints of light. Definitely a mistake. "What did Logan mean, about Lakota cheekbones?"
"It's an old joke. Not all Indian faces look alike, y'know. Not any more than all European faces. We plains people have these huge noses."
"Yours isn't."
"I've got white blood. My mother was an Osage half-breed." Her fingers spread out of their own accord, his skin warm, the line of his beard a little sandpaper against the balls of her fingers. "But I did get those Lakota cheekbones that hit the sides of a doorway when I go through."
He laughed; she could feel his heart beating so fast, feel the rush of deep red arousal in him, tangling up and tripping in something much warmer and bright, shining like the gold of the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. Was this the color of love? She closed her eyes and sank into it. He shifted forward until she could smell his breath against her face, not sweet, a little sour in fact at the end of the day but that didn't matter. It matched the sweaty man-smell of him.
"Kiss me, Gracie. I want you to kiss me. Please."
Had he not spoken, it might have happened. But the words kicked her back to her senses. She let him go and pulled away abruptly. A burst of fear from him, that he'd offended her, but no fear of what he'd meant to do just now, no guilt. Under the desire, the fear, Gracie found anger. She wasn't the only one who'd observed Jean's reaction to Logan and known it for what it was. No wonder he'd come to stand by her, not Jean.
She got up and walked away from him. "We can't, Scott."
He followed her, grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. He was strong. "Why not? It's obvious she wants him. Even after all these months. Fine. He can have her!"
"Don't. You don't mean that."
"Maybe I do!"
So much pain, hurt pride, and plain confusion. She reached up to touch his cheek with one finger. "You still love her."
He pulled her close, bent down and kissed her. Hard. Angry. As if he would mark her his, as if he needed to. "I love you," he hissed against her mouth.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and let him kiss her again. Selfish, purely. She needed this just once, before she let him go. He pressed all along her body, the strong planes of muscle from his training, felt his erection, too, against her belly. The kiss lasted almost a full minute, then he pulled back, panting. "There. I kissed you and you're not Jean. And the world didn't end."
"You were afraid it would." It was more a statement than a question. She sighed softly and extricated herself from his arms. He didn't want to let her, but he wasn't the kind of man to hold her against her will. "Your responsibility is your great strength, Scott. You're their rock. That's my name for you. They call you Cyclops. But you're their rock. Inyan. They depend on you, even the professor. Maybe the professor most of all. You're his son. Go to bed, Scott. Go to Jean. She has something she needs to tell you. Good night."
And Gracie left him there before he could see her cry.
She went back by her room, grabbed her jacket and her cigarettes, then headed outside for a walk.
She saw him, standing back against a wall, out of the lights. Or really, she could feel him. He was black inside of black, only the red spark of his smoke giving away his location. She lit her own cigarette and wandered over to sit down on a bench. He would join her if and when he was ready. It took a few minutes, but he finally did. "Glad to see somebody else in this joint shares my vice." He paused, took a puff and blew smoke rings. "But I'm surprised the Boy Scout puts up with it."
"He doesn't like it. But he doesn't own me."
Logan chuckled. "He has no idea what he's in for with a Sioux woman, does he?"
"He isn't in for anything. We're not a couple. I think you know that, Logan."
"Coulda fooled me."
She didn't reply, just studied the stars. This far from the city, they were visible, but not so bright as on the plains. A harvest moon hung gold on the noose of the mountain horizon.
He snorted finally, a laugh of sorts. "Marie calls you my 'power twin' and that Jubilee kid said she thought we might be like matter and anti-matter and explode the school."
"She's been watching too much Star Trek."
"Probably." A pause. "Can you teach me to do with Marie what you do?"
"I don't know. I can try."
He nodded, took a drag from his stogie and exhaled slow through mouth and nose. A fog of smoke against the dark. Pleasant and acrid.
"But I don't know how much longer I'll be here," she added.
He glanced at her quick, then away and didn't reply for a while, finally stubbed out the cigar and ground it into the grass. "Running ain't always the answer."
"I'm not planning to run, Logan. I'm planning to leave. There's a difference. Running means not saying good-bye." Which would be so much easier. But "Running hurts people. Sometimes we have to leave, though. For our own good. And for someone else's."
"He won't like it."
"Neither do I."
"He don't know, does he?"
"He don't know what?" She wasn't inclined to play guessing games. "Dr. Grey is the telepath. Not me."
"And 'Dr. Grey' is pregnant, too. And One-Eye don't know."
"No, he don't. She knows. And Ororo. The professor suspects, I think. How'd you know?"
"How did you?"
She raised the hand with the cigarette, burned low now. "Touch. When I touch a person, I can feel things about their body."
He tapped his nose. "For me, smell. And observation. Her hair has that pregnant-woman shine, her skin is softer and she looks tired. Her breasts are fuller, too."
"You'd notice."
He laughed a little. "I'm surprised One-Eye ain't. But then, I don't think he's been looking very hard at Jeannie lately, eh?"
"It's not what you think. We haven't done anything."
"I'm sure you haven't. You're just like him, aren't you? You always do what's right."
If only Logan had seen the two of them twenty minutes earlier, he might not say that. "I try, but I don't always succeed. I feel it when people get hurt. It's not a fault to try to do the right thing."
He nodded. "I didn't call it a fault. I like Sunglasses Boy. Sorta. But I think he needs to loosen up. And don't give me that shit Jeannie did about him and control and blasting out mountains. It's not about his eyes."
Gracie smiled. "No, it's not. It's just the way he is." She took a last drag and dropped the cigarette, ground it out.
"So how long you planning to stay here?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'll find a ride home for Christmas. I don't think I'll be back. This place is too different, too white. And Indians don't do real good, away from home for long."
"Seems like you done good enough. Marie spoke real highly of you."
"I messed up somebody's life. Two somebodies. Three, if you count the baby."
"And helped a few more. Where would that kid Jake be, if you hadn't been there, eh? If you messed up One-Eye's life, he let you."
"I didn't mean to."
She wasn't going to cry, not in front of a stranger. But Logan didn't feel like a stranger; they shared Rogue. He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. She blinked, kept herself dry-eyed by force of will. Logan spoke. "One-Eye and Jeannie have their own problems that ain't got nothing to do with us, darlin'. You know that, I think."
She nodded and he let her go. "I didn't run, either, you know," he said after a minute. "I left. I had things to find out. My own business. But leaving or running Both are the easy way. I decided it was time to come back and do the hard stuff. I'm not used to having family. That's hard stuff for me. But it's doing the right thing. I guess Cyclops rubbed off a little more than I thought. Don't tell him I said so." She smiled at that. He stood up and went on, "Maybe you need to take a little time. Go home. Get your bearings. But remember what I said. Running or leaving ain't always the answer, winchinchala." And he sauntered off.
She grinned to herself. Where had Logan learned that word?
In prison, probably. He'd lied to Scott. He had been in prison.