Taming a Beast

After a few stressful, tension-ridden weeks, Logan and I’s relationship had only gotten worse. I tried to get him to talk to me about his past, but he just kind of ignored me or tuned me out. I gave him the cold treatment in return. If he wasn’t going to talk, I wasn’t going to see him. However, he did nothing to fight me on that point, including a verbal argument, which was completely unlike Logan. I was picking at my salad at dinner one right worriedly, thinking about all the possible issues that could have occurred in his past life to make him so secretive with me, a characteristic I hadn’t known Logan was capable of possessing up to this moment, when Storm and Jean slid up to my table.

“Come on, talk to us,” Storm said automatically, knowing trying to dodge around the subject would help nothing. I looked up at her across the table as Jean put a comforting arm around my shoulders. Storm reached across the table and grabbed my hands in hers. “We know that you’re hurting, Shy. We know that you’re keeping something inside.”

“It’s just...” I said, breathing out. I checked to make sure no students were listening in before I leaned in closer to Storm, saying, “I feel guilty. Had it not been for my pushiness, Logan wouldn’t even have to be thinking about what I am presuming is his horrible past filled with tortures.”

“You don’t know that,” Jean spoke up. “You know how he is. He is just a very secretive, private person. He doesn’t tell his feelings or anything of that sort to anybody.”

I laughed, pulling my hands out of Storm’s and putting them to my face. My words were directed to Jean as I said, “No offense, but you don’t exactly know him as well as I do. Up to this point, secrecy has never been a problem in Logan and I’s relationship. Neither has expressing our feelings.”

Jean went quiet as Storm offered, “Whatever the case may be with Logan’s maybe bad, maybe good past, this was not your fault in any way. You were trying to do a good thing, Shiloh, and that’s what matters. Logan is merely just preoccupied with finding out things about his past. You’ve got to understand that suddenly remembering a huge chunk of your life is something that needs time to get used to. He hasn’t stopped loving you, Shiloh; I don’t think he ever will.”

I just looked back down at my salad before Storm grabbed my hand again. I looked back up at her and she gave me a sympathetic smile, saying, “Maybe some time in the Danger Room will help you get distracted at the least.”

I smiled at her, feeling bad that she and Jean were really trying hard to cheer me up and I was the one being uncooperative. I squeezed her hand and said, “That sounds great,” before getting up with her and Jean as I threw my salad away and the three of us started making our way to the Danger Room.

When we entered, Storm set up an environment for Jean and I. Jean had always been on of my toughest competitors; Xavier claimed that she was one of the strongest mutants in the world. However, a lot of her power had to be contained in fear that Jean would literally lose it all and go insane. So, her powers were lessened considerably, and that led me to beat her in some of the current standings.

Storm threw us into the Arctic, my least favorite environment because I absolutely despised being cold. I shifted into Beast, whose warm fur could protect me from the cold, as I shuffled through the snow. I used his keen, animalistic sense of smell to locate Jean, and followed that scent as I found her entering a cave to presumably look for me. I smiled-- this was all too easy.

With my adrenaline rushing, I shifted into Lady Deathstrike and swung back my arm, ready to bring the ax down-- literally. Just as I was about to slice through Jean, the environment shut off and I sheathed my claws. The last echoes of the warning tritone were sounding, and Storm was already on her way down to meet us at the front door. We rushed outside to where kids were crowded, trying to get back to their bunk rooms for bedtime, and now they were all in a fenzy in the worry that something was wrong. I had to pat a few backs and lay a few kisses before we finally made it to the X-Men hallway, quickly changing into our uniforms and sprinting to the hangar.

When we arrived, Xavier was sitting, poised and poignant as always, in his wheelchair. I walked over to Logan, mostly out of habit, and kissed him on the lips; he responded with a kiss of his own and a small smile on his lips, but the corners of his mouth didn’t reach his eyes. I sighed and pulled away as he gave me a confused look, sensing that something was wrong. Xavier’s loud, booming voice didn’t give him the chance to follow up with a question, however.

“It seems that Magneto took off his helmet, and I saw his mind for a brief moment. It may be a set up, but since when has that ever stopped our victories?” Xavier asked us, giving us the rundown. All I could think about was how Logan’s eyes were trained specifically on me throughout the whole speech, watching me in confusion. I had slowly made my way back over to the other side, flanked by Storm and Jean, who would come up with a million excuses before I had to deal with Logan.

Xavier wished us good luck and we all piled onto the plane. Throughout the flight, Pilot Storm kept Logan plenty busy and, most importantly, as far away from me as possible. I filled in Rogue and Shadowcat quietly, but I knew Colossus, Gambit, and Bobby were listening as well.

We finally made it to our destination, and Storm decided that we would be paired off. She specifically paired me with Shadowcat so I wouldn’t have to be with Logan, then sent us to entrances on opposite ends of the building to ensure that we wouldn’t meet again. We snuck around the building with stealth, then entered. We killed a few mutants in hand-to-hand combat, but we realized that they were ultimately no match for the both of us.

What felt like hours later, we came across Bobby, who was supposed to be with Logan. He was almost in hysterics, saying that he had turned around at one point and Logan had disappeared into thin air. Immensely worried, my heart breaking at the thought of what might have happened to them, I told Bobby to take care of Shadowcat and find the others as I went off on my own to find Logan. I snuck through the hallways, walking slowly and making merely no noise.

“Logan?” I eventually asked, slowly rounding the corner. I sniffed tentatively and found no other mutant scent. When I turned around the next corner, I found myself faced with a long hallway leading to a cracked door. I heard giggling and murmuring coming from inside, and I slowly approached it, peeking through the door. What I saw appalled me.

A girl with beautiful, long, black hair was straddling the waist of a man wearing an X-Men uniform; who it was, I could hardly tell. It was one of the meatier guys, but Colossus and all of them had a similar build. As I entered the room, wondering who the hell the girl was, she separated from the man, whose face was revealed to me. I choked, and both of them turned to look at me with fear on their face before I could come out with the word I had wanted to say.

“Logan?” I asked in betrayal to the man sitting beneath the girl, his hands around her waist. He opened his mouth to argue, but the moment the girl’s hand touched his shoulder, his seemed to reconsider. The girl turned and looked at me with a fake, innocent expression on her face. It hit me harder than initially finding them did, and I don’t know how I knew, but I did.

This was Kayla, Logan’s first love.

And maybe his only.