After

2. Walls

Claire was putting the last touches on the stew when he emerged from the bathroom. He looked almost like the Logan she remembered. The worn jeans he'd found were a snug fit, but that seemed to be how he always wore them anyway. The green and yellow John Deere t-shirt wasn't so well-suited to his broad frame. He tugged at the restrictive neckline.

“I'll wash what you brought with you tomorrow sometime.” Claire rummaged through a cedar chest and came out with a fisherman's sweater made of heavy, unbleached wool. “This'll fit better until then. Hopefully it won't be too warm.”

“You seem pretty sure of that.” He looked at her curiously.

“I'm certain of it.” A little smile touched her lips. Claire turned back to the food when he tugged the other shirt off. She waited until she heard the sweater go over his head before turning around again. She was glad she went with the simple straight cables, they suited him.

“You made this,” he said. It wasn't a question.

“I did.” Claire said, there was pride in her voice. She looked closely at the sweater and decided she'd done a reasonable job of guessing his dimensions. “The sleeves could have been half an inch shorter, but it'll do.”

“It'll do?” He chuckled and sat down. “When did you have time?”

“Well, I started it at Xavier's. It wasn't like I could wander around at night like I was used to, so I had to have something to keep my hands busy.” She smiled a little, then picked up his bowl and filled it with the hot stew. “After...I still needed something to keep my hands busy.” Claire set the bowl in front of him, and filled her own bowl. When she turned around again she could see that half his stew was gone. It was either that good or he was that hungry.

The rest of dinner was silent, except for her telling him that there was more in the pot if he wanted it. He took her up on the offer without a word. Claire had to suppress a little smile when he went back for the third time. She'd always liked to cook, but beyond that she liked to see people enjoying what she made. Her uncle always had. Not having anyone there to enjoy her cooking added to the emptiness after he died.

“You wouldn't happen to have any beer, would you?” he asked, a little smirk on his face.

Claire laughed. “No, but my uncle made his own mead. I think it's horrible stuff, but if you want to try it, I'll get you some when I put the leftovers away.”

“Sounds good.” He said.

She put the leftovers in a container, then folded back the braided rug and lifted the trap door to the cellar. “Be back in a few minutes.” She disappeared down the steep stairs.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Logan watched her disappear into the dark space. A smile still changed her whole face, even if that face was etched with exhaustion and worry. He wondered how long she'd been alone here, and how she got here in the first place. He knew she had family outside Burlington, and she was planning to visit them for the break. They were a good thirty miles from there if he actually was where he thought he was.

He wondered if she'd seen it coming and - knowing the kind of set-up her uncle had – headed here. It wouldn't surprise him if she had. She had damn good instincts and she tended to follow them.

The sweater had surprised him. He knew she liked to knit. Most of the time when he saw her downstairs in the evening she had a basket of yarn and wooden needles in her hand. The way those needles whispered against each other became the backdrop to more movies and television programs than he could count. In the beginning it was an annoyance, but later he realized that when he heard the needles it meant she hadn't run away to hide him her room. The idea that she'd spend her time making anything for him had never crossed his mind, let alone something as nice as this.

He wondered why she'd kept it hidden away for so long when she or the uncle might have used it.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Claire made sure there was enough food for two thawed for breakfast before coming up with two cold bottles of mead, just in case he liked it.

“Here you go.” She handed him one bottle and set the other on the table in front of him. “If you like it there's more down there.” Claire collected the dishes and put her back to him while she washed them. She worked at keeping the tension out of her shoulders.

“This ain't half bad,” he said. “You're uncle made this?”

“Yes. He has a book on it somewhere, but the one time I saw him make a batch I got the impression that the recipe was mostly in his head,” Claire said.

“Sounds like a hell of a guy.”

Claire smiled a little. “He was.”

After a few minutes he asked, “He got the flu?”

“Yes, but that isn't what killed him,” Claire said. “He had a heart attack about six weeks ago. At least, I'm guessing it was a heart attack.”

“How'd it happen?” He got up and grabbed the dish towel. Claire turned her head away just enough to hide her face, seeming to pay great attention to scrubbing the stew pot.

She shrugged a little. “We ate breakfast and I went out to the barn. He said he'd be out in a few minutes, so when and hour passed and his still wasn't there I came back inside to check on him.” Claire took a deep breath. “I found him on the floor. He didn't have a pulse...” She dug her fingernails into her palm under the dishwater, fighting the urge to cry all over again.

“Claire-”

“It was either a heart attack or a stroke.” Her voice was detached again. “It was over too quickly to be anything else.”

He was silent. She knew that whatever he was going to say, he'd wait until she looked at him. From anyone else, the tactic wouldn't have worked. She waited until she was reasonably sure she could trust herself not to cry, then she looked over at him.

“I'm sorry,” he said. That simple statement was enough to send large cracks radiating throughout her resolve.

“Thank you.” There was a tremor in her voice. “Could you finish drying these please?”

Claire didn't wait for an answer. She retreated into the bathroom and started running water for a bath. While the tub filled, she sat on the rim, her arms crossed over her stomach, doing her best to keep the sobs silent.

*~*~*~*~*~*

As soon as the door closed, he threw the dishtowel angrily onto the counter. The damp cloth made an unsatisfying little thumping noise against the butcher block surface. He thought they'd moved past her desire to hide her upset when she'd had the accident. Apparently the time between then and now had been enough for her to put that part of the wall back up.

The accident had been one of those things that could have happened to anyone. She liked to run in the early morning. It was the first – and for several weeks the only – way he'd found to connect with her. For weeks they'd run side by side in silence on the wooded trails that surrounded the mansion. Without conversation, he'd learned quickly that she was comfortable in the woods, that she was in better shape than the clothes she hid in suggested, and that whatever her mutation was, it allowed her to find him easily when he left her behind.

Three weeks after he'd started running with her, he couldn't take the silence anymore. Usually it was the other way around, but he couldn't remember having met a woman who was so damn comfortable in silence. Their first attempts at conversation were stilted and as awkward for her as they were for him. Eventually, they both got comfortable enough that it seemed natural for them to tease each other, or for him to challenge her and to try and make her laugh. Sometimes, she would reward with him a smile, other times she'd roll her eyes and try to bite back the smirk that touched her lips, as if she were afraid of giving him too much encouragement.

In that awkward time, he'd learned that once he got past her hesitance, she'd made him smile just as much. She listened to him. Not because she'd had to, or because she'd been trying to stroke his ego. She'd listened because she'd been interested in what he had to say. She'd asked questions when he left the possibility open, and backed off when he'd needed her to.

The accident had happened on a Sunday. He'd proposed a one-lap race around a good sized pond on the property, with the loser to make the winner breakfast.

She'd cocked her head and looked at him, as if weighing the possibilities. “I have the feeling I'll be cooking when we get back, but okay.” She'd smiled, and they'd started.

He could've won, but that hadn't been his intention that morning. Sure she'd call him on it later, but for a minute she would be excited. Just to make it look good though, he'd pulled out ahead of her. He'd heard the change in her stride before he'd heard her pained cry. He'd turned in time to see her laying face down, half in the treeline, half on the rocky shore. He'd rushed back and helped her sit up. When she did he could see the large glass shard sticking out of the backside of her forearm a few inches above her elbow. She'd cut her hand up pretty good too, but that was minor. Just the movement of her sitting up dislodged the shard in her arm. He knew what the brown glass had come from before he ever looked over at the nest of a dozen or so broken beer bottles.

“Sorry,” she'd said, and held her other hand over the wound.

It had taken him a minute to realize that she though he was angry at her. “For what?” He hadn't been able to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Being so clumsy, ruining your-.”

“Could've happened to anybody. Lemme see.” He'd knelt next to her and moved her hand away gently. “You're probably gonna need stitches in that.”

“Great.”

He could see she was on the verge of tears at the mention of stitches. “Sorry, but you need a way to put pressure on that while we get back.” He'd given her sleeve a sharp tug and tore it up to her elbow. That's when he saw the round burn scar.

“What're you doing?” She'd pulled her arm away from him, as if he were responsible for the injury. The thick scent of terror was coming off her in waves, mixing with the coppery smell of her blood.

“Gettin' something for you to hold over that. Your sleeve is ruined anyway.” He'd made no mention of the scar, just finished tearing the sleeve off at the elbow. She'd held the already bloody cloth over the cut, but took just as much care to keep the scar hidden.

He'd made sure she was getting taken care of before trying to figure out which of the students was responsible. That and getting them to clean up the mess had taken the rest of the day. That night, she wasn't downstairs, so he went to find her in her room.

At first, she wouldn't let him in. He'd resisted the urge to threaten to open the door his own way, settling for telling her that he wasn't going away. That had gotten her to open the door at least. He could tell she'd been crying, but she was trying to hold it together.

“Six stitches.” She'd said. “It'll be fine.”

“Good.” He'd said. “Can I come in?”

“No.” She'd looked away. “It's just a cut, there's nothing more to say about it.”

With most people, he would have just left it alone. There were lots of mutants who were treated like shit as kids. He figured you learned how to deal, and you moved on. Seeing the pain in her eyes had touched him in a way he wasn't accustomed to. Whatever it was, he hadn't been about to let it go.

“Bullshit. Either we talk in there, or you come out here.”

She'd sighed and let him in. It was the first and only time she'd let him into her room. He sat next to her on the small sofa and watched her try to placate him by not really answering any of the questions he was asking. He knew she was afraid of something, and he could smell her anger rising as well.

“Why do you want to know?” She'd shouted finally. She'd gotten up and walked across the room, attempting to put distance between them. “Aren't there enough sad stories around here for you? You have to have one more?”

He'd shrugged. “You're the only one I haven't got yet.”

She'd smiled a little then sat down with him again. The story took longer to come out, and he'd missed some of it because she was crying so hard. The parts he'd gotten had pissed him off. The scar on her arm was one of eighteen. All except the one he had seen had been inflicted by her grandfather when he thought she was using her mutation, the one on her arm had been a warning when he'd started to suspect what she was.

He couldn't offer her much, but she'd seemed content to rest against his shoulder for awhile. After that night, she'd started to relax. She still wouldn't talk about her mutation, and she still kept the scars hidden, but she smiled more and she talked more about herself. It made him want to get even closer to her. He thought she was starting to feel the same way.

When he heard the tub start to drain he finished drying the pot. Whatever way it went, he would be damned if he was going to sit around and wonder until she decided she wanted to talk about it. He was pacing when she emerged in flannel pajamas and a patched bathrobe.

“Why the hell did you just leave like that?” He demanded.