After moving into the X-Mansion, Victoria… didn’t expect a lot. She’d tried this before, and she only got stuck in a room with no help. She barely wanted to try again, really, but she knew she needed help.
So she sucked it up, and went back, and now she’s got her own room and stupid therapy sessions and an ex-best-friend who barely remembers her. He’s trying. She knows he’s fucking trying, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It’s always hurt. It’s hurt since he started looking at her with confused and fuzzy and anxious eyes back in Team X.
“A’right,” the man in question’s voice snaps her out of her reverie as he shoves open the door to her room, lifting up a six-pack of Asgardian mead. “Got the goods. Ready to get shitfaced for the first time ever?”
Vic can’t help the smile that worms its way onto her face. She sighs and sits back, letting Logan clamber his way up to sit next to her on the bed. He drops the bottles between them, beaming his fanged grin like a proud little cat that just caught the biggest and bestest bird in the whooooole yard.
“You steal that from Thor?” she asks, bemusedly, as Logan uses his claws to slice the top off. “Ain’t no way places sell that.”
“It’s my taxes from bein’ an Avenger.” Somehow, despite the literal chasm of broken memories and bodies between them, something still feels right. Some sort of easy banter, even if Logan’s eyes don’t light like they used to when he looks at her.
“So you stole them.”
He snorts. “I thought you were the bad one here,” and she ignores how that stings, “why’re you carin’ what I do in my free time?”
Her face burns and she looks away, scratching her claws into her bare thigh. The cuts heal up right behind, and Logan’s focused on something else– or she though, but his soft huh cuts through her thoughts. When she looks up, he’s staring at her with a sort of frown. “You did that when we were… younger.”
“I thought you couldn’t remember anything,” she parrots back. “That was… fucken’... hundred-eighty years ago or some shit. Cornelius took all yer shittin’ brain.”
“Well, Jesus fuck, I’m trying, aren’t I?” Logan snaps back. “Jean– Jean and I are working on it. Holy hell. You keep talking about–” he rakes a hand through his hair, and Victoria suddenly has a much better idea of why his hair is as stupid as it is– “About all our past, an’ stuff, an’ I’m tryin’. I can barely tell what’s real and what’s Cornelius, so why don’t you goddamn help?”
They both go silent. Logan puts his bottle to his lips, downing the whole thing as fast as he can. It’s awkward, now, and Victoria stares at her hands and her claws like they’ve personally offended her. Which they sort of have.
“I’ve never lied,” she tells him quietly. “About what I’ve said. We were… friends. And they took that away, and I forgot a lot of what… of what you wanted. Of what you were trying to be. You were always the better one, I think.”
Logan makes an ugly, sharp scoff, reaching for another bottle and shoving it into her hand. “We’re both assholes and idiots, yada yada yada. I remember you protecting a whole lot more prostitutes than army guys ever did. Fuckin’– ow.” He presses his palm to his temple and soldiers on with a frown. “Remembering hurts.”
“Don’t strain yourself, now,” Vic mumbles, taking the bottle and taking a swig. She doesn’t like how Logan looks when he’s in distress. She never has, even when they were little. She– well, she lost the plot a little ways along and started to like the way he looked angry and bleeding, but that’s… calmed down a little. “Fighting used to be fun,” she mutters to herself, and when Logan makes a little confused noise, she repeats herself.
“I wanted to try and make you remember,” she tells him. “When we were fighting. We used to do that when we were younger. I thought– that you’d remember.”
They can’t scar. They’ve never scarred. And Logan tucks his hand under his shirt anyways, tracing his ribs where she knows she’d slashed him open dozens of times. “I thought you wanted me dead.”
“I did.” She regrets that fairly soon after she says it, and presses her mouth shut. “I mean–”
“I wanted you dead, too.” Logan interrupts. Vic avoids saying anything via drinking more, and once that’s gone, reaching for another. Logan doesn’t stop her, just watches, fingers twitching. “I don’t think I do anymore. You’re– I remember too much. To hate you anymore.”
Nights spent sleeping under the stars, curled up against each other in Logan’s pack of wolves. Days hunting, and playing, and stealing all those fancy suits and dresses from town and dressing up. Vic would always wind up making a joke about how silly it was that they were playing at being human, and Logan would go quiet, and the game would end soon after. Victoria always knew that Logan wanted to be human. In a way they weren’t. He’s gotten much better at pretending it over the years, but he’s still just pretending.
“Yeah,” Victoria says instead of anything else, staring at Logan. She doesn’t know what else to say, and she doesn’t think he does either, and the silence grows awkward. Logan stands up, obviously going to head out the door, and Victoria doesn’t know anything else to say but “Wait.”
Logan turns. Looks at her, one hand on the doorknob, one in his pocket, because he’s still in his stupid jeans and tank top and ugly-ass flannel instead of anything even remotely normal for eleven at night. A flicker of something that almost looks like hope flickers through his eyes and leaves just as fast, narrowing again. “What?”
Victoria suddenly very much regrets saying anything at all. “Nothing. Nothing. Just–” she glances at the bed. “Nevermind. Leave.”
Logan looks from her to the bed. “You want me to stay.”
“I don’t want jack shit,” she snaps, face burning in embarrassment. “Go away.”
“Geez,” Logan huffs, and opens the door and leaves, shutting it behind him. Victoria hears his feet down the hall, until his own door opens and snips shut. She sighs, rubbing at her face, and sits back against her bed.
—
Victoria’s still sort of terrifying, Logan thinks. She’s… softer now, almost making herself more palatable. He’s never seen her do that before, even when they were younger. She was always stupidly headstrong, getting into fights and flashing fangs and claws like they wouldn’t get snapped up by the government at the first instance they could.
And then they did get taken. That is, thankfully, mostly blanks. Blanks until he goes to sleep, and then his mind seems to think it’s absolutely hilarious to taunt him with memories he can just barely grab at before they slip away.
And, of course, the usual ream of bullshit:
Needles. So many needles. It’s no wonder he has a fucking phobia, half of what he can remember on a good day is sterilized metal piercing his skin, the burning ache of flesh trying to regrow and failing. Stuck unable to move as voices sound around him and pure toxins are pumped through the breathing tube keeping him alive, toxins that make him woozy and clog his throat and make him thrash in the water and he gets nowhere.
his insides being cutcutcut, skin flayed and exposed and knives reaching for nerves and making funny little pinpricks dance down his arms down his spine down his legs, hands on his dick and his chest and in his mouth and he doesn’t want it stop please
When he wakes up, the room is dark and empty and he’s tangled in his blankets and the fucking claws are out. He’s panting.
He snarls at nothing and, as expected, nothing happens. Nobody hiding in the dark. Nobody anywhere, nothing that could hurt anyone–
—
Victoria finds Logan prowling the halls at what can only be described as too goddamn late to be awake. He’s stalking the damn place, stopping by every door that a student sleeps in and waiting there like he’s checking for something before moving on.
Vic silently falls into step next to him, pretending to ignore the way Logan’s shoulders stiffen. It’s not her business. Well– no, it is, but she can’t bring herself to care. Logan looks the same way he used to during Team X when he was remembering things that he wasn’t supposed to. Vic knows how uncomfortable that is. Cornelius probably made it that way, just so they wouldn’t try to go looking for what good little weapons weren’t supposed to know.
They walk for a while. Victoria follows Logan back to his room, and it’s only once the door is shut and they’re alone that Logan talks.
“I don’t want to fuck.”
“Wasn’t… planning on offering.”
“Good.” Logan stuffs his hands in his pockets– still in those godawful jeans– and Vic sighs.
“Do you ever change? Take a damn shower.”
Logan makes a face, and Vic makes one right back, and eventually he gives up and disappears into the bathroom. Vic hears the water running a moment later and grins to herself as she sits down on his bed.
Sucker.
Logan… doesn’t actually use his bed, she’s belatedly realizing. There’s a nest of pillows and blankets on the ground, random articles of clothing–
The door to the bathroom opens back up.
“You have my skirt,” Victoria looks up at Logan.
“Yeah,” he says like it’s no goddamn big deal, toweling off his stupid-ass haircut as he heads over to the closet. The only scars on his body are six cuts across his chest, under his pecs– Vic was there for that, unfortunate as it may be. Trying to figure out how to cut off tits in the middle of the Great War was insane, but apparently those scars just want to stick around. Talk about being visibly trans. “Do you want it back or something?’
A beat. “No,” Victoria decided, ignoring the way Logan relaxes a little as he gets dressed in actual pajamas. “You can keep it. I don’t care.” Not her favorite skirt to begin with, really.
“Okay.” Logan turns around. “So what do you want?”
Vic shrugs. “You were being stupid and brooding–”
“I don’t brood–”
“Tell that to your permanent frown lines– so I wanted to come and see what all…” She waves a hand at Logan. “Your general Howlett-ish-ness was about tonight.”
“Nightmares. Obviously.” Logan grumbles, dropping down into his nest and curling up in the center. There’s a long moment of silence before Logan groans, turning over. “Get over here.”
Vic forces back a smile. She curls up in the nest with him, wraps her arms around him, watches his chest rise and fall and mimics it for all of five seconds before she runs out of air trying to copy his breathing.
“We used to do this. Right?” Logan asks, not turning over. “In the– the woods. Before everything.”
Everything is a good way to put it. “We did,” she nods. “Until the wars.”
Logan makes a sharp, angry, annoyed sound. “Fuck the wars.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
Vic absently winds a hand into Logan’s hair. It’s stupidly coarse, a dirty-brown that refuses to lie flat even wet, and she closes her eyes as he hums idly. She feels a lot safer than she has in a long time, and she buries her face into Logan’s hair.
Logan shifts a little. “You’re wearin’ silk.”
“Observational of you, buddy.”
He makes a soft noise in protest, squirming to get away. “Water ruins silk.”
“Who on God’s green Earth taught you that? You don’t know shit about fabric.”
“Jubilee. That looks stupid fucking expensive, I am not gettin’ water on yer pretty stuff.
“Aw. You think I’m prettyyyyy…”
“I’ll gut’cha.”
“Transphobia.”
Logan’s huff turns into a snicker, and he ducks his head to hide it. “You’re so stupid.”
“Gasp. Misogyny. I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he huffs. “Shut it. I wanna sleep and if you snore I will find an excuse to put a claw in your head.”
“Damn, again?” She falls silent at a jab to her side, grumbling and pressing her face into the pillow so she’s lying prone. “Fine. Damn. G’night.”
“G’night.”
—
They’re woken up the next morning by the one, the only–
“Jubilee!” Logan grunts as the girl in question all but catapults herself onto them, sitting up with a huff as she rolls off with a grin into the divot created by Vic and Logan’s bodies. Laura follows moments later, tackling Logan back to the pillows with a greeting snarl.
“Hi, Logan!” Jubilee beams. Realizes there’s a whole other adult in the nest a few moments later and blinks up at her. Victoria gives her an awkward smile. “Hi, Miss Creed!”
Vic blinks. “...Hey, kid.”
“Hi,” Laura pipes up, climbing over Logan to drop her full body weight on her sister. Jubilee shrieks and Logan scruffs the kid, tugging her back over to his other side.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“It’s twelve in the afternoon,” Laura grumbles. “Scott sent us to wake you up.”
“Scott can kiss my ass.”
“Does Jean know about that?”
Vic snorts, rolling over and standing up. “Okay. Up, up. Kids, out.”
Jubilee makes complaining noises all out the door, even as Laura drags her out. Logan watches them leave quietly, fondly, before heading over to pull what’s basically his exact same outfit from yesterday out of the closet.
Vic snorts. “You’re like a comic book character.”
Logan tosses his bundled-up pajamas at her, making her squawk and hiss. “I’m a hot comic book character, then. The hottest. I get every single bitch.”
“Nah. Nah, I would. Easy.”
Logan side-eyes her up and down. “Whatever you say, Creed.”
Victoria rolls her eyes, heading out Logan’s door to get dressed in her own room. “You’re a dick.”
“Thought you loved those.”
“Not mine!”