#i'm a habitual time-skipper

[shih-coulda-had-it]

stormverine | rolo week! day three | trust

wc: ~1800

a/n: expanded from an earlier wip post. technically gen, but definitely setting up the ship (and what i will probably have to tag as Power Dynamics, because i enjoy writing guard dogs what else is new)

//

Logan’s sanity has been in question for a good decade. Optimistically speaking, it’s a work-in-progress. When he was Weapon X for the Canadian government, Heather and Mac made an effort to keep him on an even keel.

More human than weapon. More reason than instinct.

He’d sensed he was hitting some kind of block by the time Xavier came to fetch him. Something that couldn’t be overcome by medicine or therapy prescribed by a bunch of doctors who pretended to understand what the hell was happening to him. 

And don’t get him wrong. Xavier pretends to understand too, but the professor’s got telepathy, and that at least gets him a better view of the struggle. It gets Logan the surety of a safety rope; painless, so he wouldn’t flinch and retaliate, and inexorable, so he couldn’t resist. The fact that the X-Men also gets him a front-row ticket to some of the worst mind-bending trips of Logan’s life is, well… 

Pessimistically speaking, Logan is losing the war to keep his goddamned mind. He’s lashing out on reflex and instinct, seeing enemies in his peripheral. His reasoning, his memory, it’s all going to pot.

It was bad under Scott’s leadership. It is worse now, but he won’t blame it on Ororo. 

The slide’s been building momentum. Too many slips without a save. Xavier can’t be there all the time, so Logan tries to keep rational on his own, tries to keep the bloodlust down now that there’s an actual kid at the mansion. Kurt seems to get it; he offers out of genuine sincerity to let Logan blow off steam with their games in the woods, and more than once, Logan is sure that Kurt’s had something to do with making sure Logan bumps into Ororo once a day. 

Which, on principle, Logan resents. 

Logan is a grown-ass mutant who doesn’t need minding. Never mind the evidence that Ororo helps, just by offering a word, a joke, or a mug of coffee. If Kurt indulges Logan’s bestial instincts, Ororo settles them. They aren’t pressed down like they are when Xavier intervenes. They aren’t even redirected to productive, if equally destructive, purposes, which was a favorite tactic of Scott’s. 

It’s not good. He shouldn’t be thinking of Ororo like a touchstone.

Yet when he breaks free from Doom’s cage, disoriented and half-mad, it’s Ororo he thinks of first. The team is scattered and the micro-transceivers aren’t working; the world outside the castle is clearly out of sorts with a wind howling as loud as the animal inside him. Logan doesn’t bother wasting time weighing his priorities—Ororo comes first.

He thinks in a different world, he throws in the towel and removes himself from the trappings of civilization altogether. It chafes to be restricted by things like orders, morals, ethics. He hadn’t liked it under the Canadian government, he hasn’t enjoyed the lectures from Cyclops and Xavier, and—the itch to act out and test the boundaries that Storm sets…

It’s still there. It’s nipping at his heels. Something’s going to give.

Before that, though, Logan can’t help but tie his fate to Ororo’s. When he and Kurt force Doom to revert the organic steel transformation and Storm emerges not just free but furious, Logan admittedly thinks twice about trying to restrain her.

Her rage is valid, isn’t it? Who has the right to leash a goddess?

So it’s not Logan who pulls Storm back, since he definitely lacks Colossus’s steady faith and firm trust in the human spirit. And in the chaotic rush to prevent Storm from going rogue, Logan’s thin and desperate plea to a higher being will be forgotten.

His thoughts are muddled throughout the aftermath, save for the instinctual training of his senses on where and what Storm does to negotiate their exit.

She uses the Wolverine’s name like a naked blade catching the light, and Logan isn’t even bothered. Let him be the threat. He’d relish the reputation if it got Doom’s slippery manners and hollow, courteous gestures to stop. 

When they agree to a truce, to a clean slate, Logan chews on the implications all the way home. He’s perversely glad that he can focus enough to puzzle over that last exchange.

Human enough to be jealous. Wonderful.

It’s something like a week after they return to the mansion, after Angel abruptly cuts from the team for greener (saner) pastures, that Logan remembers he’s human enough for the less pleasant sides of humanity too.

The nightmares have come back with a fucking vengeance.

Logan never remembers them, doesn’t have to, because what they do to his heart rate and sweat glands and sensory system says it all: he’s fucking terrified. Of what? The mansion creaks like it always does, old and reliable and drafty with all the recent repair work done to its walls and windows. The various scents are homely: blends of the incense sticks he burns, the remnants of meals, the smells of his teammates.

He should feel safe here. 

A memory snarls, a phantom sound. Logan wrenches himself out of bed and just barely restrains the claws from extending. His clothes do a lot to wick the sweat away, but it chills the back of his neck and raises the hairs, and he—

Logan lurches for the door. Ghosts. Spirits. He can’t trust his senses. He’s been put into too many situations where his heightened senses worked against him.

If the Professor isn’t reaching out to help him, isn’t beaming his deafening reprimand to calm down and be rational, then—! Logan doesn’t let himself finish that thought. If Xavier thought Logan was too far gone, he’d try and cage him in MacTaggert’s facility. No, maybe it’s more likely that Logan’s mutation has finally adapted to the invasive nature of Xavier’s mind-touches. Maybe Xavier needs to exert a little more conscious effort to catch when Logan’s about to let loose. 

Maybe Logan’s head is masking its own damn disintegration.

He slips into the hallway, barefoot. He eases the door shut behind him. He has to trust something. There is something in his head that is standing firm, steadfast, someone who smells like ozone and greenery, dust after rain.

The stairs up to Ororo’s attic-loft have never seemed farther, but Logan’s pushed himself through hell before. He steps silently, nimbly, until he’s ascending and at the door to Ororo’s personal haven.

Before he can stop himself, he’s—

“Ororo,” he calls out quietly.

The door swings open. “Logan?” she says, blinking. There are no curtains in her loft, and the moonlight washes her hair and the outline of her body in blue. The tension in his shoulders and spine vanishes. Logan digs his nails into his palms, clawing for clarity.

“‘Roro, I don’t—I don’t rightly know what the hell’s happenin’ to me right now. My head…”

“My friend, come in,” she says.

She’s worried. Obviously. It’s not every day that the Wolverine admits to a bit of headache and a spiraling feral temperament.

The door clicks shut, but she doesn’t switch the light on. Instead, Ororo draws him to the windows. Her eyes are steady on his, and when she reaches to touch his face to check for fever, Logan lets her. Her hands are a little chilled, wind-chapped too. “Is this something I can help you with? Shall I ask for the Professor?”

“If he had an idea, he’d have said it. Done it already.”

Ororo is silent. Belatedly, Logan realizes that he’s let his eyes shut, his vocal cords free. He’s goddamn purring like a rusty engine, and leaning into her hands to boot. He locks up and in like a good soldier. 

“Logan—”

“Sorry,” he croaks, and tries to pull away. “My control’s slippin’. I know it. The team knows it. I’m becomin’ as much a danger to the X-Men as to the creeps we fight.”

She holds him still. “Would you not say the same of me? I have never lost myself to my powers before. I hurt my team in an effort to stay as I was.”

“That’s different. You were—trapped—” Logan struggles to make the difference in their situations clear. Her brief foray into primal rage was born of a unique hell preying on her past, her fears, her innate desire to dance along the winds. He’s just like this. He’s always been like this. 

Her thumbs brush over his cheekbones; she is bold enough to card her fingers through his hair, and the long nails scratch Logan’s scalp like he’s some pet.

Fuck, maybe he is. Logan goes boneless, goes to his knees and tips his head to her, breathes out and in like meditation. His eyes close in anticipation of judgment.

“I do not accept your resignation from the X-Men,” Ororo says. “I will not accept any question of your leaving, unless there is some dire need of your presence elsewhere.”

“... Nice caveat.”

“I would not be who I was without some measure of freedom,” she responds wryly. “But I believe I am beginning to understand what might keep you here, beyond promises and vows.” The air shifts. He knows, without a doubt, that Ororo is kneeling too. “The Professor doubts your ability to reason in moments of crisis. I cannot seem to get it through his head that you, my friend, help me keep this team together.”

The affectionate nickname leaves his mouth without permission. “Darlin’,” he says, before snapping his teeth together with a click.

Ororo tugs his hair in reprimand, and Logan’s spine goes a little liquid. He cracks open his eyes, registers the slight smile, hears the quickened heartbeat. Her blue eyes are bright despite the dim illumination that pours through the skylights.

“Sorry,” he offers, guiltily. “I can be a professional about this.”

“If you were capable of being wholly professional, you would not be in this situation,” Ororo says. “Can you tell me what you need, Logan? Or shall I guide you in ignorance, as my predecessors did before me?”

Logan considers the request. Slowly, he says, “I ain’t askin’ for perfection. I don’t go lookin’ for it, either. I don’t care about the mistakes you’ve made, because the good you do outweighs all of that. Past, present, and future.”

She waits. He gives in first.

“Balance,” he says. “Don’t ask me to choose one or the other. Human or animal. Duty or freedom. The mission or—your life. I know what hard sacrifices are, and I’ll make them when I have to. I can’t promise to be your completely obedient servant—” Ororo interrupts him with a snort of derisive humor, and Logan flashes a quicksilver grin back, “—but I don’t mind deferrin’ to you. You’re team leader.”

“I am not as experienced as Scott was.”

“What’s that matter? There are dozens of ‘experienced’ team leaders that do worse with better people.” Logan hesitates, but finally catches Ororo’s wrists and takes her hands down, holds them in his, runs his thumbs over the fine knuckles and brown skin tinted blue. Then he lifts them and presses his lips to the slender digits, eyes cast down. Quietly, he murmurs, “Lead me, wind-rider.”