C H A P T E R   17 :   S P L I T   M E   I N T O   I N F I N I T Y

"You were alone
Left out in the cold
Clinging to the ruin of your broken home
Too lost and hurting to carry your load
We all need someone to hold

You've been fighting the memory
All on your own
Nothing worsens, nothing grows
I know how it feels being by yourself in the rain
We all need someone to stay"

For some reason, Alex decided to enjoy his time at the school with a swimming pool fight. Because Alex wasn't Alex if he wasn't doing or thinking about doing something stupid. I really liked that about him.

"No way." I shook my head vemehently. He pouted his lips and gave me his best puppy eyes. "That's not gonna work, I'm a cat person, you idiot." I smiled. "And you know how cats are with water." Charles had already erased Black Cat's true identity out of the minds of most students, but I had asked him not to include my friends. They deserved to know the truth, and when I told them of my decision they were glad I trusted them enough, and so was I.

"Not to mention we're in November and it's cold." Kitty added, always rational.

"And I can only go full-clothed, but even so I'm not risking accidentally touching someone." Rogue completed, always passionate.

"Those are all valid arguments." Alex nodded. "Yet I think we should still do it. Roberto?"

Roberto laughed upon the hope in Alex's blue eyes.

"You know I can't let you do stupids things, Alex." He smirked. "Alone."

Alex grinned at him, clashing his fist against his best friend's. Their bromance was goals.

"Besides, you'll be able to see us shirtless. I bet you can't find something better than that." Alex winked at us.

"Hum... yes, I can. Seeing Logan shirtless." Bianca replied, smirking at me. I rolled my eyes and raised my hands.

"Never had."

"Not for lack of wanting, though." She grinned and turned to Alex and Roberto. "It is cold, and I'm not sure seeing your bodies will be enough to keep us warm."

Alex smirked at her. Roberto showed her the palms of his hands, instantly producing two spheres of solar energy. We all inched closer automatically, feeling the warmth spreading from the living heater he was.

"Temperature is not going to be a problem." He assured us.

"What are we waiting for, then?" Bianca asked excitedly. Her eyes were always glowing, untainted from shadows, and I wondered what it felt like to never having known darkness. I hoped she would always keep her purity.

"Yeah, go for it, guys. I'll be your cheerleader at the edge." Rogue smiled while Bobby embraced her from behind, his arms wrapping around her waist. She winced slightly, but then relaxed once realizing their skins hadn't touched. Bobby was always cautious, and despite not being able to touch it, he seemed to know Rogue's body quite well.

"I'll stay with you." He said into her ear, to which she gratefully smiled.

"So that leaves three girls and three guys. It still works!" Alex clapped.

"Not so fast, Havok. I'm 6'6, there's no way a girl on your shoulders can reach Kitty on mine." Piotr declared, and Kitty smiled upon hearing she was his first, and only, choice. I didn't know for sure if they were dating or not, but I was also a defender that love didn't need such labels. People complicated too much, and love should be kept simple. That's why I was not meant for it.

"Yeah, we'll pass it too." Kitty agreed. She looked so small next to Piotr, but only in height. He had that talent; he never made Kitty feel small where it mattered. In heart. "And then there's four."

"Wait, I didn't say I was in." I said, but Alex pointed a threatening finger at me.

"Don't you dare back out of this too, Felicia."

And goddammit, I didn't.

***

Bianca and I laughed as the guys struggled to keep us on their shoulders. We had been doing this for a while and Roberto and Alex were getting exhausted, but now that they had convinced us we were going to make the most ouf ot their idea. I didn't suffer with cold like normal people did, and Roberto had also taken advantage of his power to heat up the water, to a point where even Kitty and Piotr had dove in to swim with one another.

On the pool's edge, Rogue and Bobby cheered for us in the rare moments their eyes and words weren't making out with each other. Since they couldn't kiss and could only hold hands and touch with caution, they had to be inventive and find other ways to explore their love. And they nailed it.

On Roberto's shoulders, I reached for Bianca's hands again, ready for another fight. I had won most of them already but Bianca never gave up nor lost her smile. Our laughter and shouts had grabbed much attention, though I had a feeling the swimsuits had more to do with it.

If looks of jealousy could kill, Bianca and I would be dead by now, and so would Alex and Roberto. I thought about going to the kitchen's fridge to see if there was any peanut butter I could give away to their jelly.

"Come on, Bianca, this time we'll win!" Alex exclaimed resolutely, his warrior face switched on.

"You wish, Alex, Felicia and I are invincible." Roberto replied, taking the arm out of my left leg to give me a high five.

"Damn right we are." I smirked, slamming my hand against his. He faltered a bit at my strength and immediately grabbed my leg again to steady our position. Even though we had hooked up, now that the attraction between us had been consumed, all there was between us was a nice, playful friendship.

"Are you sure about that?" Bianca asked us with a smirk as our fingers tangled. Roberto's grip on my legs became firmer as he stared defiantly at Alex.

"Ready?" Bianca and I asked our guys, and they both nodded.

"Seriously, Alex, isn't your ego bruised enough?" Roberto teased.

"NEVER!" He shouted, and Bianca and I started the fight. She was stronger than what she seemed but I wasn't using my superhuman strength otherwise it would never be a fair fight. The guys struggled to keep us on their shoulders as we fought against each other, our positions getting shakier and shakier by the second.

"Hold on, there, Bianca, we almost got them!" Alex said, out of breath.

"Dude, you realize you're losing, right?" Bobby shouted from the edge.

"SHUT UP!" He demanded, but their stance was trembling like gelatine. I pressed the palms of my hands against Bianca's, ready to make them both fall with a single push, and smirked. Victory was smiling at me already.

"Felicia."

Well... victory could go fuck itself.

As soon as I heard him behind me, I lost my strengths and my balance, making Roberto struggle even more to prevent us from falling. It didn't work. Our posture became too unstable and I fell into the water with a loud, embarrassing splash.

I suppressed my feral instincts of repulse as the water surrounded me, the cat in me clearly unpleased. My body was tangled with Roberto's in a mess of legs and arms. He was laughing hard, bubbles coming out of his nose and mouth, and equal amounts of laughter were coming from above.

"Finally, we won! I told you, Bianca! Take that, invincible duo! And Bobby, you were saying?" I heard Alex's cheerful voice.

"You only won because Felicia got destabilized." Rogue replied.

Yeah, and it was your fault, Logan, I thought as I emerged, my eyes instantly locking with his, because of course they had to look at the only direction my brain was specifically instructing them not to. If Logan were a fridge, I'd be all the magnets in the world. His pull was strong like that.

"If I had known all it took was a word from Logan for you to fall down, I would have called him myself." Alex breathed out in between laughs.

"Shut up. I wasn't expecting it." I said, but it was useless trying to defend myself. The entire school had just witnessed how I suffered with the reverberations of Logan's voice. He was a damn earthquake and my whole body felt its aftershocks. How am I supposed to keep still when the entire world is trembling around me?

"Excuses!" Bianca exclaimed as she and Alex high fived, their eyes gleaming with the same mischief. Maybe I should put together a 'Felicia Hardy Show' and ask Logan to be my guest every episode, since everyone seemed to have so much fun with us two.

Roberto emerged next to me with a smirk that vanished once Alex started mocking him too.

"Sorry I couldn't hold you." The brown-haired apologized to me, the droplets of water that fell down on the defined muscles of his torso grabbing the attention of many girls (and some boys).

"It's okay, the fall was inevitable." I muttered, no longer looking at him. I couldn't help it, my eyes kept being pulled towards Logan, trapping me in his magnetic field. Some people didn't need powers to create them. And sometimes immunity was out of reach.

"I need to talk to you." He finally spoke again once the laughter and my embarrassment died down. His voice was raspy and hoarse; I could almost hear the smoke still present in his lungs. I wondered why he smoked. I wondered if I could have been one of the reasons. Of course not, you're not that important.

"Now?"

"No, tomorrow, but I'm warning you today so you can get ready." He stared at me, blankly. But my mind was everything but blank at that moment. "Of course it's now."

As if Logan had pressed the 'start' button, the laughter began again. Yup, I should definitely invest on the idea of a 'The Wolverine & The Black Cat Show'. All Logan needed was to press start for me to go all fast forward, and none of us would ever press pause or mute or change channel. As for me, I was in desperate need of a menu button to understand him. To understand at least a piece of him.

"No comeback this time?" Alex provoked me.

"Not all comebacks are verbal." I winked at him, getting out of the pool in a way it would surely grant me a role in Baywatch. It seemed to affect many males there, but not Logan. If not even my turquoise bandeau bikini could get a reaction out of him, what would?

"Here." Bobby gave me a towel and I smiled in appreciation. I started drying myself, walking towards Logan.

"Great timing you have, uh?" I questioned, my head tilted to the side. I felt shivers just beneath my skin, but it could only be the cold.

"Go put something more appropriate on and then we'll talk."

I could have acquiesced, but I didn't. It was his fault that I had lost the fight, so of course I had to find a way to make him pay.

"Why? I feel comfortable this way. Unless you don't..."

His stare fell on me harshly. Clearly he wasn't in a good mood which for some reason just added to the thrill of annoying him.

"You have five minutes."

I looked over at my friends and winked at them.

"Yes, daddy."

Logan simply rolled his eyes before turning his back to me, but my friends gave me a thumbs up and Alex even mouthed 'Dare completed'.

***

"So, what did you want to talk about?" I asked Logan after taking a quick shower and changing into some more appropriate clothing according to his standards.

"It's been more than five minutes." He replied dryly. His eyes didn't move from the picnic table between us, not even when I sat in front of him. It made me feel uncomfortable, like not having the outer layer of skin. I didn't know feeling his eyes on me was such a must-have.

"What are you so upset about?"

"You." He raised his stare abruptly to make it crash brusquely against mine and I felt my breath somersaulting in my throat. "You."

"Ok... well, that doesn't help me much."

"What do you have against Jean?" He questioned out of the blue and my teeth gritted. Seriously? Quite honestly, I didn't know how I hadn't guessed it yet. Logan got angered about a lot of things, but none more than Jean.

"Nothing." I replied, my voice mechanical. "She's a teacher of mine. Nothing else."

"Felicia, don't lie. Not to me."

"If you listen to my heart you'll know I'm not lying."

Logan's brown eyes narrowed, and it felt like a door being closed right on my face.

"We both know you are an expert on controlling your body's reactions so as to not give anything away, so let's cut the pretending, ok?"

I clenched my fists. I hated when he was right. Which was... almost always.

"So, why does Jean bother you so much?" He insisted.

"Who tattled? She or Scott?"

Logan scowled at me, but eventually answered.

"Both. I mean, none came to me directly but I overheard them talking and your name was included several times."

"Maybe you misheard it." I shrugged, my voice machinelike so it wouldn't betray me. He was right, I was an expert. An expert at disguising and being anything but me. "Maybe they were just measuring my awesomeness on a scale of one to ten. I give myself a thirteen."

"Felicia, stop!" His voice raised a bit, gathering the attention of some people nearby. None of us cared. We were too focused on each other. "Stop the damn mockery and just answer me."

My arms crossed over my chest defiantly. I held his gaze. If he was the sun and I was Icarus, did that mean I was destined to get burnt and fall?

"Why do you care? Isn't the infamous Wolverine immune and impassive to everything? Why would it bother you if I like or don't like her?"

"It bothers me if you do it on purpose. I'm not asking you to like her, but the least you can give her is your respect."

"I don't think I've been disrespectful to her. All I did was talk a little with Scott about her, that's all. She was the one who got all upset when you went to the infirmary to pay me a visit and not her. It's not my fault that she gets all jealous simply by seeing you talking to another female. And it certainly isn't my fault that you and Scott are both so smitten by her."

Logan let out a growl. Like a real, animalistic growl of warning. And it did things to me... things I shouldn't be feeling. Things I was nowhere near as ready to feel.

"Sometimes I forget how young you are."

Just like that, he grilled the anger in my veins. Sometimes it felt like my heart was a barbeque and his words the coal.

"What do you mean?" I asked guardedly, even though I knew.

"That you are acting according to your age. It's typical of you: you feel attacked so you attack others."

Yeah, as if pain was unique to an age group.

"The best defense is a good offense, right? You taught me that." I forced a smirk. My mood was far from fun, but I couldn't let him know that. If we showed people how they affected us, they'd only make worse.

"And I believe I also taught you you don't need to use humor to mask your feelings. Not with me."

Especially with you, I wanted to reply.

But I kept silent. After a while, he sighed.

"I'm just trying to understand... why do you hate Jean so much?"

The suddenness of his question took me aback.

"Hate? I don't hate her. I simply... don't like her like everyone else seems to."

Logan shook his head. Clearly he wasn't convinced by my arguments. Honestly not even I was.

"The animosity you have for her... is it even rational?"

Sometimes Logan picked up parts of me I didn't know I had. He found things I thought were lost. He made sure I never forgot about them again. He knew exactly where and how to reach.

"I don't know. Maybe I just dislike the color red."

Logan's eyes fell on my lips for just a brief second, instantly returning to my face, but it was enough to quicken my mind. My breath, however, remained completely steady. I could control every part of me except my brain. I hadn't been trained for that, because killing machines weren't supposed to use, or even have one.

"Lipstick being the exception, that is." I ended up saying, my voice more vulnerable than I intended. A sigh of exasperation came out from his lips, and I couldn't help but stare at them for a little while longer.

Logan didn't catch me, though; when he looked at me again I had composed a perfectly collected expression of indifference.

"I'm trying to help you, Felicia, but you're too locked in yourself and you won't come out. You stubbornly refuse to. I know you find comfort in sarcasm and masks and I'm okay with that as long as you can be honest when it's needed. Which at the moment you're clearly incapable of."

"You're right." I said, my tone drenched in sarcasm on purpose. "Service is currently unavailable." I switched to a robotic voice, because the more he asked me to stop the more I continued. Logan made me an anarchist to his system. "Please try again later."

"Fuck, Felicia." He muttered under his breath, and there was more rage in that whisper than in any shout he could have made. I wanted to mock him for cursing in front of a student, but clearly our student-teacher relationship had gone off the rails somewhere. "When will you understand the world is not going to attack you all the time? There's no need to be so defensive about everything, goddammit. Not everyone is trying to sabotage you. So why are you?"

I swallowed. Something inside me cooled down. Logan had grilled my anger; now he was shoving it into the freezer.

"There's nothing to sabotage." I looked at him, struggling with reality. I lied so much to myself sometimes I couldn't recognize if I was being honest or not. "So just... please, Logan, you stop. I don't need your damn concern or your damn philosophical speeches, I just need you.... everyone... to leave me alone. Help is like anger, you know? It has to be the right dosage. Too much and it suffocates you. So step away, it's better that way. Stop before you get caught in something you can't escape from. I'm a grenade, Logan. Everything around me is at risk."

Logan got up briskly. His eyes weren't so angry anymore. More like... split.

I might have split him into two but he split me into infinity.

"I'm not afraid of explosions."

I rose to his level.

"Then you're a fool."

I turned my back on him and started walking away. I had no idea how the conversation had gone from one thing to another completely different so hastily. How it had run so deep. But that's what happened when I was with Logan. Everything escalated quickly.

He didn't call after me, and I was unsure of how that made me feel. But gosh, the truth was so clear to me. Why couldn't he see it? I didn't want him to waste his time on something that was doomed from the start. I didn't want him to try when the only possible outcome was failure. His efforts were meant to fail.

Because, couldn't he get it?

There was no salvation for me.

***

I barely slept that night, awake with my nightmares. When unconsciousness finally claimed me, they just continued, in different coloring but the same old terror. Dreams were the television to the past, and my remote control was broken and out of control.

In my dream, I wasn't alone. I wasn't angry or upset or hurt or wrecked. I had already experienced loss, yes, but I wasn't lost. Not yet.

It started with a dark sky. It was a night like any other, peaceful, quiet, perfect. This lifestyle had become a routine to me, I didn't have to think much to do it; it was as easy as brushing my teeth or buttoning my blouses. But much more exciting, because there was always a risk to take. Always the chance of losing something.

I didn't know yet that that night would be the night I'd lose everything.

If I had known, I wouldn't have smiled so much throughout the entire evening. But I was happy; and nothing warned me happiness wasn't supposed to last long. I thought there should have been warnings, signs for things like these. When one singular moment could shape your life forever, shouldn't there be some kind of precaution before?

No. That only happened in movies, but in real life there were no bloopers nor post-credit scenes. Everything was live, and it happened only once.

So, the smile. Never again replayed.

I was holding it with my lips as we got out of a store. We were laughing, he was telling me a joke. So carefree. So oblivious.

There was no one around to hear our laughter, but my heart was a witness. We couldn't be culprits of anything when we felt so happy.

He was carrying the bag with the money: he always allowed me to carry the bag of jewelry, he knew I preferred it. And I wondered how anyone could tell us we were doing something wrong if it felt so right, if it bonded us so deeply. They didn't understand. The world didn't knew. The only thing that we could be blamed for was our happiness.

It was a dimly lit part of the city, so the stars shined in the sky with an intensity New York didn't usually allow. I loved it when he took me to steal here; it was like he was offering me each star, asking me to place them in their right place in the sky.

He taught me stars were the smiles of people; and the darker the atmosphere was, the more real they would feel.

What he didn't teach me, though, was that stars could bleed too.

The sound of a gunshot shattered the bubble of naïve happiness I was in, brutishly throwing me into the real world. The stars stopped smiling, they had to. Smiles had to be extinct, because he was too.

Everything happened so quickly. So unexpectedly. One minute we were laughing together, his tender eyes watching mine, the next he was laying on the ground, a pool of blood surrounding him like the shadow engulfing my heart.

A scream cut the air. It was the most terrified scream I had ever heard and it took me a lot of time to figure out it had come from my mouth.

I fell down to my knees, my hands covered in his blood. So red. Everything, so red. Everywhere, so red. I tried to do something to save him, but I didn't know how to. Where to start. What to do. I had never seen so much blood in my life. I took my hands to my face to push my hair away, and droplets of his blood fell on my lips.

I froze. My lips became a bleeding star.

It was my first red lipstick, and at that moment I swore I would always only wear that color in my lips. Not anywhere else. To remember him. To honor the blood he shed that was mine too. To never forget how his death had tainted my heart, but most importantly how his life had painted it.

Then the men came. They were already there, of course, hiding in the shadows like coldhearted cowards. Someone had to pull the trigger.

It was so easy, killing from afar. It didn't require any emotional connection. Everything was easier at distance. Gosh, I hated guns. I hated bullets. Most of all, I hated those who pulled the triggers.

I tried to look at them to place a face in my monsters, but my vision was blurred. There was a flood in my eyes and a drought in my heart and nothing could cure me. I was the beginning of a disaster that would never end.

Two men grabbed my arms violently, ignoring my sobbing and my screaming. They were soulless, hurting a child that had just lost her only connection to herself. I tried to fight against them, but it was so useless. They were too strong and I felt so powerless. So devoid of life. All I could see behind my eyelids was the image of him getting shot, his eyes rolling up as he fell on his knees and then to the ground like a puppet callously freed from his strings. It played over and over again in my mind, haunting me forever.

In between my suffering I wondered why they had shot him but not me. Why I was still alive. I was scared, terrified down to the core, but I didn't feel it enough. Every other emotion was suppressed by a raging rage. I felt so angry, and I knew that anger would stay with me. Some things, once felt with so much intensity, you could never leave behind.

The men forced me to raise, clutching my arms and stopping me from reaching out to him. No one had bothered to close his eyelids. His dead eyes faced my dead soul in a goodbye that felt like the last. Even though there had never been a first.

I didn't know what was happening, I didn't know what to do or how to feel. I wanted to be placed in the sky just like any other star, away from the world. What was happiness? How had I been able to feel it in the past? How did my lips ever form a smile? And would they ever do it again?

I shouted, I cried, I struggled, but the men dragged me away anyway.

Away from him, his smile and the safeness of his arms, the comfort of our home. Away from everything good and all the happiness I would ever feel. Away from a Felicia that died at the same time he did.

Away from my father and his death.

Closer to mine.

"You were alone, left out in the cold
Clinging to the ruin of your broken home

Hear you, falling and lonely, cry out:
Will you fix me up? Will you show me hope?
At the end of the day you were helpless
Can you keep me close? Can you love me most?"

A/N: So much drama... and more to follow! Felicia's past will be explored in the next chapters.

Picture is just a depiction of the fight in the swimming pool ;)

Song is "Someone to Stay" by Vancouver Sleep Clinic. Love this band and this song is perfect for this chapter!