"When things get tough, you get off your ass and get to work."
"WHERE'S YOUR ROOM?" Logan asked Valerie curiously as they walked down the long corridor. Valerie had somewhat forgiven him for being an asshole when they'd first met after a certain length of time.
"With Scott, down the hall." She responded and Logan seemed surprised.
"Is that your gift? Putting up with that guy?" Logan was joking of course but Valerie just rolled her eyes and dealt with it as if it were a real question.
"Actually, I'm an empath, I read emotions." She knew he knew this but she couldn't help but correct him anyway, having just about enough of the shit he was spewing.
"Yeah, I kinda figured that out." He said. "What kinds of emotions?" Valerie furrowed her eyebrows.
"All kinds of emotions." She answered. "I also have a bit of a telepathic ability. It comes with my ability to read emotions. Certain emotions that are very strong I can occasionally read and comprehend."
"Like your professor?" He asked but Valerie was quick to shake her head.
"Nowhere near that powerful." Logan turned to her, making them stop in the middle of the hallway.
"So, try and read my emotions." He said and Valerie felt if she had rolled her eyes one more time, they would get stuck in the back of her head.
"I'd rather not." She said.
"Come on. You afraid you might like 'em?" Valerie refused to encourage the man's obvious flirting.
"I doubt it." She said.
"So, why put up with him?" He gestured down the hall. Valerie raised an eyebrow quizzically.
"With who?"
"The cyclops guy." She already knew what this was about.
"He's not my boyfriend, Logan. He's just my friend." She said. Logan almost laughed out loud at how ludicrous that sounded. Two friends sharing a room? He doubted it greatly.
"Then why're you sharing a room?" He asked. Valerie felt her face tinge red at what he was implying. She would never sleep with Scott. She saw him as a brother.
"That's really none of your business." She still wouldn't let up though. It wasn't exactly Logan's place to know who she shared a room with and why.
"So, a friends with benefits kind of thing?" Valerie had just about smacked him before she remembered Charles telling her about how she needed to learn how to control her temper.
"No." She turned to him aggressively. "It's because he's the only one strong enough to hold me down when I get nightmares. In case you haven't noticed, the Professor is in a wheelchair and neither Storm or Jean are strong enough." Logan was shocked, to say the least. And just as he was about to apologize for the second time that day, the douchebag he currently hated rounded the corner. And it seemed like Valerie had noticed his presence as well.
"Scott!" She called out, sounding relieved. She walked over to Scott, giving him a hug which he returned. Before Valerie headed into her room, she turned to Logan who was still standing by himself down the hall.
"Goodnight, Logan." She said, knowing if she had gone to bed mad, she would have regretted it the next morning. Her mother always told her to never go to bed mad at someone. Because the next morning, they could very well be dead before you ever got a chance to reconcile.
"You gonna tell me to stay away from your girl?" Logan asked as Scott walked over to him, holding a menacing and threatening stance.
"If I had to do that, she wouldn't be my girl," Scott said, a small laugh in his voice and a smirk on his face.
"She's not," Logan said. "She told me she's not. So, are you a liar too now?" Scott's smirk quickly dropped into a frown and his mood seemed much more menacing than before.
"It must just burn you up that a boy like me saved your life, huh?" Scott asked and Logan nearly laughed at the pathetic excuse for a man standing there, trying to threaten him. "You oughta be careful. I might not be there next time." Scott was about to walk away before he turned back to deliver some parting words. "Oh, and Logan, stay away from my girl."
Scott walked off and into his and Valerie's shared room, closing the door in Logan's face.
. . .
"Logan?" A voice shouted. "Logan! Logan, wake up."
Logan jumped up out of bed startled, his claws emerging in a flash and hitting something hard. When he looked up, he was horrified to find Rogue standing in front of him, his claws embedded in her chest and more than likely going through her heart. Logan's eyes widened and his breathing escalated.
He drew his claws back in, glancing around for someone; anyone.
"Somebody, help!" He shouted, aiming his cries down the hall.
DOWN THE HALL
Valerie's eyes burst open as soon as she felt that same sinking feeling. The feeling she'd experienced when her family had been killed all those years ago. She jumped out of bed faster than she ever had before, knowing in her heart and mind that something was surely wrong.
She could feel it. The three chunks of metal puncturing her chest and cracking her ribcage. She wasn't feeling the same physical pain but she sure as hell could feel the weight of everything as she sprinted out of the room, stopping by the doorframe.
"Somebody, help!" She heard a shout.
Valerie gasped, sucking in a deep breath as her eyes turned a bright scarlet red. Red wisps of magic began to seep from her palms like fog from a smoke machine. It wove its way around her and Valerie could suddenly feel the same sinking feeling Rogue felt.
The fear, the guilt, the pain, the shock, everything else and so much more.
"Scott! Grab a pillow!" She yelled and watched as he jerked up quickly but she had no time to see whether he'd done what she'd told him to. Instead, she made a mad dash for the room, fearing for both Rogue and Logan's lives.
She burst into the room, Jean, Ororo, and Charles coming in behind her and Scott making his way there. She noticed Rogue, her palm on Logan's cheek and Logan sucking in non-existent air. He couldn't breathe. Rogue was using his healing factor.
She broke away soon but it wasn't enough.
"It was an accident." She defended, trying her hardest to keep the tears in. Rogue quickly sprinted out of the room and Jean was quick to go after her.
"Logan?" Valerie questioned, stepping closer to the bed where he was sat up against the headboard. "What happened?"
"Is she all right?" Logan asked, sounding more concerned about Rogue than he was about her almost killing him.
"She'll be all right," Charles said.
"What did she do to me?" Logan questioned and Charles sighed, knowing Rogue's mutation was a hard one to comprehend.
"When Rogue touches someone, she takes their energy, their life force. In the case of mutants, she absorbs their gifts for a while. In your case, your ability to heal." Charles said, just as Scott and Ororo left the room, knowing the situation was contained and that no one was in danger anymore.
"It felt like she almost killed me," Logan said, heaving a deep breath and Valerie glanced down.
"If she'd held out any longer, she could have." She said. Charles placed a comforting hand on Valerie's shoulder, knowing just how much she truly understood Rogue's struggle to be normal. Well, as normal as she could be.
Charles left the environment soon after that, leaving only Valerie in his wake.
"Nightmare?" A brief moment of silence had passed over them only to be broken by the Scarlet Witch herself.
"Yeah," Logan answered, watching the woman closely as she rocked back and forth on the heels of her bare feet.
"Wanna talk about it?" She asked, the rocking back and forth stopping momentarily. Logan could see her eyes glowing in the darkness and he wasn't scared to admit that he felt almost hypnotized by them. The way they lit up the room in an almost demonic way. But at the same time, he wasn't scared of it.
"Sure." A large part of Logan really didn't like sharing the things he saw. He had been through enough people who tried getting him to share his "feelings". But the other part of Logan really wanted Valerie to stay with him and he wasn't quite sure why.
Valerie walked over shyly, messing with her hands before taking a seat on the edge of the bed and folding her legs beneath her. Logan couldn't help but find her adorable at that moment.
Logan sat up straighter and moved his legs so she had more room to move around. He had already made her feel uncomfortable and he didn't want to make the same mistake.
He breathed in a deep sigh.
"All I ever really get are these flashes," he started. "Little bits and pieces of who I used to be."
Valerie listened intently, keeping quiet and not asking any questions. She understood how hard it was to get things off your chest. Especially things from so long ago.
Logan scratched the back of his neck, hesitating on what to say next.
"In my nightmare, I'm drowning." He said. "And not the type of drowning like in an ocean and you can't swim. Like the type of drowning where someone's holding you down in a batch of water, doing anything they can to kill you."
Logan trailed off after that, not knowing how on Earth to follow up with what he'd just admitted.
"I often get nightmares about fire," Valerie spoke up, making Logan look at her in surprise. "When I was a little girl, the kids at school teased me a lot."
Technically not a lie, but not the whole truth either considering Logan probably assumed she grew up in a normal, public school instead of an old schoolhouse in the 1600s.
"Mainly for wearing these," she reached into her pajama pockets and pulled out a large pair of glasses.
They were circular and incredibly large on Valerie's face as she slid them on for a moment. "Cause I had always needed reading glasses." She went to slide them off as Logan made an unexpected comment.
"They fit you." Sure, it was short but Valerie also found it sweet and fought to keep the blush from rising in her cheeks.
"Thank you," she said, her voice quiet and sincere before she quickly resumed her story. "But anyway, once the other kids found out about my powers, they started accusing me of being a witch." Logan furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.
"Not a mutant, not a magician, but a witch. A spawn of Lucifer." Valerie sniffled. "And the reason this was so significant is because my family were very religious and devout Catholics. And they believed me when I said I wasn't a witch."
"Did they know about your-"
"No." She quickly cut him off. "Only my little brother knew about my mutation." She sighed. "And of course, the parents didn't believe their children when they claimed their classmate was a witch. But when I was older, just about sixteen, someone in my town saw me using my magic." She waved her hand around as an example, the red wisps of magic practically seeping from her skin.
"They drove me out of town."
Again, not exactly a lie per se since they technically dod drive her out of town. But not because they claimed her to be a witch but because she killed many of them the day they murdered her family and tried to burn her alive before ultimately failing.
"And your family?" He asked, seeming genuinely curious about her answer.
"They were all disgusted with me." Now that had been the biggest lie of all and the hardest one for Valerie to tell. Her family had known about her powers, they had always encouraged her in her gifts, and most importantly, her family had loved her more than life itself.
"They still had legal custody over my brother so he couldn't exactly stand up to them. So I left and eventually found Charles."
"So, do you get nightmares about your family?" He asked, making Valerie take in a deep breath.
"No." She said. "I get nightmares about getting burned alive like the witches back in Salem." Logan felt incredibly surprised at how blunt and truthful her answer was.
While he had been cryptic and incomprehensible, she was more straight to the point, almost as if she had said the same thing a million times before in another place at another time.
. . .
"Can anyone tell me what dark matter is?" Valerie absolutely adored her job but there were times when the students made her wanna hit herself over the head with an Oxford English Dictionary.
No one in the classroom raised their hands. Valerie was a science teacher and a very good one at that. Charles hadn't hesitated when giving her the job for which Valerie was grateful.
But suddenly, probably the shyest girl in the classroom and by far the youngest, Charlotte Waters, raised her hand. The little girl's mixed skin shone from beneath the light of the window and her large glasses perched on her small nose. Charlotte pushed her glasses up so they sat higher on her nose; a habit of hers, Valerie had noticed.
"Yes, Charlotte?" Valerie asked. Charlotte returned her hand to its original position and hesitated before speaking.
"Dark matter is a form of matter thought to account for a-approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total energy density. Most dark matter is thought to be non-baryonic in nature, possibly being composed of some as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particles." She said, stumbling over her words more than a few times and fidgeting with her shirt nervously under the beady eyes of her classmates. Valerie just smiled at the young girl.
"Very good, Charlotte." She complimented, making Charlotte give a small smile.
Valerie turned back to face the rest of the class and just as she was about to continue her review, she heard the faintest sound of a door opening. She glanced up to see Logan standing close to the door with his arms crossed and his eyes on her. She was thankful none of her students had heard the door creak open as she had. They were all far too busy getting lost in their own worlds for that. Valerie had decided she would ignore the man's presence and simply go on teaching class.
She scanned the classroom, sweeping her eyes over the dead children, the only one seeming to be listening to the review was Charlotte. However, there were some in the class that weren't as subtle about their lack of attention-span as the others. A certain blond boy with ice powers named Bobby who was often causing trouble in her class had his head down on his desk. She walked up to the boy who appeared to be sleeping. When the other classmates realized what was about to happen, they giggled in anticipation. Logan noticed what was happening too and couldn't help but smile.
When Valerie finally reached the boy's desk, she smacked her hand down hard on the table he laid on which made him jerk up in surprise, his paper stuck to his face. When he looked up at his science teacher, he was absolutely terrified to see her smirking face, knowing he was in deep shit.
"Mr. Drake," she said and Bobby swore he could feel his heart hit the floor. "Can you tell me why the planet Saturn has rings?" Bobby had absolutely no idea and at that moment, felt like a complete idiot for not knowing the answer. Hell, there was a little, eight-year-old girl who sat at the back of the classroom in a high school level class who could answer this question with ease.
"Cause when God created Saturn, he liked it, so he put a ring on it?" The class erupted in laughter and Valerie simply facepalmed. Logan chuckled deeply at the snarky reply that had come from the kid but most of his amusement came from Valerie's expression. She looked as if she were contemplating the death of the universe.
"Very amusing, Mr. Drake." Bobby mentally hit himself over the head. He shouldn't have said that. Ms. Moore had never been a fan of jokes, especially not when it came to astronomy. She turned back to the whiteboard before explaining the real answer. "Saturn has rings because, over millions upon millions of years, dust and ice particles have been pulled in by Saturn's gravity at varying distances from its surface. Which, in turn, created Saturn's ring." Bobby wrote down all he could so that he could study it later on.
It was only then that Valerie glanced at the clock and realized it was time to go.
"Alright, I guess I'll see you all tomorrow." Kids immediately began packing up their things, some of them noticing the strange man with a cigar in his mouth standing in the corner of the room. "And please don't forget about the test on Wednesday, I beg of you." Many of them nodded and bid her goodbye.
But Charlotte stayed behind and so did Logan. And he admitted he was surprised when the small girl with big glasses ran up and gave Valerie the biggest hug.
"Thank you." She mumbled and Valerie smiled, knowing the girl wasn't just thanking her for that day in class but for the days before as well when Valerie had each time given Charlotte a chance go answer. Unlike the other teachers who often brushed her off, thinking she was too young to understand such complicated things. And whenever Charlotte raised her hand in class, they would often ignore her and choose somebody older.
Ms. Moore, however, had done no such thing to discriminate against the little girl's brilliant mind. When Charlotte had finally left the classroom, hauling her pink backpack behind her, Valerie had finally turned to face Logan.
"Why are you here?" She asked, but not in a condescending way. More in a curious sense.
"Wanted to apologize." He eased out, stuffing his hands into his pockets. Valerie crossed her arms with a skeptical look on her face. This man's emotions changed more than she could comprehend. She sensed a small twinge of nervousness along with an underlying sense of guilt. She decided she'd take him seriously for the time being, whether she liked it or not. "I'm not the best at this sorta thing so take what I say with a grain of salt." Valerie peaked an eyebrow, slightly confused. "I insulted you, quite a few times as a matter of fact," Valerie crossed her arms and gave him an expectant look.
"Go on," Logan smirked at her, finding amusement in her confidence in the situation.
"And I'm sorry if I disrespected you in any way."
"What the hell do you mean "if"?" She questioned. Logan shuffled around on his feet, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't be considered disrespectful in any way.
"Alright, alright. I'm sorry that I offended you. Are we good?"
Valerie thought for a little more than a few moments. Was she really going to forgive this guy that easily?
"Yeah," she said. "We're good."