"It was you or everyone else." Logan wasn't sure if he truely spoke the words before the world swam once more, but he felt them. In his heart, he would have burned it all down for her. The world, humanity, all of it, had never been kind to him, and pure, sweet Jean had been. How easy it would have been to let her sear it all away. It hadn't been his call though, even if it seemed like it was. He couldn't sign the death warrant of a world, of more worlds, and so he had signed her's. Or so he thought, right now it certainly didn't seem it.

Much as he could take most things in his stride, he was unprepared to be further back in the land of memory. It took half a heartbeat for him to feel how much he missed those days, though he of course wouldn't have known it at the time. For how insufferable many of his colleagues had seemed, it had been the first time in a long time that his life had meant more than suffering.

He knew the memory the moment he was in it, so profoundly that he found himself moving as he had at the time, despite his free will and despite the fact that to him he stood as he was now, not the being of the time. With his gifts he didn't so much age in the linear sense, but the memories of the intervening years still weighed on him. When she touched him the sensation was akin to the brief flashes of a warm life before he was turned into the murderer he had become. She was sunshine rising over the horizon and the smell of Spring.

"It's Logan." He managed to reply, less gruffly and dismissive than he had tried to sound the first time round, his eyes following her such that he almost missed that look from Xavier, the look that the original time over had always put ice between the two men. He didn't much care for the presence of those who did not belong behind him. He didn't much care what was going on, the memory was as real as it had been the first time. That was until he touched down on the ground from the ramp of the plane and his eyes fell once again on Xavier. Jean was speaking with him as she had at the time, breaking down what had occured, in her ususal manner, not that he'd known it yet, ignoring any reference to just how much the ordeal had overstrained her. Xavier wasn't watching her though, despite Jean acting as if he did. His eyes were on Logan, and within them blazed a true flame that had never been there. Not the cold, controlling look that rankled the Wolverine, but cosmic furty.

[i]Phoenix[/i]

It hated him, and in that moment he knew, it feared him too. Good.

He took steps towards her, reaching for her shoulder as he felt the true heat of wrath thrumming through the air.

"Jeanie, we need to ta-"

As he touched her, speaking a name that was years in advance, and her young, pretty smile turned in confusion to his actions,reality spun about again.

"It's me or it's none of us! She screamed at him, the angriest he'd ever known her. As fresh as her smile had been on the jet, her anger was just as intense in this moment. He recognised the space shuttle around them in a flash, although as before not all of the inhabitants were those who had truely been there. The new X-men, the suit, replacing and alongside those who had truely made the journey. Now it wasn't the anger of the Phoenix Force which threatened to consume him, but her very real anger. Without his advanced senses, those which let him known in the tilt of her form and the gentle musk of her human body that she concealed feelings she would admit to no one for some time, he would have sworn at the time that she had begun to truly loathe him. If this was Jean, or simply his own mind, to the being infront of him this was as real as it was a memory to him.

"Jeanie, I don't know what's happening, but we need to wake up, you need to wake up." He spoke to her, reaching for her, a motion that only seemed to repel her and enhance her fury.

"I told you, it's Jean, and what nonesense are you trying now!? You do not get to do this, Wolverine, I cannot doubt, if I do, we're all dead, and not all of us get to come back from that." In retrospect, that was a highly ironic statement from Jean Grey, but he did suppose back then, fleeing from the Sentinel Station, it had made rather more sense then now.

"But you didn't doubt, Jean Grey, you were right, and we lived, we made it home. We won." His hands gripped her now, forcing the woman to remain in place, trying to hone her mind, if it was indeed her, a fact he couldn't doubt, back into the present, into reality. The pressure immediately thrummed in his head as her mind set to forcing him back, off of her. It was an awful feeling, not just because his metal bones hummed with the force of her power, but of making the woman he loved feel the need to do so.

"Enough! Get in the pod like [i]everyone[/i] else, you are not different. I have tried to be kind, but you are....insufferable." Even in rage she was impossibly diplomatic, even as her mind threatened to pull him apart, and the window for her to act in the memory shortened. He could feel her desperation, and almost began to doubt it himself. If this was real, he was about to damn everyone aboard all because he wasn't going to let Jean go. As he told her, no time to doubt, and with a snarl, he fought through the wave of force battline against him and squeezed his arms around her. He felt her shriek of anger builidng, and then...

[i]Nothing[/i]

Logan blinked as he emerged from the void into the sight of the Sun rising over a sparkling sea. It was a view he didn't recognise. He stood upon a balcony, attached to an apartment far nicer than any he remembered staying in. Below the sea lapped at the base of the island as he performed his daily ritual of watching the new day.

How did he know it was an island?

Hands laced around him, gentle, elegant hands that looped over his shoulders, and he felt the press of lips on his neck. He didn't react, pull away, but found himself slinking into her warmth.

"You're always up so early...it makes me feel lonely every morning." Her husky, morning voice, purred in his ear as she nuzzled him, her body pressed to his.

Home, this felt like home.