Soft as a whisper, the ornate inlaid door gave beneath her hand. Jubilee peered hesitantly around the edge, searching the room with eyes that felt gritty from too many tears. The vast open space was covered with fine worked mats and a mahogany shrine burned against one wall, laden with stones and rough-drawn pictures of those passed away but not forgotten. Candles flickered fitfully as the warm hall air rushed past her into the chilled room. For all its expense and history, the Yashida clan mansion was prey to drafts - especially now.

Almost immediately she found what she sought. "Wolvie? Hey, can I come in?" His back was to her where he knelt in the center of the room, seiza. His shock of midnight black hair rose over the collar of snowy white traditional robes. The garb's wide shoulders accented the gentle arch of his back as, head bowed, he seemed to meditate in silence, lost in thought a mid the thin trails of candle smoke and incense that wafted from the shrine.

Biting her lip to keep back more tears, Jubilee slipped into the room on quiet bare feet, padding to stand beside him. "D'ya want some company yet?" she said. Something about the pristine whiteness of his clothes made her hesitate to touch him, something both solid and ethereal like white marble shrouded in ancient mists. Before him on a black lacquered stand lay an unsheathed wakizashi, the bare blade glinting dully. 'There are rituals for grief,' Jubilee told herself. 'There are rituals for everything here.' As the silence stretched on without reply or motion, she knelt beside him, squirmed a little, and sighed. Tired of crying for him, for Mariko, for the loss that everyone in the mansion felt after the sudden death, she sat numb amid the stillness. How much worse must it be for him? she thought grimly.

After resituating herself, her knees pulled up to her chin, she tried again with a simple, "Hi?"

He didn't look at her, but his voice seemed to reach across the tiny, incalculable distance, brushing against her ears like the dim light on her face. "Hullo, darlin'." It was low, raspy with grief and disuse these last few days while he kept everyone away.

Now with his attention at least partially on her, all the words she had thought to say faded, and she was left with nothing, with triteness and redundancy, with only a soft "I'm so sorry."

He made a low noise in his throat, somewhere between a cough and a rueful laugh. "Not yer fault." The pause was almost imperceptible, but she heard the timbre of his voice turn to steel. "Mine."

Compulsively, she reached out to him, linked her arm through his and leaned against him. Hugging his massive arm, she buried her face in his shoulder to stop the tears from coming again. "Oh, Wolvie ... it's *not* your fault. It's not! Have you spent all this time in here thinking that? Wolvie, nobody blames you!"

His silence spoke louder than any protests of culpability, and she found herself clenching his arm tighter, protectively. No matter what anyone said, he was determined to bear the blame for Mariko's death. While it had been his killing strike, certainly - and Jubilee couldn't help but shiver at the thought - Mariko had asked for death at his loving hand, for an end to lethal pain. A merciful death. A noble death. A very Japanese death, if unexpected. With honor and all that.

The teenager sharply quenched a shock of resentment. Ending Mariko's torment had broken Logan completely ... and it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for him to suffer as he suffered or, Jubilee reminded herself with a sting of shame, for herself to condemn Logan's beloved for her choice of deaths. Jubilee silently battled the sudden lump tightening her throat again, wishing away the strange taint of fear and nausea inevitably brought on by thoughts of Mariko's last moments. Nobody blamed Wolverine, surely, but ... She shuddered. Such a horrible, horrible death. Noble, merciful or not. The price of being Logan's lover and friend.

"Nobody blames you ... but you," she whispered sadly, releasing his arm and shifting aside a little. Trying to comfort him was like consoling a statue. She swallowed, mopped at her eyes with the back of her hand, and continued trying, however. She had to. "Y'know, when my folks were killed, I thought it was like the end of the world. And I just knew it had to be my fault, right? I mean, if I had been there maybe, maybe it wouldn't have happened like it did. Maybe they'd still be alive. Maybe ... maybe I'd have gotten to at least say g'bye." She scrubbed at her face again, wiping away the tears that seemed to come from nowhere. Reminiscing was still hard, the old wound still painful even though it often seemed healed. "You know what I mean, Wolvie? It sucked, y'know. I mean, it really sucked. Sometimes it still does."

She looked blearily around for some tissue or a handkerchief, but the mats held only the sword stand and a small photograph of a lovely, self-possessed Asian woman, Mariko, both just within Logan's reach. Dashing a few more tears aside with her sodden sleeve, she continued a little helplessly. "I know it hurts, Wolvie. I-I know what it's like to lose someone you love."

"Not th' same," he rumbled, voice shattering even on those few words. Tears fell in grey spots on his robe. "Yer family ... awful. This ... unforgivable."

"It *is* the same," she insisted, touching his arm gently. "At least you ... at least you got to be there, y'know. At least you know why ..."

His fist clenched sharply and, with a terminal *snikt*, three claws snapped from their housings. "Yeah, I know why." Their silver was tarnished, ruddy with stains of old blood, and he lifted his eyes away momentarily as his breath caught in his throat. "Not th' same, Jubes. Not at all."

Her hand leapt to her mouth and her eyes widened. "Oh, Wolvie! Is that ... is that hers?" Her eyes were drawn to the dark-stained claws he cradled on his knees, her stomach knotting convulsively. In the time she had fought at his side, she had dealt easily with his sometimes-brutal method of fighting, and she knew the glittering adamantium blades were never left slicked with an enemy's blood.

His face contorted, lip curling away from his teeth. "It's hers. Wish it was mine."

"It oughta be Matsuo's." If she couldn't rouse him from this entrenched sorrow though sympathy, perhaps she could rekindle and channel the rage that always lurked beneath the surface. Even a rampaging, berserker Wolverine would be preferable to this. "Isn't he the one responsible, the one who poisoned her?"

"He ordered her death." Logan's growl gave her a momentary spark of hope. "An' he deserves a world o' pain." Bitterness. And self-mocking. "But facts're facts, an' her associatin' with me got his attention in th' first place." One rough-knuckled hand slid over the hard muscles of his abdomen, tracing across and up idly. Jubilee stared at him in silence for a long moment, mind reaching back to some random facts she had collected in her few awake days in World Cultures class. What was it? It evaded her, hanging just outside of conscious thought, tantalizing and terrifying at the same time.

Little details began coming together - the unusual white robes, the sword presented before him, the ritual path for the blade. Unaware of her eyes and the horror settling in them, Logan's fingers moved against the pristine white of his stomach, unerring, frighteningly well versed in the appropriate stroke. Suddenly, the chill of the room penetrated into her bones and took her breath. Oh, oh god, she thought frantically, clutching at her jeans. Oh no. He can't be ...

"Wolvie," she began slowly, trying to stop her voice from quavering, "I know this is a stupid question, really. But people always say there aren't any really stupid questions, right? I mean, if it's important enough, it can't be stupid." You're babbling, Lee. She swallowed hard. "You-you're not really thinking about ... about ..." She had forgotten the formal term for ritual suicide, but even beyond this, the impossible horror of the idea choked off coherent thought.