Work Text:
“Doesn’t the world look like it’s on fire?” You mused, eyes glued on the slow moving clouds in the sky. They were saturated in orange and pink, covering most of the horizon as the sun lowered.
Logan tightened his arms around you ever so slightly -- a mannerism he’d picked up ever since returning to the mansion -- and he huffed out a chuckle. “It does.”
He then got silent, chin resting on your shoulder as he drew in a deep breath. The wind blew lightly against the two of you, and you knew he was catching its scent. You didn’t even have to turn to picture the look on his face -- eyes closed, brow furrowed in concentration, soft smile on his lips. Something like peace. Perhaps the closest to peace Logan’s been to in a while.
“I’ve seen a world on fire,” Logan murmurs after the breeze is gone. By now, the sun is low enough that dusk is taking hold of the sky. The first few specks of stars are littering the deep blue like freckles, a chill settling in with the oncoming night.
Your hand moves to where his rests across your midsection, fingers dancing over his knuckles. His arms tighten again, and you press further back into him.
“What did it look like?” You press, voice soft and understanding because you know what’s coming. It wasn’t uncommon for Logan to get like this out of nowhere -- lost in his own head, reaching for distant memories.
His memories are a jumble, overlapping each other and full of holes. You’ve sat up with him on countless nights after he’d awoken from a nightmare and tried to help him piece together the fragments of his mind. It was hard to talk him down with all the things he’s seen; it was almost like he was reliving his tragedies all over again each time he remembered something new. Sometimes keywords sparked something, and you were there and patient with him every time that happened.
“Red,” he says in a half-hearted joking tone. You roll your eyes and lightly jab him in the side with your elbow. He chuckles softly, the sound resonating from his chest before it subsides and he becomes serious again. “It was… lonely, really. The world went to shit and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop it. Not at first, anyways.”
You take in a breath, heart aching at the defeated and resigned tone in his voice. How he keeps all these memories, whole ones and fractured alike, in his head without breaking is something you’ll never understand. He was perhaps the strongest person you’ve ever known.
His thumb draws circles against your stomach, a soothing pattern that you mirror onto the back of his hand with your fingers. “Was this in the other timeline? With the sentinels?”
You can feel him nod his head, a subtle movement that was almost undetectable. He’d told you a bit about that timeline; or, the few things he’d remembered from it. How the future looked, and his time in the past trying to prevent that future from coming to fruition. But, just like with his other memories, there had been holes. Now, it seemed, he was piecing some things together.
“I think…” he begins after a couple minutes. You slip your hand into his, giving it a gentle squeeze while you wait for him to get his thought out. He squeezes your hand back instinctively. “I remember drowning.”
You notice the expansion of his chest against your back as he draws in a deep breath, jaw clenching and unclenching as he tries to take control over the memory. “That’s where it goes blank, I can’t… I remember the feeling of my lungs filling with water -- bursting at the pressure -- and then nothing else.” He turns his head, pressing into the crook of your neck. Your free hand reaches back to card through the hair at the nape of his neck. “Sometimes I still feel like I’m drowning,” he murmurs.
“Do you feel like that right now?” You keep your voice level, but worry still gnaws at you from the inside. It always pained you how haunted Logan was. He could never seem to catch a break, both from his mind and from reality, and it just didn’t seem fair that someone like him could be plagued with just tragedy. Fate was a bastard.
“Mhm,” he hums, chest expanding again. You turn in his arms, dropping his hand as you shift from sitting criss-cross to propping yourself on your knees in front of him. You take his head in your hands and situate him so that his forehead is pressed against your chest right over your heart. His arms circle around you again, grip tight enough to hurt a little but you don’t mind, really. You trusted him, just as he trusted you to be his lifeline right now.
You card fingers through his hair, pressing kisses to the crown of his head every now and then. “You’re okay, Logan,” you murmur, “you’re safe. You’re not drowning anymore.”
His fists clench against your back. “Fuck,” he mutters, shaking his head slightly. “I know.. I know.” He takes in another deep breath, then releases it a moment later.
“You’re okay,” you repeat softly. He sits in silence as you continue to reassure him, his body slowly untensing as he focuses on you and your words. It isn’t until the night is fully set in that he risks leaning back, head tilting to look at you.
The phosphorescent moon illuminates his features and you can tell that there’s a hint of shame in his eyes. Despite his trust in you, he still always seems to carry this sense of guilt in the aftermath of moments like tonight. You’ve learned by now how to quell his worries before he feels the need to apologize for anything, so that’s what you do. He has nothing to apologize for, afterall.
You cup his face and smile at him softly before pressing a kiss to his forehead, and then a lingering one on his lips. When you pull apart he rests his forehead against yours, eyes closed. “Thank you,” he whispers, and you can tell there’s more he wants to say. His mouth opens, and you tilt back to look at him but he seems to rethink what his next words were going to be because all he says is, “for staying.”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” you respond, your words spoken like a promise. The corners of his mouth quirk up, that hint of shame gone from his eyes. After a moment he clears his throat, glancing up at the sky as a welcome distraction from the dark thoughts that were plaguing him just moments ago.
“Pretty sky tonight,” he remarks, looking back at you with a nearly charismatic smile. “Mind if we stay out here for a little while longer?”
“What, you mean you don’t wanna rush back to the mansion and prepare for tomorrow’s lessons?” You tease. “How irresponsible of you, professor.”
“Ah, shut up,” he says, voice light as he leans back onto the grass. He crosses his arms behind his head and settles against the ground while you stay kneeling between his legs, staring down at him. When he sees you haven’t moved he quirks an eyebrow at you, nudging you gently with the side of his knee. “You waitin’ for an invitation? C’mere.” He flashes you another smile, arm moving from under his head so you can cuddle up next to him.
You move in an instant, head resting on his chest and hand splayed against his midsection. A silence settles between you and Logan, but it’s comfortable and welcomed. Just the two of you on the grounds of the mansion, watching as the galaxy drinks up the night sky, a world no longer on fire.