Jean and Logan

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

After Scott's announcement that Pietro's joining the team, and the ensuing brouhaha, Logan goes out for some air, and Jean goes to talk to him.



Tracking Logan down had been slightly harder than she'd expected. For whatever reason he seemed to be avoiding his normal hide outs. She ended up heading outside, following a tip she'd gotten from some students. From there it wasn't hard to guess he'd end up in the forest but tracking him wasn't really an option. Well, she was wearing perfume, and wasn't really in much of a hurry. Picking a spot she could see the lake from, Jean settled down to wait till he came back.

Originally Logan was going to sit outside in seiza until he got his shit together enough to be around civilized folks. Just a little sitting meditation to quiet his spirit, re-center himself. But then a spare breeze brought a waft of very familiar perfume to his nostrils. Seems Jeannie'd come out to play and likely she was lookin' for him. Standing up, he brushed his jeans off and went to go find Jean.

The thing with Logan's mind was that it was too chaotic to read without trying, and so focusedly guarded it would take serious effort to get more than traces. But Jean wasn't interested in more than traces, all she'd needed was that faint tickle of awareness, the shift in thoughts featuring a flash of recognizable red hair to let her know he was coming. "Evening, Logan," she said as he stepped out from between the trees, appearing as suddenly as only a feral could. "Feeling better?"

"Not really," he said, sinking back into seiza next to Jean and slowed his breathing, tried to slow it down, draw the air deep into his lungs before letting it go. "Should know better than to get on the fucking journals," he groused.

"They have their uses," she replied, letting her own breathing slip into the meditative patterns she knew so well now. "Although sometimes it seems the main use is to stir up trouble." She let the quiet of the evening surround them for a few moments before adding, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I get that I'm the wild one. The crazy," he said, with a fast turn for an apologetic look to Jean. "I can't help but feel like the whole thing's a bad idea," he said. "Makes me crazy that I can't remember why I know."

"You're hardly the only one with claim to the Crazy One title. Sure, you're in the top five, but probably not number one. Which is kind of beside the point. Not asking if you knew why people had jumped at you, I'm asking if you wanted to talk about it."

"What do you want me to say?" Logan asked. "That my team doesn't trust me? That's obvious. That the blood I've shed, the work I've done don't mean shit? Knew that too. I don't KNOW why I know it's a bad idea to let him back into the field. I just know that it _is_," he said with heat in his voice.

"Sweeping generalizations are a problem, Logan," Jean said. "The team doesn't trust you? Trust you to what? To keep a cool and level head and never lose your temper? No, probably not. To give everything you've got and more for the team? Of course. To do what you think is best for the team? Absolutely. But the key there is 'what you think'. And the thing with Pietro is also about what you think; as far as I can tell it's not about Pietro at all." She turned her head to meet his eyes levelly.

"I don't give a toss about Pietro," he admitted after a moment, looking away. "I don't like what he represents and I sure don't like the shitty decision to let a double-agent into a position of trust," he grumbled. "I just know it's a bad idea."

"You've said that," Jean said, turning her gaze back to the lake. "Many times. You've also said you don't know why or how you know it. So, I assume, it's related to something which happened to you during the time you can't remember. Now. Charles has decided to trust Pietro - take it as a blanket statement of trusting a double agent if you like, since you don't care about Pietro. Why not, instead of raging at a situation you don't like, when you know that simply raging at it isn't going to change it, go talk with Charles. At the worst, you find out why he's choosing to trust Pietro inspite of what he was. At best, you find out why you feel like this, or you change Charles' mind."

"Not real inclined to go talk to Wheels on this one," he grumbled. "I'm sick of the damned tea and he won't let me smoke in his office." And speaking of which, Logan patted himself down to look for a cigar. Ah, good. One left. He courteously offered it to Jean silently.

Jean smiled faintly at the familiar ritual as she shook her head. "Well, do you have another solution? Or are we settling for brooding until the situation changes somehow? It's an option, but one that never seems to make you happy."

Logan lit the cigar and took a puff or two from it. "Read my mind," he said suddenly but sincerely. "Help me figure it all out."

Jean's eyebrows shot up, although when she thought about it she realized she shouldn't be surprised. "Logan," she said slowly, "we've done that before. It rarely goes well." Which wasn't exactly a 'no'.

"Come on, Red!" he pleaded. "You spent all that time freezing your incredible ass off in Tibet getting a grip on your brain. Read my mind," he taunted. Unbidden, his words to Scott so long ago floated to the forefront of his mind. ~If I have to tell you to stay away from my girl...~

"So if I start forcing tea on you will you go see the man who's actually qualified to do this?" Jean asked. "The time in Tibet was, yes, about getting a grip on -my- brain, not yours."

"C'mon, Jeannie. I trust you," he said with as roguish a grin as he could muster. He reached over and took her hand in both of his, squeezing it. "No-one I'd rather have poking around in my noggin."

"You trusting me was never the question," Jean said, but she couldn't quite help smiling at his grin. "And I take it I can't talk you out of this one?"

"I'm a stubborn one," he said with a grin. "C'mon, Jeannie. You can do this," he said confidently.

"Can, certainly. Should... Well, we'll see." Standing up, she dusted off her jeans. "Well, if we're going looking for double agents in your brain, we're doing it where it's warmer than this."

Logan just laughed. "Then let's go on inside." he said, gallantly gesturing to allow her to lead the way. And, he had to admit, the view would be spectacular.

---

They ended up co-opting one of the parlors on the ground floor for comfort. Jean had, of course, mentally mentioned to Charles what they were doing, but he hadn't done much more than raise an eyebrow at her. Well, at least he had faith in her ability. "Take a seat," she said, waving Logan to one of the couches. She briefly considered pulling a chair to sit across from him, but instead toed off her shoes to kneel on the couch beside him. "And can you focus on the double agents thing? Might make it easier to find what ever's hiding in there."

Logan grinned appreciatively at Jean. "Sure thing, Red." He closed his eyes - when it came to mindwork he needed every crutch he could get - and tried to focus in on the nebulous memory. He could tell there was _something_ there, but for some odd reason he got the smell of mint in his nose. Mint and alcohol. Mojitos? Odd time to be craving a drink. He also got an itch right between his shoulderblades and he squirmed in the chair to try to scratch it.

Jean centered her mind on him, first simply looking at what slipped out on it's own before going searching after anything. "Deep breaths," she said quietly. "Still and centered." The itch felt like a memory to her, having all the mental signs of a non-physical reaction. But the hints that remained in his mind were too nebulous. Steeling herself, Jean carefully moved further into his mind, watching as his mindscape swirled up around her.

Logan's mindscape - what there was of it - coalesced into a very dingy bar that reeked of stale sweat, blood, and alcohol. Judging by the signs it was somewhere south of the border, and sitting at a table in the corner was Logan - looking exactly the same as he does today - and another man clouded by shadow. ~You believe this shit?~ Logan said to his companion, gesturing to a newspaper on the table. ~Fuckin' assassinated the President.~ At the bar sat four extremely beefy Latin men, dressed for the heat in light tropical wear. Each of them bore a pistol and a knife at the belt and no-one took it amiss in the slightest.

Given that she wasn't actually there in the memory, it was fairly simple to hide herself from Logan and watch the memory play out as far as it could. The shadowed man was curious - given the spots in Logan's memories it was almost equally as likely that this man was the focus of the memory, or that he'd been incidental and the memory of him taken for entirely different reasons. From the angle she was watching, she couldn't see the newspaper and make out which president they were talking about.

One of the men at the bar stood up and walked over to Logan's and the shadowed man's table. He had his hands full with a pitcher of mojitos and three tumblers. The glasses went thunk as they hit the table and the pitcher sloshed over the edge, soaking the newspaper. ~El Presidente will be in Havana tomorrow.~ the newcomer said. ~He'll be giving a speech about Dallas.~

Which answered that question, and explained the mint smell. Idly, Jean wondered if Logan still spoke fluent Spanish, and if he remembered when he'd learned. She let the memory continue, still taking no action as she focused more on the clouded man. It covered all features but, more than that, managed to obscure even seemingly unrelated details like his size and clothing, which seemed to shift about at random. But it was possible the changes weren't random.

Logan and the shadowed man stood up to go, and the newcomer stayed at the table. But just before Logan and the shadowy man were to walk through the front door it was thrown open by the local police. Behind Logan, the man who remained behind turned his chair around, pulled out his gun, and casually shot Logan in the back. The scene faded out to the smells of blood and gunpowder.

"Well, huh." Jean stood in the grey space between memories, reaching out to find where Logan had gone in his mind. It was slightly more risky than just watching, given the nature of the chaos in here, but it was that or leave, and she didn't have any answers yet, only more questions. "Shooting you is only real betrayal if someone doesn't know about your healing factor. So did he? Who called the police, and why? You haven't lost all your memories of the man who shot you, so who is he? Where else do you know him from?"

The image in his mind swam and shimmered, to reveal Logan and the other man shrouded in darkness lounging in some kind of house. "So I hear that the boys in Maryland got one of the inner circle to turn," he said around a cigar. "You believe this shit? And now he's being taken from his Lap of Luxury to get us close enough to do the job."

She needed more information, and she wasn't even sure Logan had the answers.

The man in shadow said something, but his words were distorted, obscured. Impossible to make out. Yet Logan reacted like they were plain English. "Yeah, well, I know that technically you don't trust a double, but the boys upstairs vouched for this one so I'm willing to give it a shot. Besides, if he does turn again we can always just shoot him," Logan said, making a gun with his fingers and pointing it at his distorted companion. "Bang, bang."

The whole scene flickered, like it was being viewed underwater while lit by candles. Weird shadows, fuzzed-out outlines, and distorted voices made following what was going on almost impossible. There was almost a sense of strain about things, like something was pushing _back_ at Jean's probe, back at the memory, smoothing it all over and making all the distress and pain go away.

"Damn it, no," Jean muttered. "There's something here. Something he deserves to know." But she couldn't hold the memory together and try to unravel the mental cloth that was fuzzing over everything. And that was the real problem. Instead of holding herself inside the melting memory she stepped back, looking for the source of the loss.

Back in reality Logan grunted as his nerve endings screamed. He lifted a hand to wipe away the sweat that had popped onto his brow from nowhere and let the beads roll off his fingers. "Dammit, Red, whatever you're doing hurts like a bitch." he growled at the telepath.

"Do you need me to stop?" It took effort to vocalize the thought, but she did so, briefly stopping her search, although she didn't let go of what little information she'd gained.

Logan felt like he'd been worked over with rubber hoses filled with lead shot. "Think I've had enough," he said, wiping his brow again. "Get anything?" he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Jean gently dropped the link entirely, taking a deep breath as the parlor snapped back into view around her. "Yes," she said slowly, "sort of. It's almost more interesting what can be deduced about what happened to your memory than what specifically there was to learn about double agents. The thing is, most of your memories seem to actually be there, just... hidden. Covered over. Parts are missing, but they link into other memories and can be traced through, except that there's this defense to it, where even just thinking about it hurts you. I have to assume that either what happened to you didn't involve a telepath, or they weren't very good to have left so many traces."

Logan just blinked at all that. "Got no idea," he said roughly. "Was fine early on, then you did something or something happened and it started to hurt like a bitch," he said. "I can handle a little pain but I want to know I'm getting something out of it."

"When did it start hurting, compared to when you spoke up? I'd only just started looking at the blocks themselves when you said to stop."

"Dunno. I wasn't following what you were doing," he said with a shrug. "I was fine until you asked me about the guy. Then the pain hit. Felt like being beaten."

"So, he's a trigger. Well, that's potentially good to know." Jean sighed, rubbing at her face. "I don't know if I've found anything terribly useful, I'm afraid. I may only have ended up with more questions. I can talk with Charles about it, though."

"It's a start," Logan said, trying to cover his disappointment. "And ya gotta start somewhere."