This Logan wasn’t her dad. Laura knew that. He was, but he wasn’t.
Her eyes ran over the people dotted around the room until they eventually locked onto him. He was talking to Wade at the kitchen table, or more accurately Wade was doing the talking and Logan was pretending to glare at him.
The people she had met a few days ago, Wade’s family, came in and out of the apartment sporadically, like they lived there, so there were usually at least a few of them hanging around. She’d spent most of her time talking to Logan, but she’d started to get to know the others too and she could see why Wade had been so desperate to save his timeline. She particularly liked Vanessa.
Laura had felt the life leave her dad’s body. She watched the exact moment he died. She’d share the same DNA with this Logan, but he couldn’t recreate that brief connection she’d had with her father.
She liked him though. He made her smile. She wouldn’t want him to be that same man. They shared a face but their lives hadn’t been the same and honestly, Laura wouldn’t wish her father’s life on anyone.
But this Logan’s life hadn’t been much easier. In fact, both versions of him had ended up in similar places anyway, with the X-Men gone and no home to return to, left with the shackles of grief and guilt as their only real companions.
Wade had made an odd comment about “how much more complicated the timelines had become” and that “the plot of the movie was confusing if you thought about the implications but it has heart so who gives a shit?” as well as “it was about honouring the legacies of the characters who had paved the way for the MCU so maybe reconsider that cynical one liner you’re drafting for Letterboxd” and she didn’t really understand why it looked like he’d been speaking to someone who wasn’t there when he’d said it or what any of it actually meant, but it did make her wonder about the people who were out there who had been long gone by the time she’d met her Logan.
Several of Wade’s friends were X-Men. They were still alive. Nothing had happened yet. Nothing had to happen.
And this version of her dad was alive too. He had been given another chance, much like Laura had and that was how she would approach this. This was her second life. The first was still intact, and with it her dad’s memory.
The week in which she’d gotten to spend with him was foggy now. Time had dulled the vivacity of her memories, but the images still appeared whenever she closed her eyes, partially distorted but no less important to her. Untouchable, stored carefully away in a mausoleum in her mind. Time would wear away at the stone that made up its walls and roof, but it would stay whole. It was hers to keep, and she’d make sure to tend the gardens and keep the weeds away. She’d keep him safe just like he’d done for her.
She wondered if there was any variant of her dad who had lived a happy life. If that hypothetical scenario for some reason required that she never be born, she could live with the idea if it meant he could have peace, even if it was just once.
But then maybe it wasn’t possible for someone with his lifespan to be happy. Time wasn’t kind to anyone and living longer just meant you were able to cultivate more loss.
Laura didn’t care what this Logan had done. Maybe she should but she didn’t. As far as she was concerned, all that mattered was the man he was now, and the man he was now was messy. He drank too much, he was foul-mouthed and temperamental. He was abrasive and difficult and hard to read and she wouldn’t change a thing.
Well, maybe the alcoholism.
It threw her back to that road trip all those years ago, if you could call it that, the three of them suffering in that hot car, Charles muttering away to himself in the back and Logan in the front, bickering with him and trying to keep himself from dozing off behind the wheel. He’d been so tired, not just from a lack of sleep. It was the sort of tiredness you could only gather over a lifetime and he had lived several.
She was starting to understand that tiredness, even if it was just a little.
She also knew time was blinding her to how terrible it had really been. All she really missed was the two men who had saved her but she missed them so fiercely that her brain was tricking her into thinking she missed that time too.
Of course she didn’t. The constant terror she’d felt was something time could never alter. But both men had died for her and they’d never known that their sacrifices had meant something. She just wished she could show them they hadn’t thrown their lives away.
The man standing across the room from her right now carried a similar sadness, the kind that was so profound it was almost tangible, to that which her dad had had but it was different. He had the same world-weariness, but there was hope in his eyes. Just a tiny little fragment that Laura suspected hadn’t been there before he met Wade.
Wade was ridiculous . That was putting it lightly but there weren’t any combinations of words in English or Spanish that she could use to fully encapsulate him. He had this way of endearing himself to you without you realising and without him trying despite how intense and unusual he was. It was bizarre.
She didn’t quite know how to fit in. Wade’s family were nearly as odd as he was. Nearly . They were an eclectic bunch and she was surprised they all fit in this tiny apartment. She’d never known anything like it. Not one of them had a thing in common, yet they understood each other. They loved each other. A family had never been a possibility to her until she’d watched hers die.
Logan had a place here. That’s what her dad had never had, at least not when she’d known him. Not right until the end when her fingers were so slicked with his blood that his hand had nearly slipped right out of her grip. Until the air was saturated with the metallic stench of his life gushing from the holes in his chest and soaking the forest floor, likely the first moisture the dried grass had experienced in eons.
The thorns in the wood from that cross that had hastily been patched together had pricked her hands when she picked it up. It hadn’t hurt though.
What had hurt was how quickly the tiny cuts had healed, one of the last signs her dad had been there. When she washed the blood off, he’d be gone completely.
She’d kept what she’d worn that day for years, long after all of it had stopped fitting her. It was all she had. Instead of a photo of her dad, she had crimson-stained clothes and those crumpled comics.
A particularly rare sound pulled her out of her thoughts. It was Logan laughing, and he couldn’t quite stifle the noise, despite his best attempts. His hand gripped Wade’s shoulder as he steadied himself. Laura had heard him laugh so few times she still wasn’t used to how it sounded.
There was something about how Logan was with Wade. She didn’t know what it was just yet and she doubted he knew either. But it was something important.
One thing that seemed to be common in every Logan variant was that he would fight so hard to convince you he didn’t care, that he was annoyed by you and he didn’t have the patience or the time to deal with you but it was all a front. Laura had worn him down and it appeared Wade had too. That was Logan’s thing. He got attached far quicker than he was comfortable admitting. He lashed out at the person he became attached to but the only person he was really attacking was himself.
Logan and Wade were kindred spirits in a way. Similar trauma and abilities, very different coping mechanisms.
Logan preferred isolation, silence and the numbing sensation of alcohol.
Wade preferred… well, it depended on the day. Laura hadn’t figured him out yet. She didn’t know if she ever would or if it was even possible, but he was a good person. She could tell.
Perhaps twin flames was a more accurate description because they butted heads constantly, but as the days passed and Wade would say something outlandish as he so often did, Logan would scoff and curse him out, but the facade was slipping more and more. Laura wondered what the exact nature of their relationship was and where it would lead but if he was really like her dad, it would lead to something so intense it was hard to quantify. He’d die for the people he loved without question, even if that person was near impossible to kill. He’d done it for her. He’d do it again.
“Hey, kid. You doing okay?”
Laura tore her eyes away from the two, to see Vanessa, who sat down beside her on the sofa. She’d been sitting alone for some time, not used to all the socialising yet, so it wasn’t a surprise someone had taken notice.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“This has got to be a lot to take in.” Vanessa’s eyes watched her thoughtfully. Something about her face was so kind. It made Laura really want to trust her. “Wade- well, he did explain everything to me but I don’t know how much of it I understood because having a conversation with him is like talking to three people at once sometimes, but I know you’ve been through your fair share of shit. Whatever you need, there will be someone around here who can help. I hope you and your dad stick around, at least until things settle. I think you’ll be good for Wade.”
Laura gave her a genuine smile. She knew she’d had good reason to like her.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Laura’s eyes wandered back to that table, watching the strange pair.
This Logan wasn’t the dad she had known. That man was long gone. But maybe he could be something close.
Not a replacement. The very thought made her feel ill.
Something new. He could be her family, with time. That didn’t seem so bad. She could live with that.