Any Kinda Breath: Part 3D

by Kaylee

An appointment with Doctor Niles to see if Remy was strong enough yet to begin the last round of chemo.  This time they had to work into the doctor's busy schedule, meaning they traveled to the hospital.  And here they stood in an elevator without a chatty car radio easing the weight of all the not-talking.  Enclosed.  Just the two of them in a metal box, no one to distract them at all -- and still Remy, leaning a shoulder against the wall opposite, didn't even look at him.  The utilitarian gray carpet was so much more interesting.  Bobby blew out a quiet breath of frustration and gazed to his own heart's content, making no attempt to disguise his attention, willing the man to return it.

Remy didn't, but his motionlessness gave ample opportunity for study of what face was visible beneath shades and cotton skullcap.  Taken outside the environment they knew too well, walking in the mundane world where their mundane problems were the rule instead of the exception...felt different.  Almost alien.  In this world he could be Robert Drake, standing here in nerve-racking silence with Remy LeBeau, and maybe there'd never been an Iceman or a Gambit.  Maybe there were just two men in an elevator who had to find some reason for Now to be of value, since Then was behind them and couldn't be recaptured.

No spare flesh over jutting cheekbones, but that jaw was still finely drawn, sharp and strong.  Hairless due to the chemo, but unquestionably masculine.  Bobby's gaze shifted, lifted a bit.  Elegant lips, subtly arching, sensual even now, though they were currently set in an achingly emotionless line.  Up again, tracing the hint of a permanent groove that'd set in to the side of those lips, curving to lead to the straight, patrician nose.  Higher, guided by the natural artistry of the human face to distinctive brows above the occluding shades.  No hair there either anymore -- not yet -- but there was no denying the aristocratic refinement to this face that belonged to anything but a blue-blood.

It wasn't the rascal's face that'd first set his heart thumping far too fast way back when.  The vigor was gone, most of the pervasive sly humor drained from edged features.  Denied the sun, his skin had paled cruelly to reveal those shadows and lines of stress and fatigue and pain in a stark setting, and yet...

"You're still gorgeous."

He hadn't planned to speak at all and was surprised at the genuineness he felt, the honesty of the words.  For once his mouth was ahead of his brain in the right way.  He hoped.

Remy's lips pressed tighter together.  He didn't look up at all that Bobby could see, though with those sunglasses it was hard to tell.

"You don't like that word?  Handsome, then."

Not a twitch.

"Joli."

That garnered him a direct, startled look.  At least he thought it was startled -- without seeing Remy's eyes he was left to guess.

Managing an offhanded shrug, he smiled a little.  "I looked it up."

The elevator's quiet whir slowed to a halt with a 'ping.'  The doors shooped open to reveal a huge nurses' station at the right-angle junction of two long halls.  Remy stared at him a few beats longer, then wordlessly turned to step out onto the floor.

They were told that Doctor Niles was with a patient and pointed toward a cozy waiting room a short walk down the hall.  Remy was restless, though; a few minutes of sitting seemed all he could take, then he stood without comment and walked into the hall.  He moved like he had a destination in mind.

After a minute Bobby went for the doorway, pausing there to glance up and down the corridor.  Quiet here, even with the television murmuring softly in the room behind.  Peaceful, he supposed, for those who'd given up on trying to leave.

Beautiful.  Morbid.  God, I'm just batting a thousand today, aren't I?

Shaking himself internally if not outwardly, he walked back toward the elevators.  A nurse seated in a niche busily scrawling on a chart glanced up, smiled disinterestedly, ignored him.  He swallowed and kept his eyes carefully fixed frontward.  Almost instinctive, that.  Don't look, don't see, don't let it become real for anyone outside your own world, Bobbster.  It's harder to rage against the personal unfairness when confronted with a larger scale in which the suffering of you and yours is...unexceptional. 

Eyes front.  Mind front.  Find Remy. 

The last was easier.  The small alcove holding the fish tank just around the corner from the elevators was empty save for a tall, thin figure, dark from covered head to black hikers.  Remy's sunglasses were pushed up as he stared at the tank, but when he heard the soft scuff of Bobby's feet he lifted a hand and casually flipped them back down.  Hiding his mutancy from any random passerby, or hiding himself specifically from this one?

Bobby stopped beside him and looked at the fish and couldn't think of anything whatsoever to say.

Remy waited a minute or two, hands back in his pockets and stance that stiff, careful slouch.  Brightly colored fish moved lazily about their lives, uncaring of watchers, busier with their methodical explorations of the tank that made up their functional universe.  Bobby thought he remembered hearing somewhere that some fish had memories spanning only thirty seconds, nothing longer.  How fascinating could the world be if you forgot everything about it only moments after solving its mysteries?  Always a fresh start just around the corner.  Never-ending discovery.  A life that was pointless from the outside could be anything but to those within.

Remy glanced at him from behind those sunglass-shielded eyes.  Looked back to the tank.  Back to him a moment later, and then he was slipping the near hand from its pocket and extending one finger to touch the glass over the largest of the fish.  "'s PuffPuff."

"Do what?"

A headshake.  The finger stayed.  A sort of vague, ponderous curiosity seemed to hit the big, purplish fish, and it swam with exaggerated caution over to scrutinize this finger probing the edge of the world.  "Name's PuffPuff.  Lady was here las' time I was, standin' right here talkin' to her kid.  She named 'im, I think."

"Oh."  PuffPuff's mouth opened and shut, opened and shut.  The near eye rolled to follow the line the finger was attached to.  By the time the fish saw the Cajun's face, would it have forgotten the finger?  "That was months ago."

"Yeah."  Remy's head cocked slightly, his face expressionless as he drew a line along the outside of the glass.  PuffPuff didn't seem to notice.  "She might be dead by now."

Heart jackhammering suddenly, Bobby swallowed and made himself gaze steadily at the other.  "She might be alive."

The finger kept trailing.  PuffPuff bobbed forward in the water slightly, then gave plodding chase.  "I think she's dead."

Bobby looked away hard and had to swallow again and again.  His eyes filled, dried, filled until he closed them, then burned hotly under concealing lids.

A woman's voice, pleasant yet formal: "Mr. Le...bue?"

"LeBeau."  A hand touched Bobby's shoulder and squeezed lightly.  He didn't trust himself to open his eyes.  Before he could cover the fingers with his own the gentle pressure was gone.  Quiet footsteps moved away, leaving him alone in the alcove save for PuffPuff and crew.  And the latter could forget any moment that anyone else had ever stood there in the whole history of their existence.

Being a fish, he thought distantly, might be well worth the tradeoff in intelligence and lifespan and freedom and opposable thumbs if only it meant this hurt could be forgotten by the time he opened his eyes.

***

He wasn't sure what drew him in, what made him abandon his determination not to see what life was like in those sterile rooms.  A noise, a weak grunt of effort, or maybe a feeling itching beneath his skin.  Something, anyway, that caused him to edge warily through an open door into a lonely room with one little window set far from the bed.  In that bed was a man, an old one.  He wore tubes and wires attached to machines that hissed and dripped and showed the progress of animated lines across a stretch of black monitor.  One gnarled hand was grasping, trying to reach a fold of blanket lying across his thighs, inches too far away.

By now Bobby considered himself an old pro at covering people with blankets.  Hardly thinking about it, he moved to the bedside, pulled the cover up.  Gave the man a brief little smile and started to step away.  But there was that hand again, slipping out from beneath the blanket and still reaching, grasping.  And his eyes had no sense in them when they fixed on Bobby's unfamiliar face.

"Can..."  His hand waved toward his visitor with slow insistence.  "...can..."  Fingers grasped at Bobby's own, curled around.  But then the old man looked perplexed, gazing up at his captured stranger in something like confusion.  His hand felt like cold dry leather over thin cushions over brittle rock.  For a few moments it rested motionless in Bobby's softer, warmer flesh.

Then he tried to speak again.  "Can...can..."

"What?" Bobby asked, low-voiced.  "I don't understand you."

The eyes blinked with exaggerated slowness.  "Can..."  A slow, elaborate swallow.  Fingers squeezed harder.  "Can I...go now?"

Bobby's ribs suddenly felt impossibly tight, but he didn't look down.  Wouldn't look away from the question even if he didn't know the answer.  "Where do you want to go?"

A pause, not weighty or demanding, but just a pause.  Then-- "Can I go now?"  Almost impatient, irritated and grumbly, like a child's repeated 'are we there yet?' from the back seat.  "Can I go now?"  All while he was holding on to Bobby's hand tighter still.

Surreal, these few minutes.  A step through an open hospital room door and into a between world, a transitory rest stop between here and...not here.  A place where the rules just might not apply, and it could be a 'you' and a 'me' instead of 'us' and 'them.'

Could it? 

Bobby felt his lips draw away from his teeth and didn't know if he was smiling or snarling, feeling no connection to the expression on any level he could detect.  "I'm a mutant."

Faded eyes stared.  Didn't blink.

"I'm gay."

Only the slowly rising, falling, rising chest gave evidence of life.  Bobby stared back into the rheumy gaze without knowing what he was looking for.  Acceptance?  Loathing?  Wisdom?  This man, if he had mind enough left to acknowledge it, was more isolated and segregated than any Bobby could label 'his kind.'  He might never experience the world beyond this single undecorated, easily forgotten room again.

Heart feeling more constrained, beating in frustration against the vise around it, Bobby shook the expression from his face, took a half-step back and started to free his hand.  The old leather clenched with sudden strength that almost hurt.

"I'm," he said, wrinkled lips working carefully around the words, "I'm John."

Bobby stared this time, blinked his turn.  The grip loosened tiredly, but didn't let go, didn't release either of them.

"Can I go now?" John asked irritably.  His question, Bobby knew suddenly, wasn't for his guest.  He was asking himself.

Bobby found a painful smile that probably wasn't even seen.  "I don't know," he said, loosely clasping cool, bluing fingers and thinking that he could surely hold them a while longer, at least, if the old fellow wanted him to.  "You tell me."

***

Bobby's Journal:
            I sat there and held a man's hand today, and he's going to die soon and what I did didn't change that but somehow it still made all the difference in the world to him.  That holding of his hand.  It mattered.  It made things better.  Just a fucking handclasp from a stranger made things BETTER all by itself.
            I'm slow.  I'm really, really slow to catch on.  But I think maybe I actually get it now.  Jesus Christ, I think I get it.  It's how parts of life just get cut off and discarded because you can't spend any energy considering them anymore.  It's how you don't even NOTICE at first - you're too busy telling yourself to pay attention to what's right in front of you, taking tiny little small steps to BEAT THIS.  And then a day comes when you look up and expect to find the world and instead there's just - you.  You and no landmarks and no way to get back that you can see.
            We don't get it most of the time.  It matters so much, but we look right at them and don't even notice that they're not quite seeing US.  It's - that connection when hurting - that reaching in the dark and not expecting any answer, thinking all the answers are back there in all that light and energy with the voices that speak TO you instead of AT you.  A hand just kind of waving, bobbing like a windup toy that's almost run down, asking.  And then there's another hand finding yours and it doesn't matter whose and even if you can't hear the voice you know you're not alone.
            And maybe sometimes when they ask, "Can I go?" what they're really trying to say is, "Can't I stay?"

*** 

The room was shadows and moonlight.

The words gave themselves to the sentiment, and somehow they felt unquestionably right.  Shadows.  Moonlight.  If he found something more, maybe, just found a few more words then this twinge of faded, heart-tugging nostalgia would resolve itself into memory...

Fool, he told himself.  But even his scorn had no satisfaction left to give him.

The bed rested comfortably by the window, impervious to the tired glare that sought to scorch it and the whispered curses that sometimes damned it to hell, or damned him to hell, or damned his lungs--

--lung--

--or cigarettes or subzero temperatures or anything and everything that did or didn't deserve that damnation, burning forever in rivers of fire for every sin committed and every good deed gone wrong and every omission that might've made a difference, somehow, might have saved a life or a heart or a soul.

For every cruel word he'd meant without meaning.

For every apology he'd thought but not said.

Shadows.  And moonlight.  And given the choice of the two he'd seated himself in the chair out of direct line of the window, watching pale luminance crawl across the empty bed, nowhere near touching him.  Too much clarity in light, sharp-edged and real.  Shadows let him imagine what he didn't see, let the pain blur into something monumental and unfocused that assured him there was no real point in trying...anything.  That the best option was no option at all.

Fool, he thought again, because surely he could let himself forget, just for a while, how much he was lying to himself.  Surely he deserved that much, yes, even him.  Surely...

He heard the footsteps moments before the door opened and prided himself ever so briefly on attentiveness before remembering that he'd sunk too deep to be concerned with his surroundings.  He should have been surprised by the opening door.  Should have used that as one more thing to berate himself.  Too late now, however, so he just blinked tiredly and turned his head the fraction of an inch it took to bring Bobby's darkened form into view.

Notebooks were in the man's hands -- several of them, not just one.  They looked hard-used and ink-stained.  So did the hands holding them.  Bobby sat down on the bed, face intent -- then waited, silent, thrumming with tension but oddly patient. 

So Remy spoke.  "What."  It was meant to be a flat declaration.  It sounded like a whispered plea to his own ears and he wondered where the energy for that emotion came from, or if it could be heard outside his own head.

The notebooks shifted hands.  Remy didn't let himself watch them.  Journals, he couldn't help noticing, each of them.  Four...five?  He hadn't realized there was so much that needed to be said.

Bobby stood restlessly and dropped the notebooks to the bed with a few solid 'thwaps' and a mutter of blanket against sheet.  "It's everything."

Remy stared at him.

"Everything I've written," Bobby clarified with rushed, rehearsed, fumbled words.  "I want you to read it.  Them.  I wrote...a lot of it isn't...  I was figuring a lot of shit out, so I don't think all this stuff, not now, but I felt this, and..."

Remy stared more and hoped that his heart wasn't visible there, thumping up high and demandingly in his throat as it was.

"So."  A wave, awkward and aborted halfway, at the journals.  "There.  It's.  It's me."

Then he turned, strode a few steps away and rubbed uncomfortably at the back of his neck before twisting around on a heel abruptly and seating himself atop the edge of the desk.  Watching.

But by now Remy's eyes had pinpointed those bundles of paper-trapped thoughts.  Hesitantly he stood, less aware of his acquired gracelessness now than he'd been in recent memory.  Only a brief pause as a hand reached to touch, then he set aside the weighty pondering of sin and guilt and eased himself down by the small stack.  His lung at that moment felt woefully inadequate.  He wasn't sure two would be less so.

He picked one up at random and flipped it open.  Mutant eyes and natural nighttime light let him easily decipher Bobby's busy scrawl.

So much needing to be said...

Minutes passed.  He read, flipped a page, read, flipped a page.  Breathing, sibilant murmur of paper to paper, a creak every now and then as Bobby shifted restlessly on the desk, rested his feet on the chair, more breathing...

"'How we work so hard to kill ourselves and then work so hard to save ourselves,'" Remy read aloud, "'and when it doesn't work we blame God and when it does we credit ourselves, and I wonder if it really matters either way.  I wonder if it would change anything to blame an acorn in Montana instead, or to credit a footprint on the moon.  Maybe there is no blame and no credit, and all that's left is what is.  We either cope or we don't.'"

Wheels squeaked unhappily beneath the chair as Bobby pushed it back and forth, forth and back, staring at the seat instead of his eyes when Remy looked his way.  "Probably doesn't make as much sense outside my head..."

More pages.  More insights.  All of this...spurred by him?  These thoughts -- raw, uncensored and scared and angry and trying so hard to find hope that it made his heart ache -- were because of him?

He had to clear his throat to read aloud again.  "'Hank said today that it looks hopeful.  What he really said was more like it doesn't look hopeless, but they're close enough to the same thing except in different degrees.  Like a lightbulb versus a lightning bolt -- one's just a little more emphatic than the other is all.'"  A pause for breath, then he read on.  "'So since he got to be the bearer of good tidings I figured Hank deserved a lifetime supply of Twinkies.  Kurt helped me deliver them, so they probably taste like brimstone.  Whatever brimstone tastes like.  But now if anyone ever asks how many golden snack cakes it takes to fill a furry blue genius's bathroom, the answer is 'I lost count.'  Something like a gazillion and thirty-three.  No, wait, I ate two.  A gazillion and thirty-one.  So it's not a lifetime supply, but I'm counting on at least a month, barring famine.'"

Remy shook his head, lips curving, and let out a slow breath half a beat off a chuckle.  That part of Bobby wasn't gone.  This...tribulation...hadn't killed the impish prankster or choked out his grin.

Again, the squeaking of wheels.  "He was a little down.  I wanted to cheer him up."

"Did it work?"

This time when he looked Bobby met his gaze and gave a hint of a smile, more in eyes than lips.  "I'll let you know after he digs himself out.  You shoulda seen it.  Sweet blessed fat grams as high as the eye could see..."

Remy smiled back, cheeks feeling tight and unused to the motion.  His fingers snagged on several pages at once and turned them together.  Rather than flipping back he glanced at the words and found himself caught by the raggedness of the penstrokes on this particular sheet.  It took a moment longer to make out the handwriting here, then longer still to read through the entry three times, first word to last, absorbing nuances of penmanship and emphasis.

He cleared his throat again.  It wasn't as easy this time.  "'I wonder, and I hate wondering, but I have to wonder what I'll do if he dies.'"

Bobby flinched.  His feet stopped pushing the chair and his fingers gripped the edge of the desk on either side of his thighs, holding.  Even from the bed Remy could see knuckles going white.

A breath, then he read on, voice husky and thick.  "'What if a time comes around when I have to decide to let go?  What if I can't?'"  He had to pause, swallowing again against the rock, the boulder lodged stubbornly in his throat.  "'What if I can't,'" he started over, but couldn't...his throat just wouldn't...

"'And what if I can?'" Bobby finished softly.

Very carefully, mindful of wrinkled pages, Remy closed the notebook and set it on top of the stack, leaving the others as they were.  He drew his hand back.  Ran his palm across his bare scalp.  Looked out of habit at the window, the reflection, the safest way to view the other man and see what damage he'd caused.  He'd done this dozens of times, more than that, but this time Bobby was watching him closely.  This time when he snuck that surreptitious glance at the reflection, he found the reflection staring back.

"I thought y' a'ready had," he told the window-person distantly.

"Thought I had what?"

"Decided t' let go."

The shadow-image shook his head faintly in negation, eyes locked with his.

Remy turned away from the window, scooted up the bed and settled himself against the headboard, patting the blankets in front of him.  In a moment Bobby'd claimed the spot and sat in it with a loose clutch of arms over knees, feet bare of kicked off shoes, eyes meeting his as hesitantly as his did in return.

"There's lots more."  A slight headbob at the notebooks.  "Hundreds of pages.  I don't know where it all came from."

Remy leaned to extend a hand, tapping a finger against the firm chest.  "You got a lot in there, cher."

Skin flushed, but not the crimson blush those words might've once caused.  "You can read the rest.  If you want."

"Non."

"But I thought you--"

He felt that plea again, somewhere in his chest and just behind his words.  Was it audible at all?  "Talk t' me, Bobby.  I'm still here."

Bobby's face dropped to his knees.  "Jesus, please don't put it like that."

"Like...?"

"Like 'for now' is sitting at the end of it."

Thin fingers picked absently at the shoes Remy hadn't bothered to take off yet.  "A'right."

"Thanks."

And then...pregnant silence, heavy and awkward and raw.

"So," Remy prompted when it got to be too much.

"So," Bobby agreed into his knees.  Then again when he crossed his arms over them and lifted his face to rest his chin there.  "So..."

Another silence, slightly longer.

"This is easier on paper," Bobby said eventually with a faint scowl.  "And with a thesaurus.  If you're waiting for me to get eloquent we're probably in for a long night."

A smile.  Red-black eyes focused on the untied shoestring that he was slowly winding around his bony fingers.  "Got nowhere I gotta be.  A long night ain' no big t'ing."  He caught the second string and started threading it opposite the first.  "Y'eveh notice how time goes so fast lately?  Like y' can' even keep up any more?"

No answer.  A very loud no answer.  Remy glanced into startled, blinking blue eyes.

What'd I say...?

If he wanted Bobby to speak to him honestly again, though, like a whole person, he couldn't tiptoe around, second-guessing every word out of his mouth.  "'s like I'm on a roller coaster," he continued hesitantly, "an' it's goin' 'round, up an' down, over an' back all crazy-mad, an' I keep thinkin' I'm goin' in circles, then sometimes I think I'm goin' real far and fast, but truth is I don' know where it ends.  Or if it does."

Roughly-- "I wanna be on it with you."

"Not sure y' can, joli."  Said with a gentleness and self-possession Remy hadn't quite known he still held.  "We can p'tend otherwise all we want, but we both know this might be a one-way trip."

Fresh wetness sprang to blue eyes, but he barely seemed to notice.  His voice was calm.  "Are you scared?"

How to distill the ocean of emotions into an answer...?  Impossible.  Not in a lifetime, not if he were a poet.  The enormity of the waters would drown him if he tried.

Instead he shrugged one shoulder, smiling apologetically at the insufficiency of his reply.  "Yes, very, and no, not hardly a bit.  How 'bout you?"

Tears broke free.  Bobby nodded wordlessly, and Remy untangled his hand from the shoestrings to reach for Bobby's, grip it tight.

"Scared's okay."

***

Bobby's Journal:
            Today I took the loud guy to lunch.
            He was there outside the store again, trying his damnedest to make a scene, but this time I just stopped and watched him for a while.  Really looked at him.  And I noticed some things.
            He's skinny.  Almost as skinny as Remy.  His clothes don't fit, and they're pretty ragged besides.  He looks like he tries to stay clean, but there's a sort of grimy edge, like maybe he doesn't get to shower all that often.  Like maybe he's homeless.
            When I went up to him he told me again how I was going to hell, how I needed salvation.  I asked if I could buy him lunch, and he said sure.  So we went over to Burger King and got some whoppers and sat down to eat.  Soon as his mouth was too full for him to butt in I started talking about me and Remy.  I told him about Dad, and how Mom just went along with him and how they still haven't called.  I lied and said Remy was a fireman - close enough to a superhero without bringing up the whole mutant thing - and I told him being a fireman has to be doing God's work, if God's real, because a fireman risks his life to grab you out of hell.  God's gotta care more about that than about who a guy sleeps with.
            The loud guy listened pretty good.  Or at least he stayed quiet while I talked, probably because he was eating.  I gave him my burger too since I wasn't hungry and had more to say, so it was kind of a long lunch.
            Anyway, I finally asked what he thought.  He said, "I think I'm gonna pray for you."  At first it made me mad, real mad, but I figured I'd walked into that one.  I asked if he really believed there's a God up there who hates gay people and he picked up his bible and said he didn't know, he was just trying to do this right, and I asked what "this" is and he said it's living.  He was holding his bible against him like a shield or talisman or something.
            And I realized - he's scared.  Scared of doing it wrong.  He wants a roadmap to show him the right way to go, and that book's the closest thing he's found.  He's not going to listen to a guy like me, who hasn't even got a map.
            But I don't feel lost.
            When we went our separate ways he shook my hand and said he hoped my fireman got better.  I wished him luck with living.  He was already yelling at people again before I got out of hearing range.
            Hope he finds his way.

***

The man in the mirror had regained some of his color at last, but Remy wasn't looking at that.  He'd started adding a little flesh to his frame again, so nearly skeletal features now appeared only gaunt, but he wasn't looking at that either.  He wasn't even admiring the vigorous growth of red-brown fuzz atop his head that testified to three months out of treatment.  The past five minutes, maybe ten, he'd been studying the familiar uniqueness of his eyes and trying to decipher any oracular messages they might hold.

Three months out.  The odds still weighed against him, but...three months out.  It had to mean something.

Logan in the hallway, at the door.  Pushing through without waiting for an invite.  His face, if possible, wore more annoyance than usual, with dark eyebrows knotting up in intimidating bunches.  "Ain't you ready yet?  I swear, Cajun, you're turnin' into a woman."

Remy's lips curved a little.  He didn't look away from the reflection.  "It's my s'prise party.  I can be late if I wan'."

"Who says it's a party?" Logan asked, a token effort.  "We're just hangin' at Harry's."

"Ev'yone else is there 'cept you.  Tells me they wanted t' get there early t' dec'rate.  You hate dec'ratin', 'cept f'those odd times 'round Christmas."  He smirked knowingly.  "You'd never volunteer t' be my chauffeur if y' t'ought Jean an' Bobby'd letcha get outta helpin'."

Logan shrugged, unconcerned.  "I didn't tell ya."

"I'll fake bein' s'prised."

"Don't matter none t'me.  Can we get gone already?"

"Jus' sec."

"Whaddaya doin'?"

"Lookin' f' somethin'."

"Got somethin' in your eye?"

Remy peered closer.  "That's the question."

"Cryptic."

If any teammate would understand, it would be this one.  But Remy wasn't ready to explain.  "Sorry."

Logan pocketed his hands restlessly, jacket leather too broken in to creak.  "That doc's gonna be there.  He's a very busy man.  You're keepin' a very busy man waitin' on account o' your eye."

"He won' mind."

"Not to mention Drake.  He's gotta be goin' outta his skin by now, wonderin' where you are."

A snort.  "How long y'been dry, Logan?"

"A week," he said with eloquent vehemence.

"So you mus' be wantin' a drink real bad."

"As a matter o' fact, I am."

A sidelong glance, amused but unmoved.  "I'll be ready in a minute."

Logan flung his arms up in exasperation and left the room, muttering deprecations.  Nothing too serious.  Surly the man was, as often as not, but never oblivious.  Not about the important stuff.  And maybe Logan knew enough about gutting it out -- fighting right up to the edge, then laboring for each and every backstep away from it -- to recognize the way that changed a person.  Or the way a person had to change in order to make it through.

Question now being, had he changed enough?

The mirror eyes looked back at him, pondering him even as he pondered them.  A little lifetime ago he'd seen something in the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy, stark and raw and essential, and he'd recognized a survivor.  He'd wondered if he'd one day see the same smoldering proof in himself.

Three months on the far side of the hardest fight of his life.  Ahead stretched a future -- be it six months or sixty years -- of incertitude and constant vigilance, with the possibility of recurrence always lurking.  Doc Niles and Henri, they'd explained that no one could guarantee the cancer'd been knocked back far enough to stay gone.  He knew this, but for him the answer should be there in his eyes, telling him damn the odds, you are what you need to be, live your time fiercely, LeBeau.

So he searched in the looking glass.  Asked himself the question.  Kept Logan waiting, dry as a bone, until the purposefully heavy step in the hall told him his chauffeur's patience had reached its end.

"Cajun, for the luvva god..."

"It's there, Logan," he said clearly.

A momentary pause.  Much of the irritation faded from the careworn face and Logan quieted some, listened to him.  "What is?"

"What I was lookin' for."

The footsteps now were hushed and deliberate.  Logan moved a little behind and to the side to get a view.  Met Remy's eyes in the mirror and studied them intently, his scrutiny reminiscent of Jim and the dream of ice shards and failure.  Except instead of tightening with grief his mouth slowly tugged toward a faint, approving smile, and his dark eyes warmed.

"Oh," he said.  "That."

~finis~

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