...they didn't save Logan? (Part One)
“No, no, no…” Victor looks up at the sound of Laura’s voice, and sees her with Logan, now leaning against a tree, Laura’s little hands doing nothing to stop the blood leaking out of Logan’s body. Logan’s eyes are closed, and his breath is so shallow it’s barely existent.
“Logan,” Victor rushes towards Logan, falling to his knees on the other side of him, pressing his hands to the biggest wound, the one in his chest. “Logan, pup…”
Tears build in Laura’s eyes as she looks at Logan, bottom lip wavering as she tries to hold them back.
“Victor…” Logan’s voice clicks as he talks, hoarse and dry. “Get Laura outta here. Take her, take her…Run.”
“Logan ,” Victor, always prided himself as a smooth talker, someone who knows what to say, can’t say more than that, can’t say anything besides Logan’s name. He presses his hands harder in the wounds, Logan’s blood and the blood on Victor’s hands mixing.
“I-” The words get caught in Victor’s throat. What can he say? I’m sorry? I love you? I hate this? I wish you stayed with us, I wish you stayed away? What's the point in saying any of this, what’s the fucking point?
“I know,” Logan wheezes, eyes squeezing what looks painfully tight before opening them again. “I know, Victor.” He turns to Laura, weakly reaching for her. “Don’t be what they made you. Victor’ll take care of you. Ya won’t hafta fight anymore…”
Laura grabs at one of Logan’s hands, meeting him halfway. “Daddy…”
Victor knew he was gonna lose Logan today, he knew it, but God, does it have to hurt this bad? Victor thought he knew pain, but what pain can compare to this, what pain can even hope to compete when Victor’s heart is dying in his hands?
“Logan, sweetpea, pup, c’mon, don’t-” Victor presses his forehead against the side of Logan’s, unable to look at him. “ Don’t .”
“You’ll take care of her, Vic.” Logan mumbles to him. “You’ll be good, I know it.”
“Shut up,” Victor begs, tears building in his eyes. “Shut the fuck up, old man.”
Logan laughs, a horrible sound as his lungs actively collapse around it. “That’s my man.” He sighs sweetly, the words Victor wants him to say, but not like this. Logan squeezes Laura’s hand, bringing her closer to him. Victor looks at her, eyes red and tears falling, and he knows he should help her, comfort her or something, but he can’t breath, he must be dying too, what other reason could there be for the way his whole body aches right now, the way the his lungs stutter, his brain feeling like cotton?
Victor pulls away to wipe the tears away from his eyes, smearing blood even more over his face. He can’t tell what’s blood is his and what’s not. He can’t tell anything anymore.
“Victor. Laura…” Logan breathes in, looking at them both. His lips quirk up, his barely there smile on his face, deeply fond and hopeful . “So this is what it feels like.”
Logan breathes out for the last time.
Laura’s head drops as she cries, curling herself towards Logan, while Victor feels like he can only stare.
No. No. No.
You were alive, Victor thinks, not hearing the yowling sound that comes from his mouth, nor feeling the tears that would burn down his cheeks, in the sunlight of Eden.
Victor carries Logan’s corpse like a bride until they reach the person who will take them to Haven. Her smile falls when she sees the dead man in Victor’s arms, and the ride to safety is a solemn affair.
Victor and Laura bury Logan by water, just like Victor and Logan did for the professor. A small pond rests near the backyard of the home they’re given, and Victor supposes that’s the best he can get.
Victor takes Logan’s dog tags before they put Logan in the ground, a heavy weight against his chest despite the light metal.
How’s that cross feel? Victor thinks hysterically. How does this fuckin’ cross feel?
Like an albatross, Victor answers himself.
They get two days in Haven, and only that. They get one fucking night to cry their eyes out, Laura in his arms, before men come for them.
They come for Laura, truly, with words that don’t make sense to Victor: anchor beings, a chance of survival, world ending.
Everything around Victor still feels like cotton. It doesn’t feel real. Nothing seems real.
“With Victor?” Laura asks the main man, a man in a suit and not the combat uniforms of those who surround him.
“No,” the man's lips curl downward, as Victor was something distasteful. “He will stay.”
“Then I’ll stay.” Laura says with a scowl, wrapping her little hand around Victor’s.
“I was afraid you’d say that.” The man sighs. “ Children .” He snaps his fingers, and before Victor can react, one of those guards touch Laura with a strange glowing stick.
“LAURA!” Victor roars, his brain kicking back on for the first time since Logan’s blood was on him. No, not her too, not her. He’ll kill this man, he’ll kill all these men, he’ll kill this whole commune if he has to, not her too, God fuckin-
Victor leaps at the man with the glowing stick, and is gone.
Life in the Void is simple.
Victor wakes up, allows himself to mourn over Logan’s dog tags around his neck, the Adamantuim bullet he tied between them. He makes sure Laura is safe in her bed, and then stalks the perimeter of the shitty hidden shed they have. He gets the strange void animals, and people out from his traps. He resets them, skinning and tossing those in the traps respectively, before heading back inside. He makes food for Laura, and wakes her up. He braids her hair, and they sit in silence. Victor doesn’t talk much anymore. The days are filled with Laura’s training, and protecting themself from the other Void inhabitants around them.
There are four Sabretooth heads around the front of their shed, all on spikes in the ground, a warning to those who come near. This Victor is the only Victor in the Void.
Laura wears one tooth from each on a necklace around her neck. Victor wonders what happened to the necklace he had in his youth made out of his own ripped out teeth. He can’t remember the last time he wore that. Did Logan ever see it?
It always comes back to Logan.
“ Did you always love him? ” Laura asks one night, curled up to Victor’s chest as he gently undoes her braid.
“No,” Victor tells her. “But I always fell in love with him.”
Victor puts Laura to bed, and trails the perimeter of the shed again. Once done, he heads inside to the small bed he has, and refuses to cry.
His entire world is a dead man in a dying universe, and the little girl a room away, both who he had already failed. Victor does the best he can. It doesn’t feel like much. Guilt and doubt are new to him, and he hates it.
He gets used to it.
Days are inconsistent in the place between worlds. Nights can feel like weeks sometimes, days can last for months; on the other hand, the sun can fall and rise over the course of a few hours. It’s impossible to get a sense of time, yet time passes nevertheless.
Laura tried to call Victor ‘Dad’ only once. Victor had froze at the words, Logan’s voice on the repeat in his mind, Can’t I have fuckin’ anythin’?
“Logan’s yer dad.” Victor had reminded her fiercely, hands on both her shoulders and making her look him in the eyes. “Don’t ya forget that. Don’t ya ever fuckin’ forget that. Logan’s yer dad. Promise me ya won’t forget that. ”
Laura never tries to call him that again.
Laura calls him ‘Pops’.
Laura grows up.
Victor thinks she could technically be an adult now. It’s hard to tell; most of the time he looks at her, and he still sees that 11 year old girl.
She picked up his traits, he sees. Laura growls and hisses like him, smiles the same way as him. She eats the food that Victor makes, and develops a taste for it, bloody and raw. Laura talks more than she ever did in the real world, and sometimes he can hear his own cadence in her words when she speaks English.
She kills like her father, but lives like Victor.
Can’t I have fuckin’ anythin’?
They hear about a group of others, a small rebellion trying in vain to fight the woman who rules this world.
Victor is tired of fighting, but Laura is young.
She joins, and Victor follows.
“He would want this for us, yes?” Laura whispers to Victor one night, eyes on the starless sky above them. “To stay fighting. He would want us to be heroes.”
Victor wonders how she remembers Logan, the man she knew for a week, nearly a decade or so ago. How much of her memories and feelings are true, how much are the stories Victor has told her, the promises he’s made her keep?
“He always wanted to be more than he was,” Victor answers. “He wanted you to be better than both of us. Yeah, I think he would want ya to be a hero.”
Teammates die. They lose a lot, more than they win. Soon, their numbers dwindle, and then there are only six of them.
Johnny Storm is gone for a day, and Victor mentally corrects himself. Only five of them.
Laura comes back from her perimeter scouting trip with a car, an ashen face, and a ghost.
“He’s not our Logan.” Victor reminds her, reminds himself, staring at the sleeping face of a Logan.
There’s never been another Logan here, not that Victor has seen. A couple Victors, a few Magnetos, a handful of Professor Xs, a shit ton of Deadpools, but no Lauras, and no Logans.
This one is younger than Victor’s. He looks close to how Victor used to remember him, back in Wyoming. His hair’s a little shorter, his facial hair a little less sharp, and a lot less smile lines than Victor’s Logan, but it’s still Logan .
Victor’s heart breaks all over again.
“He’s not our Logan, Pops.” Laura agrees. “But he’s still Logan.”
Victor swallows, and has to look away. Laura is too much like him sometimes.