there are no more guns in the valley (director's cut)

The briefing is not going very well. 

“No,” Scott says firmly over Logan’s loud, insulted protests. “I’m sorry, Ororo, but I can’t take a week off just to haul Logan out to North Dakota.” 

Ororo frowns. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Scott, you know I wouldn’t ask if there was a better way, but — just look.”

She taps and swipes a few times on the tablet in her hands until a fuzzy image of a New York Times article is hanging over the table. Logan rolls his eyes, turning away. Scott scowls at his dismissiveness and squints until the headline comes into focus. 

Recent Anti-Mutant Attacks Linked to 2028 Shutdown of  Transigen Research Facility, Authorities Confirm.

He grimaces. The words flicker once before dropping out of the air. 

“Kurt — ?”

“Out of commission. He’s on bed rest right now. Pushed himself too hard during his last lesson.”

Scott bites the inside of his cheek, unsure of what to do now that he’s run out of viable options. Ororo presses something on her tablet again, her eyes flicking back and forth as she reads. She frowns. 

“The Professor said not even Blackbird is safe. The technology some of these people have…” she trails off, her expression growing distantly angry before she snaps back to the present. “Driving is the safest option. The jet isn’t cleared for civilian travel yet, anyhow.”

“Civilian travel?” Scott asks, swinging his head to gawk at Storm. She looks over at Logan, who shakes his head in a firm no.

“Regardless,” she continues, ignoring Scott’s sputtering, “all flights out of New York have been grounded. If you got caught fifty-thousand miles in the air, on your way out of state on an unauthorized mission, you could both be arrested. The Professor could be fined, and the school — “

“I think he gets it, ‘Ro,” Logan grumbles. She cuts her eyes sideways to glare at him for a short second before turning back to Scott. 

“What’s in North Dakota?” he asks. Ororo sighs. 

“It’s not for me to say. Logan will tell you when he’s ready.”

“And when will you be ready?” Scott asks incredulously, looking at Logan, who does not return the favor.

Logan shrugs. “When we get to North Dakota.”

Ororo squeezes her eyes shut. Scott debates the consequences of leaping across the conference table in a way he can’t anymore, then thinks about how Logan could still, after all these years, tear him to pieces. It pisses him off even more. 

“My car,” Scott says, pointing at him. “We’re taking my fucking car. And you’re paying for gas.” 

“Consider it a business expense,” Ororo says before Logan has a chance to argue back. She pulls out her phone, then takes a shiny black card out of the pocket on the back of her case. She slides it toward the middle of the table and Scott swipes it up. Logan rolls his eyes, again. 

“And you’re telling me before we get there. I’m not driving halfway across the country without knowing why. You don’t get to do that anymore,” Scott reminds him. 

“I know,” Logan concedes. Scott straightens, startled, before he continues and says, “That’s why I’m driving.”

Storm promptly walks out of the War Room, tablet tucked neatly under her arm, and Scott puts both of his hands flat on the table as he glares at Logan. 

“Bullshit. I drive, you talk. That’s it,” he says firmly. 

“Or,” Logan starts, “I drive, and neither of us talk.”

Scott drops his head, standing all the way back up. “We’ll split the drive to North Dakota, then do the same on the way back to Westchester. Alright? And you talk.” 

Logan hesitates for a moment before saying, “Sure thing, Slim.” 

Scott sends Logan off to his room to pack. He finds a folder of hotel reservations and printed out directions on his desk, and feels a surge of affection for Ororo and her detail-oriented preparedness. 

A haze of irritation quickly replaces it as he looks over the route and sees that it’s a full eight hours before their first stop. He just wants to get this over with so he can get back to grading and supervising Bobby’s Danger Room lessons. 

He has responsibilities here, things to do, but once again Logan is just assuming Scott will structure his to-do list around what he wants, and he probably won’t even thank him in return. 

What could Logan possibly need from him, and only him? A tension headache?

There was a time when Scott wouldn’t have totally minded dropping everything to play hooky with Logan. Not even that long ago, Scott would have gladly slipped away to spend a few days traveling through back roads, stopping in shitty motels, eating artery-clogging diner food, though it’s not like Logan ever had to worry about his sodium intake the way that Scott did (and still does). 

He missed that for a long time after it stopped happening; fishing without a license while Logan fed him gas station beer and bitched at him until he set the tent up. Sometimes they would share a sleeping bag, a bed, and sometimes they wouldn’t. 

But he isn’t forty anymore, and their odd on-and-off whatever has been dead for multiple years at this point. 

(Another thing that was made even more complicated that morning Logan woke up in a different version of his own body, and Scott had to explain the grueling, embarrassing details of his life as an X-Men and the history of their relationship.) 

Scott cannot imagine Logan thinks himself indebted to him somehow, and he’s certain he doesn’t owe Logan a damn thing, especially not an impromptu road trip for some top secret mission no one will tell him about. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, shoving his visor into his suitcase. He tucks it under his clothes for attempted discretion, even though he’s pretty sure he won’t need it. 

“Hey,” Jean says softly from the doorway. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah, actually,” he sighs, zipping the bag shut. “Logan needs my help with something in North Dakota, I guess.”

“Oh,” Jean says a second too late, and Scott looks up at her, noting how she’s still hovering nervously in the doorway. 

“Let me guess. You know, and you won’t tell me.”

Jean nods, apologetic. “I have an idea, but,” she taps her temple with two fingers. “You know.” 

“Not fair,” he says, and she smiles. “The Professor, then?”

“I would imagine,” she nods again. “He actually asked me to come check on you before you left.”

Scott nods stiffly, trying to brush it off. He starts digging through his backpack, looking for his phone charger. 

If the Professor really wanted to ease his worries, he’d tell Scott what the hell is going on. He’s still Team Captain. It doesn’t matter that this is his first mission in months, or that Bobby has been Field Leader for nearly six years; he’s still entitled to basic respect from his colleagues, and all this secret keeping just seems cruel. 

Jean finally steps into the room, and Scott halts his search, posture slumping. She quietly closes the door behind her, then puts both of her hands on Scott’s shoulders once she reaches him. 

“I’ll tell you this, Scott. It’s worth it,” she says earnestly, tilting Scott’s head up so she can meet his eyes behind his shades. “What you and Logan are doing right now — you don’t know it yet, but this is one of the most important things that any of us have ever done. So be a friend. Help him,” she urges. 

“Why does he need my help?” Scott asks, but he knows it’s pointless. She won’t give him the answer he wants. 

“You know him better than most,” she says instead. It is an awkward truth to swallow. “You can help him the best.”

“The Professor… “

“Charles is,” Jean starts before abruptly stopping. Scott figures it is because she doesn’t want to upset him. “Charles can’t make the trip right now. You know that, Scott.”

He nods and looks away, a little ashamed that he suggested it in the first place. 

Charles hadn’t been doing well as of late, and it was hard to watch. The migraines started years ago, but the seizures only began a few months prior — while few and far between, they took a toll on the kids as well as the faculty, and it seemed like Charles lost more and more of himself with each attack. Ororo was appointed emergency acting headmaster after the first one, which had lasted fifteen seconds and sent two students to the infirmary. 

It was a rough day. 

“I feel like Hank would be better company,” Scott deflects. 

Jean furrows her brows like he said something rude. “Logan isn’t your enemy anymore. Far from it, actually,” she reminds him, a knowing twinkle in her eye. He steps back, annoyed and ashamed. 

“It’s not — we’re not like that anymore,” he says haughtily. The same thought had been circling in his head since he’d left the War Room. 

Jean sighs, and she shakes her head like she did when Scott lied to her about Logan the first time. 

I haven’t done anything at all, he had sworn, and she didn’t have to read his mind to know he was full of shit. 

“I mean it,” he affirms. This time she just shrugs, a learned defense from the man in question. It makes Scott bristle on instinct. 

Jean flicks her wrist and his nightstand drawer slides open. His phone cord rises up from the same place he always keeps it, and he takes it from where it’s suspended in the air. She leans over and kisses him on the cheek, turning to go. 

“Eat something before you leave, alright? And don’t forget, I’m only a phone call away,” she says, looking over her shoulder to make the gesture with her hand. Scott grins back at her. 

He finishes packing pretty quickly; they won’t be in North Dakota for more than a day, day and a half, tops, so he’s only bringing the necessities. 

Then he can throw himself back into teaching and finish out the semester on a high note so he won’t have to worry about lesson planning until August at the earliest. His workload has lessened considerably over the years, and it would be nice if it didn’t make him uneasy about the future of his career. 

Every year the school’s graduation rates rise and the enrollment figures drop. Mutants are hard to find these days; their youngest student is thirteen, and she’s transferring to public school in the fall. Scott hasn’t started any kind of retirement planning, but he has started thinking about a potential after, even if it’s still hard to wrap his head around the idea of outliving the school. 

When he was seventeen the idea of dying for the X-Men was wildly appealing, but he’s been fighting this war for thirty-six years now. He knows it’s not going to stop anytime soon. He won’t live to see the end of it but he can still find a corner of the world to disappear to. 

Only, he doesn’t know where he would go. Not back to Alaska (and do what, he’d asked Jean once when she suggested it for their never-honeymoon, a million years ago. Not there, please. Anywhere but there), but maybe somewhere like it, familiar and quiet, with enough space to stretch out. 

Where would he go? Who knows, really. 

He waits in the front foyer for twenty whole minutes. Logan doesn’t show. 

What, Scott thinks bitterly, could he possibly be doing? 

He roams the halls for a bit, hunting down his teammate. It’s not even noon, which means class is in session for the next couple of hours. That leaves only a few people free to wander around and delay their departure, the aforementioned pain in his fucking ass being one of them. 

He finally finds Logan sitting on the back patio with Marie. Her gloved hands are holding his, their heads bent together, whispering. She looks mournful and ecstatic all at once, in a way that only she can manage. 

Scott cannot hear what they are talking about, but it seems important, so he waits to clear his throat until they finish up conspiring and she plants a quick kiss on Logan’s cheek. 

“We really should get going,” he says softly. Marie gives Scott a sad little smile, though it brightens instantly when she looks back at Logan. 

“See you around, Logan,” she says, and her voice is thick like she’s been crying. 

She hasn’t gotten this weepy about one of Logan’s going aways since she was a teenager, and his return wasn’t guaranteed. It has been for a long time now, so Scott is unsure why she is so upset. They won’t be gone more than a week. 

“Catch ya later, kid,” he says warmly, jostling her shoulder a little bit as he stands and walks away. It makes the dog tags around her neck shift, and they glint in the late morning sun.

Logan tells Scott that he still needs to see the Professor, and at Scott’s insistence he promises to not take longer than five minutes, and then he promises that he knows they need to leave before twelve and he isn’t just wasting time. 

So Scott waits for him a second time in the garage, leaning against his car and very carefully not thinking about anything. Except for the fact that this car is the same color as the one he had in his twenties, the one Logan and Rogue and Bobby stole and then somehow ‘lost’ in Boston. 

He grits his teeth just as the door swings open. Logan waltzes in, humming under his breath. He’s wearing a soft black t-shirt and faded blue jeans and a pair of shoes that must be new because they’re clean, and Scott doesn’t recognize them. 

Logan catches him looking, and he leers, mouth curling.

“Let’s get outta here,” he taunts. Scott scoffs but nevertheless gets in the passenger's seat. 

This close, he can smell the cigar smoke and aftershave smell that he has come to associate with Logan. It’s a scent that he knows makes Jean sick, or rather used to make Jean sick when he would come to bed with it clinging to his clothes. 

He closes his eyes against the memory, knowing it wasn’t this Logan’s fault. Then again, it was never really the other Logan’s fault, either. 

“If we’re talking, then no music,” Logan bites, turning on the ignition. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Scott agrees listlessly. Logan smirks, acting as if he actually got him to do something, and it annoys him in an easy, comfortable way. 

Logan pulls out of the garage like Scott has seen him do a hundred times before. This part will be easy, he thinks. This part is as familiar as anything else. 

“What’s in North Dakota?” he tries, only because he wants to see Logan smile, and he does. He also shakes his head. 

“Not yet.”

Scott sighs. “Fine. But you can’t keep it from me forever.”

Logan cuts his eyes to the side quickly, sparing Scott a careful glance. He nods, solemn, and Scott looks out the windshield. 

He has until North Dakota. 

—

They get dragged through Pennsylvania in a never-ending line of slow-moving traffic. Logan argues with the automatic toll booths and then with Scott when he asks to put on a CD.

“You like Billy Joel!” Scott insists, waving the plastic case around as he gestures.

Logan pauses to honk at an auto-truck that cuts them off. “We had a deal,” he says evenly, only a little tight, and Scott decides to drop it. 

Instead he traces the lines of Logan’s face with his eyes, thankful for the shield his glasses provide, though he’s sure Logan can sense the trail of his gaze anyways. 

If he does, though, he doesn’t point it out. In fact, he’s still squinting, despite having pulled the sun visor down, and the sun itself has since moved behind a wad of cotton-white clouds. 

Scott sits up, concerned. 

“Logan, do you need your — ”

“Don’t you fucking start with that,” he says through his teeth, eyes still on the road. “I can see fine, so don’t tell me some shit about — ”

“You packed them, right? Tell me you at least packed them.”

Logan glances at the glove compartment, so fast it could have been a twitch, but Scott knows better. Bingo, he thinks.

He opens the small door and finds the exact brown leather case he was hoping to find. He slides the wire-rimmed glasses out, offering them to Logan. 

“Come on,” he teases. “For my peace of mind, if nothing else.”

Logan snatches the glasses out of Scott's hand and angrily puts them on. Scott takes a second to soak up the sight of him absolutely fuming with the rectangular rims resting gently on the bridge of his nose. It has never stopped being funny, and it still makes Scott smile as much as it did six months ago. 

“Knock it off,” Logan snaps. Scott just grins wider. 

“They make you look smarter,” he observes, voice genuine. 

Logan takes one hand off of the wheel to give him the finger, and Scott gives it right back. They share a wicked smile and Logan relaxes, letting his shoulders settle into the seat behind him. 

“How old were you when — ?” he starts, making an aborted gesture towards Scott’s shades. 

“Seventeen,” Scott says automatically, having answered the question a million times over the last three and a half decades. He knows he must have told Logan the story at some point, but in all honesty, he can’t remember which one he told it to. 

Logan grunts in sympathy, and Scott closes his eyes, pressing his temple against the cool glass of the window. 

Thinking about home hurts, even if Anchorage hasn’t really been home in a long time. The last time he was in town was for his father’s funeral, four years ago; he had to fly himself up there and sit in a cold church next to his sniffling brother, staring at the urn containing his father because the son of a bitch had insisted on being cremated. It was a joke, and it was in poor taste. Go figure. 

His headstone is next to their mom’s. Alex had to show him where she was buried, because no one had bothered to invite him to that one, because he wasn’t allowed back home for a while and hadn’t been since the late nineties. He hadn’t even known about the cancer. It had just eaten away at her while Scott sat in New York, oblivious. 

After the service he and Alex had retreated to the dingiest, emptiest bar they could find. He still remembers how his heart had started to break as he listened to his little brother talk about his life in California, his gym, the defense classes for young girls his wife was teaching, the normalcy and stability that Scott always wanted for him.

All he had been able to tell him in return was that his classes were going well, Jean sent her best, and he had finally gotten the upper hand in fantasy football. 

“We watch when you’re on the news, you know,” Alex had said, smug, and Scott had looked away in embarrassment. 

“You shouldn’t,” he said. “It’s boring. And it’s sad, Alex. It’s so fucking sad.”

“It’s not sad, Scotty,” he had said, not knowing that the nickname stirred up memories of cracked leather, rolling fury. “It’s important. You’re helping people, like you always did. I’m just sorry I couldn’t be a part of it.”

Scott knew then, and still knows, that Alex hadn’t wanted to turn down Charles’ offer. But he had been fresh out of high school, finally free after eight years of living with their parents post-Scott incident, and he did want a while to breathe. 

He ended up going to Iraq the next year, hopped up on too much blow and the pressing, unending threat of war. Not to mention the ugly and deceptive posters that were plastered everywhere back then: Our Fight Is Your Fight! Mutants Enlist Today! 

He just wasn’t the same when he came home. 

There wasn’t much a messed up vet without a college degree could do, but he made it very clear that he didn’t want to see anyone else get hurt. People are fucked, man, he had explained to them in Charles’ office before he formally declined the offer for a second time. 

Scott had helped him get set up in Sacramento after that. It was good to see him healthy and working and happy, and Scott was left wondering how the hell he was the one who ended up fucking up the good stuff. 

“I’ll see you later, kid,” he had said to Alex at the airport the next morning. He ruffled his hair like he used to, and Alex batted him away and grinned just like old times. 

Four years ago. He hasn’t spoken to Alex since. 

He blinks, rushing back to the present where he’s in the car with Logan and driving out to somewhere , destination to-be-announced. 

Four fucking years. Christ. 

“You alright?” Logan murmurs. Scott ignores the warmth that rushes through him. 

“Yeah, I’m fine, I was just — thinking.”

Logan snorts, calling Scott’s bluff.

“They fucked you up, huh?” he asks. It’s supposed to be mean, but there’s no heat behind it. 

“It doesn’t bother me so much, anymore. I’d like to think so, at least,” Scott admits. “It’s part of being on the team, isn’t it? Can’t have too nice of a home life.”

“Why else would anyone wanna live in a house full of freaks?” Logan finishes for him. 

They laugh the same bitter, dry laugh. Logan has no real parents to speak of. None that he can claim, anyhow. Scott wishes briefly, selfishly, that he could say the same. 

He spends the next two-ish hours half-baking in the mid-April Ohio heat, trying to convince Logan that they’re going to be on this one stretch of bare, flat road for the rest of their lives. He rolls his head over to watch Logan’s mouth pull itself into a sharp grin.

Scott tries to fiddle with the radio to mess with him. It all ends up coming in static. 

The hotel they check into for the night is nothing above average in terms of road trip pit stops, but it’ll do the job. The front desk girl asks if he wants two doubles or a queen, and Scott pretends not to notice Logan smirking behind him. 

“Two beds, please,” he says politely. She nods, knitting her eyebrows together in embarrassed confusion. 

Scott hauls himself and his bags to the elevator, then down the long corridor to their room. The whole place smells like mothballs in the way they have all made sure the mansion never does, and he wrinkles his nose against the scent as he pushes open the door. 

“Well,” he says on an exhale, tossing his suitcase and backpack onto the nearest bed. “I’m gonna shower.”

Logan nods. “How ‘bout I go grab some dinner?”

“Sure,” Scott says, clicking the bathroom door closed. He trusts Logan to pick out something edible enough to tide them over until lunchtime tomorrow, because this place doesn’t do breakfast and they won’t have time to stop somewhere. Logan will be pissed, but he will manage. 

So while Logan scrounges up a meal, Scott washes eight hours of horrible silence down the drain. 

It had been more miserable than he would have thought, once it became clear that his friend was more shaken by the sudden trip than he was. 

Scott came to the conclusion about two hours in that this trip wasn’t as spontaneous as he had been led to believe, only that Logan had probably spent the last however-long-he’s-known ignoring it until he couldn’t anymore. It’s something he’s been doing as long as Scott has known him. 

What’s in North Dakota, Logan, he muses again as he steps out of the shower. 

He pulls on an old sweatshirt and a faded pair of sweatpants, running his index finger over the pale yellow X that sits on his thigh. 

The times are changing; he can’t remember the last time he suited up to fight. His battles seem to be fought on senate floors now, with signatures and sit-ins and long, boring meetings. 

Then he remembers twenty-seven hours driving across the eastern half of the country, a bomb set off on a plane in Seattle, and thinks maybe the times aren’t changing that much after all. 

The world will never unlearn violence and hatred. He isn’t sure what to do about that. 

He sits on the creaky old bed after shoving his things to the floor. He flips on the television, searching for the basketball game he knows is on. Outside the small, curtained window, cars zip by at varying, alarming speeds. 

Logan comes back with pizza and cheap beer sometime later. They sit on their respective beds eating dinner out of the box and picking on the different teams. Home is getting their asses kicked and Scott accepts the inevitable defeat with a clink of his bottle to Logan’s. 

Tomorrow, they will keep driving to North Dakota, and Logan will tell him what all this is about, and they will go from there. 

Scott falls asleep pleasantly buzzed, listening to the sound of Logan wrenching open the window frame to smoke. He mumbles something that sounds like a complaint before drifting off completely. 

—

The next morning he loads up the car with his head pounding and a bad taste in his mouth. Logan squints against the piercing sunlight but otherwise seems unphased, even though Scott knows that twelve pack didn’t finish itself off. 

“I hate you,” he decides, looking at Logan over the roof of the car. 

Logan snorts. “Don’t blame me ‘cause ya can’t hold your booze anymore.”

“It was four beers,” Scott shoots back, though he knows at his age it was probably three too many. He can’t quite keep up with Logan and his stupid-fast metabolism anymore. 

Logan gets in the passenger’s seat before putting his own bags away, and Scott slams the trunk closed extra hard just to piss him off. He isn’t sure if it works until Logan honks the horn once, impatient. 

Scott smiles to himself, pleased.

Indiana treats them well, though Logan complains about a smell that Scott’s non-enhanced nose can’t pick up on. 

“Then roll up your window,” Scott snipes. Logan makes an angry noise in the back of his throat. 

Scott almost starts trying to put a CD on again out of spite, but he’s not sure he could pull off that kind of maneuver without running the car off the road. 

Though, the more he thinks about it, the more that seems like the best option. 

It’s been eleven total hours of sitting next to each other and not thinking about why. Scott has talked himself out of asking a million times over because the next time he does, he wants Logan to finally tell him. 

He wants to map it out, somehow, the moment right before this big fucking secret stops being so much of a secret, the moment right before Logan reveals whatever it is that’s eating him up. 

Because Scott can read it on his face, and he shouldn’t be able to anymore, but it’s still there in the crinkle between his eyebrows; Logan is scared. 

What’s so bad that you can’t just tell me? Scott doesn’t say, the thought heavy like a stormcloud. What did you do, Logan?

They eat lunch in Chicago. Scott picks at his brown rice and steamed vegetables until Logan scolds him for playing with his food. He swallows down a yawn and resists the urge to rub the grit out of his eyes. But Logan catches him the second time, and he frowns some more, setting his steak knife next to his plate. 

“You’re practically sleepin’ on your feet,” he chides. 

Scott looks away, irritated already. 

“Let me drive the rest of the way to the hotel,” Logan offers, his voice gentle. Scott hasn’t heard it that soft in a long time; something rises up from the depths of his subconscious at the sound of it, and his spine tingles. 

“Okay,” he concedes, not even bothering to put up a fight. Logan just shoves his bowl closer to him and tells him to finish his goddamn lunch. 

The radio finally picks up a station, and Scott hums along to an old pop song under his breath as they get back on the highway. At Logan's suggestion, he tries to take a nap, dozing in and out of consciousness as they zip down the interstate. He hadn’t expected to be so tired, but he’s exhausted.  

That’s what thirty years of vigilante work does to the body, he guesses. The reality of it makes him want to snap in half.

Logan pulls into a rest stop about halfway through Wisconsin because the car needs gas and Scott hadn't thought to bring any road trip snacks, which Logan seems to find genuinely offensive. 

He offers to fill up the tank while Scott stretches his legs inside the dingy convenience store. The overhead lights are old and yellowing. The buzzing finds a spot behind Scott’s left eyebrow and burrows there, manifesting as a splitting headache. He shuts his eyes tight for a moment and breathes in deep through his nose. He pushes down the rolling nausea in his stomach, then makes his way to the cooler in the back. 

He grabs a bottle of water for himself and a bag of jerky for Logan. He pays in cash, pretending not to notice how the cashier is squinting at him and his shades, something like recognition threatening to take over his face. 

“Have a good afternoon,” Scott says politely, if not a bit stilted. 

“Hey,” the clerk starts, and Scott freezes. “Aren’t you — ”

He looks back over his shoulder, mouth turned downwards because these things never go how they should. Everyone ends up disappointed or asks too many questions or, in a few cases, gets way too grabby. 

But the kid meets his eyes and his sentence stops in midair. He gets this look like he’s trying to find the face of someone else, someone long dead, in between all of Scott’s features. Hunting down ghosts in the tired slant of his eyebrows. 

“Never mind,” he says, embarrassed. “You have a good day now.”

He gives him an odd half-salute, and Scott walks briskly out the door, mortified. 

Logan is leaning one arm on the roof of the car, watching Scott carefully as he comes towards him. His eyebrow is ticked up and his hip is popped out, like he does when he’s thinking, and Scott could probably produce a snapshot of Logan doing that exact pose for every year they’ve known each other. 

“That guy give ya trouble?” Logan asks once he’s in ear shot. 

Scott shakes his head. He tosses Logan his food, who looks at the package with curious appreciation. “Comic fan.”

Logan’s face drops into a scowl, and he shudders sympathetically. 

People always hate finding out that Wolverine is also an asshole in real life, or that Storm does just go to the store to buy groceries sometimes. 

“Fuckin’ comics,” Logan grunts. Scott nods in agreement. 

He still thinks Charles should have taken legal action, but Charles loved the idea of their legacy being preserved like that, even if half of that legacy is built on blatant and unapologetic lies that everyone else on the planet seems to take as unabridged truth. 

(“Oh God,” Jean wheezes out in between laughs. Scott frowns. 

“It’s not funny,” he says, tracing the line of Comic Jean’s crazy-big hair with his finger. Her dress is skin tight except for the train billowing around her, and he looks more confident in a tuxedo than he ever has in real life. “How is this funny to you? It’s a lie.”)

“Good for nothing,” Scott sighs as he opens the car door. He cracks open the lid of his water with a twist of his wrist and takes a long pull, glancing out into the red-tinted building beyond. 

The cashier is staring through the windshield, right at Scott. Still looking for Cyclops.

He’s not here, Scott thinks as Logan pulls out of the parking lot too fast and wide. He hasn’t been here for a long time. 

—

When Scott blinks awake several hours later, the car still smells like jerky, and it makes his stomach churn. 

Once the queasiness passes, he realizes it’s after midnight and they haven’t stopped, or switched, and Logan is gripping the steering wheel just hard enough that he won’t slump over and kill them both. 

“Logan,” Scott says blearily. “Logan, pull over. You’re about to drop.”

“Hm,” Logan huffs, but he doesn’t make any move to stop the car. Scott sits up. 

“Logan. Pull over.”

“No.”

“Mother fucker,” Scott spits, sick to death of the silence and the arguing, sick to death of his own fucking car and the concept of driving altogether. “We missed the hotel. We have nowhere to stay for the night. I’ve slept. Let me drive.”

Logan doesn’t glare at him, but he is glaring, his eyes shooting daggers at the road ahead. Scott reaches over and puts a hand on his forearm, splays his fingers all the way out so he’s touching as much of Logan as possible. 

If this were ten years ago — well, if this were ten years ago who knows where the fuck they would be right now. Dirtying a set of already filthy motel sheets, working off the tension filled car ride the only way they could without screaming at each other. 

Not healthy, about four meddling voices repeat in his head. Scott, that’s just not healthy. 

He squeezes Logan’s arm. The dim light from the display is reflecting off of the wire rims sticking out of his shirt pocket. The whole space is filled with a horrible, thick tension, snaking its way around Scott’s neck, filling up his socks. 

“What’s in North Dakota, Logan?” he says softly. 

The car comes to a sudden halt. Scott would be worried if it wasn’t the middle of the night and they weren’t the only ones on the road. 

Logan stares ahead for a few silent moments. His shoulders are tight, hunched up like he’s getting ready for something. Scott pulls his hand away and leans his elbow on the console between them. 

“I’m sick, Scotty,” Logan says, finally. He sounds broken open. “I’m dying.”

Scott fumbles, unsure what he means. “What? Have you talked to the Professor? I’m sure that — ”

“Of course I’ve talked to the fuckin’ Professor. I’ve seen Hank a hundred fuckin’ times in the past month, I don’t — ”

He cuts himself off with a rough cough, and it makes Scott wince. Logan brings a hand up to tap at his own chest. 

“It’s killing me. This shit stuck to my bones, it’s — it’s fuckin’ killing me.”

Because what else is he to do, really, Scott reaches up and takes Logan’s face in both of his hands, gentle as he can. He brushes his thumb under Logan’s eye, over the wrinkles that shouldn’t be there, the scars that shouldn’t be there. 

He doesn’t think he totally gets it, but the way Logan is looking at him, split down the middle, exhausted, he thinks he doesn’t have to. 

He can help Logan, and he will help Logan, because it’s the only thing he’s good for. He feels like a bad friend when he realizes he’s spent the better part of twelve hundred miles bitching at a man being slowly poisoned by his own body. 

“Okay,” Scott nods decisively even if no decision has been made. “We’ll get you the help you need.”

Logan closes his eyes like he can’t afford to believe Scott right now. 

“But still,” Scott continues, moving back so he can really consider Logan. “You have to tell me. Why are we going to North Dakota?”

Logan shakes his head and looks away, back at the empty road in front of them. “You remember when that place shut down last year, the one Hank helped get all those search warrants for?”

Transigen. It had been a grueling process, signing off on emails and printing out contracts for months. But they had done it. 

“Yeah, yeah, I remember. But that was in Mexico City.”

Logan scowls. “I’m gettin’ to that. And you remember how Charles had that seizure?”

Scott nods. 

“Well, he’s been tellin’ me — he thinks it was ‘cause of all that commotion that day, you know… the raid and the arrests.” 

He looks guilty, almost, as he gazes out through the windshield. Scott tilts his head to the side, confused. 

“How would that have — ?”

Logan sighs, long-suffering. “They had kids there. In Mexico City. They were experimenting on ‘em, just like — ”

Just like they did to me.

“Charles thinks that all the overlapping uses of power or somethin’ caused some kinda rift or disturbance or whatever , and it uh, overwhelmed him.”

“They were taking kids?” Scott asks, still stuck on it, horrified. 

“Not exactly, but — well, Charles thought he could use Cerebro to find all of ‘em but he wasn’t strong enough. He had to start training Jean.”

“Jean?” Scott says. She never said anything to him about it, and it hurts his feelings in an incredibly juvenile way. “Jean is using Cerebro?”

“She’s tryin’ but… I dunno, I guess it changes from telepath to telepath. The machine knows how to help Charles, not her. It sounds like a bunch of bullshit if you ask me, but.” He rolls his eyes, and the action momentarily comforts Scott. 

“Have they found any of them? The children?”

“Some. Few of ‘em were just wandering around Texas, most of ‘em with their nurses. A lot of them told us to fuck off.”

Scott reels back. “You’ve met them?” 

The pieces finally start to click together; Kurt on indefinite bed rest, the eastern wing of the mansion being closed off because of “mold,” approving a new budget that he hadn’t even bothered to look twice at. It’s been right under his nose the whole fucking time. He’s angry, but mostly he just feels stupid. 

“Listen, it was too risky to — not even Ororo is supposed to know, but she ended up findin’ out anyways, so — hey, Scotty, listen to me — so it’s nothin’ personal. We gotta protect the kids, that’s all.”

Scott waves the reassurances off, because this is not about either of them, really, despite a nasty bout of jealousy threatening to break through. Scott pushes it down, down, down. 

He doesn’t enjoy pulling rank on Logan anymore, but, well. Desperate times. “With all due respect, how do you know any of this?” He keeps his voice cool and steady. “Why are you involved?”

Logan straightens himself up. He fixes his eyes to Scott’s, looking grimly at the red lenses of his shades, probably only seeing his own face reflected back at him. 

“One of them is mine,” he says quietly. So quiet that Scott is sure he heard him wrong. 

“What do you mean, one of them is — ”

“They had my blood, or my — I don’t know, but they were manufacturing these kids. Makin’ ‘em in bottles and shit. This lady wrote the mansion sayin’ she was headed to North Dakota, that they were following some fuckin’ coordinates to this place — ”

“Eden,” Scott finishes for him. Something they had laughed at together, years ago. 

Logan nods. “She was worried, you know, that they were gonna die out there. She said she had family she couldn’t get to because they had basically walked the whole way. She was real apologetic, too, but apparently she has my — my — ”

“Logan,” Scott murmurs. Logan shakes his head and drops his gaze, but he doesn’t start sobbing. He doesn’t even really cry, just sniffs and shrugs. 

“Her name is Laura,” he says, delicate and soft, like it might splinter on his tongue. 

Scott nods. “Laura,” he echoes back, just to see the relief break across Logan’s face.

The night around them is quiet and still. They’re probably halfway through Minnesota at this point, and if they just keep going they’ll be there by morning. 

They switch off, much to Logan’s chagrin. But as soon as he slumps down in the passenger’s seat, he falls asleep with his mouth open, snoring at an acceptable decibel. 

Scott looks over at him, smiling, and starts the car. 

—

North Dakota is bright and hot. 

They pass the state line just as the sun rises, the light glinting off of the blue and white sign. Welcome! it screams. A line in a textbook from twenty-five years ago swims to the surface of his memory; false sense of security. He shakes his head, and shakes the thought away. 

Logan starts to stir sometime later, and Scott lets him wake up slowly, lets him adjust to the light and try to stretch out his stiff muscles. Scott watches him a little out of the corner of his eye; he looks muted in the morning sun, with his clothes rumpled and his hair all stuck-up in the back. He looks softer around the edges. 

“Good morning,” Scott says quietly, after Logan has been staring moodily out the window for at least two minutes.

He slides his eyes over to Scott but otherwise hardly moves. “Mornin’.”

“We’ll be there in about two hours. We can stop at the hotel first, if you want — I don’t know, some time, before. If you need a minute we can go to the hotel.”

“No,” Logan says, and he looks at Scott a little bit like he wants to curse him out for as long as it takes to get to Eden but he somehow, miraculously, abstains. “No, let’s just keep drivin.”

What’s in North Dakota? he repeats to himself, a little hysterical. 

You make your own problems, Jean is telling him, her voice firm but still exasperated, the way only he can get it to be, and even the memory makes him smile. You worry yourself sick over nothing and try to make everyone else deal with it. We can’t shoulder it all like you. We can’t. 

Eden is in the middle of fuck-all and Logan isn’t even sure they’re in the right place. 

“I know how coordinates work,” he snaps, tired, shielding his eyes against the open, blinding sky. “I guess — fuck it, let’s keeping headin’ this way till we hit something.”

It’s a little bit like doing a recon mission, or something; trudging through some stretch of wilderness because Logan thinks he has an instinct about one thing or another. It pisses Scott off to no end that he usually ends up being right. 

They follow the same winding path until suddenly, it levels out and they’re deposited onto a clearing of sorts. A steep cliff to their left, probably a few hundred feet to the ground. There’s a lean-to constructed neatly against a large rock formation. In it sits a mat made from torn up little strips of fabric, some bottles of water and a cooking appliance, like you would use for camping. 

Scott looks up at Logan, but he’s looking somewhere behind him, alert, and he crouches down a little on instinct. 

He hears her before he sees her, truthfully. 

It’s the scream she lets out as she charges him; something guttural and ragged — a battle cry. Scott recognizes it from a place deep in his mind, the same place that holds the sound Jean’s voice makes right before she cries. Three decades worth of combat and fighting; he would recognize that sound anywhere. It’s Logan, out for blood. 

She leaps up, getting the jump on him from behind. She pushes his shoulders down, swings herself around as he falls and pulls her fist back, two small metal blades popping out from between her knuckles. Scott lands hard on his back, the wind rushing out of him as he stares up at her. 

She’s snarling, baring her teeth furiously. Her face is partially shadowed, her thin brown hair hanging over most of it. She has his arms pinned to his sides and for a moment she is sitting heavy on his chest with her claws drawn and Scott thinks, of course Logan couldn’t muster up the decency to kill me himself. 

But someone pulls her off of him, he thinks, and distantly he hears someone else talking, panicked but scolding. A hand comes into his line of vision, big and weathered and familiar, and he hoists himself up with it, brushes the sand off of his jeans. 

“Chica,” a woman is saying firmly. “You know who that is.” 

“H — “ How does, he mouths. “ — know?”

Logan winces at the way Scott’s voice comes out, strangled and choked, still trying to catch his breath. His mouth quirks downwards, apologetic, and Scott groans with remembrance. 

“F… ‘in — “ shuddering gasp-breath in, “ — comics.”

Logan nods. Good for nothing. 

The woman who saved him from certain doom is still speaking to Laura in hushed Spanish. She takes one of Laura’s hands in her own and swipes a thumb through the drying blood on her knuckles, shaking her head and tsking in the universal well, that’s no good gesture. It is an action Scott recognizes from living in a school for the better part of his life. It is personal and paternal, so he glances away. 

Then he steps forward, takes a deep breath, and extends his hand. “Hi, I’m Scott Summers. We’re with the — “

“I know who you are, too,” the woman says, and for a quiet second Scott thinks she is going to be angry, as people often are in these scenarios. Anger that comes from disappointment, from getting too close and seeing all the cracks and fractures. 

But then, a relieved, tired smile spreads across her face, brightening her eyes. “Of course I know who you are. We’ve been waiting. Hi, I’m Gabriela.” 

She takes his still outstretched hand. Their calloused palms fit together nicely, and Scott thinks, a little helplessly, that their hands are quite similar. He knows a fighter’s hands when he sees them. How many hours has he spent bent over a roll of gauze and a pair of busted knuckles, the faces and hands changing but the simple criss-cross of the wrap remaining a sturdy constant? His mind flips through the faces easily; Alex, Bobby, Kitty, even Logan on the rare occasion he felt like humoring Scott’s weeping heart. 

It is despite these tells of violence, or perhaps because of them, that Scott also recognizes the worn, familiar hands of a healer. Hands that have seen hell and fought against it. Hands that help pick the pieces back up. Soft and scarred. 

They match, he thinks again, and he knows he’s bordering on delirious, but they do. Their hands match. 

“And this,” Gabriela continues, stepping back and gesturing next to her. “This is Laura.”

Laura stands beside her confidently, back straight, eyes determined. Her posture is, again, something Scott would know anywhere; the collected slope of her narrow shoulders, the way her hands hang idle and ready by her side. 

Scott looks over at Logan and knows that he sees it too. It really is her. 

“Hi, Laura,” Scott says once it’s clear that Logan won’t. “I’m Scott. It’s wonderful to meet you.”

He puts his hand out for her as well. She looks at it, then at him, considering. She takes it tentatively and gives it one good shake, and Scott is startled by the firmness of her grasp. 

Laura looks over his shoulder, and her face shifts minutely, into something calmer. Her eyebrows settle into an ever-curious uptick. Scott moves to the side and watches Logan’s face as Laura, still fierce and wild-eyed and brave, reaches her own hand up, offering it for Logan to shake. 

Scott watches his eyebrows furrow like he’s angry, like he’s hurting from the inside and he’s mad about it. It passes over his face like a cloud before he smiles a wry smile and takes her hand, squeezing it once before stepping back and looking at Gabriela. 

“Do you need to pack?” he asks. She looks back to their small campsite, and Scott wonders how many days they must have spent walking, waiting, seeking out refuge from the pages of a story. Eden. Not a paradise, but still a beginning. 

“No,” Gabriela says after a pause. “No, we didn’t — there wasn’t anything for us to take, except for her bag.” 

Scott notices a beat-up army green backpack slung over Laura’s shoulders. Logan nods. He seems uncomfortable, or maybe just overwhelmed, squinting at Laura like he’s not sure how she got there. Scott grants him some dignity and averts his eyes. 

“Okay then,” he says, and Laura looks at him, almost amused. “We can go.”

They make the walk back and load up into the car. Scott hands them each a bottle of water, fumbling for a second with the plastic convenience store bag. 

“We’ll get to the hotel, and you two can shower, and eat — we’ll get food on the way, too — and one of us will go out and get a change of clothes for each of you. And then — “

He looks over to Logan, who picks up seamlessly. “And then we’ll take Gabriela out to her sister’s and… go from there.”

Scott nods, then pauses before asking, “Why didn’t you go to your sister’s first?”

Gabriella shifts her eyes over to where Laura is curled up against the opposite door, leaning her temple on the glass of the window and gazing blankly out. 

He understands what she is going to say before she says it. “I didn’t know if they would take her in or not. If they would call the police.”

Scott starts the car. 

He doesn’t much register the next hour. He gets it in glimpses, like he’s peeking through his fingers. He knows things happen because he is still somewhat aware that time is passing, but nothing really sticks out in particular. 

It isn’t until he sees Laura rush past him and hop up onto one of the big beds, spreading out as much as possible, that he is able to feel his fingers again. 

He blinks, and glances over at Logan. 

“What?” he says without turning towards him, looking about as helpless as Scott feels. 

“Nothing,” Scott says softly. Logan finally looks back at him, startled, and Scott mirrors his concerned frown. 

“You alright Slim? You look a little lost.”

“Yeah,” Scott says, and he can’t help but smile. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

Logan goes out to get Gabriela and Laura some clothes. Scott sits outside the room while they both use the shower. His phone rings and he is only a little bit surprised to see Rogue’s name lighting up the display. 

“Hello?” he answers. 

“Hey, Scott,” she says, and her voice is quiet and sweet. Something must be up. 

“How’s everything going?”

“Oh, everything’s alright. We’ve been holdin’ down the fort.”

He listens to her take a deep breath. 

“How are y’all? How’s the trip?”

Scott has known Marie since she was seventeen years old. He knows what her voice sounds like when she’s scared and when she’s lying and when she wants to ask a question but is too afraid of the answer. He also knows what she sounds like when she’s trying to ask about Logan without seeming like she’s asking about him. 

He leans his head back, and it thunks against the wall. 

“You know, don’t you?”

There’s a crackling silence over the line while he waits for her to answer. 

She takes another breath in. “Look — ”

“Oh my God.”

“I basically bullied it out of him anyways,” she says, defensive. “I wasn’t supposed to find out! Nobody is, not ‘til they get to New Mexico.”

Scott sits up. “What?”

There is another heavy silence. He hears the shower in the room stop. 

“Rogue. New Mexico?”

“I have to go,” she says suddenly, and continues over Scott’s urgent protests. “See you when you get back. Tell Logan I said hi!”

She hangs up. 

Scott stares at his phone for a second in mute outrage. 

New Mexico is another two days. New Mexico is miles and miles away from home. He gets a sinking feeling that might be the whole point. 

A busted up pair of sneakers enter his line of vision. He looks up and into the face of none other than Logan himself. Master deserter. The times aren’t changing. The times aren’t changing at all. 

“New Mexico?” he says in lieu of a greeting. Logan’s face drops. 

“How — ”

“New fucking Mexico?”

“Scotty — ”

“Enough with that!” Scott snaps, dropping his voice into a furious whisper. “Enough with the — the nicknames and the wounded bird act and the lying. Enough with the fucking lying, Logan!”

He stands. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Logan, for as much as he shouldn’t, looks pissed. Like he has any fucking right. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Scott snaps. 

Logan rolls his eyes. He shifts his weight, readjusting the plastic shopping mall bag in his hand. “I’ve been talkin’ to the Professor about retiring,” he says simply. “We got somethin’ squared away somewhere just outside Albuquerque. Figured no one would be missin’ me too much.”

He says the last part a little darkly. 

“When were you going to tell me?”

“Soon,” Logan shrugs. “Honest. If you don’t wanna drive us out there, I could probably find a car. Or the bus — ”

“I’ll drive,” Scott interrupts again. “Of course I’ll drive you guys.”

There’s an awkward pause. Scott realizes, with an embarrassing flush of his cheeks, that he never thought he’d have to say goodbye to Logan. Not that he thought they’d spend the rest of their lives together; they had different wants and needs in the past that made it hard to visualize a real future with one another. 

It was more that he had always assumed — and he realizes that it’s rather morbid and now terrifyingly untrue — that Logan would simply outlive him, and that’s how they would handle it. Scott has been ready to die since he was twenty-two and almost did for the first time; Logan going before him was never a possibility. Even when he would leave for weeks, months at a time, Scott knew that he would always come home. 

The door opens and they both look down at Laura, who is staring curiously back at them. Her hair is wet and combed back behind her shoulders. She glances down at the bag in Logan’s hands, and her eyes widen in excitement. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Logan mumbles. He hands the clothes over. “Call us in when you’re done.”

The door closes again. Scott doesn’t look at Logan but instead at the room number, the flaking gold. 

“I can’t keep fighting, Scotty,” Logan says. 

Scott shrugs. He feels, stupidly, betrayed. “You don’t have to explain. I just — I wish you’d told me.”

“I should have,” Logan says. Scott doesn’t think he believes it, but he’ll say it to appease him. More lying. Scott scoffs. He switches from staring at the numbers to looking at his shoes. 

“Gabriela?”

“She has two weeks to come down if she wants. If she does, there’s work for her and somewhere to live near us. If not, she’ll get the means to start over wherever. It’s her call.”

Scott nods. 

“I don’t want Laura to — the life we lived, the shit we did, I don’t want that for her. I don’t want it for me, either. Not anymore.”

I have a chance, Alex says to him a thousand years ago. I have a chance to stop the violence, at least a little. I have to take it. 

There’s a terrible second where Scott thinks he might cry. He doesn’t. Instead he leans his shoulder against the wall and tries his hardest to look at Logan. 

“I’ll miss you,” he says quietly. “We all will but — I’ll really miss you.”

Logan doesn’t say anything. Scott regrets it as soon as it leaves his mouth. He will miss Logan, but Logan knows that. He knows it like he always knows it. 

The door opens after a silent minute. Laura beckons them in, looking cleaner but even more tired in her brand new shirt and jeans. Gabriela is standing ready by the television. She looks down at Laura, and something complicated but gentle passes over her face. Scott thinks she’s made her decision. 

He ends up taking her to her sister’s house. It’s only about a half hour drive from the hotel, and they spend most of it in silence. It’s not uncomfortable but it is weighted. They both have questions they shouldn’t ask. They both know things they won’t tell the other. 

Gabriela’s sister is named Aurora and she tries to feed Scott four times in the ten minutes he’s there. Her house is warm; the living room is painted a rich sunset yellow. There are photos on every wall and magnets from different states on the fridge. 

“Thank you,” Gabriela says to him by the door. “And tell Logan, too. Thank you both so much for giving her a home.”

He doesn’t have the heart to correct her. He lets her circle her arms around him and pull him down into a hug. 

“Will you miss her?” he says quietly. 

“Of course. But she belongs with people who understand her, I think. Who know what it’s like.”

“You should visit,” he says as he pulls away. 

“I will,” she assures. “When it’s safe.”

They exchange their goodbyes and Aurora insists he comes back when he’s in town again. Her husband throws his head back in laughter and hooks an arm around her waist, pulling her close. 

Scott smiles. He gives them all a small wave, and heads out the door. 

During the ride back he thinks of Aurora and her house with its blue shutters and wood floors, its rugs and leather couch and decorative plates. He thinks of the home she has built and finds himself curiously envious. He has a home and a family. He’s not lacking love the way he was when he was younger. He has nothing to want. 

Except he does, doesn’t he? That terrible truth he tries so hard to ignore. He aches with a want so bad it makes his teeth hurt. Sometimes he thinks he wants it to go away even more, but it never does. It just eats at him and eats at him. It’ll keep eating at him until he’s nothing. 

He sits in the parking lot for a few minutes and thinks about just going back to New York. He sighs. He gets out of the car and heads up to the room. 

Laura is sitting on her bed, quietly breaking off pieces of a big chocolate bar and eating them slowly, like she’s trying to savor it. Logan is leaning up against the headboard of the other bed, dozing off. 

“I guess we can stay here for the night,” Scott says. Laura looks over at Logan, then back at him, and she seems to be trying not to laugh. They share a secret, mischief-filled smile. 

Scott takes her down to the small restaurant in the lobby a few hours later, after he gets the chance to shower and change his stale clothes. She orders a big cheeseburger and french fries, but he makes her get a glass of water instead of the milkshake she tries to point to on the menu. He gets a salad for himself and one to-go for Logan, because it won’t kill him to eat a vegetable once in a while. 

Laura doesn’t talk. She hasn’t spoken the whole time she’s been with them, but Scott doesn’t mind. He knows how kids get sometimes. He’s seen plenty of wrecked kids come through the mansion, ones that won’t talk or eat or sleep for whole days after they arrive. Wide-eyed and shell shocked. Like Alex when he came back from overseas. Like Rogue when she ran out of Logan’s room that first night. 

He stabs at a cucumber with his fork. “Do you think you’ll like it in New Mexico? With him?”

She doesn’t look away from the television in the corner, but she does nod, and Scott leaves it at that. 

Laura doesn’t get ready for bed past wiggling under the covers and promptly passing out. He almost makes her get up and brush her teeth, but figures she probably needs the sleep more. 

He jostles Logan’s shoulder. 

He gestures to the empty side of the bed. “Hey, do you mind?”

Logan doesn’t open his eyes. He just mumbles, “No, ‘course not,” and shifts onto his side. Scott climbs in and lays on his back, gazing up at the ceiling. 

The room is dark and quiet save for the television, left on by Laura and kept on because Scott is too lazy to find the remote. Logan breathes even and deep next to him, with only a hint of a rasp, and Laura looks small in her big bed. 

He manages to fall asleep for a few hours, restless and sweaty as it is. He blinks awake just as weak golden light is starting to come through the window. 

Logan and him have both turned to face each other in the night, and Logan has one hand placed loosely on Scott’s bicep. His face is serene and blank in sleep, and Scott takes a moment to study it, noting the sharp curve of his jaw and the soft slope of his nose. 

Scott puts his own hand over Logan’s, shutting his eyes again and drifting off. 

He wakes up again when he feels his glasses being slowly pulled off his face. His instincts kick in, and he grabs the offending hand, sitting up and quickly pushing his shades back up his nose. 

Laura stares at him, unblinking, apparently unbothered by Scott’s reaction. He lets go of her wrist, heart hammering in his chest, guilt souring in his stomach already. 

“I’m sorry,” he says shakily. “You know what happens, don’t you? When I take these off?”

Laura keeps her face even, keeps her shoulders squared, stubbornly standing her ground. But she must be able to sense Scott’s genuine distress because after another second she drops her gaze and gives him a small nod. His heart sinks a bit.

“It’s okay,” he says softly. He slowly reaches toward her, letting her telegraph the movement, then takes her small hand in his. “I’m not mad. I just want you to be safe, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Laura smiles, small and secret, and squeezes his fingers. His stomach lurches in his throat, but thankfully she pulls back before he starts sobbing in front of her.  

On cue, Logan steps out of the bathroom, changed and all cleaned up. He beams at Scott. 

“Hey, Slim,” he greets. “We should get goin’ soon.”

He looks to Laura, then back to Scott, still smiling his big, dumb smile. The sleep did him good, Scott thinks. He looks good. 

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed. “Well then. Let’s go.”

—

“It’s a shorter drive,” Scott explains as they pull out of the hotel parking lot. “So I don’t think we need to stop for the night this time. I mean, besides the fact that this was our last reservation, it seems better to get there as fast as possible.”

Logan agrees and Laura, of course, says nothing. She seems content to gaze out the window at the bare fields and low buildings that dot the area. 

Scott feels bad. He hopes she has things in her backpack, a toy or a book or whatever she does for fun. He wonders what she’ll do in New Mexico. Logan has been teaching the literature course along with his usual history lesson for the last five years, give or take, but Scott thinks he would want her education to be more rounded out. 

Then again, he isn’t sure if she even exists in the eyes of the government, at least not as a person one could register for school. It probably isn’t safe, either way. 

There isn’t much to see on their route. South Dakota is the same empty kick-a-can-around bubble that its sister state is, and Scott never thought it would be anything to write home about but it gets a little unbearable, staring at the endless cliffs and hills that fall on either side of the road. 

The car is silent. Scott makes an executive decision to preserve his own sanity and pulls into another rinky-dink gas station just as the sun is starting to set behind the clouds. The horizon is a muted swirl of colors, underneath a heavy purple that makes Scott feel lightheaded and weightless. He feels like he’s on the moon, or what he imagines the moon would be like. 

“I thought you said no stops,” Logan accuses, listless and bored and arguing just to do something. 

“I think we all need to stretch our legs,” Scott says. Logan laughs at the frown on his face and his scowl deepens. 

He leaves Logan and Laura to do the shopping. He fills up the car with gas, and the methodic movements of the pump, the machine, the gas cap help shake off the encompassing dread that’s been cropping up over the last seven hours. Logan’s presence, angry and awkward but still there, in the passenger’s seat next to him — it was a reminder that Scott was going back to Westchester alone. It was awful. They have ten more hours of driving. 

He shoves the pump back into its slot on the machine, swipes his card and punches in the numbers. Five dollars a gallon. Ridiculous. 

Laura emerges from the store a minute later. She has on a pair of too big orange-tinted aviators despite the sun being well on its way out by now. She makes her way over to the gumball machine, and Scott watches her frown and poke and squint at it. She turns the coin dial once, twice, and glowers when nothing happens. 

“Laura!” he calls. She looks at him. He pulls a quarter out of his pocket. She grins. 

She rolls a ball back and forth across the backseat, sunglasses still on and her gumball tucked safely away in her backpack for later. Logan flits his eyes to the rearview mirror from time to time, like he’s making sure she’s still there. 

There’s a sign somewhere on the border of Wyoming and Colorado, and in big green ugly letters it screams MUTANTS GO TO HELL. REPENT TODAY. There’s a phone number along the bottom of it: 1-800-CURE. It’s lit up ominously by flood lights fixed to the structure. 

Scott ignores it. Logan ignores it, but Scott knows he sees it because he shifts in his seat and his face drops into a furious glare. He isn’t sure if Laura notices it, only because he’s fairly certain she’s fallen asleep, the aviators slipping down her nose as she readjusts her head on the seat. He tries to picture her learning how to read in some all white, depressingly clinical facility, hooked up to a machine with armed guards at the door. It makes him a little sick. 

They finally make it out of Wyoming sometime around one in the morning. Laura is fast asleep by then, stretched out across all three seats, her bag tucked up under her head. 

Logan is awake but silent as always, staring gloomily out into the dark with his chin in his hand. 

“Hey,” Scott whispers. “Are you alright?”

Logan doesn’t respond other than giving a curt nod of his head. 

“I’m serious. What’s up?”

“Nothin’,” Logan mumbles. He sounds exhausted. 

Scott huffs. “Fine.”

He lets another five minutes pass before he tries again. 

“You’re brooding too loud. What’s going on?”

Logan grumbles, and Scott rolls his eyes, and it’s just as familiar as anything else, save the small mutant child sleeping in the backseat. 

“It’s never gonna be safe for her,” Logan says at last. Scott sighs. 

“It will be. That’s what this whole thing has been about — keeping her safe. We’re always trying our best to keep people like us out of danger.”

When Logan doesn’t respond, Scott softens his voice and says, “We look out for each other.”

Colorado seems more interesting than fucking Wyoming, at the very least, and Scott tries to focus on that rather than how Logan is just sitting there staring at him. 

“Stop it,” he complains quietly. “Weirdo.”

“We look out for each other, huh? That’s what this is?” Logan gestures between him and Scott, to Laura, to the whole car and the general trip itself. 

“Yes. Of course.”

“Yeah, alright. Lookin’ out for each other. Fantastic.”

Scott looks at him for a quick second, bewildered, before nervously glancing back at the road. “What are you talking about — ”

“Fan- fucking- tastic — ”

“I don’t understand,” Scott says, exasperated. 

“Just forget it, alright? Just fuckin’ forget it, Scott.”

He says his name like he’s pushing a bullet out through his teeth. It hits its intended target, and Scott shuts his mouth abruptly, hurt into silence. 

“Let’s not fight. We’ll wake her up,” Logan says after a moment. 

Scott just nods. 

—

As soon as Laura wakes up, she digs in her backpack and pops her gum in her mouth. Scott grimaces. They really should have gotten her a toothbrush. 

Logan makes Scott pull over so he can drive the rest of the way. They only have a few hours left on the road, but Scott concedes and climbs into the passenger’s seat. 

It’s early enough that the sky is a sweet dusty pink. Slowly, the rocky terrain of Colorado levels out into the bumpy sand-swept land of New Mexico. It’s nice to watch. 

Laura seems to think so as well; she twists around in her seat to stare intently out the window. She’s still wearing her glasses. 

The small dottings of civilization start to materialize around them. Billboards, farmhouses. A large banner promising XXX GIRLS. Logan snorts. 

Eventually they pass a sign declaring them to be entering the wonderful city of Bernalillo. Scott has never heard of it, but that’s probably a good thing. 

He realizes suddenly that this means it’ll be over soon. He’ll be driving back to the mansion in a few hours, all by himself. 

He tries to memorize the buildings they see on the way to the house; the coffee shop, the brick-front clothing stores. It seems modern and traditional all at once, and he thinks that Logan will like it here even if he won’t admit it. 

They make a few more turns, going deeper and deeper into a quiet little suburb, and Scott forgets to remember the route. He’ll have time, he thinks. Plenty of time. 

He almost doesn’t realize that the house they’ve stopped in front of is supposed to be the one Logan bought. It’s small, but not too small, painted white with a dark red door, a stone path jutting out from the driveway. His mind can’t connect the two for a brief second, Logan and this house; he gawks at the curtained front window as he tries to rationalize it all. 

He’s in New Mexico. What the fuck. 

Logan unlocks the front door with a shiny silver key and pushes it open. Laura runs in ahead of them. She stands in the middle of the small living room and looks around with big, disbelieving eyes. They both watch her take in the dusty light and bare walls. 

“Go look at your room,” Logan says, a little coyly, and Laura runs off again to go inspect. 

Scott watches her go, and when he turns back to Logan he’s looking at him like he’s trying to figure out how to say goodbye. It is a painfully familiar expression, and it makes Scott’s chest hurt like it always does. 

“Come on,” Scott says softly. “Come on, Logan. Enjoy this for one second, will you?”

“I am enjoying it. Don’t fuckin’ say that,” Logan says angrily. He shrugs, tired and irritated. “I’m just worried, is all.”

“About what?”

“That I ain’t cut out for this.” He waves his hand in the air. “You know, lookin’ after a kid. Bein’ — Bein’ normal. I’m not sure I know how.”

Scott frowns. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

Logan shakes his head and looks away. Scott prods at his shoulder, beckoning. 

“You always do. Don’t you?”

“Well,” Logan shrugs again. He leaves it there. 

The house turns out to be fully furnished, which Scott suspects is more Charles’ doing than anything. There’s a television in the living room. The appliances in the kitchen look new, as do the fixtures in the bathroom. He really should have taken a closer look at that budget.  

Laura’s bedroom is fully outfitted with a bed, a bureau, a pre-filled bookshelf, and a desk with a small laptop sitting squarely in the middle. The bureau is full of clothes. Her bedsheets are a clean, light blue. 

She turns to them from where they’re observing from the hall and smiles, nodding her head happily. 

“It’s good,” she says. Her voice is raspy but still filled with delight.

Logan stares at her, mirroring her expression in the living room. “Yeah?”

She nods again. “Yeah.”

Logan and Scott look at each other and seem to be experiencing the same feeling. 

Logan shows him the rusty old truck in the garage, proudly declaring it his newest project. Scott runs an admiring hand over the hood and mumbles something about calling him up once it’s done. 

Logan says “Of course,” like it’s obvious and Scott is an idiot for feeling the need to clarify. 

He thinks he might be loitering, once Laura settles down on the couch with one of her brand new books. Logan sits next to her, fiddling with the television remote, and Scott stands awkwardly in the doorway. He feels out of place. He really should get going. 

“I should get going,” he says. They both look up at him, twin scowls on their faces. 

“Are you sure? You can stay for another night. The couch pulls out.”

Scott pulls his eyebrows together, oddly insulted, and shakes his head. “Thanks, but I need to get home.”

Something moody crosses over Logan’s face before he stands up, gesturing towards the door. 

“I’ll walk you out.”

“Wait,” Laura says quietly from the couch. She makes her way over and takes a hold of Scott’s wrist. She shakes it gently. 

“You have to come back,” she says firmly, angry brown eyes pointed towards the red-crystal lenses of his glasses

He nods. “When it’s safe. I promise.”

She lets go of his hand, satisfied. He gets the overwhelming urge to hug her, and quickly turns and walks out the door before he does. 

Logan does walk him to the car, depositing the keys into his hands. They stand there for a moment, shuffling their feet and avoiding the inevitable. 

“Okay,” Scott says at last, because he’d like to be somewhat close to Oklahoma before it gets too dark. “I really do need to head out.”

“Yeah,” Logan mumbles. There’s a pause, and Scott thinks he might say something else, but he just closes his mouth and nods. 

“Hey,” Scott says. He thinks that he’s always trying to get Logan’s attention. “I’ll be down soon.”

“It’ll be a few months until it’s safe enough. Even phone calls are a big risk,” Logan says glumly, and Scott is uncomfortable seeing him so put out and miserable. 

“That’s alright,” Scott decides for the both of them. “We’ve gotten through worse.”

Logan chuckles, dry but amused, and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I guess we have.”

Scott wants to kiss him, because Scott always wants to kiss him once he’s about to leave despite having twenty years of experience on why that never works. Logan has made up his mind and Scott supposes he’s made up his own. 

He’ll go back to Westchester for now and he’ll be okay with not seeing Logan every day because he has to be, because this is so much bigger than either of them and even that is able to shine through the layers and layers of insecurity threatening to drown him. 

“I’ll see you soon. Alright?” he says. He reaches a hand out, pokes at the center of Logan’s chest, smiling a little when it makes him sway. 

Logan catches his hand and pulls it away, grinning. He brushes a thumb across Scott’s wrist, over his pulse point, before letting go and stepping back. 

“See you around,” he says. 

Scott gets in his car and starts driving, and he doesn’t think about Logan’s hand on the inside of his wrist or waking up to his sleeping face for the first time in years. 

He doesn’t think about Logan and Laura being two thousand miles away, and he doesn’t think about four days spent driving around Nothing, America only to leave it all behind in the end. 

He doesn’t think about it because there’s no point, even though that’s never stopped him before. 

He misses Jean, he thinks. He misses Jean and his bed and his office and he doesn’t let himself miss Logan because there’s no point. 

The drive back is even more flat and blank. Missouri is hell on Earth, he decides as he drives through smatterings of anti-mutant roadside signs and billboards declaring that the end is nigh. 

Cows graze in the fields next to him, and horses gallop in the distance. He hates it all. 

He drives through the night, pulling off into a rest stop around five in the morning to shut his eyes for a minute. He isn’t able to fall asleep for real, between the uncomfortable feel of the seat on his back and the fear that drifts up in his peripheral consciousness when he thinks too hard about dozing off in a random state, miles and miles from home. 

He wanders into the stop after about an hour and orders himself a cup of coffee. He grimaces against the fluorescent light reflecting off the white tile. 

He knows he probably looks like shit — rumpled, unshaven, hair sticking up from where he’s been nervously combing his fingers through it. He looks down at the table self-consciously. His phone buzzes in his pocket. 

Jean: Home soon?

He smiles, fiddles with the corner of his case. 

Scott: Tomorrow hopefully. 

He should eat something, he knows he should, but his stomach feels tight with nerves. No one is here to make a fuss about it anyways. 

He’s homesick, he realizes. Homesick like it’s his eighteenth birthday and his phone calls are getting ignored. 

Distantly, he wonders how Logan ever managed in all those small towns and halfway points. Maybe it’s a skill, like stealth. Camouflage. How did he ever blend in? Wasn’t he lonely? 

There’s an old song playing out of the dusty jukebox in the corner. Scott listens, letting his syrup-sticky brain wake itself up some more. 

I found a dream that I could speak to, the singer croons, melancholy and sweet. A dream that I can call my own. 

Scott thinks about Logan, like he shouldn’t, about Laura and her books all the way back in Bernalillo. His throat tightens. 

I found a thrill to press my cheek to, she continues, and Scott thinks about Logan’s hand on his bicep in a hotel bed, like he shouldn’t. He closes his eyes. A thrill that I’ve never known. 

He leaves the rest stop as soon as the song ends, not even bothering to finish his coffee. The cashier eyes his black debit card with suspicion but says nothing, simply nodding at Scott when he wishes him a good day. 

“You know,” a woman leaning against the front of the building says as he steps out. “You can get that fixed.”

She’s smoking a cigarette, and uses it to gesture in his general direction. He pauses. 

“Excuse me?”

“Your car, man,” she says, confused at his offense. She points to the all day mechanics on the other side of the road. 

Scott looks at his car and for the first time notices two parallel scratches on the back passenger door. Something in his chest catches, and he smiles, even though he should probably be angry. 

He turns back to her. “I’ll leave it ‘til I get home. But thanks.”

The woman nods and takes a thoughtful drag of her cigarette. 

“Where’s home?”

“Up north,” he says automatically, because it’s what he’s used to saying to polite strangers wondering why he’s sniffing around these parts. Though not geographically untrue, he corrects himself. “New York.”

She whistles low and smooth. 

“What’re you doing out here?”

Scott shrugs. “Business.”

She takes one last long drag and drops her cigarette to the ground, stubbing it out with a black platformed boot. 

“You’re an awfully long way from home to just be doin’ business.”

He shrugs again, a touch more uncomfortable than he was a moment ago. “My job takes me to weird places sometimes.”

He hopes she doesn’t ask anymore questions. He can be quick on his feet, but he doesn’t want to be, because he’s sore and angry and tired. He’s so tired, and all he wants is to get back to the mansion and drown himself in grading and finals and curriculum planning until enough time passes and he can see Logan again. It’s an embarrassing thought and only a simplification of the frustration bubbling up under his skin, but it’s the truest thing he knows right now. 

She nods, contemplative, and pushes herself up off of the wall. She tips her head towards him, almost like a salute. “Well, I won’t keep you. Seems like you’re missing someone.”

He stares at her for a second, unsure how to proceed. His silence must be answer enough, because she grins. 

“A girl knows these things,” she says as a way of explanation, tapping the side of her temple with a painted black nail. Scott blinks. He isn’t sure where he knows that gesture from, but it’s familiar. Incredibly familiar. 

He makes his way to his car, dumbly pulling open his door and staring at the interior, unable to get in for some reason. He feels an equally familiar tug on the back of his mind, and looks over the roof of his car at the woman, startled. 

“See you later, Cyke,” she says, still grinning, before opening the door to the rest stop and disappearing inside. 

He gets in his car. 

He starts it. He stops it. He stares at the steering wheel for a second in shock.

He starts the car again, and keeps driving. 

He pushes it out of his mind by the time he gets back in Ohio. He welcomes the same old flat nothingness, because at least it means he’s closer to home. 

The sun is a distracting intrusion, and it drills into his skull and pulses behind his teeth. He’s always forgetting to pack aspirin and he’s too worried about what Hank would have to say about his mild but frequent migraines. So, he ignores it, and drives on. 

Ohio creates a festering wound in his soul that Pennsylvania only barely manages to sew up. The city sights are familiar but it’s still not home, so he keeps going. 

The radio starts coming in clearer, and he turns the dial up as the announcer promises another hour of ad-free classic rock. “Throwback Thursday!” he cheers, the smug grin evident in his voice. Scott rolls his eyes. 

Nirvana starts to drip out over the speakers (“Nirvana? Classic rock? Come on!” he exclaims out loud, to no one), and it keeps him company as he soars past the sign declaring him back in none other than the Empire State itself.

Something takes over his mind as he gets closer and closer to the mansion, some outside force gently guiding him all the way back. They’re automatic, his movements, his foot on the gas and the turn of the wheel. He doesn’t have to think about it. He just follows it the whole way home. 

The light is dim and golden, the sun starting to dip in the sky. The gates open and he sails into the garage, giddy relief climbing up his chest. He turns the car off. He opens the door. 

He steps out and ignores the motorcycle in the corner, half of the engine taken apart because Logan had managed to do something to the crankshaft and promised he would fix it. 

Bastard, Scott thinks, before continuing to ignore its presence. 

Jean is waiting for him in his room. Scott goes to ask how she knew he was home, but then his mind reminds him of a stranger in a parking lot making herself privy to his secrets, and connects the dots himself. 

“Well? How was it?” Jean asks hesitantly. 

“Fine,” he says, tossing his bag onto his bed. “It was fine.”

“Charles told me,” Jean says, the little crinkle between her eyebrows that means she’s frustrated making an appearance. “Once he knew they were home safe. I knew about the other kids but I didn’t know about her. I didn’t know that she was his. I didn’t see any of the — all I did was find them. I swear.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were learning how to use Cerebro?” he says, too hostile, because it’s been thirty hours of smoldering alone in his car without someone to take some of the heat. 

But Jean doesn’t understand what Logan did, that Scott was never really angry at him, he was just angry, period. 

“I wasn’t supposed to,” she says, clipped. She crosses her arms over her chest. 

“Why not!” he exclaims. An ugly laugh forces its way out of his chest, and Jean steps back, alarmed. “Why does everyone around here have to keep each other in the fucking dark all the time?”

Jean looks at him, something furious and bold shifting in her eyes. Scott prepares himself for the blow, the fight, tightening his jaw in anticipation. 

But Jean doesn’t yell back, or strike him, or insult him. She drops her arms and sighs, heavy and regretful, looking away from him. 

“We’re not doing this,” she says decidedly. “I won’t be your stand-in punching bag, not this time.”

Scott pauses, momentarily ashamed, and she continues. 

“I’m sorry the trip was rough, and I’m sorry this was all sort of thrown at you, but I really think you should take a shower and go to sleep. We can talk about everything when you’re — when you’re not so tired.”

She turns and leaves his room, shoulders tight. He listens to the click-click of her shoes down the hallway. She turns, and the sound drifts off. 

Scott sits down on his bed. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, alarmed to see a text message from Hank of all people, time-stamped fifteen minutes ago. 

Hank: Come see me upon your arrival. I take it you might have some things you want to discuss. 

Scott turns his phone off and shoves it under his pillow. He does want to know about the Professor’s condition, about Logan’s, about the other children and how they even started doing this in the first place. 

But Jean is right. He’s tired. He should shower. 

He makes his way into his bathroom. He flicks on the light. He is pleased to find everything just as he left it. His razor and toothpaste and mouthwash on the counter, his towel still neatly on its rack and the bathmat flush against the side of the tub. He looks at himself in the mirror and frowns; his eyes are droopy behind his lenses, and his skin looks dry and sullen. The stubble that hugs his jaw and cheeks makes him look a little wild. 

He runs a hand through his hair, trying to fix himself up a bit. When it doesn’t work he sighs and looks away. 

He showers. He climbs into bed. He listens to the silence of the halls because by now everyone is at dinner, and he would join them if he was capable of moving his legs right now. 

He imagines himself all alone in that big, empty house, and falls into a restless sleep. 

He wakes up a few hours later, disoriented, briefly forgetting how he got home. The lights in his room are on but the sky outside is inky-black. The display on his bedside clock tells him it’s just past eleven. 

Someone is playing music on the patio. He strains to hear it, and finds it’s the same song that the jukebox was playing. 

He chalks it up to his tired mind hearing things; he’s not in the mood for coincidence or divine intervention. 

He slowly but surely falls back asleep, listening to that same old song float into his room from the backyard. 

Here we are in Heaven, she promises, and Scott starts to dream of yellow light in New Mexico. For you are mine at last.