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In Sickness

By John Duffin (poet@sharecom.ca)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The wind blows on a barren plain, stirring dust that would have lain for millenia, but for the technological wizardry that maintains an atmosphere in this place. Footprints are slowly eaten by the hunger of this wind, and other such marks of the passage of a score of beings. Immortality fades when the evidence of our lives is gone.

One set of footprints is too new, too deep to be swept away by unquiet air. These marks tread their winding way from a futuristic fortress to the heels of the creature who stands solemnly, staring at the blue-green orb below him. His bearing is noble, but apart from his patrician robes and penetrating gaze, his features are undistinguished. A hairless pate tops a broad head that descends in full roundness around small ears and nose, where underneath lies a small, but expressive mouth atop a weak chin.

The presence of observers does not escape the attention of the creature, who would appear human apart from his great height. Very little indeed escapes his attention.

'I am the Watcher. Though I have a great fondness for the planet and people that I observe, I am pledged not to interfere. Tragedy and triumph unfold in their turn before me, but my pleasure and pain must be vicarious. This is my curse.

'When the toll of inaction becomes too heavy, yet still I may not pause in my vigil, but it is open to me to watch other realities. These realities may be very different from the familiar one below. Sometimes they are more hopeful, sometimes more tragic, but all serve to ease my burden when the need comes upon me.

'One such shall I visit now. In the world we know, mutants became more common in the twentieth century- partly because of nuclear experimentation, but mostly due to certain medical advances in the relief of pain, which had the unpredicted and unremarked effect of activating the X-factor in the genes of children developing in the womb.

'The section of DNA that governs benevolent mutancy of this particular kind in humans is called the X-factor after its supposed discoverer, Charles Xavier, but it has an older name still. It was originally proposed by an English scientist who was more than a century ahead of his time when he predicted the existence of mutants. He was the Earl of East Saxony, a scientist by the name of Nathaniel Milbury. Chiefly, he affected the name of his demesne, the name of Essex.

'In the world you know, Apocalypse would approach Essex in the nineteenth century, and offer him immortality. Essex, in grief over his decaying family and slain son, would accept his offer and become the creature who calls himself Mr. Sinister. It was Sinister, you see, that was so influential in the discovery of that unremarkable agent in the treatment of pain.

'That is the world you know. In this world, Adam Milbury did not die in his youth, and his father was not driven to become Mr. Sinister. He died at his naturally appointed hour, his theories little regarded by his peers. Without his influence, the child Cable would never be born, and thus Apocalypse would not awaken in the twentieth century.

'In this world, many mutants who would have powers to shake the world have lifestyles that seem mundane by comparison. But heroism does not spring from power, and they are also noble who do not wear a costume. Watch...'

* * * * *
The home stood on a plot of green lawn that was, perhaps, unnecessarily large. Trees of comforting aspect stood in silent vigilance on the lawn, like manicured and foppish guards.

There were other guards, not nearly so well-heeled, that walked their pace outside the house. These were dressed in the costume of the Legion Etrangere, and carried automatic weapons. They were surely less than comfortable in the heat, but showed no sign of it.

The house itself was built in French colonial style, with a covered porch that encircled it, and relatively few windows, though these were of some quality. There was a fresh coat of eggshell paint on the costly pepper timber that made up the facing on the home, and the shingles were in excellent repair. A double door presented its closed maw to the outside world, exuding from itself a fine, yet careworn green carpet that ostensibly welcomed visitors up the porch steps. This same carpet yielded to the firm presence of the driveway, which led, in winding fashion, to the front gates. These were sternly closed against interlopers.

Inside the spacious home were fittings no less costly and tasteful than was implied by the exterior. The floors were hewn of mahogany, in lines that extended straight from corner to corner. They were largely free of rugs, but the house lacked no other tasteful ornament. There were many bookshelves, and these contained books that were obviously kept by a bibliophile, so well were they preserved. Lamps tended to corners. There were a variety of paintings on the walls, kept well back from the ravaging windows to preserve their colours. The walls ware otherwise clad in paint of light pastel tones, pleasing to the eye and inoffensive to the mind.

Everywhere, the well-preserved things of quality stoked the memories of the ruined old men who dwelt among them. None of these men could have been called well-preserved themselves, but that was more the fault of violence than wrinkles. Some of these old men had horrible scars that ruined otherwise handsome faces. Some of their number were missing an arm, or leg. None were entirely whole.

One such man sat in a wheelchair, and stared fixedly out of a window that faced the back lawn. His hair was iron grey, and his skin was stretched as thin as parchment. Still, his gaze was even, his back straight, and his grip on the arm of the wheelchair was strong, even though his left hand missed three of its fingers. The man had a faint smile on his craggy face, but his eyes did not agree with the smile. They were both sorrowful and angry.

The man affected to ignore everything that transpired in the house around him. Here, other old men were playing at cards. There, a more vigorous fellow regaled a guard with a war story that he had told a hundred times. In an adjoining room, a sleeping codger's snores were drawing glances of irritation from his neighbours, who were playing at chess.

The sound of heels clicking on the hardwood floor drew the glances of the other old men, but the window-gazer ignored them until they came to a halt behind his chair. He felt the tiny shock when hands came to rest on the handles.

He licked his lips, and croaked in a voice that was gravelly, perhaps from disuse. 'Sandalwood. You must be new.'

'Pardon, monsieur?'

'Votre parfum. C'est bois de santal. Je prete l'attention aux parfums. Ils peuvent on dire beaucoup au sujet d'une personne.'

'En effet? Et que vous indique-t-il au sujet de moi?'

'Vous pensez que vous etes belle. Oh, and French ain't your first language. How's your English?'

The old man found his chair lifted on its back wheels, and spun around quickly. He came to a halt facing the woman.

'My English is better than yours. There is nothing wrong with my French.' The woman was staring him in the eye from a distance of about four inches. Her long, slender arms were braced on the back of the wheelchair, on either side of his neck. Unexpectedly in an African woman, she had a great mass of snowy white hair, which was pulled back in a loose coil around the crown of her head. She also had a rather exotic pair of blue eyes, which were angry in aspect. She was clad in the white outfit of a doctor.

The old man smirked and leaned in closer. He glanced downward with impish eyes. 'That's a pretty bold neckline for a doc, girl. Not that you don't carry it off, mind.'

'I am no girl, and you are very rude.'

'No girl, eh? Take it from me, darlin'. I got a trained eye. They don't build boys like you.'

The woman knelt on the floor, so that she could look the codger in the eye. She favored him with a sympathetic smile. 'I understand, Mr. Logan. You wish to alienate me to prevent closeness. You do not have to worry. I will not be leaving soon.'

The old man sputtered. 'What makes you think I want you to be close?'

She smiled sweetly as she stood. 'You could hardly make good on your innuendo without getting close, Mr. Logan.'

He snorted. 'No danger o' that. You got my chart right there.'

'So I do. However, I do not see any mention of reduced sexual function, or of prostate problems.'

There was some chuckling from the chess room, which Mr. Logan silenced with a glare. 'A man knows. Time was, a girl looking like you couldn't walk in here without an armed escort. You're pretty safe, now.'

'Perhaps I am. It does not matter. Right now, it is time for your medication.'

'Huh. You better get that notion out of your head right now, darlin'. I ain't taking meds.'

'They are my orders.' she said firmly. 'I am your new doctor, and in matters of your health, I am your master.'

The old man grinned ferally at her. 'You know how old I am, girl?'

'Doctor. No, I do not.'

'I was born in 1892. That makes me ninety-nine.'

The doctor was taken aback. 'I should never have guessed. Seventy, perhaps.'

'I fought in the Spanish Civil War, and in the second war. I've been in Korea and Afghanistan.'

'Surely not Afghanistan. You must have been too old', she said.

He chuckled. 'I like you, doc. What's your name?'

'I am Dr. Munroe.'

'Nah, yer first name.'

The doctor gave him a look, but complied. 'My first name is Ororo.'

'Ha! "Beauty", hey? Fits you, sure enough. Your mother must o' been a looker if they tagged that one on you.'

Ororo smiled at him. 'I thought that we were through with flirtation, Mr. Logan.'

'Ah, call me Logan. Just Logan.'

She frowned. 'Is that your first name?'

'After years in the Legion, sweetheart, it's the only name I've got.'

'Very well, Logan. Now, please take your medicine, and then you should probably rest for a while. You have been awake since five.'

'Perhaps you weren't listening, Ororo. I don't take meds.'

'You did not get to be this age by neglecting your health, did you?' She pulled his chair forward, and then took her place again behind it, pushing it toward the dispensary.

'I don't neglect anything, doc. I just don't take meds. Look at me. I'm older than your grandpa, and I never so much as popped a Tylenol. Taking pills, I'd just be arguing with success. Only a jackass does that.'

'I am a doctor, Logan. Health is my business, and pills are my argument against your ailments. Now, please, allow me to do my job.' She pushed the wheelchair forward with new vigor, wheeling it around to face the door to the dispensary.

He jammed his hands on the wheels. Ororo came to an unexpected and precipitous halt, and flopped halfway over the chair before righting herself angrily.

'You're doing your job,' he said evenly, 'if I ain't dead in the morning and I'm satisfied with the state my body's in.'

Ororo tried to push the chair forward again, but his grip was too firm. She set her jaw and crouched down, and then leapt lightly over the chair. She spun on her heel to face him.

'Do not tell me my job, little man. I am here to keep you well. I will do my job, and you will live a while yet.'

He levered himself from the wheelchair to stand before her. 'It's my frigging body. You take _my_ orders where my body's concerned. You keep yelling in my face, girl, and I'll teach you some respect.'

Her eyes widened. 'Your knees cannot support your weight. Sit down at once!'

He shuffled forward, clearly in pain, and took her about the waist. 'My body.'

'Sit down!'

With a grunt, he picked her up, and with great care turned around and placed her rump in the wheelchair. 'You in love with other people being helpless? You sit there for a while and think about that.'

She watched him shuffle painfully into the dispensary and out the other side. Nor did she move for a while when he was out of sight.

A nurse found her sitting there a short while later, and laid a thick hand on her shoulder.

'Pay him no mind, doctor. He means no offense.'

Ororo favoured her with a tight smile of gratitude, and the nurse made her way past the chair and into the dispensary.

Ororo stood up, finally, and pushed the chair into the dispensary. The nurse smiled up at her from the desk and made a little mark on a clipboard. She sighed, and opened Logan's clipboard again. His file implied a number of conditions which should be medicated, most dangerously a likely case of diabetes. It was impossible to know anything about his health with certainty, what with the quality of doctors willing to work in rest homes.

If she were to save his life, she would have to be cunning. The old vet would not be easy to fool.

She came to the window that Logan had been staring out of, and smiled to see a pair of boys playing on the lawn of the adjacent property. They seemed so happy and careless of their surroundings. Of course, it was their wealth that allowed them such security. They were probably French boys, no doubt part of a powerful colonial family here in Algeria.

The sun was setting in the west, casting a soft effulgent glow across the sky. In Cairo, the sunsets had been more spectacular, but that, of course, was due to the pollution. This land may have been groaning under the weight of European rule, long overdue to be shed, but it was still mostly a pure land, and beautiful.

Logan had been staring at these boys, and smiling. Obviously, she thought, he could still take pleasure in life. He must not be ready to give up yet. Why, then, would he refuse the means to live a longer life?

* * * * *
Ororo awoke to a thick, familiar heat in her quarters. It was hot and dry outside, but the closed shutters and her own breath had made the small room muggy. She cast the shutters open and stared outside at the morning sun. The gardeners were already outside, slaking the thirst of the verdant lawn with water. In this, the driest part of the year, it seemed wasteful.

'Should water it at night. Idiot stupid to water the lawn in the day when it'll evaporate.'

Ororo started. The voice had come from right beside her window. She stuck her head out of the window and regarded Logan, who was sitting in a wheelchair on the porch.

She stared across the lawn. 'Better yet, they should not waste water on grass at all. It was not meant to grow here at this time of year.'

Logan snorted. 'European strain anyway. Wasn't meant to grow here, period.'

She smiled. 'On this, at least, we are in agreement.'

'I think you'll find we agree on a lot of things, darlin'. Just not on everything.'

'How can you be sure that we will have such a close opinion on things?'

'Just a feeling. For one thing, by the way the gardeners are staring this way, I'd say that you sleep the same way I do.'

Ororo closed the shutters. 'It is not something to be ashamed of.'

'Not hardly. I wasn't saying that you should close the shutters. Hell, I'd walk around that way myself if I wouldn't get locked up for it.'

She chuckled. 'It would seem to be a sign of the onset of senility.'

'Ha! I got more sense in the hairs on my ass than the fools who run this joint.'

'That', she said as she reopened the shutters, clad now in her doctor's whites, 'is an image I would rather have avoided.'

He chuckled. 'You and me both, doc. Regretted it as soon as it was out of my mouth.'

She climbed into the windowseat, and stepped down lightly onto the porch. 'It is going to be a lovely day.'

'You bet. Most of 'em are like this. Nice place to retire, I guess.'

'Your voice tells me that you are not sure you would like to be here.'

'What, in a home for forgotten vets, or in Algeria?'

'Either.'

Logan smiled slightly. 'You ever seen northern Canada, doc?'

She shivered. 'Too cold for my taste.'

He nodded. 'You being from the tropics and all. Still, it's just gorgeous country. You can step into the forests or the tundra up there and not see another human for days.'

She smiled slowly, and sat back up on the windowsill, kicking out her legs a bit. 'It sounds nice.'

'Nothing like it, doc. If you can get past the chill.'

'You must have to bundle up very warm for such country.'

The old man shook his head. 'Maybe now. I was raised up there. I could walk around wearing shorts in December.'

'Is December in the cold season up there?'

'You bet. Gets cold enough to crack trees open, some nights.'

She smiled demurely. 'It has been many years since I was in North America. I have not been there since I was a little girl.'

'Well, it ain't got class, but I think I'd like to die there.'

Ororo looked at him sideways. 'You are not going to die.' she said.

'Ha! Going to wrestle Hades for me, darlin'? Didn't think I'd made that kind of impression.'

She glared at him. 'You will live to see me as an old woman.'

Logan leaned back and gazed out over the lawn. 'You're an old woman now.'

'What? How dare you!'

'Doc, you're young enough to be my granddaughter. Hell, you're young enough to be my great-granddaughter. But it seems to me like you got more fear of death than any old woman.'

'I do not fear my death. Only yours.'

He put up his misshapen hands. 'Fair enough. Wasn't trying to make out like it was otherwise. But what the hell is life worth if you ain't doing anything? What good are you if you're sitting on your ass, never changing, never contributing?'

She took his hands is hers. 'You have already made your contribution, Logan. I am paying you back my share.'

'That's sweet, Ororo. I like that. But I got my grins in making the effort, you know? That was my paycheque. Why don't you pay back them as haven't been reimbursed for their efforts? I gotta do some more work if I want my sweet reward.'

She sighed. 'Logan, I want to help you. You understand that, don't you?'

'Sure.'

'Please explain to me why you do not want to be helped. Is it because you are tired of life?'

Logan grunted. 'If I were tired of life, doc, I'd be right at home here. You check "life" at the door around here.'

'But surely,' she continued, 'you cannot expect to be as active as you were twenty years ago. The human body does not allow a person to remain so hardy into as extreme an age as you have.'

'Girl, I don't expect to be able to do everything I could do at eighty, or sixty, or twenty. But damn it, ain't you ever heard "do not go gentle into that good night? Rage, rage against the dying of the light?"'

'I have.' she said. 'I live by that credo.'

'So do I.'

With that, he wheeled around the porch, leaving the doctor bemused in the windowseat.

So she sat for a while, and shook her head in amusement. The old coot seemed to be able to make her question the validity of her most dearly held beliefs. He would be a valuable person to have as a friend.

The sound of bustle inside the home reminded her that she still had a duty beyond that to any one old man, no matter how intriguing. She swung her legs back into her room and went down the hall to attend to her duties.

* * * * *
Ororo finished her day with a sponge bath, delivered to an old man who was game enough to pretend arousal at the experience. It was a grand gesture by an old rogue, and she played along, returning his jibes and suggestions in like measure.

That done, she contemplated bathing herself. The heat of the day had carried over into the night, and the house was still at a temperature that was above the comfort level. It would be heavenly to be able to bathe in a full tub of water, but although no one would blink at such grand waste, she still could not bring herself to do it. She poured out the washwater in the garden out back, and returned to the dispensary to refill the washtub for her own bath.

She shed her clothing, and pulled up a sponge. She began to wash away the dirt and stress of the day. It felt very nice indeed.

There was a knock at the archway. Covering up as best she could, Ororo turned around to face the visitor. It turned out to be Logan.

'Sorry. Guess nobody told you I usually wash up this time o' day.'

She went back to her washing herself. 'It is nothing. I have an abundance of water. You may share it if you like.'

'Humph. Don't mind if I do, doc.' He stripped to the waist and picked up a sponge of his own. He took a full stoup of water and squeezed it out over his head.

She smiled at his evident pleasure, and relaxed some.

The old man grunted. 'You really don't got any nudity taboos, eh doc?'

'Ororo. You may call me Ororo even when I am nude, Logan.'

'Aw, it ain't that.'

She raised an eyebrow.

'OK, maybe it is that. Ororo.'

'There is no need to be embarrassed, Logan. I am certain that you have seen women without clothing before.'

'True, but I usually know where I stand with 'em before I do. You, I don't know about.'

She paused to refill her sponge. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean I don't know whether we're gonna be friends or no. We seem to be tripping up on that Hippocratic oath o' yours.'

'Would you like to be friends?' she asked shyly.

A long pause. 'Yeah. Yeah, I think I would.'

'So would I.'

They sat quietly for a while, attending to their respective cleaning chores. Perhaps as a mark of their newly declared friendship, neither of them rushed the task.

Logan grimaced. 'This is the part of the evening that ain't as much fun.'

Ororo regarded him. 'What do you mean?'

'The circus contortions. Watch and be amazed.' He leaned out from his wheelchair on forearms twisted with muscle thickly lain, and eased himself onto the floor from that position.

'You seem to be adept enough at it, for all of your protestation.'

'We ain't got to the fun part.' He unfastened his pants, and made the first, difficult motion to remove them.

'Here, let me help.' Ororo offered.

'No thanks.'

'It will be easier. Please let me help.'

'What part of "no thanks" did you miss?' he snarled. He twisted sharply, and his pants slipped down a half-inch more.

She placed her hands on his. 'Logan, I can see that you are a proud man.'

'Got a lot to be proud of, doc.'

'You must do this every night. It cannot be easy.'

'It ain't.'

She stopped the jerking of his arms with a touch. 'Logan, I have the feeling that you are a great man. You are certainly a capable one. I must ask you, though, why you fear my help.'

'It ain't help I'm afraid of, doc. Thanks for coming out, though.'

'What part of you is reduced by accepting the help of someone who holds you in high regard?'

'My goddamn dignity, that's what. I've been putting on my clothes and taking them off since before your grandpa was born, damn it, and as long as I got an arm that works, I'm not going to stop.'

'I am not asking you to.' she said patiently. 'I am offering to spare you from a few moments of pain, because it would make me happy if I could do so. I am not suggesting that I should help you on and off with your clothing every day. I am offering to remove your clothing right now.'

He sat in silence for a moment, and then grunted his assent. 'Please.' he added.

She pulled his pants down over his hips, and then gingerly pulled them from each leg. She gasped in wonder and sympathy at the terrible scars that criss-crossed his legs. 'What battle left you these scars, Logan?'

He grunted, seemingly embarrassed. 'Aw, you old smoothie. You know the easiest way to distract a vet from his problems is to ask him about his scars.'

She traced a particularly vivid mark up his leg with her finger, absorbed by the strange curve and length of it. She was startled when he flinched violently.

'I am sorry!' she said stridently. 'I did not mean to hurt you.' Then, she saw the real reason for his reaction. Her eyes opened wide, and she averted her gaze.

Neither of them moved for a moment, but Ororo recoverd her composure first. 'I thought you said that such reactions were beyond you.'

'Must admit, I ain't sorry to be wrong, but this is a damned sorry time to find out.'

Ororo turned back, and forced herself to look at him. 'It is nothing to be ashamed of. An involuntary reaction to a tactile stimulus.'

He snorted. 'Let me tell you, when the nurses around here touch my leg, nothing like this ever happens.'

'Then I am flattered.'

He replied, shyly, 'Flattery ain't real. You are one hell of a good looking woman, and a pistol to boot. Back in the day, I might have tried to press my luck.'

'If I were not your doctor, I might have tried my own luck just as you are.'

He laughed out loud. 'Goddamn, Ororo, now I just know that we're gonna get along.'

* * * * *
The cooler season arrived in Algeria, as it will, and Ororo was happy to see the change of seasons. She regarded the process of nature as it went through its cycles as wondrous magic. Better still, it was a magic that could be understood, in some small part.

She was standing on the porch, facing the back yard. A guard stepped around her carefully, and gave her the same look of interest that he did every time their eyes met. She smiled, but was not inclined to pursue the matter. His interest in her was strictly sexual, she thought.

The leaves on the carefully manicured and vigilant trees were as green as ever, of course, but the little girl in her still half-expected to see them change colours for her. The grass at this time of year did not require nearly as much attention, and it was as thick and lush as a carpet. The smell of loam and vegetation wafted sweetly from the lawn, which sparkled with dew from the dormant sprinklers, busy scarcely an hour before.

She heard the squeak of Logan's wheelchair as it came around the corner of the house. She smiled when he cursed under his breath.

'You cannot sneak up on me if you do not oil your wheelchair, Logan.'

He snorted his disgust. 'It's this frigging unseasonable humidity. I should have been good for another three months, at least.'

'How are your joints feeling?' Ororo inquired.

'Much as what you'd expect.' he replied.

'You would feel better if you took some painkillers, Logan.'

'The hell I would. You'd feel better, you mean.'

She smiled and batted her long eyelashes at him. 'Is that not reason enough for you?'

'You perform that trick beautifully, 'Ro, but I ain't budging.'

'I wish that you would take your insulin. I would not bother you to take painkillers if you would simply regulate your diabetes.'

'I seem to be doing okay without it. Besides which, you ain't got enough of the stuff for all the boys in this joint. Save it for them as needs it.'

Ororo sighed her frustration. 'You are an exasperating little man.'

'Been hearing that all my life, darlin'. That ain't news.'

'Behavior modification never occured to you, of course?' she asked archly.

'Ha! I was given this part to play, 'Ro, and nobody does it half as well as me. It'd be a shame to ditch a good part to win a congeniality contest.'

'Yes, I suppose it would.'

Ororo took a seat on one of the lawn chairs, and they sat together in companionable silence for a while, broken only by the salutes of the new guards coming on duty.

She turned to the old man. 'They always salute you, regardless of their rank. What rank did you achieve in the Legion, Logan?'

'Colonel.'

'Small wonder, then. Of course, you could not be here if you did not have some rank or money.'

'Yeah, it's a real frigging privelege, all right.' he said bitterly.

'Logan! I am surprised at you. What is bothering you today?'

'Aw, it's nothing to worry yourself over, 'Ro. Just woke up grumpy, that's all.'

'Is it?' she asked directly. 'I wonder.'

'Wonder away.' he replied smugly, and would say no more on the subject.

That night, however, Ororo went to the morning nurse and asked her if she knew about anything that could be bothering Logan. The girl said nothing, but walked over to the laundry and pulled out a pillowcase. It had a substantial bloodstain.

Ororo saw red. She snatched the offending bedclothing from the startled hands of the nurse and stormed directly to Logan's room, where she threw open the door without ceremony.

He looked up, startled, from his bed. 'What's your disfunction, 'Ro? Oh.' he said quietly.

She stalked up to the bed and sat on it, brandishing the pillowcase in his face. 'When were you going to tell me about this?' she demanded.

'I wasn't', he said straightly.

'You weren't?' she answered in a dangerous tone.

'No.'

'I thought that we were past this! I thought that you trusted me!' she raged.

'I do, Ororo. It's just that a man's dying is a private thing.'

'This could be tuberculosis!' she screamed. 'You could have infected the whole home! What were you thinking?'

'It ain't TB. It's a terminal strain o' Roehm-Kratz. Not something other people can catch.'

Ororo closed her eyes. Roehm-Kratz disorder was invariably and swiftly fatal. The alveoli began to become deformed, allowing less oxygen into the bloodstream. In the final stages, they began to tear, allowing blood to leak into the lungs. Logan could not have had more than a week to live.

'You could not have diagnosed this on your own.' she said, deeply hurt. 'You must have gone to another doctor.'

'That I did, Ororo. I went to deRoche, and he figured it out.'

'You hate Dr. deRoche. Why did you go to him, and not to me?'

'I didn't want you to know. DeRoche I could give a shit about, but you're a friend. I didn't want you to worry. Nothing you could have done for it anyway.'

'How are you suppressing the cough? Are you allowing blood to collect in your lungs?' she demanded.

'Yeah.'

'That will make you more sick, you fool! Cough!'

He did so, violently, raising a brown-and-black stained handkerchief to his lips. The fit lasted nearly a minute, and he was clearly exhausted by the experience.

Ororo went and got him a glass of water, and cupped his head as she helped him drink.

'Now,' she began slowly, 'we must fly you to Rome tomorrow and get you into a real hospital.'

'Ororo, you know I ain't going to agree to that. No hospitals, no Rome. Forget about it.'

'You could live for a few weeks more.' she pleaded. 'They can drain the blood from your lungs, and operate your blood gas exchange using a modified dialysis machine. You might live for years...' she trailed off when she saw the look in his eyes.

'No respirator, no hospitals.' he said gently. 'It's my time, 'Ro. It's my time. Let me do this my way.'

'No.' she said, miserably.

'You can't force anything on me and keep our friendship, 'Ro. You know that. It ain't in me to accept something like that.'

'I cannot bear it if there is nothing that I can do to help you.' she whispered.

'Sorry, sweetheart. All the help that you can give me, you're laying out right now. It's enough for me.'

Her arms snaked out, tentatively, and his own answered her. They pulled each other close.

* * * * *
The wind blows on a barren plain, stirring grass that has newly sprouted from the unforgiving earth. Unsatisfied with the silence of the plain, the unquiet air travels farther south, to whistle through the northern edge of a dense thicket of trees that extends as far as imagination permits. Change is constant on the plain as the seasons tumble slowly over each other, but the landscape itself alters but slowly.

There is an anomoly on the plain. A small cross stands near the edge of the trees, carven in stone as brazen and resolute as the man over which it stands vigil. Before the cross kneels a woman, whose features are nothing if not remarkable. Her hand traces the name in the cross, and she bends to kiss the earth before rising. The chill makes her shiver, and she bundles deeper into the heavy parka she wears. The wind carries her wishes to the four corners of the world as she treads her way slowly toward the trees.

* * * * *
'Great souls cannot be bent by a weak body. In our reality, Wolverine could never be brought low by disease, even in old age. Even if he could, however, he would bear it stoically and with honour. In such a way is the essential nature of humanity revealed, even across the skein of time and space.

'Although she was born without her connection to nature and the weather, Storm nevertheless maintained the strength and compassion that makes her a good leader in our reality. Perhaps, the lack of power has made her stronger, for she was able to accept and love Wolverine without reservation.

'By contrast, Wolverine was much the same man. Although he was warily able to love Storm, he proved reluctant to accept her love in turn. Perhaps Logan is the same man no matter what world he is on.

'Possibility is what separates one world from the next. It is a great comfort to think, however, that whatever the circumstances, humanity is not entirely the victim of the tragedies that buffet it. Some people, at least, can mantain dignity and courage in any circumstance.

'I am the Watcher.'