Not Less Than Everything
Chapter 6
by
Rex Luscus
DISCLAIMER: All poetry belongs to the estate of T.S. Eliot. Wolverine, Nightcrawler and the X-Men belong to Marvel Enterprises, Inc. Duh.
ARCHIVING: Just ask.
NOTES: A big, sloppy thank you to Lorelei and Dark Hedgehog for all their help with this monster. I'm serious when I say it wouldn't have happened without you. You guys are the shit. < G >
Oh, and thanks to Graham Greene. I think this story is some sort of homage to him, though I didn't realize that as I was writing it.
Author's note: the lines Logan quotes in the first paragraph of part 1 are from East Coker, lines 201-2. The lines he quotes in part 5 when recounting his memory of World War II are from The Waste Land, lines 1-2.
Over the next few weeks, I got back to my life, such as it was. I went on missions. I strategized with Summers and Chuck. I drank beer at Harry's, alone or with easy company. I trained with the X-Men. I did all the things I'd been doing before Kurt left. I ignored the ache in my heart studiously, like you ignore an annoying crank caller. Every time something in me said *go to him! try again!* I just let the phone ring and concentrated on whatever stupid details were handy.
But eventually I realized that it wasn't enough. The last time I'd seen him, we had been angry, and I'd come close to hurting him. At the very least, I had to make peace with him over that, and I had to *tell* him that I'd resolved to let him go. That resolution didn't hold water for me unless he knew about it - I had to give him my word, so that I wouldn't be tempted to break it.
On a quiet Friday morning, I got out my bike and headed for Brooklyn. This time, there was no one at the reception desk, so I wandered back toward the chapel, remembering the way from before. The place was quiet as a tomb; with my luck, everyone would be in their rooms studying and I'd have to come back later.
I poked my head in the chapel door and picked up his scent immediately. Sure enough, there he was at the altar, a black smudge on a square of light, kneeling. He was praying, dressed in the nondescript black uniform of the student priest. I looked at him and swallowed, hating what I was about to do. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right. But I'd made my decision and I couldn't afford to think about it - this was all just the downslope.
If he heard me walking up the aisle toward him, he didn't show it. When I reached the first pew, I focussed my gaze on the back of his bowed head and said his name.
He turned quickly, showing me his startled face, all the shadows washed away in the filtered light. I saw something in his eyes when they met mine - prayer had left his soul naked and raw, and for a second he was laid open. Everything was exposed as he recognized me - love, desire, need, most of all desire - all those fucking things I'd been dying to see in his face and had just about given up hope of ever seeing again. For just that second, he let me see it all - before he remembered that I was the enemy now, and that he was supposed to be hiding it from me.
But that second was all I needed. Without a second thought, I threw my plan out the window. I dove toward him and caught him by the shoulders, squeezing him tightly, painfully, unsure whether it was anger or passion driving me on. "Just say it," I breathed, clamping him vice-hard against me. "Just say you still want me. Say you know that you're throwing away the best thing you've ever had. Say it ..."
"Logan, please ..." His eyes were wild as he struggled in my grasp.
I curled my lips back into a vicious smile. "Why aren't ya 'portin', Elf? Better yet, using some of that jujitsu I took all that time to teach ya? Maybe 'cause you don't want me to let go? Just *admit* it, Elf, that's all I want!"
"That's not all you want," Kurt muttered, struggling even harder.
Something about the contemptuous way he said it got me madder, and as rage seized my body in its hot fist, like a reflex I shoved him away, hard, knocking him to the floor. His head hit the steps of the altar and he lay there, stunned - he was far from combat form these days, and I'd struck at the moment of maximum vulnerability. He didn't have a chance against me - I had the mental and physical advantage. The fighter in him knew that and had already given up.
Still shaking with fury, I fell on top of him, pinning his arms and legs. My vision was suddenly filled by that little square of white at his throat, sitting there like a blank, like the cause of his silence. I took hold of it and ripped as hard as I could. Both the collar and the neck of the cassock came away easily, and I continued to tear downward, splitting open the front of the robe, all the way down to his waist. Finally I could see his flesh, free of that black shroud, and I knew even more certainly that he was the same man he'd always been, still *mine* no matter what he said.
"Hey! What's going on here?"
Shouts behind me interrupted the joy of my discovery. Quickly, I looked at Kurt's face - but it was turned away from me, his head lying still against the step, eyes wide open and blank. He breathed heavily but didn't struggle any longer, withdrawn off to some place away from this struggle, away from my need and anger and demands for answers. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw two priests hurrying up the aisle toward us.
In a flash I leapt up off of Kurt and turned to face them, the claws coming out automatically. It was ridiculous - they were two middle-aged priests, not a threat at all - but they'd come to get between us, and that was enough to make me good and mad. They stopped in their tracks as soon as they saw the claws, hands held out tentatively toward me, begging me to keep my distance.
"We've already called the police," one of them said. "Please, just leave."
I didn't believe him about the police, and anyway I didn't care. I turned around to look at Kurt on the steps - he was just now getting to his feet, the ruined robe hanging in tatters from his shoulders. And he was staring at me with unchecked, narrow-eyed horror, his face filled with furious disbelief at my betrayal - and I felt a pit open up inside of me. I stepped toward him, reached for his face, an animal cry welling in my throat, but he twitched away like I'd burned him. A cloud fell over my brain and I knew that all hope, all meaning, was gone. I stood, lurching, hearing a weird, strangled sound in the air that couldn't possibly have come from my throat, and ran unsteadily past the two frightened priests. And as my body sailed over the threshold of that chapel, all memory stops - in any way I can convey to you, anyway.
~~~
Once, and once only, did I ever go into a church with him.
It was that winter, and we were in Italy. Milan, team business. Very romantic; but that's another story.
He wanted to see some of the old churches in the city. He invited me along, I accepted; I was curious about this part of him, wanted to see what it was all about. I thought I knew him, but there's knowing someone and then there's knowing someone. He was good at giving the impression that he was letting you inside. But I'd known him for two years before I even learned he was religious, for pete's sake. I guess I hoped I'd catch a glimpse of something in him while he was in those peaceful, holy places, looking at images of his God, his guard relaxed. I couldn't tell you what I hoped to see.
"It's called a pietư."
"It sure is ... intense."
"That's the idea. It's a traditional subject in Catholic art - the Virgin Mary cradling the body of the dead Christ. It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"Yeah. *He's* beautiful. His body kind of looks like yours, come to think of it."
"Hm. Well, it's just a body."
"I guess." I shifted uncomfortably. "It is kinda troubling, though."
"Why?"
"Doesn't it remind you a little of those other statues - the ones of Mary with Jesus as a baby? She's holding him just like that - except he's a naked, bloody corpse here."
"Yes. Mary stands at both Christ's entrance to and exit from the world. She is His humanity, and when are we more human than when we are born and when we die?"
"Huh. That's pretty heavy."
"That's the idea behind these images of mourning over Christ's body - pity for His flesh, the part of Him that could suffer and die. His eventual resurrection and ascension can't erase the fact that He suffered as much as it is possible for a human being to suffer."
"Well, okay, I guess that's what I don't understand. If everyone knew Jesus was the son of God and would defeat death, then why is Mary so sad?"
"Because she's human, and He is the son she gave birth to. And right now, He isn't the truth and the way and the life for her, He's just her dead child, and she's heartbroken. We here on earth can plan for the afterlife as much as we please, but the only reality we actually know is the mortal life. It is all we can understand - until the time comes for us to leave it. Maybe that's un-Christian of me to say, but it's how I feel."
"Huh."
I stood there uneasily, feeling strangely awed.
"I cannot look at something like this and not be moved. On the one hand, it is heartwrenchingly sad, but on the other hand, I know that in a similar way, *I* am cradled in the arms of God, that He pities my poor, earthbound body, and that His love is as limitless as a mother's for her only child."
"Geez. That must be a nice feeling."
"Do you not find this image moving?"
"Sure I do. I don't feel cradled by God, though."
I could feel his eyes on me.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I have *you* to hold me when I'm lonely, remember?"
"But surely I am not enough. Surely you must feel very alone in the world ..."
"Well, those're the breaks. I don't feel alone when you're around, and that's good enough for me."
"As you wish."
I smiled.
"Thanks. Can we get going? It's so cold in here ..."
"Whatever you desire, beliebt Freund."
We laughed a little, figuring me for a loss as far as religion was concerned. It was such a beautiful city, and walking next to him in the noisy, purple twilight, I never felt such peace before. I wanted to tell him that this was *my* church, this old stone-paved city, and him at my side - he was the only thing *in* that city as far as I was concerned.
~~~
On the cusp of waking, I felt soft, furred hands touching my face.
The first things I saw were Kurt's eyes, big and frightened. That expression of desperate concern, always for someone else's welfare and not his own, made him look so incredibly young, like he'd looked when I first met him and he was still a kid in a man's body. My heart skipped a beat - what year had I woken into? Had I dreamed it all? For a moment, I didn't even notice the clerical collar at his throat. Then I saw it; it was undone, hanging by a snap on his shirt, dangling against his collarbone like one half of an undone necktie.
I swallowed my disappointment, crinkling my lips into the best wry smirk I could muster. "Is this heaven?" The hoarse whisper where my voice should have been surprised me.
He smiled shakily but widely, and I thought I saw unshed tears in his eyes. "How do you feel?" he asked me gently.
"Okay," I croaked, testing my limbs a little. "Bit sore, maybe." I sucked in a deep breath, stretched, then lay still. "How long have I been out?"
"You've only been unconscious for a few hours. Logan ... do you remember anything of what happened?"
I nodded guiltily. "The chapel. Did something ... bad. Things're fuzzy after that."
"Yes. Well. That was more than a week ago."
I started. "You said I'd only been out for a few hours!"
He sighed, gathering strength for an explanation. "After the - the incident in the chapel, you ran out into the street, and I went after you. Frankly, I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself, or someone else. You wouldn't let me near you, though. So I backed off, and went to call the X-Men. When we finally found you again, you were living like an animal in Prospect Park. Jean and I stalked you for three days before you'd let either one of us come within forty feet."
I looked back and forth between those eyes, so filled with gentle concern, and the undone priest's collar still at his neck. "So what are you still doing here?" I asked.
"I couldn't leave you, not like that. You are still my friend. No matter what has happened."
"What I did - what I *could've* done - it's unforgivable ..."
"Nothing is unforgivable. You aren't well, Logan, and I can't just leave you when you need me like this."
I opened my mouth to answer - but the words died in my throat. I was his charity case now, apparently - or was this love? Was he giving in to longing, or was he still trying to serve God? How could I tell the difference?
"Does this mean you're, you know ... staying?"
"Yes."
"But the priesthood ...?" I tried to gesture at the collar.
"... will continue with or without me. There are other men whom God has chosen to be ministers of His will. He'll understand that I'm needed elsewhere."
"Needed ..." If he only knew ... but I wanted him to need *me* - I wanted his desperation, not his kindness. "Yeah, I need you ... I'm going crazy without you." I tried to laugh at my poor excuse for a joke, but the result sounded more like a sob.
His face was full of compassion, and I hated myself for doubting him. "I'm here," he said. "I won't leave you alone." Then he bent forward and laid his mouth over mine.
It was my wildest goddamn dream come true. So how could I tell him what I wanted to tell him: that his pity would kill me, that I didn't want his selfless, indifferent love? I couldn't seem to make that matter to me now. I pulled him down on top of me and rolled over on the med lab bed, pinning that slender body I'd missed so much under my own old bones. I would never know him. I would never be certain of his love. I'd had one clear moment of knowing exactly what he wanted, and that was the moment when he walked away from me.
I pulled his clothes off without speaking. There was no thinking, no relief or sadness or even joy. Just a desperate need to reach the goal, to take the thing I'd been longing for all this time. There was no past, no future - only now. At least for now, I had him. And who knew how long it would last? I slipped my hands into his hair and kissed him deeper, happy in a way for whatever time was left. I didn't have a second to waste.
"Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire."
Little Gidding, [209 - 215]
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