Drafted

Chapter 1: To Grieve

(Pinwheel Universe: Original Timeline, December 2015)

Wolverine! Stand down! This mission is compromised! he heard Xavier’s voice in his ear. It might as well have been fucking white noise. He snarled again as he rammed his claws into the head of another man, the pristine eerie white of the hallway now splattered in streaks of red and swarming with more militant combatants. They had been trying to storm the lab where they believed the enemy to be developing technology to detect the mutant gene in non-mutants, but had been compromised early on. Too few of us. Too fucking few of us to do anything. Always, always, too few.

“Wolverine!” Blink screamed into his comm, conjuring portals this way and that to help them evade the worst of the gunfire. “This is becoming a suicide mission! There are too many of them. Sentinels now spotted in the facility! We should retreat! Now!”

“I give the FUCKIN’ ORDERS, Blink!” Logan roared, but, just as he turned, a laser blast to the chest, the sizzle of boiling temperatures as flames licked his shoulder and head, searing the skin off the left side of his face. What the fuck?! He snarled, as a pair of Sentinels stood between them and the outside entry. Baring his teeth, he charged forward, before the portal changed and Logan wasn’t quick enough to not run through it, before the handful of mutants that had been commissioned to attack the lab were all breathing heavily once more in the underground bunker in northwestern Canada where Blink had quickly transported them to safety. 

“Fuck!!” Logan growled, whipping around this way and that, uniform half corroded and still smoking in places. He could still feel the air on his metal-coated skull for a few fleeting moments, before the skin painfully and stubbornly grew back. Around him, Blink was sporting third degree burns on her forearms, another mutant he’d come to know, Cypher, was on his back, a healer and the mutant medic in the bunker rushing over to him. The rest of his five-man team sporting minor burns and wounds.

Turning around quickly, Charles was there, quietly hovering outside the door as a few mutants rushed past him to help their injured brethren. 

I told you to stand down, Wolverine. 

“We had time,” Logan barely ground out in English, snarling as he still struggled with the animal within to stay something closer to human.

No, Wolverine, you did not. And you risked lives because of it.

“We had fuckin’ time, Charles,” Logan barely mumbled again, running his hand through his freshly grown-in hair.

You’re off team leadership on reconnaissance, starting now, Charles communicated to him. You’re too volatile. 

“I could have handled it,” Logan muttered, and their leader quietly and solemnly shook his head. 

“Look around you, Logan,” Charles murmured, finally outrightly speaking. But Logan didn’t need to. He could feel all of their eyes on him, his rage finally subsiding enough to realize it was in that very rage, that blinding white incessant fury, he had jeopardized them all. Quickly and quietly the medic and healer worked to revive the mutants Logan had deliberately put in harm’s way to try to complete the mission. 

For a moment, Logan simply seethed, frowning deeply before stalking forward past Xavier rudely. 

“God fucking damn it,” he muttered, pushing past Magneto and Blink and even the quiet, heavy eyes of Storm, intent on his own cinderblock, stalely lit room. Intent on drowning.

--

A hot night. The mealy smell of cigarette smoke and vomit and pollution and too much liquor. Her gloved hand was shaking slightly in anger as she offered out the damp hundred dollar bills toward him, and he swallowed hard.

“Here,” she said.

“Hmph. Thanks,” he muttered, taking the money and shoving it into a jeans pocket. He couldn’t evade her scowl though. And he’d earned it. After that last fight in the cage, her eyes on him constantly, the animal had been too close to the surface. He’d come out here to expend some energy with a random redhead. She’d almost caught him in the act, his jeans undone and the redhead bent over the side of some pallets. Thank fuck she hadn’t walked in a moment too early. He couldn’t help it though, sometimes around her. He loved the kid. Respected her. Wanted to set her straight, get her out of that funk she’d been in. She’d been sloppy in the danger room. She was twitchy, unsettled. He’d thought a night of whiskey and taking her mind off that damn poisonous skin of hers would help. Now, he was afraid he’d only made it worse.  

“What was this tonight?” she demanded of him, and suddenly his defenses were up.

“What do ya mean?” he said, even as he glanced down past the dumpsters and spare pallets toward the end of the street, where the Harley was parked. He wanted to leave. He wanted out. He closed his eyes impatiently as the last of the effects of the gallon of whiskey he’d probably had tonight wore off. 

“Was tonight about me or about you?” she finally asked, the words hot and warm in the sticky summer air. Goddamn. What a question. And he’d be damned if he knew the answer. It was probably somethin’ in between. Not quite about her shit or his. Just like most things in his fuckin’ life. Not quite stayin’ in Westchester, not quite able to leave. He and Rogue: not quite friends, not quite anything else.

“Look, I’m not sure what you think you....well. It’s gotta be how it is…” he muttered lamely.

“How what is?” she asked, not just yet letting him off the hook. A quick breath out from him, a quick shake of his head, and then a longer sigh.

“Nothing, kid,” he muttered, too tired tonight to explain the fucking things in his body and brain he felt for her. Besides, even if he was able to put it into better words, if there were things he felt that were deeper, there was no way he’d act on ‘em. Xavier would have his head.  

“Come on, let’s get you home.”

The girl frowned, but said nothing more as she trailed behind him to the bike. He started to get on, but then he heard her cursing under her breath. 

“Fuck. I forgot my jacket. Must be back in the bar,” she murmured. In an instant ,he was sloughing off his own, his signature dark brown one with the yellow stripes, and offered it to her.

“No problem,” he muttered. She only stared at him for a moment, then down at the jacket, then back to him.

“But what about-” she began.

“If I get thrown from the fucking bike, I’ll survive,” he said, explaining, a little pissed. Just take the goddamn jacket, kid, he thought to himself.

“Put it on, Rogue,” he said seriously, holding her gaze. She sighed a little, and, hesitantly, finally took it from him. Slowly she wrapped herself in it, and all he could fuckin’ think about was how it would smell like her for weeks after. He swallowed, as she straddled the bike, her hands warm through her gloves as she gripped his chest tightly, now far less layers between his body and her hands. A nineteen year old straddled around his bike and waist. Holy fuck, this had been a mistake. 

“Get us out of here,” she managed to whisper, and he obeyed. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation as the bike roared to life and peeled out of the parking lot, as the dark night enveloped them. Everything was a blur, his regret and want and confusion churning within him, until a brisk harsh word was hissed into one of his ears. 

“Faster.”

“That right?” the words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“I wanna fly,” he heard her whisper, and then he couldn’t help the low growl in his chest as his boot pushed on the throttle and the night was wild and open and-

And then the dream was morphing, and they were in the underground bunker, a memory not from years but only weeks ago:

“You know what I want more than anything right now?” she asked, wrapped up in blankets as she was in the so-called living room of the bunker, just a blank, empty rectangular room with some mattresses, a coffee pot, and a record player. He’d been site-scouting with Storm all day, and had drearily come back to find her listening to some crap music from the shitty collection of records in the bunker. He hadn’t meant to linger that long, but she’d invited him to talk with her. After he’d finally sat next to her, he was aware of how fuckin’ close he was to her for the first time in weeks, since South Africa. After he’d given her his healing, he’d given her space, with as much shit was probably up in her head that had to do with him. 

“What’s that, kid?” he asked, a small smile on his face. 

“A Big Mac,” Rogue said through a sad laugh. “I haven’t had one in…god. Years. A Big Mac and all the McDonalds fries I can eat,” she said, and he chuckled a bit at that.

“Heh. Well definitely better than Spam and canned green beans. Doesn't sound so bad to me, either. Sorry I can’t help ya there, darlin’. I don’t know of the last time they let our kind into a fastfood joint like that in North America,” he muttered through a frown.

“Was it different ...in Japan?” Rogue finally asked, turning to look at him more seriously.

“A bit. Wasn’t as bad. I mean, you probably couldn't get a decent burger over there, but the politics were different. They didn’t have mutant sensors yet. I could walk into any place… undetected. But I shoulda known, things were still brewin’ under the surface. Had I been paying better attention… If I hadn’t...well…” he dropped off, and, noticing she was still shivering, he cleared his throat. 

“Rogue….” Logan muttered, before she looked up to him hesitantly through another shiver. 

“Yer killin’ me, kid. Don’t…make it more than..fuck...just c’mere. Healing factor should be worth something,” he muttered, and reached for her, pulling her close to his body, careful not to come in contact with the bare skin of her neck and face.

“Hell,” she muttered, her back against his chest, leaning into him without thinking about what it meant as her shivering subsided with the rise and fall of his own steady breathing . “You are warm.” 

“I told ya, darlin’,” he finally managed to mutter, trying to not drown in her scent, the sound of her pulse, the sight of her neck exposed and so close to him. He had no fuckin’ clue where to put his hands, but, before he could decide what to do with them, she placed one around shoulder so it wrapped around her frame. He sucked in air as she idly massaged his hand through her gloved fingers, and for a while they simply sat there like that. More moments they couldn’t come back from. Moments like this. 

“I hate this place,” she said quietly after some time. “It’s like, down here, I can’t breathe.”

“It’s the same for me,” he muttered. “Ain’t no scent down here that feels real. All this fuckin’ artificial light.”

“Yeah…” she drifted off, and he could hear her heart settling, and he realized she was exhausted...and sad. He wanted to fucking kiss her. He wanted to bite down on that pulse on her neck. He wanted to protect her, keep her safe, revive that promise he’d stupidly made to her all those years ago. The one he hadn’t been able to keep.

“Listen, kid...this thing between us-” he began again, his voice rough and deep as he struggled to form words she kept idly massaging his hand.

“Shh,” Rogue said, turning to stare up at him.

“Kid-” he began, but she put two gloved fingers to his lips, and he stopped talking. 

“Soon,” she murmured, and he only cocked an eyebrow at her for a moment, a small smile playing on his lips, as she leaned into the planes of his chest once more.

Logan snarled as he shot up in the cold cot, body practically convulsing, brain hazy through the fog of sleep and booze. He only groaned and breathed for long moments, shutting his eyes tightly. After some time, he growled, swiping for a half-empty container of cheap whiskey on the desk and drinking heavily. If he kept a bottle to his lips all day, he got enough of a mild numbness to maintain the basic semblance of being alive, but that was all. After a few more minutes had passed, he stumbled into the bathroom to piss, and afterward had growled as he looked up at his own reflection.  He hadn’t shaved in two months, and he looked like a fucking animal. Dark circles under his eyes. Face carved with the memory of nightmarish sleep. Not that it fucking mattered. They were underground anyway, buried in the snow, the real light snubbed out.

Two days after it had happened, he’d gone back to Two Rivers without permission. He’d found nothing but scorched earth and debris, charred remnants of the sprawling, multi-building facility. They had bombed the shit out of it, but before the bombs fell Logan knew she had only about a minute left to live. She’d known. Known since the moment she pulled the collar off. The toxin pumping through her system. The dead feeling in her eyes. And now, nothing of what he’d witnessed. No body to bury. No scent of her left on the wind. No way to grieve. He’d stared, wild-eyed, out at the Canadian wilderness beyond, and had left Blink then, telling her to go home, and stalked out into a thick swath of pine trees. He walked for what felt like miles, before stopping, swaying on his feet, finally falling to his knees in the deep snow. He’d shut his eyes then, and, with the little strength he had left, buried her in his mind.

No more why. No more what if. No more her. Instead, after that, he’d thrown himself into dangerous mission after dangerous mission. He sliced and tortured and carved his way through half of Canada after Two Rivers, immediately volunteering for using his body in the way it was meant to be used. To slaughter. To maim. Not to fucking love. Despite this fact, most of the missions had failed; there were simply not enough of them to turn the tide, to scramble for any sort of upperhand. There were times the others had all barely made it out with their lives. But now, Charles had grounded Logan. And there was nowhere to go, no way to be. Except at the bottom of a bottle. 

Her life: squandered. His: neverending. Why hadn’t he pulled the goddamn collar off his own neck? Would it have even killed him, if he was immune to all the fucking poisons out there anyway? Why had he been the one without a fucking spine? He had been dying as it was. Why not then? Why had he let her make the sacrifice? Why her? 

Why? Why, kid? Why’d you do it?

Why you, and not me?

Somehow, he knew he’d pay for it. Somehow, someday, he’d pay for his hesitation, his awful, unbearable mistake.

--

Two weeks, three weeks, four...life nothing more than waking and dreaming, occasionally showing up listlessly to a debrief when he found the strength to. He hated these moments though. He hated the look of pity on ‘Ro’s face, the way Blink looked at him with disdain at how little he seemed to care, which didn’t fucking make sense to him. He was still decommissioned from recon, anyway, and any missions there had been had died down with the harsh, Canadian winter they were all facing. 

It was a random, bitter January day when he heard Charles’ voice in his head, and it took everything in Logan to get out of bed, pulling on a sweatshirt and stalking forward to the briefing room where he had been summoned. Charles was quietly sitting at the stainless steel table with a laptop in front of him and some paper documents. No one else was present, and Logan quickly realized this was just about him and not about the mundane updates of a winter hiding out in the Canadian rockies.

“Logan. Please come in,” Charles said, nodding to the older mutant who stalked forward, sloppily taking a seat to Charles’ left.

“What do ya need, Chuck?” Logan muttered, itching the scruff of his full beard, and Charles’ eyes narrowed, studying him.

“I want to say right away that I hope you know how deeply, deeply sorry I am for your loss,” he murmured, and Logan realized it was the first time his leader had said anything about Rogue since the short, silent ceremony they had held after returning to the bunker on that fateful day.

“We all lost her, Charles,” he muttered, muscles bristling with tension at the insinuation that she was something more to him. That it was anything other than what it was. 

“We did, my friend. And I must say-”

“-why’d you call me here, Chuck? Get to it,” Logan snarled, interrupting the younger man, who once more fell silent. He sighed, putting his head in his hand once more.

“I wanted to, in part, apologize. It was a mistake, to keep you in charge of reconnaissance, after her death. But...I have realized now it was also a mistake to entirely keep you at a distance from our purpose for being here. For fighting back,” Charles said solemnly, and Logan only growled lowly in response. 

“You don’t needta handle me with kid gloves, Charles. Hate to remind you, but I’ve got well over century on ya,” Logan snorted, and Charles only sadly smiled.

“Nevertheless-“ but then something in Logan was cutting Xavier off again. 

“And I only knew her for a few weeks as it was. I’m fine.”

“And of course...the years and years before that when you were her mentor,” Charles said softly, blue eyes meeting Logan’s hazel. Logan frowned, but said nothing, as he waited for Charles to continue so he could be over with the whole damn thing.

Charles cleared his throat and got to the point.

“The mutant compound we placed the families we rescued at Two Rivers, North Point, the one Alpha Flight is managing…” Charles began.

“What about it?” Logan growled lowly.

“I would like you to go there. They’ve established a colony, but I have reason to believe they are not thriving. Alpha Flight recently lost over half its team on a mission in Ontario. Alpha Flight needs help with inventorying supplies, rationing commodities,” he finished, but Logan was already leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms tightly against his chest. 

“I ain’t a fucking girlscout selling cookies, Chuck. You want me on a mission, put me on a real mission again, where you need firepower and someone who ain’t capable of getting hurt. Why don’t you send one of the others?”

“Because the others, my friend, don’t need this. You do,” Charles said so softly Logan wasn’t sure if he’d put it in Logan’s head or uttered the words out loud.

“What? To go hand out some bread to some mutant kids? I ain’t in need of any fuckin’ therapy,” Logan barked back.

“Nevertheless, you knew this winter was going to be a challenge. And may I remind you, my friend, it was your suggestion back in South Africa that we take cover this winter. We are also low on supplies… you’ll take the jet but will reconvene with a ground convoy in three days’ time so that we may stock up before the winter becomes worse, and mobility is no longer an option,” Charles said clearly.

“So I take this means I’m still off of recon?” he growled.

“For the immediate future, yes. But if you want...out of the house...so to speak, this is your chance,” Charles said through a curt nod. Logan sighed, and finally stood.

“And Logan…” Charles added, and quickly Logan turned back around to look at the other mutant. 

“Yeah?”

“May I suggest shaving before heading out? There are children at the compound, after all. No need to scare them more than necessary,” he said through a sad smile, and Logan scowled through a low growl, but also a brief nod, before showing himself out. 

---

An hour and a shave later, as the Blackbird lifted off the ground, Logan closed his eyes a little more tightly. Until now, he hadn’t donned the new suits that they had bartered with another mutant rights faction over, and, even though it wasn’t all black fuckin’ leather, it felt tight on his muscles. Constricting in a way he wasn’t used to. He gripped the armrests as Storm navigated the Blackbird into the air. 

The X-Jet never stayed in one place for long. It was too precious, especially since now it housed a portable Cerebro. It was something Rogue had left them with, the knowledge of Hank McCoy’s mind and the ability to construct a portable version on the jet. Often, Erik took it airborne on his quest for more mutants to join the age-old “cause.” Sometimes they used it on missions, sometimes they didn’t. 

Today though, only Logan and Storm sat in the cockpit, and as it rocketed forward, he pushed down his flight-anxiety, throwing Storm a glance, only to realize she was staring at him with concern on her face.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he growled, before jerking his head forward, staring at the deep blue of the sky that was almost setting, an elderly nightfall.

“Like what, Logan?” Storm murmured tiredly, before gripping the helm more tightly. For over twenty long minutes, no one said anything, before finally her voice cut through the air.

“I miss her too, you know,” she murmured to him, and he could only growl lowly at this, even as she continued. “She was my student. And later, my friend.”

But Logan was in no mood. He loathed Storm’s pity. He and ‘Ro, always at odds. She was always coming in during the moment he was about to leave, about to do something stupid, to offer the wise advice, usually just to fuckin’ think before he acted. Rogue hadn’t been that way. Too allegiant to him to disagree, too young to see him as a force to be contested with, up until the very last time he’d met her again, that is. ‘Ro though, she never had a problem telling him how she felt, and as the only one outside of the mess that had been Scott and Jean and his jealousy toward them, Storm often had the power of persuasion over Logan. ‘Ro was, at times, his conscience, his good sense, his voice that warned wait a fucking a second and think about what you’re doing-and she had saved his ass more than once because usually he was wise enough to listen to her. 

Since Two Rivers though, he had barely muttered a handful of words to her. He wanted no fucking part of it. Good sense be damned.

“Just shut up and fly the damn plane,” he snarled, and he could feel the room choke up with tension, and he realized too late he had gone too far.

“Hey,” she hissed from the pilot’s chair, snapping her head over to him. Nowadays, Storm wore her hair super short, almost a crew cut, and it made her look harsher, perhaps more distant, but all the more fuckin’ formidable.

“Look. I know you’re going through hell,but you don’t get to talk to me like that,” she snapped, and when he threw her a contentious look, something in the sky surrounding the plane grew darker and the jet shuddered. Logan’s grip tightened on the arm rests as she kept talking. “I’m a senior leader on this team, especially since Xavier took you off recon. You’re supposed to report to me. But we both know that’s bullshit. And for as long as we survive this, Logan, and I’m not so sure how long that’ll be, we work as equals. So...a little more mutual respect, you understand me?” 

“Listen, ‘Ro. You know I respect the hell out of ya-” he muttered, but she cut him off once more. 

“I said...do youunderstand?” she asked, and when he shot a look back over to her, her thin arms still gripping the helm, he realized there were nascent beginnings of tears in her eyes. 

“Yes,” he finally muttered, swallowing his pride, and she nodded quickly. 

“Good,” she breathed. For long moments, no one said anything, until static poured out of the comms. North Point, the name of the mutant colony, checking in. 

“We read you, Blackbird. State your business for being in our airspace,” the scratchy voice came over the comm.

“Permission to land,” Storm said, her voice breaking slightly as she did so. “As arranged by Professor Charles Xavier.”

“Permission granted. Welcome to North Point, X-Men,” the voice said.

--

Eyes darted to the ground. People talked in hushed whispers as they passed. In this large, sprawling underground bunker, a tent city had cropped up, the place littered with thermal heaters, fabric dwellings, blankets on the floor for beds. Every here and there there was a “food” vendor, although Logan knew from the brief he’d received on the jet, food, along with any other commodity, was rationed. Not so different than the ghettos these mutant families had come from, the main difference being they weren't being beaten in the streets for the smallest infraction. Here, still, there was the semblance of freedom. Still though, Logan couldn’t shake off the erie feeling that settled in his brain as he witnessed the desperation.

They had been shown to their room where they’d be staying for the next three days, an actual walled-off portion of the underground tunnels with two cots. Logan realized, quickly, they’d been given the most luxurious living quarters. They had dropped their bags, and were now being ushered along the tent city to meet various families, to show a sign of good will, and to begin the process of evaluating how many rations they would need for winter from the soon-approaching ground convoy. 

“Reminder that curfew begins at 8:30 for a headcount and to disperse rations,” a computerized voice said from the digitally-enhanced skies, and Logan growled uncomfortably as Storm walked in front of him.

“Curfews. Rations. They’re barely living half a life down here,” Logan snarled.

“We’re on rations too, Logan. We’re doing no better. And at least, unlike the ghettos, they’re not hanged in the streets if they’re late,” Storm muttered, and he only somenly nodded as they headed deeper into the sprawling caverns. The one in front of them was a mutant by the name of Northstar, the leader of Alpha Flight, although he’d only shaken Logan’s hand and quietly thanked him for his service in saving the mutants that they now housed before pulling them along, further into the city of mutant refugees. 

“We’re doing our best by these families, but there are a lot of mouths to feed,” he murmured.

“Well, there ain't as much food to go around, is there?” Logan muttered. 

“No. No, not for the likes of us, Wolverine. Our supplier of dry goods has been shut down, after word was received they were still selling to mutant families. But we’re still lucky, if only due to the fact that, right now, at least, there is enough to eat and this place has gone undetected this far by the Sentinel horde,” he explained.

Every once in a while, a scarred face. People peering out of tents as they passed, most of the onlookers all with angry red “M’s’ carved into their right eyes, although often that was the least grotesque of the casualties many of them faced. Two Rivers had been known for its medical experinments, and, at times, torture practices, so much so that it was a wonder they’d had anyone left to rescue.

After a long walk down the sprawling underground hallways, Northstar finally stopped near a dilapidated tent near the fringe of the city, and a short, mousy man stopped what he was doing, stewing a can of beans on a hotplate, and Logan realized he was beckoning another inhabitant in the tent forward. As he emerged he now holding the hand of a small child, encouraging her to step forward. As soon as he laid eyes on the girl, something in Logan immediately sank, as he realized who faced them: the girl who’d been in his arms. The girl he’d saved, while the last minutes of Marie’s life ran out.

Storm quickly sensed a change in Logan, even as Northstar turned to the older mutant.

“You speak some French, yes?” he was asking, and Logan only nodded. “They wish to say thank you.”

“Pierre, mes salutations,” North Star addressed the man, who immediately laid eyes on Logan and pushed forward, gripping Logan’s hand now with desperate gratitude.

“Bien sûr! Oui, l'homme aux griffes. Nous vous devons tout!” he exclaimed in French, although Logan’s eyes were glued to the brown-haired girl with the curls.She was shy, clutching a dirty, fraying blanket, hiding behind who Logan assumed was her father, and he found himself kneeling in front of her and attempting to speak. 

“Ce...il est moi. Tout est bien,” he said in broken French, only from what he was able to dredge up in his battered, tired brain from where the memories were still making their way back to him. This one...from the second world war. The bloodied beaches of Normandy. A world on fire. Finally... the look of recognition in the little girl’s eyes. 

“Sauveur!” she whispered, and then her timidity was gone as she bounded into his arms. Gently, he embraced her, hands all the while shaking. He could feel Storm’s eyes on him, and something about how thin the girl was, or how awful the tent city smelled, or how there was never any fucking light in these bunkers had him standing immideateily, letting go of the girl.

“S'il vous plaît, s'il vous plaît nous devons vous rembourser en quelque sorte,” the man begged in French, and Logan only shook his head a little, shooting a glance over to Storm. Please...please let us make it up to you.

“Je...tu n'est pas besoin. Il est juste que nous faire,” Logan murmured in French, and then he felt Storm’s hand on his own, steadying him. It’s...alright. It’s just what we do. 

“Logan,” she murmured lowly, but even as he quickly jerked his arm away from her own, they both realized the same thing: If Logan stayed down here any longer, he was gonna fucking lose it. 

“Finish up here Storm, will ya? Need air,” he managed to mumble, and he only nodded to the man in front of him, and then immediately turned on his heel, the panic in him rising. Quickly, once more past the hungry faces. Quickly, ascending the freight elevator into the sharp frostbitten air of northern Canada where the Blackbird sat perched on a snow-covered concrete slab acting as a landing pad. Night had fallen, and visibility was shit, but it didn’t matter. He barely had time to lean on the metal hull before the memories flooded his brain in a swell of anxious panic.  Rogue, no older than seventeen, looking up into the sun as he threw back the plastic tarp on his trailer in Alberta. Rogue, staring up at him in fear before he leapt off the balcony, throwing his claws into numerous Stryker guards as they stormed the mansion. Rogue, tears in her eyes, explaining why she needed the cure, why she had to leave, as, in response to her naively claiming he didn’t know what it was like to be afraid of his powers, afraid to get close to anybody, he muttered the words, “Yeah. I do.”

No time, no time. 

The sand running out.

“Listen, kid...this thing between us-” 

“Shh,” Rogue said.

“Kid-” he began, but she put two gloved fingers to his lips, and he stopped talking. 

“Soon,” she murmured.

A different life sugar. A better one.

“God fucking DAMN IT!” he snarled to the air, plunging his claws on his left hand into the hull of the plane, and ripping them out again, shrapnel flying everywhere, hands bloodied.

“Logan!” he heard her shout to him, and he looked up to see Storm quickly stalking back over to him, boots deep in the snow as she trudged toward the jet from the barely-visible hatch they had both emerged from.

“Told you, ‘Ro. Just needed air,” he muttered, and as she stared at the claw marks in the belly of the plane, she frowned. 

“We have to go back down there. We have work to do, and I need your help,” she said exasperatedly, clutching the parka she was wrapped in a little more closely around her thin frame.

“They’re living in squalor, Storm,” he muttered, a look of disgust on his face as he glanced back to the hatch.

“They have nothing else,” she hissed, and then the wind was picking up, the outside of the jet singing as the wind rushed over it. He realized, of course, it was fuckin’ rediculous to be outside right now, but outside wasn’t underground, and that was enough.

“It ain’t anything I wanna see. Or fuckin’ inventory,” he spat back. “Charles is just hopin’ I meet some scarred mutant kid and I get my wits about me again, and it’s bullshit. Jesus, Storm, can you do something about this goddamn wind?” She looked at Logan harshly, before sighing hard, her eyes going white and suddenly the weather was calm, still really fucking cold, but at peace. When her eyes cleared and she looked back to Logan, her brows were furrowed and there was a deep frown on her face.

“Believe or not, Logan. This isn’t all about you. Right now, those people need us. They need us to help them, to guide them. You know...there’s more to saving people than slicing open a few cages open and setting children free. We’re responsible for them now,” she said softly, staring at him intently.

“I ain’t responsible for anybody,” he snarled, and Storm’s frown deepened.

“Yes. Yes you are,” she hissed. “You might’ve been gone from us for a long time, for the worst of it. But you are one of us now. Again,” she said before finally signing once more. “And I need you to get it together.”

“I’m fine, ‘Ro,” he snarled.

“No, you’re not, you idiot. Listen, I know a panic attack when I see one. And I get it, ok? You think I like it down there?” she sighed, closing her eyes tightly, before continuing. “Anyway. It’s ok that you’re not ok, for now, but I need to know you’re gonna pull through this...eventually.”

At this...he said nothing, only issued a low growl from his chest, staring at her. 

“She meant a lot to you,” Storm murmured.

“I don’t want to talk about her,” he sneered. 

“Listen. I’m not telling anyone how to grieve. But first you run us on suicide mission after suicide mission-” she began.

“Everyone walked away with their fucking lives, every time-” Logan tried to get a word in edgewise but she cut him off.

“And then you hole up in your room for weeks and weeks, whipping through our rations of booze so fast we can’t keep up replenishing them.”

“Charles grounded me-” Logan began. 

“You grounded yourself,” Storm snapped. “And when you do, you have an impact on the people around you.” That finally shut him up. For a moment, neither mutant spoke, before she tried again.

“You damn well know that she’d want you to go down there and help,” Storm whispered vehemently.

“I said, leave her out of this,” Logan snarled out a warning.

“Absolutely not. How could you even say that? She sacrificed herself for us all, Logan. And I aim, every day, to make it up to her every way I can. If that means I have to smile at mutant children with deformaties from all the torture they’ve endured and not cry, if that means I have to smell shit and rotting food and the stale life down in that bunker, even if I have to hand out fucking rations or scrub toilets all night long, I’m going to do it, because I’m grateful I still have a life left in order to help,” she finished, and something in him fell then. The fight left him, and he stared at her blankly.

“What do you want from me, ‘Ro?” he asked quietly, and she sighed, walking forward to him, and looked him directly in the eye. 

“Grieve, honey. Grieve hard, long, whatever you need. But on the clock, we need you. We need you sharp, focused, alert. We need you back,” she said through a sharp nod of her head, and then the wind was picking up, the clouds once more covering up the starlit sky. 

--

In the room they shared, Storm’s cot was on one side of the wall and his on the other, only thin, military grade blankets at their disposal. They’d shared a tin of canned meat and some stale bread that night, and a glass each of some liquor Logan had smuggled in and then had awkwardly said goodnight to each other. Storm had at least drifted off fairly easily, and slept silently but of course Logan had tossed and turned, unable to shut out the sounds and smells of a hundred mutants trying to pretend any of them still had a basic shred of human dignity. They were all hanging on by a thread here, and the war had just begun. 

He’d polished off the rest of the fucking bottle of whiskey in less than an hour, and finally, it was enough to lull him into a dark fitful slumber. Logan wasn’t surprised by what came next. He’d always been plagued by nightmares, it was just that, now, instead of bloodshed and warfare, they were all of her. 

“Here,” he muttered, shoving a fresh mug of coffee her way. She didn’t smile at him, however, as she stared down at the coffee blankly.

“Hey,” she murmured.

“Hey yourself,” he repeated back to her, and that got her to grin, at least a little.

“Where are you headed next?” she said, noticing the pack on his shoulder, with so little feeling in her voice Logan almost believed her.

“Got some scores to settle in a place down south,” he muttered, difficult for him to even form the words.

“Oh yeah? Down south?” she asked, a quiet smile on her lips that he didn’t want to admit how much he liked.

“Not that south. But south, yes,” he teased and then it was more sad, the way she looked back at him.

“Look, kid. I’m sorry,” he finally muttered into his coffee, choosing to sit at the table opposite her.

“For...what?” she asked, although he could detect the glint in her eye that suggested she knew far more than what she should.

“For for being a dumbass, ok? We both knew what happened in that alley. And I’m just...sorry you had to see it. Or...almost see it. I...I’m not...well. I am who I am. And if I get too riled up...too...upset-” he started, before she cut him off once more.

“You can't stop yourself,” she muttered, and he winced at her words, although he nodded in silent agreement.

“Tamin’ the animal. It ain’t no easy thing,” he added.

She only responded with, “Don’t I know it.” 

He paused then, unsure if she was talking about herself or some version of him that resided in her head after the torch. Hoping it was the former, he simply smiled a little, nodded his head, and stood once more

“So you’re gonna be alright? Think you can sort yourself out?” he asked, hoping like hell for an answer that let him off the hook.

“I’m not seventeen anymore, Logan. You don’t need to protect me.”

“That’s not what I asked, kid,” Logan mumbled, hand tightening on his bag.

“I know,” she murmured to her coffee she held with gloved hands, before he sighed, squeezing her shoulder briefly before fleeing through those doors, squandering those moments he always took for granted, before she left for good and he left for good, never to return to Xavier’s, swept away in the world’s current.